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LadyNTrainer -> RE: Chastity, the thin line between dominance and neglect (8/4/2009 9:04:02 PM)
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An article I wrote some time ago that you may find relevant.
The Language of Love
Some of us are hardwired for DS or SM or both. Some of us - even in the BDSM community - aren't. When a partner who's hardwired ends up with a partner who isn't, their languages of love may literally be different.
Love to me is the awesome commitment of total physical trust, the gifts of body and soul given and received, desire fierce enough to leave its mark on willing flesh. Romance is the security of real bondage, knowing that you are valued enough to be literally held, and you value your partner enough to restrain him.
The gift of dominance is as bright and beautiful as the gift of submission, and as awesome in its scope. To take the responsibility, the burdens of another's life, completely into your hands for a moment so that they can rest - this is true love, to me. To submit one's self utterly into those hands, trusting, is a gift whose worth cannot be measured in this world, and nothing material could ever hope to match it. Those things are in me to the core, and they will be with me forever.
Yet I have had partners who did not feel or believe quite the same things, and the result is hurt that runs deep. Intellectually, one can understand that some people are simply different in their languages of love. Emotionally, you feel abandoned, and lost, and very much alone. The blow to your self esteem can be a heavy one - what is wrong with you that your lover does not want you this way, does not trust you enough to give you the gift of himself?
The answer is nothing, but you cannot believe. And the hurt goes on.
Some people come into a relationship with ideas like this. “If this person loved me, they should automatically respond this way, and they should automatically know what I really mean and how I feel without my having to explain. They responded differently or they didn’t know what I really meant, therefore they don’t love me.” If you have ideas like this, or anything resembling them, please understand that this is the emotional equivalent on a relationship of dragging a five hundred pound weight around. From your nipple rings. It’s going to make for a whole lot of hard work, pain and frustration.
You are not dating a psychic, and not everyone’s instinctive “language of love” is automatically the same, not even when they are both into BDSM. That’s really okay, or more to the point, two people who understand that clearly enough have a pretty good chance of making it okay.
The first step of learning how to translate different love languages is letting go of the idea that your lover speaks the same one that you do. Let go of the idea that their inability to say the right verbal and physical “words” of love and caring or dominance and submission in your language actually means what your instincts are telling you it means. They probably are saying those words; they’re just saying them in their own language. You can’t hear them, and so you feel perpetually unloved and unwanted. Yes, that hurts terribly. I’m sorry it hurts. You and your partner deserve so much better. That’s why we’re working on communicating about this stuff, even when it’s awkward or hard or time-consuming.
The second step (and maybe the hardest of all) is to let go of the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with you because you have wanted and loved your partner so hard and so long and never felt truly loved or wanted or cared for in return. Maybe you’ve stayed in the relationship because they say they care, but yet they don’t say or do the things that you know really mean caring, or dominance, or submission. Your partner is a good person and there is a lot you admire about them. They would never be cruel or cold or abusive to you on purpose, and you may actually be ashamed of how much it feels that way to you on the inside. So you don’t leave, even when it hurts. And your self-esteem suffers, horribly, because you are staying in a relationship where it feels like love only gets lip service. You feel like you cannot be all that beautiful or desirable, or that you’ll never be a good enough dominant, or that you will always be unwanted and unlovable.
Guess what – there is nothing wrong with you, and your partner was telling you the truth all along. You really are loved. The problem is not that you’re a bad submissive or a bad dominant, and certainly it’s not that you’re ugly or undesirable or a bad person. It’s just that you and your partner are speaking different languages.
If you bear those particular wounds, they are likely to run deep. It’s going to take a lot of time and love – the right expressions of love, in your language – to heal them. In some cases you are not going to be able to heal them enough to make it work with the partner who hurt you. In other cases you will. Both partners have to be willing to go through these steps and to understand what went wrong, and why. And most importantly, what needs to be done to fix it. It’s a lot of hard work, and you’re going to have to decide whether it’s worth it, and whether you can do the work.
The last step is to identify and learn each other’s languages, without arguing over which one is “right” or “better” than the other. Neither one is. Leave your idea of how other people “should” think and feel and respond at the door; that’s what got you into this mess in the first place. Your partner’s deepest and most instinctive language of dominance and submission, of love and caring, is totally different from yours. Your concept of “should” does not apply to them. Drop it right now, or you won’t get any farther. If you can’t accept the fact that your partner does not instinctively think like you do and will never instinctively think like you do, most likely this isn’t going to work for you. They can learn to meet more of your needs by “translating”, but it’s going to be your job to do an equal amount of translation so that you can say all those things back to them.
You are probably not going to become a perfectly fluent native speaker of your partner’s language. You will however be able to learn some good translation skills. You can learn to speak the most crucial love language words to them and to hear those words clearly from them in turn. I don’t know what those words are going to be for you and your partner. Some of those words may be verbal and others will be physical. Doing these exercises will help you identify – and learn how to speak – your partner’s languages of love, dominance and submission.
For the submissive:
1. I feel loved when:
2. I feel dominated when:
3. I feel controlled when:
4. I feel appreciated and valued when:
5. I feel securely owned when:
6. I feel attractive and desirable when:
For the dominant:
1. I feel loved when:
2. I feel the desire to be dominant when:
3. I feel confident in my dominance when:
4. I feel appreciated and valued when:
5. I feel secure in my ownership and dominance when:
6. I feel attractive and desirable when:
Share your answers, and listen without judging or criticizing. There are no right or wrong answers, only honest ones. For the purposes of your discussion, the word “should” does not exist, and you are not allowed to use it in reference to your partner’s feelings.
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