Submissive, Codependent or Caretaker?

I must have written a dozen times in the course of having this online journal that you can't change people.

'If I could be more compliant, more agreeable, more understanding,' some people say, 'things will be better then.'

They put the Other first and before you know it they have changed themselves, from a person of independent mind to one who subjugates his or her own self for some peace and harmony in the relationship and home. When chaos is the norm, it can start to appeal normal, such are the adaptions of the mind. Chaos is not normal.

Throw in a family to the mix and you have this selfless sort of person becoming a Caretaker, because, at the end of the day, somebody has to take on that job if one parent is behaving in a random and confusing fashion, right?

I have a strong suspicion that the words 'submissive, 'dominant', 'codependent',  'caretaker' and 'personality disordered' can get all jumbled up.

Consent, perhaps, is the ingredient that can clear up those categories. If you both enjoy your roles, if consent is clear and there has been no harassment to obtain consent, and if the arrangement aids you both in your growth and sense of peace...well then, there is nothing at all to worry about.

If you are still reading and wondering a bit about your true feelings, then maybe the categories above are a little murky for you.

It's impossible to go into too much detail in one blog post, so let's consider one small but vital point about a relationship where there is an unequal distribution of control. Care.

Submissives love to be cared for. I adore it myself. Interaction, attention, being given a challenge, feeling the control...that is all very kinky; a turn on; it's a really funfun game. But, why should I feel that someone needs to take care of me above and beyond that? What should lead me to think that?

Well, there's a certain sense of containment that just feels so delicious. I might see a photograph of a woman contained in some way - this morning it was a photograph of a woman learning to walk in ballet boots - and there is no dismissing the fact that I get a thrill out of that. So, if a man were similarly kinky and committed to that kink such that he innately desired what I desire, that would be a whole lot of healthy fun. What's done for deeper intimacy...how can that be unhealthy?

But, what if the submission is more than that; more than just fun and erotic pleasure? What if the submissive finds herself walking on eggshells, withholding her feelings and thoughts to avoid the dominant's displeasure or emotional outburst, or frosty silence?  What's that...a power exchange for the mutual pleasure of both participants, or something that looks more like a person being the caretaker of a personality disordered person, dependent on that person and awaiting his or her share of a sense of being cared for?

What if caring for someone isn't the desired sort of care - caring for each other with reciprocity - but caring for each other using the 'roles' of 'dominant' and 'submissive' which might actually be more like one person sacrificing their true self for the Other in order to have harmony?

I could speak to any number of behaviors that would identify the difference in these two outcomes but if you find yourself acting quite differently inside the relationship or family to the way you act with friends, associates and co-workers, it's not co-dependence (I once inaccurately labelled myself a Codependent), but it could be that in order to function within your relationship, you have become a Caretaker.

I think the first question for yourself would be - do I somehow feel that my true Self is being compromised in this relationship?

If you are happy, happy, happy in the submissive role, let's hope that it never ends. If you question the behaviors you experience, and your responses, it could very well be something else.

In my opinion the kinky/erotic role of 'submissive' in a sexual capacity is perfectly healthy. No need to deny yourself the pleasures of that. If you put the Other first repeatedly such that you having trouble identifying your own needs and wants; if you identify with some fear, obligation and guilt, then it may be you've unwittingly found your giving soul in dangerous waters.

There's not the time or space here to delve too far into that thought, but to end where I began it's far from easy to change someone else. With proper guidance, it is more than possible to change yourself. You may be submissive but you can swim.

Enmeshment

A few years ago now we were having dinner. The children were with us. The conversation moved over varying topics as it is inclined to do. At the time we had a female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. She was the sort of leader that prompted a strong reaction. Either you loved her or you hated her. But, what struck both my eldest son and myself as significant about this particular day in Parliament was that various men in the Parliament had been very rude to her. No matter what your politics, we both agreed, you should never speak to someone who is a leader of the country in that rude way.

