Dominance

From time to time, I have read about a woman in a D/s style relationship who has lost her dominant, as in he died, or once or twice I have read about a dominant who has lost his submissive. I remember once telling a dominant friend that I was a little fearful of the dynamic because of the fear of just that - my dominant dying before I did, and the huge hole I imagined that would create in my life.

My husband, who has been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer isn't your typical cancer patient and he is doing so many of the right things. He honors his intuition, is deeply engaged with the healing process, has released many of his repressed emotions through hypnosis and floods his body with positive emotions. He must go for treatment each month and each and every time he is praised for his attitude. They see him as one out of the box and wish all their other patients had such a strong life force. So, most of the time, I am engaged with his strong life force and certainly not someone who has dug himself a pit of negativity or any sort of resignation.

It's part and parcel of the way we have lived together, for nearly 50 years now. Something very difficult happens, maybe an investment goes pear shaped, or a child or a grandchild has an issue. He is subject to the normal ups and downs of this but ultimately, he rallies. He says something akin to, 'don't worry, we will rise from the ashes and rebuild'. It's our whole lives together that has been a training ground, like a dharma strengthening of character, so that when a heavy-duty dose of courage is required, one is conditioned in that virtue.

I think about our dynamic as one where, as Brene Brown says, it's not 50:50. Sometimes, I might be a 10 and sometimes I am a 90. When he is caught up in fear, letting his imagination run a bit wild, I feel that I can't and shouldn't rely on him for strength or leadership.

This happened late last night when I could see his imagination running wild, and without information that allowed me to decipher whether what he was saying was a major concern, or not, I knew that the best thing for me was to go to silence. This morning provided greater informed detail, and the issue brings with it, a need for careful monitoring, possibly a second opinion, but nothing that seems abnormal under the circumstances. 

My daughter in law, who is carrying their first child, who needs to get married fast (there is an Asian mother to satisfy) and who needs to find a house fast before the baby arrives, said to me on the weekend that she is close to overwhelm. I get it.

In my ideal fantasy world, it's the Dominant one who settles me down, assures me everything will be all right, and enables me to feel safe and secure. I read this blog, I don't particularly want to say which one because it is sorta extreme, and he has the talent of allowing his wife (I am assuming from his writing) to feel so very secure in his dominance. 

She knows the rules. She knows the expectations. She understands that the rules are for her good, and for the good of the marriage and the family. He punishes when she deviates from the good order his rules impose and by all accounts, she responds to the punishment well in that she seems perfectly happy more or less immediately thereafter. 

Of course, it's him writing, not her, and so maybe, like me, she has to sometimes settle him; put things into perspective; give her reading of the things that happen in their lives. Maybe he gets dispirited, or negative, or over-worrying and she has to be the one to pick up the pieces for him on a given day. It's the tango that all couples dance, isn't it?!

In my fantasy world, in my aroused state, it's all so completely set in stone, like in the blog. I read that blog because I like that world he writes about, where he has created this fantastic sense of safety and calm, and putting things right should they go off course. She doesn't, or has learned not to, let's say, argue the point but rather accepts that her ass will bear the brunt of her misalignments of his vision for them. It's just life, their life; the way things go in that household.

For a time, it was like that for us. Pretty close. My husband got sick, and things changed, and I remember how unsafe I felt. That's when I went looking for other ways to feel calm - meditation and breathing techniques and self-compassion exercises and such. 

Here's the thing: For me, nothing cures a sense of anxiety, of worry, or overwhelm, faster than experiencing dominance. It's an act of kindness really, though maybe not in the moment. It makes me feel safe, secure, calm, at peace. It is, I have to think, some deeply invested sense of femininity left over from the stone age that lodged in my body long before there was a body. It's the only explanation.

The Things We Do

I'm currently reading THE  things THEY carried, by Tim O'Brien. He is a wonderful writer. As he writes, one shouldn't believe a story is a true war story until you feel it in your stomach. Whether truth or fiction, all his stories are felt in the gut. I could point to endless paragraphs that have deeply affected me but this one really resonated:

""To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true. At its core, perhaps, war is just another name for death, and yet any soldier will tell you, if he tells the truth, that proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life. After a firefight, there is always the immense pleasure of aliveness. The trees are alive. The grass, the soil - everything. All around you things are purely living, and you among them, and the aliveness makes you tremble. You feel an intense, out-of-the-skin awareness of your living self - your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by the force of wanting it."

