Posts tagged with "D/s lifestyle"

Trinary Maturity: The Girlfriend (or The Lifestyle)

It’s easy for some­one to asso­ciate an expe­ri­ence with the last mem­o­ry involved. I’m not with­out guilt in this issue myself. I’ll admit that the rough patch­es near the end of my rela­tion­ship with Loo have come to define the expe­ri­ence a lit­tle unfair­ly. Sometimes I have to remind myself of how much it’s helped and changed me.

In real­i­ty, I learned more from my time with Louise than from any pre­vi­ous rela­tion­ship. This was a per­son who inspired (and pushed) me to be bet­ter, but it was­n’t only her, it was the lifestyle as well.

I try not to have too much respon­si­bil­i­ty at this stage in my life, so when I do have it I take it seri­ous­ly. Being a dom­i­nant means that respon­si­bil­i­ty is assumed over anoth­er per­son, anoth­er being, anoth­er liv­ing soul. To be giv­en this respon­si­bil­i­ty, as a bond of supine trust, pro­vid­ed me a sense of con­fi­dence I had nev­er felt before.

And with this trust came a reju­ve­nat­ed zeal for self-improve­ment. She was strong her­self, so I had to be stronger. If Louise’s con­tri­bu­tion was to push, my con­tri­bu­tion was to grow. It helped me fig­ure out what I want in the next few stages of my life. I stopped slouch­ing. I start­ed speak­ing with more author­i­ty. I start­ed walk­ing into restau­rants first, some­thing I could nev­er do before, for rea­sons I could nev­er explain. I demand­ed more out of life.

In the end, it did­n’t work out. The dynam­ic was­n’t right. Unfortunately, I nev­er felt like I was able to com­plete­ly han­dle every­thing until it was actu­al­ly over. Funny how life works out like that. What I’ve lost is only rel­e­vant now.

But what I’ve gained is more impor­tant.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion

Cornus Canadensis

Many things to say, but this is the most rel­e­vant right now. This also hap­pens to touch on almost every aspect of my life, and I find myself con­sid­er­ing things from a gigan­tic range of angles. Unfortunately, I can only briefly touch on each of them, in an effort to stave digres­sion.

The first and most impor­tant goal I’ve ever had was to gain a healthy amount of con­fi­dence by the time I was mid­dle-age. This was so that I could enjoy at least half of my life as a strong indi­vid­ual. I set this goal because I real­ized that I had an unhealthy amount of self-doubt, which con­tributed to a depress­ing life and lifestyle, as well as unre­al­ized poten­tial.

This meant fight­ing off the inse­cu­ri­ties that were bred into me, which amount­ed to most of my child­hood. It has­n’t been easy in the last cou­ple of years, but it’s worked. Every six months, I’d real­ize how much I grew. This time, I real­ize that I’m there.

I final­ly feel like I’m in con­trol of my life. I speak to peo­ple dif­fer­ent­ly. I think dif­fer­ent­ly. Instead of avoid­ing con­flict, I can meet it head on. For me, this was prob­a­bly the most dif­fi­cult thing to do ever imag­ine doing. I would plan my life around such an avoid­ance, from my friends to my rela­tion­ships. I had a con­flict pho­bia, an illog­i­cal fear of a spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion, but I fought against it and won. In psy­chol­o­gy, peo­ple over­come their pho­bias by remain­ing relaxed in the face of their fears (because one can­not men­tal­ly be relaxed and scared at the same time). I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do this, by plac­ing myself in uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions over the last four months, and approach­ing them cere­bral­ly at the same time.

I also have to say that a major con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the suc­cess has been going through the D/s lifestyle with Loo. Having a sub­mis­sive as expe­ri­enced as she was, plac­ing her trust in me, gave me a sig­nif­i­cant boost in con­fi­dence. She once point­ed out to me while watch­ing Secretary, that Edward Grey’s con­fes­sion to Lee Holloway about pre­vi­ous­ly being shy was a very accu­rate detail. In Loo’s expe­ri­ence, many put in a dom­i­nant posi­tion are able to break out of their shells, and I nev­er under­stood or believed her until now.

So now that I’m here, where do I go? I’ve accom­plished the biggest goal in my life, some­thing I’d planned on work­ing on for the next ten years, and it feels like I’ve lost a major part of my rea­son for liv­ing. I feel like an astro­naut who dreamed of land­ing on the moon as a child, only to accom­plish the goal and real­ize that he had nev­er dreamed of any­thing else.

I sup­pose I still have the rest of my life to decide.

It's A D/s Life: Life After Loo

I haven’t writ­ten about this sub­ject in a while now. I need­ed to take a break, to dis­tance myself in order to gain some per­spec­tive. Now that I’m here, I feel com­fort­able enough to talk about it again.

