Collarspace Discussion Forums


Home  Login  Search 

Dominants & Self Importance


View related threads: (in this forum | in all forums)

Logged in as: Guest
 
All Forums >> [Community Discussions] >> General BDSM Discussion >> Dominants & Self Importance Page: [1] 2 3   next >   >>
Login
Message << Older Topic   Newer Topic >>
Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 10:20:13 AM   
cloudboy


Posts: 7306
Joined: 12/14/2005
Status: offline 		Its hard to tell what one really sees via a message board and web site like this; but after seeing a few posts & profiles today something struck me.

Some Dommes and Doms are truly "self important." In other words, when a sub is serving them, the sub is doing something "important," "valuable," and maybe even "crucial."

Is dominance, then, the project of self importance; making oneself important to another and valuing oneself highly? (Such as the King/Queen and his/her subjects?)

I must say I find this kind of dominance a turn off in the long run (with someone I might seek a LT relationship with) but a turn on in the short run (its a fuse that might burn pretty hotly.)






< Message edited by cloudboy -- 4/23/2008 10:21:02 AM >
Profile   Post #: 1
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 10:30:07 AM   
SteelofUtah


Posts: 5307
Joined: 10/2/2007
From: St George Utah
Status: offline 		Excelent Observation.

As I read this I thought about the honesty of this situation and how I see the ebbs and flows of Play Parties and the like and the Behaviors that get expressed.

When I started on this journey I was 16 and rather immature and stayed that way for a couple years. On the Bondage.com mIRC Server my Whois used to read. "I am that which is to be desired, I am Master, I am Lord, I am Steel" Pompas and Arrogant as it was by the time I was 18 I was in no shortage of women who wanted to be beat and fucked and used by me (not always in tha order) however thse relationships always fizzled quickly when I tried to turn them into something deeper and more stable.

I guess by the time I was 20 I felt the need to start seeking more meaningful relationships and this brought me to this realization. When I was a Self-centered entity and saw everyone around me as tools to be used I found I ended up with the kind of people that WANTED to be used. Not Necessarily Owned. Of the ones who did want to be owned I often found that thier personal self worth was viewed as nearly non existent by thier own standards.

When I started reviewing this behavior and tried to actually get to know people on a more personal level and left the self-centered person by the road side I noticed that I stopped being as desirable to the girls who wanted to be used and fucked and treated like shit as I used to be and now the girls who desired stability were finding me more attractive where before they only saw me as some Megalomaniac with a superiority complex.

This is an Excelent Observation and I look forward to seeing where this goes.

Steel

_____________________________

Just Steel
Resident Therapeutic Metallurgist
The Steel Warm-Up © ™
For the Uber Posters
Thanks for the Grammatical support : ) ~ Term

(in reply to cloudboy)
Profile   Post #: 2
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 10:34:47 AM   
Dnomyar


Posts: 7933
Joined: 6/27/2005
Status: offline 		So Steel you quit having fun and now can hardly get any. OP to each his own.

(in reply to SteelofUtah)
Profile   Post #: 3
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 10:34:54 AM   
Mercnbeth


Posts: 11766
Status: offline
quote:

I must say I find this kind of dominance a turn off in the long run (with someone I might seek a LT relationship with) but a turn on in the short run (its a fuse that might burn pretty hotly.)


So you are saying that after someone attracts you by their nature, and burns your fuse hotly, you want them to change their nature as part of the compromise for a long term relationship.

Sounds like my ex-wife; succinctly documenting the reason for the divorce.

(in reply to cloudboy)
Profile   Post #: 4
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 10:36:09 AM   
DiurnalVampire


Posts: 8125
Joined: 1/19/2006
From: Nashville, TN
Status: offline 		I dont see myself as more important than anyone else, except in my boys eyes. What they are doing is important to me, and to them, but I dont harbor any ideas that anyone else in the world gives a lick about how my pets serve me.
Maybe I am the strange one?

DV


_____________________________

I will be your Dominate if you will be my submit - Fox

Snarko Ergo Sum
If you cannot change your mind, how are you so sure you still have one? -proverb

*Owner of Fox - collared 10/13/07*
VampiresLair

(in reply to SteelofUtah)
Profile   Post #: 5
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 10:44:09 AM   
LaTigresse


Posts: 26123
Joined: 1/15/2006
Status: offline 		Oh hell, in the biggest picture I am no more important than any other individual on this planet.

I am comforted by the knowledge that I am very important in the lives of some people that are very important to me. That's all I care about.


_____________________________

My twisted, self deprecating, sense of humour, finds alot to laugh about, in your lack of one!

