Noah
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Joined: 7/5/2005
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quote:
ORIGINAL: velvetears
You also compared reading books that expanded ones consciousness and thinking ability to online training, but i would argue that we don't have relationships with the books we read. The book is static, it can only give us it's words, there are limitations to this, especially if the author is dead and you cannot ever have the chance to challenge him on his words. Live interation whether rt or cyber is fluid.
If a book is simply a static thing for you, well I can accept that. It certainly isn't the case for me. I read a book--I mean a book with a point of view and some coherent ideas in it--and it can change me to various degrees in various ways.
I live in and through that evolution out in the world. Then I return to the book after a year or ten years to find that far from being a static object it is sometimes as if a whole new book appears before me, with insights available to me for the first time only in virtue of the time allotted for the initial ideas to gestate.
I wouldn't expect much of this to happen in response to a book by,. say, Anne Rice, or that Norman guy, or Ayn Rand or the majority of the "BDSM" books I've seen (though if those books speak to you in a way they don't speak to me I encourage you to revisit them regularly.) In any case I assure you that there exists a world of literature with which you can have a profitable conversation lasting through much of your life.
This thing that goes for a novel can go for a poem or a song or an essay or a piece of graphic art. Are there limitations to this, you ask? Yes.
Tell me, are there limitations to a policy of restricting all of your efforts at personal growth to face-to-face interactions? I think so.
My point in reminding people about the efficacy of books in training was to show that--far from needing to be in the same room, a person can be in another century and play a central role in our development in a given area, or a small role--or of course none at all if we wall ourselves of from that sort of experience..
I'm just astonished, I mean flabbergasted, at the almost abject lack of imagination displayed by a fair number of people here--never mind the pig-headed ignorance shown by an amusing few. That someone can even hold in their head the notion that training can effectively happen only in face-to-face encounters is so obviously preposterous to me--even before my own years of very successful experience with remote training--that I can hardly relate to what these people are saying.
I mean tell me that in actuality birds can't fly. It will make as much sense to me.
There are so many marvelous ways for two people to interact. I try to take advantage of a wide array of them, because to do so is first of all interesting and fun and secondly, highly effective.
I've engaged in lots of remote training over the years. Every single case in which it has progressed to anything beyond the most superficial dabbling it has been rewarding for me. Furthermore, my partners have been uniform in thanking me for my role in it, and in their gratitude to the universe for presenting them with the opportunity, as well as grateful to themselves for having had the nerve and the imagination and the integrity the work required, and the willingness to do the work--and of course, to have the fun.
A submission which evaporates when the dom walks out the door may be a wonderful thing for that person. Cornstarch sprinkled an inch deep in the front yard may be a wonderful "snow" for that person. I would find both paltry. Frankly, I would find both laughable, undeserving of the name submission, or snow, in the rich, experience-based senses in which I use those two words.
If the threat of a physical sanction is the only thing that can command behavior, well, I mean, hey. Go for it. Have a ball. And call that "submission" if you like. There doesn't seem to be any law against it. I just think that people like that--my subjective opinion, here, are a joke. Sad sacks who don't seem to have a clue in the world about the depth of experience available in BDSM.
Still, of course, I wish them well. Lord knows we certainly are not competing for partners.
I have used remote training as prelude to physical interaction with tremendous success plenty of times. I have in no case ever been disappointed with the result I was presented with when we eventually pressed flesh. All this talk about "verification" misses the point by a mile, for me. If at any time there was anything more than the least glimmer of concern about trustworthiness, everything stopped. Nothing would proceed unless and until trust was re-established.
And let me be clear here. No kind or amount of "objective verification" could ever re-establish trust of the kind I offer and require. To me, that one relies on verification is proof enough of the lack of trust, not the presence of it. The sort of trust I require arises not from verification but from communion. If you don't know what that means--and how it operates--then please scroll down to the next post because this one does not address you.
I have also begun training relationships with in-person interactions. That is wonderful too.
But the thing is that I would have no interest--none whatsoever--in taking the huge risks involved and expending the immense amounts a of energy involved to engage in training a person with whom trust was not significant at the beginning and growing constantly. If she couldn't trust herself to proceed with integrity from day one--whether in person or at a distance, then she is at a point in her life where I would be a terrible match for her, and vice-versa.
That is to say that if she needs me standing there to verify her behavior then she is about as attractive to me as dirt. And less interesting.
Doms who are looking specifically, as it seems to me, for untrustworthy partners, people who have to be watched and handled more or less continuously, are engaged in an enterprise as different from mine as, well I don't know an analogy strong enough that it doesn't just sound silly.
I wish them all well, of course, but I have no idea what they are doing, or why. And I have no urge to find out.
As for the "It's okay as a prelude but it just isn't fully .... (whatever)"
I can think of one online-only training relationship which resulted in significant growth for my self and my partner, which evolved into a very warm and important friendship as well as a mutually profitable business relationship. She and my girlfriend have also become good friends. All of these relationship aspects are vibrantly ongoing to this day. I hope she and I (well, all three of us... she is totally wet for the gf) do get to smell each other's necks one day. Whether or not the asteroid hits first and prevents this, anyone who wants to tell the three of us that we three haven't all grown from our interactions together will have a tough case to make. And part of that growth arose from online training. This is an indisputable fact. To those who would bark and yap or piss and moan to the contrary I'll simply say: You weren't there. You have no idea. You are talking out your ass and we get a big kick out of you..
There are, as you say, Velvet Tears, things which remote training "isn't". I can accept that in a cool, clear-eyed way with no sense of chagrin. What I think others should accept is that there are things which can be done remotely that can't even be attempted in person, valuable meaningful things. I've learned about them and employed them to great effect with several partners.
A lot of people here seem to be reporting that they use "On the spot inspections" as a band-aid for a gaping, festering wound in the area of trust in their relationships. I say rock on with your bad self. If that's all you ever aspire to, I'm glad you've found it. If you aspire to a more genuine intimacy and this primary-grade level of BDSM that requires physical verification, and if this kindergarden shit is something helps you progress toward a more meaningful experience, then I'm glad for that too.
Please note that I am not saying that physical interaction is kindergarden shit. Far from it. I am saying that any D/s training which cannot be effective without physical presence is a cartoon stick figure of the real thing, whether it happens to involve touch or whether it doesn't. You're welcome to any divergent opinion you may hold.
But anyone who--usually based on their own proven ineptitude--declares that what I have done with several amazingly impressive women over the years just doesn't exist, or is impossible, well that person is just hilariously full-to-the-ears of horse shit, plain and simple.
quote:
As for my own opinion here, well i can only speak for myself and from my previous experiences. i would not consider online training enough for me. It would be very frustrating. There would be too many limitations that i wouldn't want to risk it. If others make it work, kudos to them. i think it all depends on how you view service and what you feel is important in creating a D/s relationship that works.
I appreciate your thoughtful contribution to the thread and the integrity you display by witholding unfounded negative judgements and owning your subjective preferences as just that.
Thank you for posting.
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RE: Online training- Hows it going for you? - 
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