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ORIGINAL: LadyPact

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ORIGINAL: sexisubi

i would completely not disobey deliberately. for a couple of reasons, 1, it makes them happy and that really does make me happy i love seeing joy in their eyes cause it always puts a smile on my face that wont go away. 2, i hate punishment cause i cant block out any pain to feel disappointment none of these things are fun 3, is what my dom told me to do going to kill me? no. so just do it, try it, rock it, if  need be cry during it doesnt mean one cant do it.  4, what if there is something asked that i do not agree to the point where it effects my personal beliefs or opinions, i have never complained before i have never asked not to do something before.i would ask for this one time of my master to not make me do this one thing because it goes against my beliefs or whatever it is, most likely they will say yes. also if it effected my personal beliefs, then ill take the punishment proudly  if they say no. 

the chances of a Dom asking a submissive to go against their beliefs are rare, or never asked but in the case they do, i will use my obedience to my advantage if they let me.and if they dont then ill take the punishment and move forward. but this is -only- if it goes against my personal beliefs dreams and ambitions.

A very good post.  This is very much the attitude that works best for Me from My submissive in a D/s dynamic.

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ORIGINAL: seeksBBW2serve

This is my first post, so if I'm out of line please say. But after all is said and done obedience comes down to nothing more than training and discipline. And that isn't the cat o nine tails type of discipline. Anyone who has served in the armed forces will know that anyone can be taught to obey? it's simply a matter of breaking down their self determination.
The problem of course arises when the become institutionalized, and  are unable to function on their own. This is a common problem among those who serve long terms in the armed forces. Being sent out into a world where you have to think for yourself after thirty years is very traumatic. And i imagine the chance of meeting someone who would take over that responsibility would be very tempting. So obedience to orders actually quite easy to instill, it's reversing it that is the problem.

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ORIGINAL: leadership527

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for me the power of dissappointment has leverage, manipulation through fear of absolute loss would in my heart anyway, feel less positive.

I hear you lally2 and I fully understand where your coming from. Trust me on this, the reality of the situation isn't anywhere near as grim as it sounds. I woud have no use for Carol living in fear on a day-by-day basis.

I just didn't qualify the statement this time. "Release" in this context, really means that Carol & I sit down and discuss what sort of relationship we would have moving forward. It is more of a dictionary correction than any change to reality. My definition of slave doesn't allow for disobedience. If she does disobey, she is therefor, not my slave anymore. She might well, however, be my submissive with exactly one known boundary. Above all else, she is still the woman I love and want to spend the rest of my life with. She knows this... that is more about me being pedantic than it is any shift in the reality on the ground.

It's also worth pointing out that I allow a fair amount of discussion before the bottom line occurs. If Carol was unwilling to obey, she'd have her say and it would be carefully listened to and factored into my thinking. But if she's unwilling to follow my lead after I have dutifully thought out the implications of whatever she is tellling me, then there's a serious problem somewhere. She's also allowed to be unwilling during the task. I don't demand that she obey and love it.... just that she obeys.

What you're really hearing is my general tendency to want to call a spade a spade. It's either total or its not. I have no quibbles with Carol being my sub, but then I don't want to be posting here about her being a slave -- that just reeks of posturng to me and I'll have none of it. I don't wish to get into a lot of the hair-spitting that happens here... a ton of "total all except for this laundry list of stuff" type discussions. So I opted to just take the words at face value. I like it that it's a fact-based statement to say, "I consider Carol my TPE slave because she has never disobeyed a direct command." It's kind of unequivocal and not subject to hair-splitting.

There's another and way more important reason though that the bar is set where it is. By doing so, I neatly get us out of all manner of unpleasantness. With no disobedience, there is no punishment. It allows the two of us to operate smoothly as a team and not waste time on tangents to that goal. What I have done is what good leaders do everywhere, I have set my expectations very high and then smiled as Carol rose to meet them. Just last night I said to her, "I am so glad that you are you and I don't have to waste time as your leader getting you to follow. You just do which enables me to focus on more important goals like our Life 2.0 plan." It's also worth noting that setting the bar in such a black and white way serves to keep ME on my toes too. Let's assume that I don't want to lose her as my slave. That means that I damned well better give some thought to the commands that I give and, most importantly, the lead-in to the commands I expect to be difficult.

