littlesarbonn
Posts: 1710
Joined: 12/3/2005
From: Stockton, California
Status: offline
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Please don't take this as a complaint. It's not meant as one. It's also not directed at any one person but just at an observance I've been having over the last few years.
For some time, I was away from the scene, so I had little involvement with what was going on. As a result, a lot of my previous contacts pretty much dissipated or just became more difficult to keep in contact with. Since I came back, I started looking for someone again, and I found my search to be less than successful (although that's actually more complaint-wise, and not the purpose of this thread...just info to put this thread in perspective). Anyway, I did manage to run into a few people here and there, but I kept getting the feeling that aside from a lot of the chemistry just not being there, there really seemed to be something missing, but I couldn't figure out what it was.
So, I backpedal a long time ago to where I was actually in a bdsm relationship, and I started thinking about what was working back then that hasn't really been around today. It took me a LONG time to really figure that out, and I think I've kind of come up with what it is.
Strictness. Yeah, that sounds strange, but let me explain. In previous relationships, I always seemed to be involved with women that were set in their ways, and they would go out of their way to make sure you understood that. A lot of women I've talked to claim to be exactly that, but I've observed a variation to that rather than what I remember being more of a norm. There is a strictness to detail, a desire to have exactness in one's interactions, but there's another piece to the puzzle that was hard for me to realize was missing. And I think I finally put my finger on it. "Expectation."
So, let me explain because that's probably confusing now. I'll give an example that a lot of people might recognize. If you read a dominant woman's profile on the boards, you may take away a sense of "strictness" from the profile, in that she wants things done her way. But when you deconstruct that, there seems to be more of a sense of "things are done my way, or you go away" rather than "things are done my way, and you'll be damn sorry if you don't comply." I find that nuance to be actually quite significant.
First off, let me revisit my first words. This is not a complaint. I believe I understand what has brought so many women to this sense of interaction with potential submissives in that in reading so many profiles, reading so many threads on the boards and just interacting with the women who have to deal with the form-letter email-generating submissive population here. It's almost a survival instinct now that if someone doesn't comply immediately, then you get rid of the person because otherwise, you're dealing with a time-waster. And I totally understand that. There were a couple of threads recently where the women were talking about not wanting to deal with a confrontational submissive, using such criticisms as calling him a time waster, and they would have much better usage of their time seeking those who are interested in serving. And I understand that.
That's when I realized that that is what really seems to be different to me these days. I guess it has more to do with the fact that the Internet WASN'T the place to find a dominant to serve ten or so years ago (when I was previously seriously involved). So, just actually showing up meant you were taken seriously. The flakes were the ones who called and never showed up. Now, practically everyone, his brother, his pet turtle and his kangaroo are all flakes and playing games, which makes that sense of realness that much harder to achieve and perceive.
So, I wonder if this has changed the dynamic in actual relationships because that's what's happened to me. In every relationship I pursued, there seemed to be no sense of strictness or control other than "do this or leave", and I'm wondering if this just means that I've been part of a statistically insignificant subgroup of partners by sheer coincidence, or has this interaction with dominants and submissive men actually changed a lot of the constructs of actual relationships AFTER the courtship stage? I realize that a lot of women are going to immediately state that they perceive themselves to be of a strict nature (of the ones that do...this isn't a necessity for everyone, of course), but I sometimes wonder if that might be a biased sample in that people may have become so used to the dichotomy today that they don't even realize things have changed.
I know this is what has changed for me in almost every person who has contacted me through this message board. I didn't recognize it until recently when I was thinking about a partner I had some years ago, and I found myself trying to figure out why what happened before worked so well yet so many others were just not the same. The quality of people I've seen wasn't sub par in any way, so I thought it might be me, and then I analyzed it further to come up with this major difference in how the control dynamic seems to work in relationships these days.
Anyway, maybe I'm the only one who has noticed this. Or maybe I'm just seeing something that's not there, or is there, if that makes sense.
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<---- FYI, this picture looks JUST like me
http://www.littlesarbonn.com/Stickman/Stickman.htm
The Adventures of Stickman and the Unemployed Lego Spaceman
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The thing I keep missing (not a complaint, but an obser... - 
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