Lessons of the past year

For many years, forever, there has been a fantasy running through my head; that there would be a man in my life who would instinctively and completely understand my need to fall under his wing in every way.

The roles in this fantasy have always been well defined and in order to hone down into that space the fantasies are often a little cruel, when in fact the role I play for him, and him for me, is anything but that; deeply loving, caring, sharing; adored and adoring. I think when we are young there is a sense of wide open space and infinite possibilities that allow for such a fantasy in a young girl's mind and for decades it refused to die. It not only survives, it thrives, even though I am in my sixties now.

It's no co-incidence that I took special note of the story of Jane Eyre as a child. Loving Mr Rochester and him loving her back was molded into the roles they played for one another. I remember feeling at great peace for Jane in the final scene, and deep peace within myself as she sat on the ground right by him, him on the seat patting her head (at least that is the way I remember the scene). It's romantic love that I attuned to even back then but also the themes of maturity versus youth, femininity versus masculinity, leader versus follower. Which is not to say that Jane didn't have a wisdom or an innate understanding of Mr Rochester that she brought to the table. I've always thought of Jane as instinctively attuned to Mr Rochester; his ways, his needs.

It's very hard to let go of such an enduring fantasy and for many years I tended to have a thought at the back of my mind -  if I can't have it all, then I'll do without. But, that thought broke down many times over as I came to see that I was attempting to annihilate out of my life my innate self. The kinky mind has been with me for longer than most of the people reading this has been alive. It's an enduring, soothing thought. It's an important part of my sexuality. It is my sexuality.

As a Caretaker type, meaning a person who can put others needs ahead of their own needs, self-care was a foreign thought.  I said recently to a small group of people - maybe 12 of us, a very safe small group - that it was only very recently, perhaps  the past twelve months or a little longer, that I have understood what self-love even meant. It's been a huge year of self discovery in that sense.

The most important lesson of the year has been that I can't wait for and shouldn't expect 'Mr Rochester' to save me; to tend to me; to lovingly dominate me. Wonderful when it comes along, but silly to wait; to pine for, to wish, to feel resentment and sorrow when there is that lack in my life.

It's a commitment to giving up the victim role, the persecutor role and the savior role. It's akin to saying 'It is what it is' and 'We are as we are'. It's looking at the situation and seeing if there is a new way to resolve the fact that we are in fact very different people; neither better or worse, good or bad; just people whose attention is drawn towards different areas of life. It's recognizing we are equals, with strengths and weaknesses, and seeing if we can accommodate that individuality within a more fun paradigm that includes both of us being fulfilled.

We are as we are, all of us, and there are measures I can take to soothe myself when his attention is steered in another direction; to feel whole; to connect in with my intrinsic self. It's not ideal; not really at all like the fantasy that has endured my whole life, but nonetheless it feels right to care for myself as best I can; to have no specific expectations. This leaves room, I anticipate, for experiences that will satisfy within certain scenarios.

Gratitude is so important in life and I have so much to be grateful for.  I think as we age we develop some wisdom about that. A new home, a new baby, a new dress are all wonderfully exciting things in life in the moment, but so too is a great cup of coffee, the moment when the rose blooms, a cool evening breeze after a hot day, the touch of lips meeting lips; the wagging tail of a dog. There are sweetnesses in life every day if we are attuned to them.

Someone I have come to know was having lunch with Ram Dass one day (what a fantasy that is!) many years ago when she said to him, 'Well, it looks like I won't be having children'. He more or less waved her off. 'Well, there's always something we want we don't get,' he said.  Or, words like that.

This stunned her a bit. It wasn't a small thing she wasn't getting, after all. And yet, she took the point. It's the human condition to have to suffer the loss, or never to have at all, that which we covet. Ask anyone and there will be something in this life desperately wanted but not got - a loving mother, the respect of a father, the admiration of a child, to be an actress or a painter, to work, to not work, to love, to be loved, to have a mentor, to be in print. We all have our thing.

I recently read a quote of Brene Brown. 'Joy, collected over time, fuels resilience.' Like a habit of mind, when we go in search for joy, we collect it in abundance, and this builds resilience for the disappointments and sorrows in life.

As this year comes to an end I feel proud of lessons learned: a willingness and ability to take care of myself, when and if I must; pockets full of joy; resilience; promise that tomorrow will take care of itself.

Building a Successful Life

In terms of a power exchange relationship people talk of the arrangement sometimes as an energy exchange. Different people have different things to say. I've heard and read of it as an exchange of two different types of personality, 'She loves to give and I love to take, so it works for both of us.'