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ORIGINAL: kyraofMists

The transfer of authority is one of the core foundations of our relationship. He has authority over all aspects of mine and Alandra's life. This exists because of his consent to exercise that authority over us and our consent to transfer that authority to him. To willfully disobey, meaning I know what I am supposed to do, I have the ability to do it and I refuse to do it, essentially removes my consent to transfer authority to him. Without my consent, the M/s structure no longer exists.

To willfully disobey him, would create a huge breach of trust in our relationship. His promise to us is that he will not intentionally harm us or our relationship; willfully disobeying means that I have intentionally harmed him and our relationship. It is something that just doesn't happen and there would have to be some really extreme circumstances to cause it to happen.

This does not mean that disobedience does not happen from time to time. There are times that I forget to do something. That is not something that happens often with me and it is a good indicator that I am overloaded at the moment. There are times that he gives orders that might contradict each other. If we can't get in touch with him then we have to make the best decision possible and live with the consequences. There are times that things beyond our control prevent us from doing what he wants.

When stuff like that happens, it does create stress. We don't like not doing his will, but he is pretty good at looking at all the variables and realizing that sometimes things just don't work out the way he thinks they should.

Time to go back to work, but that is a brief view of obedience in our house.

Knight's Kyra

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ORIGINAL: NihilusZero

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ORIGINAL: agirl

With whom I'm answerable to.

If that person understands that every task/order is essentially just a request that will possibly be obeyed.

If I'm giving a task to my sub/slave it is because I want the result...I want it to happen; not because I want to have to exact punishment if she feels in an unwilling mood at the moment.

It seems to me the entire authority dynamic is moot if the s-type inevitably gets to play a multiple-choice game with every request based on what their whimsy tells them.

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ORIGINAL: DesFIP

Obedience is not the primary focus of our relationship. I'm not a servant, I'm much more of a pet.

The primary focus of our relationship is emotional transparency and you can't have that and obedience even when you hate what you are doing without damaging the emotional relationship. Or at least we can't. Even short term resentment will cause problems. Either he knows I'm spending that time disliking him, or I have to become nontransparent.

Since he isn't a sadist, he objects to knowing I dislike him and since the core of the relationship is transparency me occluding it damages the core.

We have found that if I obey when I hate the task, and therefore for however short a period of time hate him, that it isn't good for us.

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ORIGINAL: NihilusZero

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ORIGINAL: agirl

With whom I'm answerable to.

If that person understands that every task/order is essentially just a request that will possibly be obeyed.

If I'm giving a task to my sub/slave it is because I want the result...I want it to happen; not because I want to have to exact punishment if she feels in an unwilling mood at the moment.

It seems to me the entire authority dynamic is moot if the s-type inevitably gets to play a multiple-choice game with every request based on what their whimsy tells them.

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ORIGINAL: stella41b


This wasn't necessary a 'one strike and you're out' policy. Let's not forget that we're not talking about a one-sided relationship here, because when a dominant takes on a submissive they also take on the responsibility that goes with it. Dominants also have to obey submissives and they also have to show just as much commitment to the relationship and dynamic as the submissive. Part of that responsibility is accepting a submissive together with their shortcomings, faults, failings, issues, problems, weaknesses and everything else which comes with it.

This is where knowing each other properly comes into play. No dynamic is ever going to work successfully if the dominant doesn't have a good awareness of the submissive and where they are at at that particular moment in time and the same can be said of the submissive. You cannot assume control or dominate someone you don't know, just as you cannot submit, serve or obey someone you don't know.

I was also writing about a concept, an attitude, and how I came to form both the concept and the attitude. This doesn't necessarily mean that it also followed through in practice. It didn't.

Yes I did fuck up, make mistakes, I didn't always get it right, I misunderstood, sometimes I didn't have the necessary motivation, the right attitude, the right headspace and there were times when it didn't come together for reasons beyond my control. I was far from the perfect submissive then and I'm still quite distant from being one today.

But this was also something my formative dominant always took into account and made allowances for. She herself had off days and wasn't perfect. Yes she was strict and demanding, but she was also kind and compassionate and infinitely patient.

