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CaringandReal -> RE: Writing Assignment from a Struggling sub of Mine (5/30/2009 8:50:10 AM)
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Wow.
New respondent here. I've just read your messsage not the rest in this thread as I want to approach this without knowing what others have said. I can see why this would generate many pages of comments, though. It's quite a piece of writing.
You want to hear comments about the sub and not you. That's going to be very hard to do, you know, but I'll do my best to focus on her. I probably won't succeed, but I'll try. ;)
What a thought-provoking piece of writing! First and foremost, if this sub is not settled in a career, I would encourage her in the area of writing. She's got a lot of raw, natural talent and a skilled ability to accurately express herself and situations. There are many careers that involve writing that don't involve something as ambitious or as risky as penning novels. My gut feeling is that she would do quite well in one of these fields (and who knows, maybe even in novel-writing too).
Second impression: this is a very honest piece of writing. Astonishing in its honesty, in fact. Extreme honesty, in my experience, is a very rare trait, in any sort of person. You're a lucky man.
"There are certainly many other things that I like about Sir as well, but there are just too many to list and I truly believe Sir knows what most all of them are. " She definitely needs to expand on this sentence in detail. In fact, if I were you, I'd consider her lax for not having fully completed her thoughts on this subject, even if it meant spelling out the tediously obvious. I'd definitely have her write an addendum to this essay that addresses this subject alone. :D
From your addendum: "I believe your most insightful comment has to do with the length of the section in which she enumerates things she would change about me. Verrrry telling. " Assuming I'm grasping the gist of the original comment correctly from your description... Nonsense. Of the type you try to avoid stepping on in a field variety. First of all, that is standard human behavior. When things are running smoothly and all is well we do not think about them in great detail. It's only the rough things that people tend to notice and analyze. Secondly and more importantly, I'd say this is just another example of this woman's astonishing openess and honesty. A more "experienced" (or rather jaded, "hypocritical, cynical) submissive would have acted on her awareness of the repercussions of saying more negative things than positive ones about one's dominant (I mean, to most subs, sensitive as we are to others, this is a total no-brainer) and produced a much more "appropriate" (word-count-wise) essay for you that was also utterly worthless due to its dishonesty. Do you really fail to see what you have with an underling willing to tell you the honest truth? Not to worry if you don't, you are in illustrous company. Most of the world's greatest leaders, when they fucked up royally, did so because they preferred flattering lies over unflattering honesty from the individuals who served under them. But no one is ever served well with dishonesty, except maybe the people dishing it out--these folks usually get promoted. I'm kind of surprised that the rarity and value of this trait of your sub's doesn't shine through clearly to you, but maybe the pricelessness of honesty is a lesson only learned (if at all) through experiencing the deep misfortune that can be caused by lack of truthful information. Finally, I think it's far more useful to examine the content of a passage rather than make facile judgements about it's comparitive length. But this starts to lead into territory that, for some reason, you do not want your respondents entering, so I'll stop right here. Consider it a pregnant silence, Ok?
Well, wait. There is one more thing I will say about this: thanks to her wonderful honesty, there is a tremendous amount of information in this essay, a goldmine in fact. Some of the information is about things she clearly needs help with, some is about things that relate specifically to you (and maybe even ito ssues you are currently struggling with?) and some is not about either of you in particular but about the dynamic in the relationship which may or may not be going the way you want it to. The observations are all very clear, however, and again, are refreshingly free of bias or an attempt to manipulate or influnence you in any underhanded or dishonest sort of way. Her writing suggests you are familiar with a variety of submissives. Do you, as a matter of course, encounter this sort of clarity regularly?
I am intrigued by your adjective for this sub, "struggling" because all subs struggle. It's the nature of the psychosexual beast. Some struggle much more than others, obviously. And some are honest about these struggles even if they are unflattering to their dominant, while others attempt to hide it away. What matters here is which sort of submissive do you personally prefer? FWIW, her struggles, as she has described them, seem pretty typical and not all that serious. They are things that many of us go through. Some of them strike me as about things that would cause struggle in almost any submissive no matter what her temperment or experiences. And while she is clearly struggling with all these issues, they do not seem like particularly severe stuggles. In fact, if I were a dominant faced with these things in a submissive, I'd feel intense relief that they were so minor, so very easily fixed. In many attempted dom-sub relationships the struggles a submissive experiences are over much more serious and intransigent issues. Although I know they are painful issues for her, these stated struggles are relatively small potatoes in "repair" terms, and if I were a dominant I would envy you the relatively easy job you have ahead of you.
It would help me to understand her comments better if I knew the context of her struggling. What goal is she aiming for? I can see from her comments she's probably going to be one in a harem, but I don't know at what level. Are you making her into a slave? Will she live with you? How much control, if any, will she retain over her life? And is that level of control compatible with her needs? (In this last instance, I'm thinking more of the situation where a submissive who needs a great deal of control is trying to conform to just a little control--that sort of situation is often doomed because basic needs aren't being met.)
She remains loyal and devoted even when there are difficulties and when she feels quite bad. Like honesty, that's a trait worth its weight in gold...or platinum. That says so much that is positive about her that it's hard for me to comprehend your getting hung up on the relatively minor issue of a section in her essay that doesn't flatter you being longer than a section of her essay that does.
