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ORIGINAL: leadership527

Hrrrrm, I agree agirl... as far as you've gone with it. One of the things that should be clarified here is that, in large part, we are talking dictionary terms here. Let me be specific..

GIVEN FACT: Carol & I Love each other. Nothing has changed there. Nothing is likely to change any time soon.
GIVEN FACT: Carol is generally submissive. I am generally dominant. Nothing is likely to change any time soon.
GIVEN FACT: I have a definition for the word "slave" that is, admittedly, pretty extreme in some ways.

More extreme now than 4 months ago (that's about the time you started your blog)?

But what is not a given fact is what happens next. Carol may or may not match my definition of slave which is just a literal interpretation (and here I go, undoubtedly getting in trouble for that again). I'm unapologetic for taking the ideas that I've gathered from the BDSM community seriously.

Again, have you changed from gathering ideas over the last months, and has therefore your definition changed? If so, what does Carol think of that change? If you changed, does that give her the right to 'disobey'? Why does that give the impression that she failed, and not you?

Do you fill in what 'slave' and 'Master' mean or does what the 'community' think (and we know there is no consensus) dictate your and her role? With other words, is how the dynamic works out in reality a private thing, made to fit the two partners involved, or do we try to fit partners/ourselves into the definitions?

But whether or not I call her my slave tomorrow, I will absolutely call her my submissive wife. I will also absolutely call her the love of my life. That is simply a factual description of who and what she is. It is only the definition of "slave" which is rigid.

Only if you let it be rigid.

The larger framework that I am applying that in is extremely flexible. Try to remember that Carol is, in no way whatsoever, being rejected as my friend, lover, wife, life-partner, or anything else. Nor is she rejecting me in any of those ways. This is strictly about whether a TOTAL authority dynamic works for us.

How about her desire to please, and her 'fear' of displeasing/disappointing you?

TO ME (and therefor to Carol also), M/s offers a way to obtain richer rewards from our relationship than D/s or vanilla. The question facing us is whether or not we want to play the game.

What is it, a game,  or a reality as to what Carol and you make of it, or a reality based on who both of you 'really' are on the inside, or a reality according to a definition? If it's a game, who cares if it's compliance, obedience or adoration. Who cares if either one struggles, then it's time for a good laugh, a few days off, and playing a 'role' again. On the other side, if this is 'who you are' and 'who Carol is', there are no days off, but there is always change in circumstances. If that's a case, Carol can never stop being who she is, not even if you stop the M/s.

Admittedly, it isn't an easy game to play. The stakes are high and the standards uncompromising. But then again, the rewards are also rich. I personallly believe it IS workable... and I'm a very pragmatic individual. The fact that for most people it wouldn't work out well doesn't bother me.

The question is whether Carol thinks it's workable or not.

As a general update, as talk has continued between carol and I, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I do not see her as crossing the boundaries just yet. I was, in fact, quite specific in those boundaries and she did not cross them. The fact that she flirted with them doesn't matter. The fact that she was about to cross one until I pointed it out to her (at which point she stopped) is also irellevant. The facts on the ground are that she has remained inside those boundaries which I carefully laid down. It seems kind of pointless to me go muddying my very distinct lines.

Again, I wonder if you really didn't change them.

Still though, before I name her "slave" again, I'm going to want to hear her having a much healthier viewpoint on that role. She's still working out some questions of her own.

I always thought she had done that work. Cause to me, that's the most important part.

The things involving me (my leadership being good for her) turned out (predictably) to be red herrings... statements said and regretted in the heat of anger.

Please explain the red herrings for a non-native English speaker (me). Who made the statements?
 
But there are still some real questions left... notably... is she really prepared to become someone else's property in the (here we go again) literal sense. Does that make her a weak individual -- the dreaded doormat?

That was one of the first questions I asked myself when I started to discover my submissive side.

Carol, I suspect will be posting later. Her take on all of this will be, as it usually is, very different than mine.

It will be very nice to 'finally' hear from your Lady herself.

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ORIGINAL: LaTigresse

Or a firm grip on the hair or ear........or any other grippable bit.

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ORIGINAL: CaringandReal

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ORIGINAL: Ialdabaoth

Something to keep in mind:

When you're in a submissive mindset, but unsure, what you desperately want is for the Dominant to project certainty, to Tell You How It's Gonna Be.

When you AREN'T in a submissive mindset, and are unsure, what you desperately want is to be given some freedom, to Let You Decide For Yourself.

These mindsets are indistinguishable until after the fact.

Again, good luck.

Yep. Absolutely true.

If you haven't faced something like this as a submissive, it's easy to say or think, "Oh deep down inside I'd WANT him to be decisive, exercising his authority, making the decisions." Except the actual situation, god forbid if it occurs, is never that simple. Something like this rocks your reality, and while it is going on, you go through times where you feel equally and quite strongly both feelings: that you desperately want your freedom back and that you desperately want your dominant to take control. It's extremely confusing, and if it's hard for you personally to sort out what you really want, imagine how hard it is for someone outside of you to do so, even someone as close to you as your dominant is.

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There is no "dreaded" doormat. there's just the infamous "dreaded" doormat:

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ORIGINAL: leadership527

But there are still some real questions left... notably... is she really prepared to become someone else's property in the (here we go again) literal sense. Does that make her a weak individual -- the dreaded doormat?

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ORIGINAL: CallaFirestormBW


I have to say that I completely understand both what Carol is going through, and what Leader is going through right now. I've been intimately involved in the authority-exchange community and BDSM community, and have crawled and wrenched my way to the top of an authority-exchange household, have held the hearts of our servants, and have yielded up my own... and now I am walking away. After nearly 30 years in the community, and 14 years in the House, I am setting out on my own. It was a gut-wrenching decision.

Dame Calla

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ORIGINAL: seekerof

All of this said, I had been noticing over your last several dozen posts on other discussions how often you threatened that Carol would not be your slave anymore if she did “…”.  Projecting myself into that,  I know that if I were a sub or a slave, in a committed relationship and kept reading things like this I would start to seriously back track. Reading that would make me feel insecure and  I would not know how to address that with my Dom. This is esp. true if I had already told him that I was uncomfortable with his frequent posts about me/us (which if I recall correctly Carol has told you).

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ORIGINAL: agirl
There's obviously all the vastly important information left out of your comments.......the real live day to day talks and revelations/nuances........... All there ever is in a forum is a kind of *potted* version.

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ORIGINAL: leadership527

~Carol