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StrangerThan -> RE: Dominant Partners not good for LTR? (7/13/2008 4:27:21 AM)
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I'm not going to try and address a blanket statement like the one in your textbook with another that comes from my perspective because it's as much an injustice as the original statement. It's easy to corner people in corners where they don't belong just because they fit some predetermined pattern. I see it all the time in discussions on any type of relationship, regardless of whether they're BDSM related or not. But I see being hard to live with is more a function of who a person is rather than what they are. Wrapped around that entire concept wen it comes to BDSM relationships is the difference between being Dominant and being a domineering type of person. They're not one and the same. I've seen that mistake made by submissives over and over, and in the wake of it, I've seen a lot of jaded and broken people. It's one reason I often stress knowing yourself when it comes to committing to any type of relationship, vanilla or otherwise. That doesn't mean to avoid playing, avoid learning, avoid socializing as none of those terms involve committment. What it means is before you step into a collar - or a wedding ring for that matter, spend some time figuring out what it is you need rather than simply want. It's important. Just as important as anyone who would control another spending time to understand what they need from it.
Not long after I met my submissive, I gave her two tasks. One was to define her worth. Not her worth to me, but simply her worth. What she should be able to expect, what she should deserve from any relationship. Then I asked her to define her Dom. I wasn't looking for a description of me, but more so that vague and hazy concept of the person who would own her submission. Why ask her to do those things? A lot of reasons.
I've always believed that a strong submissive is the best submissive, that when a woman knows exactly what she's giving me, she'll understand better what it is I need from her, and that D/s is, or at least needs to be for me, a type of harmony between people - a place where it doesn't matter so much what is done as how it's done, because in the how of it, you are feeding off each other, feeding the need in the other as much as satisfying the need in yourself. I need her to understand that just because I use her like a slut on a given night, I don't see her as one, that just because I shackle her to the bed and spend a couple of hours letting her fly while working her body with floggers, straps, hands, quirts.. whatever, I don't see her as less because she needs a good ass whipping. Ok, so it's not just her ass, but you get the idea. I need her to understand that even though I may chain her down and make her service me for hours, it doesn't mean I see her only in those terms. So I made her tell me what she should deserve, and when I read it, I had questions about things that weren't in it because I need her to also understand by those questions what I think she should deserve - what I am going to make her understand that she will have when it comes to our relationship.
She joked with me about that time that she needed a rule book. So we started one. Rule 1, She always matters. Rule 2, because she's fucking worth it. It's like the Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics that all other things fall within those two rules, that no matter what I do to her or with her, I never want her to emerge from it without a strong sense of those two rules remaining intact. I also had her write on those two topics because while a session, a scene, a one-night stand may hold a lot of value in terms of meeting a specific need, they will never meet the long term need of the person. Any relationship that endures by default will encompass emotional, physical and mental aspects. It's a simple fact of life that the more time spent with someone, the more important all three of those things become and the more important that all three are addressed in what you do.
So how do those things relate to being hard to live with or not? Being hard to live with often comes with knowing your own need and somehow thinking your need encompasses and fulfills the needs in someone else. While that may be true in at the base of a relationship, it's not the deeper you go into it. The more you know, the more you understand, the more you can wrap those needs around your own, the more fulfilling it can become. One of the truly intense aspects of D/s is that time is spent where it should be spent in terms of a relationship. What I mean by that is that the hours spent in session, in listening and seeing maybe where a session needs to go rather than where I simply want it to go on a specific night, and the time spent leading up to it, is spent on her. The type of blanket statement made in your textbook isn't one I see as particular to whether or not one dominates another, but more so, in whether or not one takes the time to make sure those three legs of a relationship, the mental, physical and emotional are all considered.
Long winded way of saying your textbook author is full of shit, isn't it?
Grin.
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