I've thought of it as an ideal combining of two different types of people; one who enjoys taking the lead and one who is happy to be led. Not that nearly anyone wants to be led in all ways and at all times, but rather the relationship can express the synchronicity of the coupling and then details can be adjusted as required.

The lovely things to be said about an energy exchange between such people all imply that the relationship is undertaken with intelligence, with intention and with respect. There needs to be some consistency, acknowledgement of strengths and weaknesses, together with an awareness that life challenges will interfere with smooth sailing at times. It needs to be real.

A psychologist is likely to be concerned about power relationships if they get the sense that the relationship looks more like an Empath being taken advantage of by a Narcissist. Empaths can become what is known as pathological givers. They tend to feel that if they give to the Other what he or she needs, they will be loved and be given what they need automatically. The narcissist doesn't necessarily feel this way or indeed follow that sort of thinking.

This is probably what separates a power exchange that is healthy from one that is unhealthy. If both people have their needs met, who can argue with that? But, if one person has permanently unmet needs, that's not a good thing.

People whose needs are not met would do well to explain themselves, but there is no guarantee that this will sort the matter out. There may be an uptick in reciprocity but chances are only average that there will be a permanent change in mindset. It is the rare person, and particularly so if they have a demanding or set disposition, that can change themselves to suit another person.

The empath/submissive can be so frustrated that she might rage but ultimately he or she must accept the reality of being locked into a relationship that lacks reciprocity; where the Other is unable to feel his or her pain.

Putting aside this relationship for a moment and considering all relationships in our lives, what is a wise way to think about them as a whole? Some friendships are deeper - and smoother - than others, but as we age we come to see that all friendships and all relationships have an internal mechanism.

As much as we might like to get to know someone more intimately, or to feel closer to a friend, or to wish that the waitress in the Diner who brings us our chicken salad sandwich would crack a smile, there is only so much we can do to change these circumstances.

I believe that there are ways we can influence relationships. Speaking to someone with a respectful tone when explaining what you want them to do makes the exchange more friendly as a rule. If someone begins to shout staying calm can help them to settle. We can do what we know to do. But, we can't change people's intentions or motivations or personality.

In the same way we can talk to someone with whom we exchange energy in a power exchange, but it doesn't guarantee change. It depends on their drivers - their level of distraction, their understanding of what is important in their minds; what they want. This is a relationship no different to any other really except for the fact that it could be a parasitic relationship, and that's dangerous.

Some relationships are very stressful. When someone is on the alert for the changes of mood of someone, walking on eggshells, looking out for red flags, that's very stressful. Apart from the psychological pain that ensues, the body is subject to chronic inflammation. An empath's energetic field can be so open he or she can neglect the body.

It's clear that it's no small amount of work to solve these issues when an empath or submissive has found herself in the orbit of a  Narcissist who is ambivalent. Certainly this post can't solve this complex problem except that I would like to offer three suggestions that could, in time, give such a person the strength they need to assess the situation with clarity; to make positive change.

1) A meditative practice, being the witness to your own mind, teaches you to think with clarity and awareness that will stand you in good stead for the rest of your life.

2) Resilience is not something that we either have or don't have. You can teach yourself to go without and in doing so attain a sense of empowerment. Going without something, perhaps sugar or salt or tv for a time is a good start in this practice. As you learn that you can indeed go without you will see with clarity and discrimination what to say 'no' to, and what to say 'yes' to.

3) Develop patience. 'I can wait.' This will give you strength.

We are all made up of strengths and weaknesses and we can be grateful for both. A focus on the weaknesses is a learning prompt and encourages compassion. It is all experience. Nothing is lost.

Inertia

Being Mother's Day I spent considerable time with my family yesterday and one of the comments one of my sons made was how frustrated he was that one of his best mates had ended up with his girlfriend. His complaint is that his friend has remained juvenile in many ways and that he needs a girl that can help him to grow, whereas his girlfriend accepts him just as he is.

"I imagine Alison cooks for him..."

"Every night. It's sickening to watch."

Of course, it's comfortable. It's comfortable for them both, really, because Alison is a home body and John (if only you knew how silly it sounds to me to make up these names for real people) likes that he is looked after. But, my son is right, John isn't likely to grow much at all with her and that's a wasted opportunity.

This is one of the big points of having a D/s relationship, isn't it, to grow; to have fun and pleasure, and to grow. For reasons I don't really understand I've desperately wanted to experience, to explore and grow, and I've wanted that for people with whom I engage, not least of which is my husband.