But before I go on, a lit­tle expla­na­tion of my poten­tial bias is need­ed. I’ve always been one to believe that a sin­gle bad expe­ri­ence should­n’t turn some­one away from any­thing for­ev­er. I try to keep this belief in my head when I catch myself asso­ci­at­ing the D/s lifestyle with pain (ha! get it?) and frus­tra­tion. The only hands-on expe­ri­ence I have being a dom­i­nant was with a per­son who would repeat­ed­ly hurt me and bring me down.

However, I don’t believe that this was a con­scious char­ac­ter­is­tic. It was a per­son­al­i­ty that was wide­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal, mean, and extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to deal with, but all of this fit the “type” of sub­mis­sive that she was. I saw her as a tremen­dous, effu­sive force that, when wield­ed cor­rect­ly, could be used to great advan­tage. The only prob­lem is there are only few with enough strength and patience to tame and guide such a force, although some­one who could accom­plish such a task would form an unbreak­able bond between mas­ter and slave. I knew that I would even­tu­al­ly have the strength, but I cer­tain­ly did not have the patience to be deal­ing with what con­stant­ly felt like a per­son work­ing against me.

So it’s with this cau­tion­ary step that I pro­ceed to explore the D/s branch of the BDSM umbrel­la. My sub was depen­dent on the lifestyle; she required it in her rela­tion­ships, and her only means of relax­ation was being a bot­tom at a par­ty. I knew the risks of get­ting involved. One of my biggest fears was that I would grow depen­dent on the lifestyle as well. After all, what greater ela­tion is there than to feel as if one owns anoth­er mind, anoth­er soul, anoth­er per­son.

As of yet, I don’t feel some tremen­dous urge to go out and find a sub to abuse. I’m not expe­ri­enced enough as a dom­i­nant to do that. I know, how­ev­er, that D/s is some­thing I’d want to explore in future rela­tion­ships. I con­sid­er it a basis of open­ness, trust, and accep­tance. Exploring the lifestyle (as a female sub espe­cial­ly) would lay the ground­work for a lot of oth­er things.

Many of which I have yet to dis­cov­er for myself.

Fifteen-Minute Conditioner (or It's A D/s Life: The Perils Of Faith)

I under­stand. A lack of feed­back is the ulti­mate test of con­fi­dence, one of the many cru­cibles of a rela­tion­ship. The strong make it through, the weak fall apart.

I have to be strong. I have to cast aside my inse­cu­ri­ties, and not look back. I have to trust in Louise as much as she trusts in me. I have to be more open, more com­mu­nica­tive. How can I be sure of what she thinks if I don’t speak to her first?

I have to be strong. I have to treat Louise bet­ter. She should­n’t be pay­ing for my bad days. I have to push through the weight, or we both pay, the vicious bad-mood cycle. I have to be firm first, or there is noth­ing for her to sup­port.

I have to be strong. I once asked Louise for three things, and I can’t be scared to ask for oth­ers. I have to take that leap of faith, because love is noth­ing with­out risk.

Do peo­ple real­ly become stronger from pres­sure? I’ve always cracked, and it feels like I’m crack­ing now. Is this what the strong have gone through?

No one can promise that I won’t get hurt. No one can help me.

And I have to be strong enough to deal with both.

It's a D/s life: Stepping Outside The Circle

When I made the deci­sion to jour­ney into this lifestyle, I knew that it was­n’t going to be easy, although I sus­pect­ed that it would be eas­i­er for me than for oth­er novice dom­i­nants, just from the fact that I have a very clear of idea of what I want in life and know myself well (or believe it at least).

The hard­est thing has been step­ping out­side of my com­fort zone, or what Warren describes as, “the psy­cho­log­i­cal bar­ri­ers to under­tak­ing such a polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect activ­i­ty.” It’s iron­ic; he warns, “…keep in mind that by admit­ting her desires, [the sub­mis­sive] could be seen to be reject­ing gains that women have slow­ly and painful­ly made over the last 20, 50, 100 years”, some­thing I under­stand com­plete­ly, but it’s not Loo who’s wor­ried about reject­ing these gains.

It’s me.

After all, as much as I hate to admit it, I’ve been pro­grammed by soci­ety to a cer­tain degree. No vio­lence against women, females are to be treat­ed as equals, et cetera. And along with this are my own pro­grammed morals and beliefs. Expect noth­ing from any­one. Punishment does more harm than good. The list goes on in var­ied and incon­sis­tent ways. What makes it all hard­er is the fact that break­ing out of the bub­ble must be done out of self-inter­est. As much as I’d like to keep remind­ing myself that this is not only what Louise wants, but needs in a rela­tion­ship, I have to for­go the rein­forc­ing of any such idea. To acknowl­edge it is to ruin the dynam­ic between Dom and sub.

Interestingly enough, the only way I’ve been able to get past these per­son­al bound­aries has been to not intel­lec­tu­al­ize them, to act with­out think­ing. To expect a woman to ask for per­mis­sion to leave my side, or come to bed. To have her sit at my feet instead of next to me. To hit her until the point of tears, but not stop. To know that her body is mine, and not her own.

To live this life for me, and not the both of us.