What occurred to me is that there are moments in that paragraph when he could be commenting on a BDSM experience and the after effects..."the aliveness makes you tremble". I can only speak for myself when I say that experimentation in these activities somehow places me closer to my "truest self"; that pain brings me closer to joy; that there is an "aliveness" once I have been objectified.

As O'Brien makes clear, war is not just death and destruction. It's hell, mystery, terror, adventure, courage, holiness, pity, despair, longing; love. There are no generalizations to be made, just as there are no generalizations to be made about living. We all put one foot in front of the other and the story continues on. Our memories will fade, but if the stories are written down they will be immortal. Thus, we write stories, with the exact details being less important than the essence, the truth of the story.

I sometimes sit and remember an episode of sub-space; the extraordinary experience not just of those divine minutes, but the time thereafter; the experiencing of being alive in the fullest way. In ways, it is getting closer to death, or rather, to the time before one was born; the feeling of being reborn. It creates a very special bond between two people that just goes on and on. How could it not.

One for the Dominants

Having read Sir J’s discussion about ‘punishment’, I am prompted to share some thoughts of my own on this subject.

What I like about what I know of Sir J’s dynamic with his h is that it is a closely connected relationship. He has developed rituals around the day whereby, wherever they happen to be, in the same vicinity or not, they check in with one another routinely; touch each other, often. When a submissive woman is in touch with her dominant, in whatever form that takes, she is unlikely to feel abandoned. She is unlikely to want to misbehave.

I don’t think that submissive woman misbehave too often because they can’t do the task, or they don’t know better, or they are just “bad”. I think submissive women misbehave because they don’t feel the connection adequately, and this throws them off balance. When they are off balance, problems ensue for both the dominant and the submissive.

I refer to the sort of attention I crave as ‘positive energy’.

Recently, I was asked to do a task. It was for my own benefit; something I was being taught and something I wanted to learn. I procrastinated and when called on it, a correction ensued. It was a correction that, more or less, took the place of the task and it was a correction that would see progress. It was a punishment, for want of a better word.

Whilst I do misbehave, I also do see the error of my ways and I didn’t hesitate to comply. In fact, I enjoyed my ‘punishment’ enormously as he most likely knew that I would. I also enjoyed having the task imposed on me. That’s just who I am. When I reported that I had accomplished the task, he was effusive with praise. We were both delighted!

And, that is what I mean by ‘positive energy’.

I’ve certainly had the other kind of punishment; the kind where you are asked to bend over and take a good whipping. Sometimes, that has been highly appropriate from the point of view that I didn’t do what I agreed to do or I did something, knowing that there would be such a penalty. Sometimes, I have been hell bent to do something my way and it has taken this sort of a punishment to convince me that my behaviour really does need to change. I don’t have a strong objection to this. I certainly don’t have any sense of resentment about it where the rules were very clear and I broke them.

As a submissive woman, I enjoy playing with pain, and sometimes I enjoy playing with pain that I deserve. It just happens to be part of my fantasy life; part of my kink. Exploration of pain, without the punishment factor occasionally, would be less satisfying to me. It just happens to turn me on. What can I say? Perhaps one could set up that ‘scene’ for me but I think I’d know the difference. It’s complicated.

The point is that I just don’t have the kind of personality that even desires to be good ALL the time. Sometimes, I just ‘push the envelope’. I’m never going to be the perfect submissive.

But, aside from those occasional times, I look for the kind of close connection with my dominant that will have me in my ‘happy place’; wanting to please, wanting to receive his praise. In my heart of hearts, I truly believe that if I had that, I could shine. I know, because I have had that, and I *did* shine. I bask in the glow of an attentive dom.

One of the aspects of a good submissive is that she should be ‘patient’. That sounds fine in theory, but in practice, it makes the submissive less satisfied in her submission. Surely, if she is bubbly and bright, she can serve her dominant best. To be bubbly and bright, she needs an attentive dom. It may seem impossible to the busy dom to seriously consider that a call of two minutes duration can be exhumed out of his day, but if he really wanted to do it, don’t you think he could find that time? Maybe, giving her a dozen swats of a morning sounds like a big chunk out of his day, but who is he kidding? Twelve swats can be achieved in less than ten seconds. His submissive doesn’t deserve ten seconds out of his morning?

The next time a submissive woman just isn’t rising to the mark, perhaps it is worth the Dominant man asking himself if she needs a burst of positive energy that emanates directly from his attentiveness to her. Sometimes, even a correction or punishment is just the attention she needs.

You see, at the end of the day, come what may, she craves her Dom's attention as her lifeforce.