CallaFirestormBW -> RE: How did you get into bdsm? (1/16/2011 4:44:20 AM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Tdmstr Not everyone grows up in bdsm lifestyle. So how did you, your partner, or friends find it, and actually do it real life? Curious on the routes others took to get there... I sort of came in through a back door. I was training as a pastoral care provider on an alternate spiritual path. Because we didn't have the same... boundaries, I guess would be a good word... I spent a good bit of time working with the GLBT community, and had several clients who had M/s relationships or T/b relationships as part of their primary or secondary relationships. Providing good, relevant pastoral care for them meant understanding, at least to some extent, how those dynamics affected their relationships -- so I set out to learn what I could about it. For the first decade, I was really sort of an "outsider" -- I attended events and talked to people, but I wasn't a participant. I bottomed and topped a few times at events, but really never got too deeply in. I did, however, make some friends in the community who shared some of my particular interests in hierarchical households, body modification and tattoos, and period re-enactment, and it was through those connections that I actually got more deeply involved in the life that I'm in now. About 10 years after my ordination, I was given an opportunity, through a friend of a friend who was involved in the hierarchical households/period re-enactment/BDSM ends of things, to actually immerse myself in the process and see it from the inside. I'd never "submitted" to anyone... ever... in fact, it was one of the huge annoyances between myself and my parents -- that I simply appeared to be completely unable to (as my father put it) "take direction". If I couldn't try it out and shape it myself, I simply wasn't interested, and when I was told that getting into this group would require coming in as a servant and working my way up, I almost blew off the opportunity to join the House. It certainly didn't help that the man that I met who was my contact was SO off-putting. Very bossy, and very clear that, if I made the decision to join the House, the ONLY terms under which that would happen would be if I would start at the bottom and work my way up. To this day, I can't tell you -why- (I argued with myself about it until the very second that I handed over my car keys), but I ended up taking the offer, and I've never regretted it. I learned a lot about myself, a lot about leadership, and a lot of practical skills both in BDSM and in life. I also learned a HUGE lesson about what it means to lead, and to follow, and the particular challenges faced by both sides of that equation. It's been nearly two decades now. Our household isn't typical. I mean -- well -- we're not BDSM per-se. We're sort of an amalgam of things that embrace BDSM as one possible expression of who and what we are... but the road getting here has reinforced, for me, that these things are a part of my nature that I cherish, and I can't really see myself in a life where they were repressed or denied. I'm glad that I found a family in which they don't have to be. Calla
|
|
|
|