Just because you are well educated, articulate, and can use big, fancy words, properly........does not mean you are right!

(in reply to cloudboy)
Profile   Post #: 6
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 10:50:16 AM   
SteelofUtah


Posts: 5307
Joined: 10/2/2007
From: St George Utah
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Dnomyar

So Steel you quit having fun and now can hardly get any. OP to each his own.


Quite the opposite Raymond.

Today I have a wonderful relationship with my wife.

We have started the process of Joining with another girl and her family.... SLOWLY which means still in the visiting stages and meeting all the UM's and seeing how well we do during week long visits over this next year. I will be taking a week off (vacation) then a few months later she will be visiting us and a few weeks after that andi takes her vacation and we go out for another week.

and there is a Domestic that is petitioning for a place in our house who wants to be service only to start and see where she fits into our life later. Oddly enough I stopped trying to fuck everything that walked and the came to me.

Odd I know.

Steel

_____________________________

Just Steel
Resident Therapeutic Metallurgist
The Steel Warm-Up © ™
For the Uber Posters
Thanks for the Grammatical support : ) ~ Term

(in reply to Dnomyar)
Profile   Post #: 7
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 10:55:42 AM   
OmegaG


Posts: 1474
Joined: 10/23/2007
Status: offline 		I think that everyone should feel a degree of self importance in this culture.  Self promotion and assertiveness for one's own needs is essential in order to achieve what one desires rather then be herded like sheep into the cultural mainstream.

I find that most I have interacted with don't feel that they are any more important then anyone else, but they won't let anyone else feel superiour to them either.  As for the D-types, I think that most regognize that they are one part of the dynamic and neither can be enhanced without the other.

_____________________________


Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. Sydney J. Harris

Sex without pain is like food without taste.
- de Sade

(in reply to SteelofUtah)
Profile   Post #: 8
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 10:57:54 AM   
Faramir


Posts: 1043
Joined: 2/12/2005
Status: offline 		Everyone thinks they are important--a sense of one's self-importance is a human trait, not a dominant trait.  For every profile you could show me of a dominant positionin themself as a focal center for greatness, I could show you a submisive profile talking about the value of their "gift" of submission, how strong and indepedent they are, etc.

_____________________________

True masters, true subs and slaves, X many years in the lifestyle, Old Guard this and High Protocol that--it's like a convention of D&D nerds were allowed to have sex once, and they decided to make a religion out of it.

(in reply to SteelofUtah)
Profile   Post #: 9
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 11:24:55 AM   
marieToo


Posts: 3595
Joined: 5/21/2006
From: Jersey
Status: offline 		Alright, I came back to rip this down. 

This was way too much personal info to leave for you vultures.

I hope no one grabbed it. 



< Message edited by marieToo -- 4/23/2008 11:38:37 AM >

_____________________________

marie.


I give good agita.









(in reply to cloudboy)
Profile   Post #: 10
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 11:33:16 AM   
BOUNTYHUNTER


Posts: 9259
Joined: 2/5/2004
Status: offline 		To no one in particular...In the vanilla world I am just another guy,my importance isn't any more then anothers,But with those that are mine they had better be absorbed in my importance its their job to place me above all others and yes even worship me ...We all weren't placed on this earth as equals,its the truth and most know it to be so...

_____________________________

US going to hell in a hand basket/

(in reply to marieToo)
Profile   Post #: 11
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 11:33:35 AM   
MadRabbit


Posts: 3460
Joined: 8/9/2006
Status: offline 		I think it inevitably goes hand in hand to a degree. While I don't think that I am more important than anyone else, I am more important in my own interpersonal relationships.

The women who submit to me submit to me and my expectations and standards of the relationships. These things aren't compromised from person to person based on their own expectations or fantasies of what a dominant is. Therefore, my expectations and standards of the relationship are more important then theirs.

If I want to rent the movie "Revolver" and they want to rent the movie "Shrek 3", guess which movie we are probably going to rent? Of course at the same time, I am not oblivious to their wants and am too pragmatic to think that any relationship can survive if focused solely on one person all the time, so I might rent "Shrek 3", but still what I want has a higher degree of importance than what she wants.

I won't go as far as to say that "importance" and "authority" are synonymous, but realistically, I think they tend to blend together more than not.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing unless your making "importance" and "superior" synonymous...

