stella41b
Posts: 4258
Joined: 10/16/2007
From: SW London (UK)
Status: offline
|
Relationships are a complete load of rubbish. I mean this. By relationships here I mean the concept, it's just like that word lifestyle, it's deceptive, it leads mainly to illusions, constant illusions in which you end up potentially only deceiving yourself and others, where all it takes is a broken heart and you start playing mindgames with yourself and other people. I mean, you only have to come to this website and read something and I'm sure you won't have to look too hard to find evidence of what I mean here by mindgames and illusions.
But please don't get me wrong. I'm with someone. She's happy. I'm happy. We're happy. I come to the boards and I see evidence of lots of happy people who spend their lives being happy with someone else, people who love each other, people who are close to each other, over months, years, a lifetime, and I also see people who aren't with anyone and they are just as happy. This is not to say there aren't unhappy people out there. There are unhappy people, both alone and with someone else who is also unhappy, but on the whole I would guess that the majority of people here - if they really stop and think about it - are people who can look at themselves and the way they are living and find some reason for happiness.
This is Sunday, and I guess there's many of you out there busy making preparations for the holidays. Some of you have people coming over to stay, others are preparing to travel someplace and there are a few who I guess have already travelled. Let's take the United States for example, and I'm sure with the current recession everybody's counting the cost of the coming holidays, but have you ever stopped to wonder just how much of that cost is taken up in just in travelling alone? How much gas is used for all the cars in all the traffic you see? All the buses? The trains? Aeroplanes? Spending money on travelling is for many people I guess the most important of expenses. And why?
Being there is all important. What could be more important? The food you're about to eat? What's so special about the food? Is it the presents and gifts you've bought? Are they more important? Or is it not just spending time with the people who mean the most to you? The people who are closest to you? The people you love and who love you? Isn't this the most important aspect of the holidays?
There are those who cannot be with their loved ones, either through distance, circumstances, or simply because the loved ones are no longer the loved ones and both they and their former loved ones have moved on. Not everybody lives near to those who are close to them, and so some of the expense in both finance and time is spent on e-mails, letters, cards, phone calls, text messages and IM conversations. And why?
People who are close to one another need to be with each other. Now think about all the holidays you've ever experienced. What makes them so special and so memorable? Was it the food? The presents? Can you remember exactly what you were doing ten years ago today? Or are your first memories of the people who were in your life? Is it the people you remember?
Think of the people who are really close to you, and I mean really close, the people who you love, the people who really love you, understand you, accept you, know you, and who are there for you as you are there for them. Now when you describe what is between you and those people, I understand, and I also understand it when you mention the word relationship, because here I also understand that linguistically that word relationship is an umbrella term to sum up all those feelings, emotions, and knowledge (not faith, belief but knowledge) that there is someone in your life who is close to you as you them. That I understand and accept.
But it's when people start using the word 'relationship' as a common noun or an entity in its own right where I start to have problems. This is where, by and large, I see people running into all sorts of problems. It's almost like a relationship is something akin to some form of entertainment, a hobby, a source of amusement, something which completes someone's life rather than enriches it.
It's like when having a relationship becomes a goal all on its own, where some people see being in a relationship as some sort of achievement, and where being in a relationship is seen as a badge of success. On the other side I see thousands of people literally prostituting themselves to this end, uploading the perfected Photoshopped photos and kinky images, writing profiles full of buzzwords such as 'professional', 'submissive', 'dominant', where it would appear that the relationship is a bit like a business or position in their lives and they're describing what the position entails, what they are looking for and even how candidates should write and what they should write to apply for the opportunity of an interview and the chance of being selected for the position of My Significant Other.
This is coupled with a curious dehumanizing effect, where men become dominants, slaves, subs, switches, and women become dommes, Mistresses, female subs, female slaves, and even 'that special third' person, that woman in the relationship with a married couple who cooks, fucks and sucks and does all the kinky stuff as well. Yes I'm generalizing here, but I guess there are those out there among you who know exactly what I mean here.
Having been on these boards for almost two years now I'm almost convinced that there's a lot of people out there who get suckered into the concept that this is all one singing-Kumbaya-on-Sundays, generic lifestyle shared by people obsessed with naughty bits, sex, kink where all you need is a person of the right gender, orientation and role with matched kinks in the right dynamic to create almost immediately the ideal sub dom relationship, sans friendship, understanding, acceptance, compassion, loyalty and all the other stuff that those unenlightened vanilla people do. Reality comes in the form of a tidal wave within months, even weeks, and it all goes pear-shaped. How many threads evidencing this are started on these boards on a weekly basis? And let us not forget that this is just the tip of the iceberg, for there's others on bondage dot com posting the same, Slaveregister dot com, alt dot com, not to mention those who aren't anywhere near a computer, who are living in denial, and are somehow stumbling through it all. These people are also out there in the community. Trust me. It's not a pretty sight.
Any reticence on your part to jump right on in there gets you branded a 'fake', a 'wannabe', a 'player' (I chuckle here, there people obviously never pay much attention to mirrors) simply because you don't do what they want you to when they want to you, not to mention the psychobabble terms people think up when you don't fit in with their expectations, where if you want to take it further than they do you're 'emotionally needy or clingy' and when you don't behave as they want you to behave you're being 'passive aggressive', oh and if you kick up too much o9f a fuss you're creating 'drama'.