If you asked my husband today if he agreed with that statement he'd almost certainly say he does. Yet, his disdain for her and her politics influenced his thinking during that conversation and he was adamant that we had muddled thinking about this. More to the point, he felt that it was somehow my responsibility and duty to agree with him. It became so heated that my son and I moved to the kitchen and began washing the dishes, giving up the argument altogether, but my husband wanted to keep the thing going. 'Dad you're talking to yourself. The conversation is over,' he said. And in a whisper I said to my son, 'Never, ever are we to talk politics at the table again.' He nodded his agreement.

I suppose all this time I have had that silly situation tucked behind my ear, because another situation like that came up recently and I felt a sense of deja vu. Over dinner at a restaurant I acknowledged every thing that my husband was saying about a health issue, with one proviso. For me there is always one proviso when talking about health because I believe the state of the mind can never be discounted from any conversation about health.

In these situations I aim for complete calm over my responses but in the end I said, 'No matter how long I am married to you I will always be me, an individual with my own thoughts. You're not entitled to insist that I agree with you', or words to that effect.

It prompted memories; memories decades old when I would say 'I'm Vesta (my real full maiden name is what I said) and I'll always be Vesta and there is nothing you can do about it. I am an individual.'

I have explored this line of thought, naturally, and there is a word for it, enmeshment. Some people can feel that it is critical for their well being that their life partner more or less becomes them. What is dangerous about this is that, bit by bit, the spouse begins to let go of, and even forget, his or her own needs, wants, thoughts, hopes and dreams. The spouse have become enmeshed with the other person in totality. Disagreement can be seen as proof that the two people are not feeling and thinking as one which can mean that disagreement equates to not being loved; very flawed thinking.

The answer lies in setting boundaries; something I'm learning about and reading about right now, so I don't have all the answers as yet. What I can say is that it feels good to realize this interpersonal transaction for what it is. There is a personal power in understanding why things happen as they do. We haven't had one of those challenging sorts of conversations since the restaurant dilemma. That night I asked him to stop badgering me and if he didn't I would leave. He continued to badger and I left and walked home. I think he got the point.

It is almost inconceivable that it won't happen again, but at the same time recognizing that it causes him great emotional pain for me not to agree with him on a topic that is important to him, I'll probably be inclined to keep my full opinion to myself. This is a shame, since we've been conversing non stop for over 40 years.

My goal would be to, on occasion, respectfully agree to disagree and make clear that this is not an interruption or annihilation of the love between us. I'm not at all sure, from the reading I have done, that strong feelings of spousal responsibility to agree with the other, can be easily turned around if one person feels strongly that their point of view is the truth. It's one element of interpersonal relations that came up repeatedly in the MA; that great discord in history has occurred with a rigid ownership of truth. Acknowledging that the world is more grey and less black and white is a good thing if we want to move closer to a more harmonious world where opinions can be shared and evaluated openly.

The fitness of the thing

Kinky thoughts came to me completely naturally and unprovoked as a child. I'd see a scene in a movie, or read a few lines in a novel, or overhear someone say something and I was instantly aroused. No-one else was involved in this response. That is to say, I wasn't attempting to please a partner or to follow him along a particular path. My mind was aroused by the scene and that was that.

It is said that we fantasize within very specific parameters about our kinks. If it's a school disciplining scenario we might have in our mind's eye very particular details such as the type of dress or the type of instrument; perhaps a wooden stool in involved or there is a particular cupboard where the canes are stored.

It's fascinating and troubling at the same time that these scenes never really grow old. I happened upon a school disciplining scene in the past few days - one that would be grotesque in real life, utterly barbaric - and I slipped right down the kinky rabbit hole as if I were 15 all over again. My body will never stop being instantly aroused by particular scenes, done in a particular way. That is to say, the girls have to be helpless and at the mercy of the disciplinarians, and the disciplinarians have to be ruthless in the discharging of their duties.

The girls have to cry and howl and beg at the same time that they know they must do everything possible to hold their position. The masters and mistresses have to turn a blind eye and ear to the ministrations of their charges and go about their task in a professional manner.  There is a clear demarcation of who is in charge and who has zero power and everybody in the room knows their place.

