|
CaringandReal -> RE: choices (1/13/2010 5:06:08 AM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: lucylucy
When I was single I didn't think I would date every available man until I found THE PERFECT ONE. I figured I would date until I found someone whose approach to life resonated with me profoundly. Might I have met another man whose approach to life also resonated with me profoundly if I had kept dating? Maybe yes, maybe no. It doesn't matter, though. I committed to my boyfriend, and once I made that commitment, our connection became much more profound and grew and developed to the point where I couldn't possibly meet someone else whose approach to life resonates more profoundly with me.
What you're describing in the first part of your paragraph is how I (and I think most people who reach a certain stage of maturity) realistically approach new relationships. We look for what we need, whatever it may be, and when we find it or recognize it, we hang onto it rather than seeking out even closer perfection or compatibility (because, hopefully, we've learned by now the distinct disadvantages of abandoning the opportunities life throws one's way for some theoretical idea of how much better things could be). Yes, some people do call that "settling" and regard it scornfully. But I think what what we're seeing in this thread is something else: something you talk about in the last part of the paragraph (and I appreciate the insight, I hadn't seen things like this before).
The majority of submissives answering this thread are women who are already in a committed bdsm relationship or who were recently in one, and to all appearances, content with their prior choice. I was owned for a long time, in a very fulfilling relationship, and I remember feeling similarly to you: I reached the point where I (felt) I couldn't possibly meet someone else who approach to life resonated more profoundly with me. When some people reach that point, I think they may lose the ability to realistically consider a matter such as finding another dominant. I certainly did! Their expectations are not those of a single (and lonely) person looking for happiness with another, they are those of an individual deeply content (or maybe in a few cases pretending content) with their current or recent relationship. In other words, such people are convinced that a new dominant would have to have or be everything their former partner had or it wouldn't be any good. And the imagination almost never strays to the thought, "Maybe these differences would be far from 'settling.' Maybe a new dominant would be much better, much more compatible in new ways I can't possibly imagine than my current mate."
This is a common form of blindness: the inability to realistically envision one's self in an entirely new environment, or, to use the old cliche, "in someone else's shoes." I suffered from it for a number of years after I lost my master, and, I believe, was fairly insufferable before I lost him, due to my inability to see other submissives' choices as just as valid, good, and right as my own. I think a lot of posters to this thread are responding to this "what if" scenario with the idea of of what the ideal dominant (aka their partners) is entrenched in their minds. Of course they wouldn't settle for anything less, for one choice or the other. They don't have to. Some even refuse to consider the possibility that these could realisitcally be their choices. And I imagine the thinking goes something along the lines of, "Look at what I have now. Certainly I deserve all that if not more the next time around?" Or that's how I imagine the thinking goes...as it's certainly what I felt.
|
|
|
|