Yes, I am talking about all the people here who generally take the piss out of that concept of a 'meaningful relationship', often to the point where trying to reach some sort of meaningful interaction with them becomes about as meaningless as one can get. People who appear to take themselves so damn seriously but who it would appear that these people are unable to take anyone else or the general concept of a relationship seriously. You cannot make mistakes with such people, you cannot even in some cases disagree with them or discuss anything with them with any depth otherwise they start to lose interest, back away, or simply drop you without so much as a word or explanation and you're left like a discarded sweet wrapper in the gutter. How many of you out there have had this happen to you? You go out of your way, you put in the time, the effort, go to the trouble, the expense, and instead of increasing and becoming more intense, the contact between you loses its intensity, and the more you seek contact the more they withdraw right up until the point when you say 'Fine! Two can play that game. F8ck you.' How many of you out there have started something, a friendship, and not even had that warning that something's wrong? How many of you have been left holding the baby? One day close friends, next day total and complete strangers - ever had that happen to you?
I honestly cannot put any sort of figure on it, or even estimate the amount of times people have formed opinions here, even among the most regular of posters (including myself) who have trotted out an opinion on the basis that a relationship is a common noun, an entity in its own right, and placed this concept higher in terms of importance that the person posting or the people involved in the relationship. You only even have to write the word 'online' before 'relationship' to get a lot of people joining a chorus that 'online relationships never work' or 'online relationships aren't real', same thing with long distance relationships, they don't work for some people, even despite the fact they have relatives who they maintain contact with who live hundreds of miles away.
Then you get people making statements like:
My last relationship failed.
Rubbish. Fact is, that you were with someone, they were with you, you had a relationship of some sorts based on what you shared together, but now either they don't want to be with you, you don't want to be with them, or both, and I don't care how you explain it to me but for that time you were together and enjoying each other's company your relationship was successful.
I'm no good at relationships.
Okay, so quit trying to be good at relationships and instead start focussing on being with someone who really matters to you and you being with them. Concentrating on how the relationship will only serve to create unrealistic expectations from you and the other person, that helps you feel insecure, instead live for the present, catch the moment, and appreciate the time and everything you share with the other person. Is that really so difficult a concept for you to grasp? Is there something so unattractive here that you're not willing to give it a go?
There's also this concept of 'the community' or 'the BDSM community'. and from my perspective it's this relationships over people mentality which is doing the most damage, supported by many of the problems I have touched on above. I came into this community pre-Internet and can still remember both the diversity and solidarity among those into WIITWD who maybe weren't into what you were into but who were always there to show some sort of solidarity, support, friendship, rather like what you find here on these boards. This I feel is because when you put the people first over the kinks and relationships and dynamics you start to realize just what is important in WIITWD and in the community, and one of the things the BDSM community has always been good at, better so than the LGBT community, is providing support, advice and solidarity. This is even more important now as we're living in a society which is becoming increasingly divisive and where we are becoming increasingly controlled by poverty and fear of poverty.
These observations I have and am sharing now are backed up by my experience in the past few years. I have also been working voluntarily with the homeless, people ranging from the street homeless who are sleeping rough, through people living temporarily in night shelters and hostels for the homeless up to and including those who have been resettled into their own apartments. These are people who are functioning at the lowest level of society, at the very bottom, and I have learned that it is this rock bottom of society which functions far better than any other level of society. These people don't have the money, careers, jobs, properties that many of us have, some don't even have the family or friends, in fact they don't have much of anything, but what they do have and all share is that sense of solidarity and community which is so lacking further up in society. We are talking about people here, many of them, who have failed at life in general, and either through their own laziness, stupidity, or through the stupidity and greed of others, or even pure misfortune, they have found themselves homeless and on the streets.
But you know, if I were to make a comparison, on the whole, between that community and the BDSM community I would have to be honest and say that it's the BDSM community which has a headstart on the homeless community when it comes to drama, issues, emotional problems and concentrating on negative and irrelevant details which are not important and which work against someone's happiness and fulfillment. My guess as to why this is the case is that not having much else to concentrate on, the homeless are more inclined to concentrate on each other and for them people and dealing with people become most important.
Rather like many of you people will be doing over the coming holidays when you will be spending time with the people who matter the most to you, the people who are really important, the people who are the closest to you, and even if you are not with them, I'm sure these are the people who you will be thinking about now more than at any other time in the year.
I guess all I am asking is for you all to each take a moment to stop and think, to simply pause and reflect on this and on what I have written, and to stop and consider what all this WIITWD and BDSM is really all about.
For me the bottom line in BDSM and WIITWD isn't about the kinks, the fantasies, the perversions, being kinky, the dynamics, the theories, the practices, the events, the munches, but it's about the people, people like you, people like me, people like us, and the people who are special to us, who are close to us, who accept us, understand us, who are here for us now, and who will be here for us in the future. WIITWD and BDSM to me is all about finding and getting to know these people, sharing with them, and being with them. It isn't about 'relationships', but simply about people.
What do you think?
Thoughts and comments please.
_____________________________
CM's Resident Lyricist
also Facebook
http://stella.baker.tripod.com/
50NZpoints
Q2
Simply Q
|
F*ck relationships. I've had enough. Relationships suck. - 
Profile
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