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mayapple -> RE: Navigating the liminality (5/1/2006 9:35:05 PM)
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Many of the very helpful replies here have addressed the Dom's attitude and approach, but you yourself quite rightly are asking for help in navigating the chasm you feel not just between yourself and a potential Dom but also within yourself. For this, I think you need to adopt a new way of looking at submission. You love intellectual challenges. Submission can be your new intellectual challenge... you can attempt to deconstruct submission, and you might possibly get somewhere with it. But more than that, I hope you will consider attempting to expand your inner bag of tools, for you freely acknowledge that you rely heavily on your intellect in nearly all matters, and it is possible that your intellect might stand between you and profound submission.
My Dom took quite a different approach than what we've heard so far on this thread. And in fact I discussed your question with him today. It interested me because I am quite intellectual myself and my Dom is not, and somehow our relationship works very well for both of us. I do not feel I need to hide from my own intellect, even though he may not be calling on it as much as some of the Doms here call on the intellect in their submissives.
First: please do not expect to surrender control all in one grand gesture. Submission is often granted and taken bit by bit, and especially since you are new to submission it would make sense to think in modest terms at first, even with your eye on total surrender in the future.
You are looking to be tamed. So was I. I craved submission but had no idea how to summon it. I met several Doms who similarly had no clue and concluded I was not really a submissive at all. I found out the hard way that my strong will was not serving me well as a submissive-in-waiting. And so inside myself I resolved that if I really wanted to experience submission then I would need to calm or quiet the part of me that loves to win arguments and debates. I also needed to put away my intellectual snobbery and be willing to submit to the man who could inspire my submission, even if he might not seek to be my intellectual sparring partner. I had plenty of others in my life who could serve that role.
I realized that in my lifelong submission fantasies, my intellect was completely irrelevant. The dominating man I conjured up in my fantasies did not care about my intellect; he valued only my submission, my obedience. In my fantasies, it was in reluctantly casting aside my own pride and my own will that I found the surprising thrill of submission. That is what I hoped to find in my real life. So I had to be willing to pursue it, I thought, with as much abandon as I had in my fantasies, even if in both fantasies and reality it was not reckless abandon but a gradual unfolding of abandon.
It takes profound trust in both the man and the quest... and profound trust in yourself, too... that all will be worth the gamble. If you cling to what you know well, to what has always worked for you in the vanilla world, you may well find it a crutch in the world of domination and submission.
My Dom was telling me from very early on that he was very proud of me. But he never told me he was proud of my intellect. No... he was proud of my budding submission, my baby steps of obedience. And gradually I began to pride myself on my obedience, too. When I sometimes found myself balking, I knew it was time to rise to the challenge and try harder to please him with my obedience... not with my 101 reasons why I felt like resisting his will.
Sometimes when my Dom most wants me to focus on what he wants to say, he binds me, blindfolds me, and gags me. What good is my intellect when my world is temporarily reduced to the sound of his voice and the sensation of ropes and his touch? I can struggle in my mind for all I'm worth, and launch a raging internal debate, but for what? If I am there to submit to his will... well, I love what Taggard wrote about the two choices: 1) listen, analyze and obey, or 2) listen, analyze, question (respectfully, of course!) and obey. Gradually I am letting go of analyzing and questioning, and that does not mean I aspire to be a doormat ever, I assure you!!! But there is something strangely gratifying about doing a consolidated version of the intellectual debate inside of myself, unvoiced, and then getting on with my submission... or bracing myself and voicing a question with as much humility as I can muster (something I had never attempted before in my life!).
A new mindset of humility is something you can cultivate inside of yourself, now, without waiting for a Dom to drag it out of you. In fact I realized my newfound humility is spilling over into my vanilla world, and I recently found myself saying, "I am learning to be more humble, but I'm also finding out that I can pride myself on my humility!"
Just a few humble suggestions or possible food for thought......
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