To analyze it a tad, there's complete helplessness on the part of the girls and total power in terms of the rights of the masters and mistresses to uphold the  sanctity of their contract to educate the girls to particularly high standards. Let's be clear. If the girls had behaved well, none of this would have been necessary. Under normal circumstances those who watched over them would have kept a tight ship but not a particularly onerous one for the girls, for there is only one rule at this establishment really - to follow the rules and to do as told. Simple.

It's interesting (to me at least) that I have been prepared to follow through with this thought in other ways; ways I wouldn't have thought of as a child and which I didn't even necessarily know much about as a fully grown woman. I 'got' on some subliminal level that my kink was about 'place' and that meant that I moved quite effortlessly from having a spanking kink to a kink that related to whatever it was that I was presented with. The proviso was that I really did need to feel that the contract - obedience - was at the heart of 'it'. I really did need to feel an abiding affection was at the heart of everything too. This could make it complicated.

Nowadays there is no sense of a contract in my life. Put more bluntly, there is no contract. I'm a free agent in that sense. This means that I am not likely to experience the mind blowing highs of the past but nor, logically speaking, am I likely to experience the downs, and there were downs, for complicated reasons which not everyone has to go through.

There is, of course, always 'play'; the sort of play where a partner suggests a spanking. But, for reasons as explored above, unfortunately that doesn't do it for me. In essence, I like the idea of a contract; not the one with lists that you tick, but the sort of contract where roles are clearly designated, understood and embraced, not just for three minutes but innately. I guess what I am saying is that either it is authentic and I feel it down to my toes, or I'll see through the veneer and it will do nothing for me. Either it works for us both or I think it's best we do what we do rather well, just be ourselves.

I can almost hear you asking...but can you separate your kinky self from your self? I'm not sure I know, or ever knew the answer to that. It's sat in my being all my life; that girl who is so deeply aroused by certain situations not well understood by nearly anyone. An exchange of power with a partner such that this part of me that sits bubbling below can find expression was far more elevating and satisfying than I have ever been able to express in words. I remain forever grateful for those experiences. I'll cradle them in my old age.

But, there's a lot more to me and to my mind than kink, and somehow, maybe, just maybe, now might be the right time to fully explore if I can put it away in a box; not in some dusty box in the darkest and deepest recesses of my mind never to see light again, but far enough away that I can get on with life without pining for what I once had in the lusty May days of Camelot. There is a season for everything. I had my time and now there is a new time.

Looking out and then reaching in

If you want something enough, perhaps for someone to be different to the way they are, there is a little part of your mind that says something like (regardless of how much evolving that has taken place or how much awareness has been gained), 'why can't he or she gain some awareness too', or maybe 'Why can't he or she grow?'

I help out at an elementary school and last week I was working with some children who are progressing at a slower place than the rest of the class. I was trying to show them how to add on 10 to a number, but I found myself frustrated by their ability to distract themselves from the task. There was bickering about turn taking as well as considerable moving about, since we were asked to work on the floor. One girl insisted on trying to do the sums on her own only for me to discover she had all the sums wrong and therefore had not understood the concept. The boy who was very still and right beside me had difficulty locating the starting number let alone understanding the concept of locating the number right below it on the 10 x 10 grid. (59+10 = 69, and what do you know, 69 happens to fall right below 59 on the grid.) I found myself worried for them, for their futures.

It's been on my mind since; how to adapt the small group for it to function better. Honestly, we need a quiet space to ourselves (it's an open plan school which is nothing short of a nightmare for children with learning difficulties) and we need to be sitting in chairs with me on the other side of the table so that I can see what they are all doing. We don't need lap tops or opportunities to go 'splat' on a number using some animated blob on a white screen, or any other new age thing. We just need some big laminated number grids and some colored coins for now  so that we can get this concept honed down. Understanding numbers and getting excited about them, it seems to me, is motivation enough for these children without distracting bibs and bobs that tend to make them think that the bibs and bobs are the point. If I could praise them for a job well done, it would be wonderful, hopefully for them and for me.

Of course, my comments above are the classic trap for someone interacting with someone else. I am wanting them to be different to who they are right now, with the best of intentions, but with a lack of appreciation for the reality of the situation.

