quote:

ORIGINAL: CelticPrince

quote:

I'm in the minority. A collar doesn't 'mean' anything to me. Whatever I feel for him is there whether a collar is around my neck or not.

I'm not knocking collars for other people, for some it means a great deal, for others not so much, and still for others, nothing at all.

laura,

methinks indeed your in the minority.

CP

quote:

CelticPrince,
among all the other things that a collar can mean, It means sore hands for me as I make about 400-500 of them a year. <http://www.collarchat.com/image/s2.gif>

quote:

Is it symbolic? I suppose you could say it's symbolic of unity I have in the "sides" of my life. I can be her fiance, someday her husband, and her slave at the same time. I don't have to live a double life. The collar is symbolic of that.

quote:

All I know is I want one,and she can tell me exactly what it means to Her as She clasp's it around my neck(or anywhere else she might like to plce one)

quote:

I already did submit to him and only to him, so it really didn't matter to me whether I had an outward symbol or not. If you are married, you are married whether you wear a wedding band or not, right? I was his with or without the collar.

I was happy to wear it when he put it around my neck, but in my heart it did not make me any more "his" than I already was.

quote:

For me a collar is simply a point to attach ropes, chains, ect. It is for play and not a fashion statement or an implied committment.

quote:

I told them. <http://www.collarchat.com/image/s4.gif>

quote:

For us it is a symbol of our love and commitment to each other. It is also a symbol of his ownership of me.

quote:

*dons a flame retardant suit*

All personal to me , not saying it's right for everyone, not right for anyone but myself and my relationship. As an aside I'm actually very old fashioned in some respects and that probably plays into the thoughts and ideas behind certain things.

A collar to me is akin but distinctly different to a wedding band. The wedding band signifies that commitment we share in every persons eyes who sees it. It is not private but a very public statement that is almost universally recognised as being a long term (lifetime in my own case) commitment to one another.

The collar signifies the private aspects of our relationship, the dynamic we share, th
e part each of us plays in making our relationship as strong, healthy and fulfilling as possible. We both get different things from it, for her it's safety, expectations, compassion, understanding, learning, rules and ideals to strive for. For me it is the commitment that she is the only person who I want to submit to me , a sign of trust in her abilities, her willingness to do her best for us at all times.

Ultimately the ring and collar are for one person and her alone, no others need apply or be considered. They both in their own ways honour what we share as partners, what we expect from one another and what we are both looking forwards to. Neither are required or needed, the commitment is there in every thought and thing we do, they are touchstones, tokens that when things are going wrong in our everyday lives ... there is one who we can depend on for love, understanding and support.

quote:

What he meant was that he has two collars. One is leather and the other is a silver necklace. The latter is sometimes more appropriate for vanilla settings.

quote:

I am pretty sure she is not. I think you just glossed over the non lifestyle type answers. A lot of people don't require the symbol to feel they belong. And many others need it.
Non collars are not lacking. Sometimes they are more secure.
Kyst

quote:

When Santa put his collar on me it told me *he* was ready to seriously be my Dominant. I'd submitted to him a long time before he was ready to accept my submission. But then, I'm perverting a vanilla. Since he made it for me himself, there's a special "flavor" to it for me. That also made it easier to answer my mother's question "What's the significance of that leather necklace?" I could honestly tell her that he made it for me, which solved that particular sticky situation. I didn't want to tell my 77 year old mother about my kinky side for fear it might affect her health.

quote:

It says a commitment has been made, as to the level of the commitment and the length? Varies enormously from person to person.

quote:

I take it from your replies so far-that it's fine to post so long as we agree with what it means to you?

quote:

my "collar" consists of a tattoo of his initial on the back of my neck & nipple piercings...the next level is a hood piercing...not sure where he'll go from there...this is not a symbol of my heart & soul belonging to him, but of my body belonging to him...when he's looking at the tattoo from behind me, it's the M for Max...when he looks down on it, it's the W for his last name...he said that he would use a collar & leash for play, although that hasn't happened yet...i like this better than the collar i had in a previous relationship, which didn't mean much at all...one time, toward the end of that relationship, i asked him why he had given me a collar & he said, "Truthfully? Because subs seem to expect one." i would serve Sir Max & his wife regardless of whether there was any physical evidence of their ownership of me.......