But she was the dominant, she had the control, and if something didn't turn out right or there was a problem it was she who made the decision over how to respond to that problem or failing.

I spent five years with her. Her methods of training never changed. Yes she could swing a riding crop quite well and deliver it in such a way you would think she was using a cane, it hurt. But you know what the major element of her training was? She'd get me to make coffee, and we'd sit either side of her long coffee table drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and talking as friends.

And this was a major characteristic of our dynamic - friendship. She was the domme, she was in control, I was her submissive and in service to her, that line was never crossed, but we were both close friends and we both had each other's best interests at heart.

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ORIGINAL: leadership527

OK, if I was just a bit more modest, I'm sure I'd be blushing now *chuckles*

More seriously, thank you LadyPact.

While agree that it's WAY easier to start a TPE dynamic on the foundation of 13 years of trust & respect, like all things, that's a two-edged sword. Sure we had the world's best foundation to build on. But on the downside, that foundation was already in place and so it limits the potential structures that can be erected on top of it. My M/s relationship will never be as "pure" ... as "ms-ey" as one you would build. I pesonally am fascinated by trying to contemplate doing this all over from scratch and starting out M/s. In the end, while the end product would be recognizably similar, I can only assume there'd be substantial differences in the "flavor".

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Insofar as other viable options, the truth is that our options are fairly limited at this point. It is really true that Carol is just generally submissive in life and I am generally dominant. That was always a part of our marriage even before we had names for it. Now that we have refined that aspect of ourselves, I sincerely doubt that we could ever put the genie back in the bottle. This was driven home to us when recently I fucked up horribly and was unwilling to "master" for a week or two. Heh, we ended up doing a lot of awkward dances with her seeking direction and me providing it without quite exactly making it a command. In hindsight, it was kind of comical.


What is definitely true though is that Carol & I are both flexible individuals... very flexible. I find it hard to imagine a situation where we couldn't find some common ground somewhere. I'm sure if she stopped being my slave for whatever reasons, it would most likely revert to some sort of D/s. It'd be much the same as it is now without the expectation of obedience in the really outlier areas like "having sex with someone other than me".
edited to add: And humorously enough, if we somehow got to that point, Carol would be looking to ME to reshape the relationship in some new and more healthy way. Inescapably I am in control and will always be as long as I'm with Carol.

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From the way you write about clip, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest it'd be the same thing for you. You two are who you (you dominant, him submissive) are and you are committed to each other. Unless I'm mistaken, you two are also in love. The scenario where there is zero common ground just seems unlikely. If he's truly submissive, then he's going to want some sort of dynamic. You're a clever leader. I find it hard to believe you couldn't work with that so long as whatever the occurrence was didn't torpedo the entire relationship. Maybe I'm smoking crack on that one, but really, if you envision plausible scenarios involving you and clip coming to some sort of problem with your dynamic, don't you think it's way more likely than not that you'd work something out?

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ORIGINAL: LadyPact


I'm wondering how other people feel about the concept of obedience in D/s.

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CaringandReal commented:
I was getting rather skeptical that any of these posters would still be in relationships if their principles were actually followed unerringly to the letter, as some were claiming. :/

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ORIGINAL: LadyPact

This isn't from a personal situation.  It was just something I was thinking about after replying on another thread.

Every once in a while I'll read things on one thread or another and it will make Me wonder if the concept of obedience gets lost sometimes.  I'm not talking about breaking a sub's hard limits or commanding a sub to do something that they find immoral or perhaps it's illegal.  In My mind, if we're staying out of those kinds of territories, the answer should be rather simple.  If I'm the Dominant, and I have a submissive, if I give a command, I expect it to be obeyed.  Sure, it can be discussed if there's an issue about it, but when I've made My decision, it's time for My submissive to yield to My authority.

Does it mean that a sub will always like what I've told him to do?  No.

Does it mean that he's always going to enjoy an activity?  No.

Do I expect him to obey anyway?  Yes.

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I'm wondering how other people feel about the concept of obedience in D/s?