It's not just that we've been together forever and that in that scenario you need to shake things up a bit every so often. It's that it just comes innately to me to grow; to challenge; to want to be challenged. It's not always comfortable for me but it is a lot more comfortable that being static. I thrive on momentum. It can drive my husband mad because I tend to talk about what we can do next. I'm not someone who tends to sit back and rest on my laurels. If he comes out to the garden and I've single handedly stacked the trailer with all the prunings, he might say, "You're a productive little thing, aren't you?!" I need to get stuck into things and move on.

One of the big issues in relationships is the need to cater for one another's energy levels and I think that all our energy levels fluctuate, from time to time. It's totally understandable and normal for this to happen and in the same way, arousal levels fluctuate. The desire for play fluctuates. Stressful periods of time probably mean that a person has less dominance to offer. Personally, I don't find that I have less submissive tendencies during stressful time because the submissive strategies calm my stress. However, I can say that times when I am stuck in deadlines I must put aside submissive needs. We need to be alert to the other person's needs and adjust the temperature accordingly.

However, what if the other person can't change and grow at all? What's been on my mind is that perhaps some people are intrigued and drawn to power exchange relationships because they have a certain neurological disposition that makes a certain degree of rigidity an integral part of their makeup and the way they lead their lives. Perhaps that rigidity will always be the same rigidity, year after year after year. Perhaps, there will be no growth and adjustment because it is built into the DNA that there will be no growth, no matter what.

I was talking around this issues with my son yesterday too. I was telling him about 'The Rosie Project'. The protagonist is a lovely, very intelligent man with Aspbergers who is looking for a girlfriend and I was saying that I struggle with the concept of acceptance, in part. For instance, my dog is silly. There is no two ways about it. She isn't bright and there are still moments of great frustration for me about that. I imagine having a dog who would run with me and act sensibly and although I love her, I can see the pitfalls of having a dog who just isn't that smart. I work against those feelings. I know I shouldn't have them. I can see that the children accept her quirks and I try to see it that way as well. Still.

In the process of this 'journey' of mine I've become a much stronger person, more outgoing. I still thrive when my husband takes charge of the situation, as he did this weekend. I really love being in that submissive mindset, sleeping on his chest, feeling at peace with the world after a session or two of tight containment, in whatever form that takes. Just as importantly, I love it when I feel that he's operating with some momentum; that he's moving and growing and that there is a sense of a future where we can embrace life and all that it has to offer. I love moving with him, rather than parallel to him. I'll still grow anyway, because that is so important to me to continue to grow, but when one moves in tandem with the other, that's gold. That's when I am truly in my groove.

It's been a bit of a motto of mine for many years to say that one shouldn't force friendships or have high expectations. People are as they are, and provided you've done your best, you have to accept the friendship for what it is. Friendships come in all shapes and sizes and part of friendship is not to expect too much. Intellectually, I know this. Yet, I also know myself too well to truly believe my own words. The truth is I sometimes engage in a difficult relationship because I'm intrigued; because I think it might provide growth; because I want to see it grow, on both sides. But, what if one day you wake up and smell the roses and realize that there are limitations to how much you should expect because perhaps there are neurological issues that don't allow for that growth?

What I am up against is the realization that I never accepted a poor prognosis about anything. I turned it into a winning situation because there is something inside my brain that tells me that I can. Not one to sit by and watch failure I made it right. I made it good. Maybe, I needed to deconstruct the situation and reform the situation but that's much easier, as hard as it is, than conceding defeat.

What's that old saying - God only gives you what you can handle? My third child was born with a few challenges but he never let that get on top of him. I remember talking to a boarding house Master on the sidelines of a soccer game a while back and we were talking about resilience. I was saying that that son has buckets of it and I didn't know where on earth he had got it all. What made him continue to try and try when others would have conceded defeat? "You gave that to him," he said to me. "No, it was nothing to do with me," I replied. "It's always been there."

But, today I am wondering, maybe I did give him that resilience. Maybe, I did. Maybe, as a mother I passed down to them the will to make it, whatever it means to them, to make it. Maybe, instinctively, I passed onto them the desire to stretch oneself. I'm not one to subscribe to neurological limitations; to simply accept that people can't thrive and learn, in their own way. Maybe dogs can't grow new neurons but put people in the right environments and there's something more that they can do, be, give, think and learn. Surely. A deep dislike of inertia. That's my Achilles heel.

Resilience

I think one of the issues that I return to over and over again in my writing is this notion that a woman (or man) can have a submissive nature, however that doesn't mean that she doesn't need to be strong. There is just overwhelming evidence, in my opinion, that a woman will need, at least once in her life to go through a situation where she will have to dig deep to find inner resources to pull her through.