One part of her essay was not clear. (Again, that's a compliment of her ability to communicate in writing, as in most messages I read there are 10-20 things that are not particularly clear.) It was this part: "Also, since Sir knows that I have jealousy issues from my past, I wish he would discontinue trying to make me jealous by telling me that he is going to seek out the presence of other women and that he will talk and flirt with others all in the name of trying to find someone for me." Just curious: does this statement mean you procuring a female companion for a sub who either isn't bisexual or who is but doesn't necessarily want a sexual-emotional relationship with another submissive? Does it mean you are trying to find her another (more appropriate or substitute) dominant? Or does it mean something else?
LOL, I'm reading the sub-4 statement. Ok gotta ask. So why, if sub-4 was/is such a marvelous treasure, don't you just dump the writer of this essay in favor of the exemplary qualities of the superlative "4?" And please don't give me the old, "well, someone's got to take care of this poor creature" line. I've never known anyone short of a saint who stayed in a relationship that gave them nothing simply because the other "needed taking care of." You're clearly getting something out of this relationship, something very good I would guess, based upon what I can see of this woman's personality. Perhaps you need to write your poor, struggling sub an essay about what you appreciate in her? Perhaps this would help ease her struggles (then again, perhaps not. I know from first-hand experience that when you have low self-esteem almost nothing makes a strong impression on it--nothing except consistent love and acceptance over a very long period of time, that is). At any rate, it strikes me that there must be something very good in this relationship if you two have weathered the many difficulites she spoke of and are still together. Difficult times are where a person's true worth, whether they be dom or sub, will come out, as such times tend to crush/defeat weaker sorts. So I see her mentioning weathering hard times with you as a very good sign, a positive indication of the health and strength of your relationship with her.
"This is my best attempt at your essay request. I never know what you're looking for, but I will do my best!
She clearly did her best, although, as I said above, if I were you I'd make her expand significantly on the "WHAT I LIKE ABOUT MY SIR" section, because I don't think her statement that "... there are just too many to list and I truly believe Sir knows what most all of them are" is necessarily true, although probably an honest mistake on her part. There's probably many educational things you really don't realize about yourself that she could make explicit. Perhaps even some that are a bit more physically explict. ;)
Now a quote from you: "Does this sound like a sub who is committed and satisfied with her Dom?"
My answer: Committed? Absolutely. There is no question in my mind about that. Satisfied? Not completely, no, so what are you waiting for? Get to work! :p
Seriously, I think she is satisfied enough, but sometimes "enough" is not as much as you might perfer for a particular submissive. There are many different issues she raises in this essay and they require different responses, I believe. I'm only guessing here, but some of these issues might be accurate descriptions of things that you don't particularly want to be in this relationship but that only you can change. Some could be areas where your sub needs to learn to relax or expand her personal standards of "satisfaction" to more closely match what you expect from a submissive. Others, well, to be frank some of the things she brings up are quite complex and not easily worked through. No one is to blame for them. They are things the two people involved will have to work through together, perhaps for a long time, to find solutions for them. Could you find a sub who was more satisfied with you than this sub is? Oh certainly, but she would be a completely different package than this girl and come with other issues (like maybe a sense of honesty that is more typical of the human race?) that you would find equally if not more irksome and frustrating to deal with. Issues that might cause you to say to that new sub one day, "Boy, sub-s (s for "struggle") was a wonderful sub, so honest and forthright, even when it was hard to be so, so loyal and committed. She is a much more advanced d/s partner than you."
For what it's worth, Sub-S, if you're reading this, people are seldom "better" than one another in any absolute sense. It's more a sense of how they "fit." Do you remember the famous "Healthy Submissive" essay? You might want to google it if you haven't seen this. Reding it can make a submissive prone to low self-esteem positively glow. :) It was written by a submissive psychiatrist and stolen from it's original site of publication many years ago, the instant it came out (I happened to be there, in a dark corner, watching the thefts--:D) and spread far and wide over the interwebs. Anyway, that essay (or maybe it was the less-popular one she followed it up with, about unhealthy submisisves? I can't remember) talks about the importance of "fit" and its relationship to low self-esteem. Basically the idea is this: if an exhuberent extroverted child is born into a household of people who like subdued quiet order, that child may grow up feeling like a bad or a wrong person because he wasn't what his family thought of as an ideal personality. There is, of course, nothing objectively wrong with being extroverted, and some families would have adored such a child. But he grows up feeling inferior and guilty because he wasn't what his particular family wanted. Or if a shy introverted person is born into an extrovered household with more extroverted siblings, the same might happen. The siblings would be emotionally rewarded and praised for being rowdy exhuberent hellions, while the quiet one was disapproved of. Such is the basis of low self-esteem and it happens in adult relationships, too, of course. Sometimes when a dominant says you're a much worse submissive than sub-4, the truth is not that you're a much worse submissive than 4, it might be just that you're not as close a fit to his particular personality as that submissive is. While it's hard to think in these terms about one's dominant, the reverse is often true as well. Often this means that he is not as good a fit for you as a dominant as someone else might be. I'm not suggesting you change anything. From what you've written you've clearly got a relationship with a great deal of good stuff in it, stuff that is hard to find anywhere. But when you hear statements like "Sub-4 is a more ideal D/s partner," it simply means "ideal for him." Perhaps she cracks more jokes and he appreciates jokes. Or perhaps she doesn't crack as many jokes as you do but he doesn't like jokes particularly. That's all it is, usually: fit. Not you being objectively worse at something as complex and broad as submissiveness.
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