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ORIGINAL: CaringandReal

I don't understand people willing to tell somebody obviously loyal and dedicated to them, obviously trying very hard, and perhaps with a very long history between them to "walk" or declare that they suddenly aren't your slave anymore after maybe one incident of disobedience. Isn't that demanding a standard of perfection that is impossible for any human being to keep...including yourself?

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ORIGINAL: CaringandReal

By yourself, dominants, I mean an area that you consider your dominan: your care for the slave, your responsibility over them, your decision making. What if that slips? What if you fuck up? Are you then instantly not their dominant? Do you feel like "walking?"

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ORIGINAL: CaringandReal
But what if he doesn't? Even if he does obey the great majority of time, sometimes, for any number of reasons, a submissive might slip. Would you say the relationship was over or he wasn't your sub/slave anymore if he did?

I know you aren't saying this next part, Lady Pact, so this question is addressed to anyone who cares to answer it. I don't understand people willing to tell somebody obviously loyal and dedicated to them, obviously trying very hard, and perhaps with a very long history between them to "walk" or declare that they suddenly aren't your slave anymore after maybe one incident of disobedience. Isn't that demanding a standard of perfection that is impossible for any human being to keep...including yourself? By yourself, dominants, I mean an area that you consider your dominan: your care for the slave, your responsibility over them, your decision making. What if that slips? What if you fuck up? Are you then instantly not their dominant? Do you feel like "walking?"



It's the holy grail. :)

I'm actually pretty serious/enthusastic about obedience, but for this thread I'm toning that down a bit, as I'm interesting in exploring the murkier areas of the topic.

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ORIGINAL: agirl

I simply am not obedient ALL of the time. That's a fact and the truth. That really isn't indicative of someone that *plays whimsy with every request*. The entire relationship wouldn't fly if that was the case.

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ORIGINAL: agirl

I can't think of a single occasion where I *couldn't* obey ....I only have ones where I *wouldn't* or *didn't want to*.

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ORIGINAL: agirl

Let me elaborate. I wouldn't have thrown my lot in with him if I DIDN'T think that what he said, asked, chose, commanded, ordered or requested made sense ... to ME. Not to YOU , or to anyone else. I wouldn't have asked to belong to him if he was in the habit of making me jump through dopey circus hoops for his own entertainment.

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ORIGINAL: agirl

No...there aren't conflicting views of what makes sense...as I pointed out clearly. There aren't any conflicting views on obedience either.

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ORIGINAL: agirl

The fact is, despite all of that .....I am not obedient ALL of the time in ALL circumstances because of the person that *I* am.  I can't say anything other than that because over many years that IS the case.

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ORIGINAL: agirl

If I wasn't willing and earnest, if I couldn't be arsed, if I questioned everything, day in and day out NEITHER of us would be here. It'd be a complete waste of time for us both.

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I know you aren't saying this next part, Lady Pact, so this question is addressed to anyone who cares to answer it. I don't understand people willing to tell somebody obviously loyal and dedicated to them, obviously trying very hard, and perhaps with a very long history between them to "walk" or declare that they suddenly aren't your slave anymore after maybe one incident of disobedience. Isn't that demanding a standard of perfection that is impossible for any human being to keep...including yourself? By yourself, dominants, I mean an area that you consider your dominan: your care for the slave, your responsibility over them, your decision making. What if that slips? What if you fuck up? Are you then instantly not their dominant? Do you feel like "walking?"

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ORIGINAL: LadyPact

This isn't from a personal situation.  It was just something I was thinking about after replying on another thread.

Every once in a while I'll read things on one thread or another and it will make Me wonder if the concept of obedience gets lost sometimes.  I'm not talking about breaking a sub's hard limits or commanding a sub to do something that they find immoral or perhaps it's illegal.  In My mind, if we're staying out of those kinds of territories, the answer should be rather simple.  If I'm the Dominant, and I have a submissive, if I give a command, I expect it to be obeyed.  Sure, it can be discussed if there's an issue about it, but when I've made My decision, it's time for My submissive to yield to My authority.

Does it mean that a sub will always like what I've told him to do?  No.

Does it mean that he's always going to enjoy an activity?  No.

Do I expect him to obey anyway?  Yes.

I'm wondering how other people feel about the concept of obedience in D/s.