Rich (an Internet friend) once said to me that the Dominant is really an illusion; that it is really just magic. A man can't necessarily protect a woman in every situation. He's right. Life throws up issues and no matter what one's nature, they have to be dealt with.

I've made no secret that I haven't always been as strong as I am now. I know what it is to experience post-natal depression and a depression a year or more ago now had me seeking out psychological expertise; something that I never expected to happen. Frankly, that took all my courage, but in my case there was an alarm bell that dinged within me; that told me that I couldn't cope any more on my own.

I sometimes wonder if, in fact, everything does have a reason and everything does have a rhyme because the inner strength that is now being called upon wouldn't be there to call upon if I hadn't been trained psychologically to cope. The condition that my husband is experiencing has no easy answers and I anticipate that we are going to be going through a low period for quite some time. There's no official name as yet, that I have been told, but I feel confident in saying that it is within the range of chronic fatigue. He's slowed right down and in the main, we're dealing with only the very basics of life; very few actual goals at this stage of the game.

I think we all understand things when we are ready to understand things and you can't necessarily push a person along. I think part of this relates to the brain protecting the psyche. The brain advises the psyche what it is best not to know.

Make no mistake. This is a physical condition. However, I see a pattern. I see that my husband rotates from high functionality (sometimes bordering on mania; a 'high' where he has supreme confidence and positive thoughts that can leave me worrying that he is not seeing things clearly) to periods of time where he doesn't seem at all himself; isn't particularly productive and seems uncertain. Sometimes, there are periods in between where he seems to be coasting; life seems completely under control and he seems neither high nor low. Without a doubt, those 'coasting' times have been the happiest for me. If one thinks of life as a canvass, then this is the background of our lives together; his state of  mind; moods; functionality. Much of the colour that will be painted onto the canvass is determined by that.

What I tried to do was to paint the colors of a power exchange onto the canvass and this provides abundant color and interest; gave the canvass some order and allowed me to let go of worldly concerns in tall order. The exploration of a power exchange opened my mind to spirituality, to getting control of my own emotions; giving me all sorts of skills like tolerance, patience, understanding, control of myself; relinquishing control; feeling happy. It has been wonderful for me, and him.

Yet, I know deep within myself that what we are experiencing is a breakdown of the psyche; the brain and the body have talked to the psyche and insisted that he slow down; that he take a break from the anxiety and a restless state of mind and just recover. Recovery is going to take time because he has abused the body and the brain and they aren't at all happy about it. They have closed down on him and demanded he rest.

Unlike my situation where I asked to go to see a psychologist when I knew I needed help, this is not an option in this particular case and it never will be. My husband rejects all notions that his condition relates to the psyche/brain and considers this a completely physical manifestation. What value could a psychologist be to a physical condition? Perhaps he is right. What is certain is that he will only ever do what he believes is right. I must (and do, with reluctance) accept that.

It helps a lot for him to talk; to talk to me. We spend quite a bit of time in coffee shops. He takes his medical material to read and I take my course work to read and when he wants to talk I put down my reading and listen.

I read that in these cases sometimes the significant other (that would be me) needs to also take a break from life; to simply take time off from his or her life to deal with the recuperation. Certainly, I am struggling with my course workload now  and I won't take on this amount of work again. One subject at a time for me from now on. If I can just get through the next 7 weeks...

This just happens to have befallen us at a time when I have a full household. Not only do three children live at home but there is often my daughter's boyfriend living here and when he is here, the television is usually on. I am writing in the blissful state of the early morning and all I hear is my nails tapping.

However, this is a rarity. I live, these days, amongst noise; amongst the need to provide copious amounts of food; copious amounts of clean laundry. They are blissfully ignorant of my dilemma; of my having the sense at times that I am slowly going mad. I occasionally talk to my eldest son but not too much.. He travels the world constantly and when he comes over, it is such a lovely rare treat that we just hang out and chat. He talks to his Dad quietly and gives him his full attention. He knows things aren't quite right but they no doubt seem under control  from the outside looking in. We're still here. I'm still cooking big family meals. The house still looks orderly and the kids are happily living out their lives.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm still a submissive woman and always have been. He's still a dominant male. But, people have issues and when that happens no body or brain stops to ask - well, are you dominant? Then, you are excused from anxiety; excused from having to take care of your body; excused from any and all conditions. None of us is excused.

I've located a place to meditate twice a week. The people sounded so sweet when I inquired asking me to contact them if there was anything else they could do. I just pay a few dollars to come and join their group when it suits me and that sounds just fine. I'm strong and I'll get by, make no mistake about that, but a little bit of help goes a long way.