Proprietrix
Posts: 756
Joined: 7/15/2005 From: Ohio/West Virginia Status: offline
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First, I think it's great that you are accepting constructive criticism and looking inward. I have had this occur. I don't really take it as a statement that a submissive is trying to make me into their past Dominant. Lots of people have had former relationships and I think it's normal to bring those previous relationships up from time to time, especially in the process of getting to know someone. For me, there's a drastic difference in being 'compared & contrasted' to a former, and being 'measured up' to a former. If I make you eat corn every night and you say "Mistress Yesterday had me eat green beans every night because I like them." I'm not going to be offended. However if you say "Mistress Yesterday must have loved me more than you do because she gave me stuff I like." I'm probably going to be a tad bit pissy. It's also a matter of how often is it going on, and in what context? Did you bring up her green beans because we were having a conversation about D/s choices in vegetables? Or did you bring it up because it's dinner time, and last night at dinner time, and every night at dinner time... Does every conversation seem to lead back to Mistress Yesterday? Am I being compared to her in ever facet of our interaction? But I understand that sometimes its a matter of working that former person out of one's life. Whether it was an awesome relationship and they'll always feel a love for the person. Or it was a crap relationship and they're still feeling hostility. (Which was the case with my gurl). Apparently some closure was lacking when they went seperate ways. I'm ok with a sub trying to work through that closure, as long as I know I'm more to them than their therapy sounding board. Here's what I had my former do. I gave her a marker on a string. She wore it like a necklace. Everytime she mentioned Mr. X, I had her put a tally mark on the back of her hand. She didn't even have to try not to mention him. At the end of the day, she counted the marks, and made a note of them in her journal (where she spent a great deal of time venting about him). At the end of each month, she had to go through and see if the number of marks each day were increasing, decreasing or staying the same. For her, they were steadily decreasing. This (along with her behavior, and her journal entries), showed me that she was gradually making the closure for herself that he never gave her. In time, he became 'just another part of her past'. (I don't know if that made a whole lot of sense without the details. I hope so.) I guess what I'm getting at is that if someone is subconsciously trying to "recreate the past relationship", it may be due to unresolved emotions, that for some reason were repressed. Still in love with the former... resentful of the former... angry at the former... guilt over the breakup... a dozen different possibilities. Also, if you've only had one former Mistress, it makes a great deal of sense that you would use that relationship as a base point for reflection. It's kind of like a freshman in college. He makes a lot of reference to "well, in highschool......" because that's his base point of knowledge regarding education. As he grows and moves on to a sophmore and a junior, he gets to the point where he rarely compares and contrasts to highschool anymore. No need to. He has a bigger, more well rounded base point. As you meet different people in the lifestyle, try new things, have casual get-togethers with different Mistresses, you'll increase your base point of knowledge in the lifestyle, and you'll probably find that you don't have that need to reflect back on that one relationship quite so much. Good luck! :)
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IMO, IMHO, YMMV, AFAIK, to me, I see it as, from my perspective, it's been my experience, I only speak for myself, (and all other disclaimers here).
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