< Message edited by MadRabbit -- 4/23/2008 11:34:15 AM >

_____________________________

Advice for New Dominants
The Unpolitically Correct Lifestyle Definitions

Obama is NOT the Messiah! He's just a VERY NAUGHTY BOY

(in reply to cloudboy)
Profile   Post #: 12
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 11:46:31 AM   
RCdc


Posts: 8674
Status: offline 		I don't see that as the case you present.  In the way you placed it, if a submissive type is doing something important, valuable and even crucial -  in that case, it's the submissive that is showing self importance by dong the act.
 
But then I do not agree with that nor the op either.
 
the.dark.

_____________________________
RC&dc


love isnt gazing into each others eyes - it's looking forward in the same direction

(in reply to cloudboy)
Profile   Post #: 13
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 12:04:16 PM   
CreativeDominant


Posts: 11032
Joined: 3/11/2006
Status: offline 		Actually, your observation of others and your own words regarding their behavior...you are turned on by self-importance in the short-term but not in the long-term sounds like a twist on the bait and switch...instead of them offering up bait for one thing and then switching it to another, it sounds like the most appealing thing to you...the fish, as it were...is for them to bait the hook with one thing and really get you going and then, when you...the submissive...gets tired of it, you want them to switch their behavior to what you...the submissive...want.  You want them to present a front that is false because, even though it may be part of them, it should not...in your estimation...be the long-term, major portion of them BUT, you want to have that "turn-on" factor first. 
It also sounds like a lot of those women who admit they want the bad boy and then, once they have the bad boy, they want to change them completely into what they find desirable...which in most instances is everything the bad boy is not.  Why not just find the one with those characteristics you want?  Let's admit it...because to many people, those type of people with desirable, long-term characteristics are ...in many though not all instances...not just as subconsciously, instantaneously stimulating as the bad boys or the self-important or the arrogant or the extremely beautiful types. 

In a way, my ex-wife was a bait-and-switch type...offering up one sort of thing as pretty much a guarantee in exchange for something else and then snatching the bait away in bigger and bigger chunks while expecting me to maintain my bite on the hook.  It took me awhile but I did finally ask myself why I should stay on the hook when there was nothing of the original taste left in the bait that was left.

I have to wonder...is it possible that what you see as "Self-Importance" is just the dominant tendency to self-assurance?  Most dominants I know, including myself...be they arrogant or humble...had a self-assurance about them.  That seems to bother a lot of vanilla folk and even some submissives which I find a bit perplexing:  if you want a dominant to not only be in control of their own life but able to control others, would you not think that they would have developed self-assurance along the way in order to be able to do so?

< Message edited by CreativeDominant -- 4/23/2008 12:44:20 PM >

(in reply to cloudboy)
Profile   Post #: 14
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 12:53:52 PM   
LadyHibiscus


Posts: 27124
Joined: 8/15/2005
From: Island Of Misfit Toys
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: LaTigresse

Oh hell, in the biggest picture I am no more important than any other individual on this planet.

I am comforted by the knowledge that I am very important in the lives of some people that are very important to me. That's all I care about.



Q - F - E!

_____________________________

[page 23 girl]



(in reply to LaTigresse)
Profile   Post #: 15
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 1:00:10 PM   
cloudboy


Posts: 7306
Joined: 12/14/2005
Status: offline 		Thanks for all the replies. I must say STEELOFUTAH's response seemed particularly resonant ---- which is that for some subs "being used" is a turn on but isn't really the foundation for a LTR. (Not everything needs to be a LTR.)

Subs with more sense and bearing who want something a bit more stable (or should we say "human,") don't really value a "user" or meglomaniac, as he put it.

There of course is another dividing line between LTRs and short term ones --- just straight, raw, sexual-experiential interest. A sub who can get his/her fix here can probably turn a blind eye to a DOMs eccentricities and self delusions. What real difference do character flaws make over a period of months or weeks? In such a case its really the experience that matters most.

The flip side of the equation is: can a Dom be self effacing and unimportant --- and yet retain his or her dominance?

To use myself as an example, I don't think of myself as "important," but I do think some things are important. Hence, if I were a dominant, I would have an arrogance about things I believed in but a general sense of personal modesty. Hence a sub under me would strive for personal excellence to improve her own value and importance --- not to make me feel that **I** am important.

< Message edited by cloudboy -- 4/23/2008 1:06:33 PM >

(in reply to SteelofUtah)
Profile   Post #: 16
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 1:00:47 PM   
MladyHathor


Posts: 510
Joined: 4/6/2008
Status: offline 		I am not self important, I am, however, the stabilizer bar in the family unit that I create---that means, sometimes   its Me sometimes its the UM, sometimes its the sub, but its all for the good of all involved.

_____________________________

The Mistress Hathor, always and forever, much to the disdain and discomfort of others.

(in reply to cloudboy)
Profile   Post #: 17
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 1:04:18 PM   
cloudboy


Posts: 7306
Joined: 12/14/2005
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth

So you are saying that after someone attracts you by their nature, and burns your fuse hotly, you want them to change their nature as part of the compromise for a long term relationship.

Sounds like my ex-wife; succinctly documenting the reason for the divorce.


No, what I am saying is that there are different forms and arcs of attraction. I'm skeptical of the "I am that which is to be desired, I am Master, I am Lord, I am Steel" leading to a LTR, but I think it may promise abundant forms devious experimentation.

(in reply to Mercnbeth)
Profile   Post #: 18
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 1:33:31 PM   
ShaktiSama


Posts: 1674
Joined: 8/13/2007
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: cloudboy
Is dominance, then, the project of self importance; making oneself important to another and valuing oneself highly? (Such as the King/Queen and his/her subjects?)

I must say I find this kind of dominance a turn off in the long run (with someone I might seek a LT relationship with) but a turn on in the short run (its a fuse that might burn pretty hotly.)


Your question is a bit strangely phrased, but maybe I understand what you're saying.  There are some dominants who really have no sense of proportion.  "It's All About Me" is all they know.  They aren't just self-assured, they're self-involved, and they don't recognize that their submissives have any "projects of importance" other than serving.

Personally, I like to come first, but I do not expect to be the sole focus or accomplishment of another person's life.  I tend to assume they will have other priorities and goals, which may be less important than me but cannot ALWAYS come last.  Since I want my relationships to be positive for all concerned, I obviously want to know what is important to my partner, so that I can show some consideration.  It may not be much, but hey--never hurts to take the edge off my megalomania. 

Examples:  if my submissive's mother is in the hospital, it is NOT more important to make my dinner that evening.

If my submissive is arguing an important case in court, it is NOT important to interrupt him with a phone call to remind him to pick up my dry-cleaning on his way home (I literally had one man tell me about a femme domme who did that!).

There are more subtle and long-term things as well, of course.  For example:  if my submissive is trying to accomplish a difficult or important goal, like writing a doctoral thesis or finishing the paintings for a one-man show...I might possibly need to offer some support and encouragement while that work is being done.  Ease off on the chores a bit, and make sure that the free time available is maximum stress relief, perhaps.  Maybe even *gasp!* do my own laundry. 

< Message edited by ShaktiSama -- 4/23/2008 1:34:58 PM >

_____________________________

"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea."
-- Robert A. Heinlein

(in reply to cloudboy)
Profile   Post #: 19
RE: Dominants & Self Importance - 4/23/2008 3:19:39 PM   
aidan


Posts: 904
Joined: 5/28/2005
Status: offline 		*stands up to the podium and speaks nervously* Hi, my name is aidan and I'm a self-important sub.

("Hi, aidan.")

Heh.

Seriously, though...Yeah, arrogance and a center-of-the-universe attitude is not terribly attractive to me. You are not Zaphod Beeblebrox, and no amount of leather-wear or grafted appendages will change that.

Fact is, I've got important shit too. School to attend and a job to work and books to write and causes to champion. I'm not about to put them aside for anybody.

Now I know that might sound treasonous coming from a sub. But I wanted to be appreciated as a full human being, and not simply as a sextoy or a slave (in the bad sense). Just as I have to understand that Mistress is not just a sexual dynamo or seductive tormentor. I'm happy to be those things and they're parts of me, but not everything.

The fact is we both work to improve each other's lives and reach each other's goals. Am I willing to bend a bit more to meet her's? Sure, of course. That's part of my nature. In fact I specifically set goals that allow for me to be flexible and mobile. I don't really se myself as sacrificing or losing anything in the process. Just means a shift of focus and resources.

I love my Mistress, and she loves me. That means, in our case, that she allows me the freedom to persue my plans. That's part of the reason I love her.


_____________________________

Do what now?

"I aim to misbehave."
-Mal Reynolds

(in reply to ShaktiSama)
Profile   Post #: 20
Page:   [1] 2 3   next >   >>
All Forums >> [Community Discussions] >> General BDSM Discussion >> Dominants & Self Importance Page: [1] 2 3   next >   >>
Jump to:





New Messages No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages Locked w/o New Messages
 Post New Thread
 Reply to Message
 Post New Poll
 Submit Vote
 Delete My Own Post
 Delete My Own Thread
 Rate Posts




Collarchat.com © 2025
Terms of Service Privacy Policy Spam Policy

0.094