If you 'get' something, or if you want something badly, it's tough to be aware of the fact that the other does not get it, or perhaps that they are not willing to give it to you. It's tough to say 'oh well, you know, it's their particular journey that they are on, and maybe it's a rather slow and laborious journey and maybe they'll never make it to the finish line, but that has to be respected. They are in your life because you are learning lessons from them.' They may be good and worthwhile thoughts but that doesn't make it easy.

David liked to keep me grounded. He would say things to me like, 'How long can anyone contemplate their navel?' In other words, he was all for moving forward, for having expectations and for making changes. He didn't hurry me, or other girls; not at all. However, he didn't think I should get too lost in spiritual, or obsessive thought either. Life had taught him lessons and he saw no harm in other people learning their lessons too. He saw no issue with going after what I wanted, with recognition that people often don't co-operate with what we want. He had no issues with my high standards, having high standards himself, and he expected people to rise to be their best selves. If you didn't shine your shoes he wasn't going to look kindly down on you for that. Put it that way.

I get a great deal of comfort from the writings of people who have evolved to a higher consciousness. Greg Corwin, someone I follow on tumblr put up a document with a free download this morning and in it he has written this:

"To surrender is to relax fully, deeply. It is to empty yourself fully. It is to let yourself collapse into your self. It is to expose your rawness, to stand naked amongst the clothed. It is to leave yourself behind. It is a free fall into cradling arms. It is to die and be reborn over and over again until there is less and less of you left,until you are gone." 

As a meditator and a reader of spiritual leaders I relate to these words and they bring me much succor, but I also relate to them from a kinky point of view, for the simple reason that my spirituality and kinkiness find expression in similar and related ways. So, I try with all my might to express my understanding of these words in ways that are available to me, at the same time as I pine for those ways that are rarely available to me.


In spite of the fact that my desires and needs have been expressed many times, expression of my nature is rarely offered to me by the Other. This makes spiritual expression that I can do alone doubly important.

Greg made the point in his little free book that we should go beyond romantic love when we think of Love and think of Love as self generating.

"Go to Love's source in your chest and live in Love. Soften to Love's origin within you and return your wandering mind again and again to that warm, full place and let that Love radiate out and fill all."

Spiritual disciplines provide us with a guide for living a good life. Submissive personalities like myself who stride to be their best selves and to radiate love up there in their higher consciousness spend considerable time developing greater patience; deeper love within themselves for others; tolerance for the Other and others generally. We blame ourselves when things don't go right. If only we had wanted less; expected less.

The truth, however, and I think must be factored into the equation, is that we can emotionally walk over broken glass to make things right for fear that we  didn't do all that we could possibly do; that a saint would have done. It doesn't too often occur to the likes of us that the Other isn't necessarily putting in anywhere close to the same amount of effort; that perhaps we deserve more than we get.

We grow and evolve in life at our own personal rate. Perhaps it is rare that we grow together at the same pace. Perhaps, at the end of the day, we must accept that whilst everything external changes, it is our inner identity that remains the same regardless of the passing years; bliss, peace and silence is abundantly available to those who travel inwards to that core identity. I'm grateful, in the absence of being granted more kinky expression of my identity, to have the skills to return home.

The Mind that can change anything

I wish that I could explain to people who think about taking, attempt to take, or do in fact take their lives that however bad it feels right now, it will pass. Things will get better.

I've a dear friend whose son took his life one evening when the hurdle he had to face (a new school year) seemed too much for him. Yet, with some tweaking of various elements of his life, mainly expectations, he would have gone on to have had many happy decades of life, I am sure. He was a gentle boy, very bright, and he'd have made a great contribution to this world, without question.

It's so interesting how the circumstance of one's life, which after all is just an illusion manufactured in the mind, can rise or fall on such little things, and so it seems to me that if we could just say to those desperate souls who decide to check out, especially at early ages, that what appears black today could tomorrow be a vibrant yellow.

It has been over two years since this boy took  his life and I have wondered if his mother would ever get over it. Well, I know she will never be the same woman, but would she one day wake up and be glad to be alive again? This, I have wondered.

For some time I was concerned that she too would take her life to be with him, something she said she wanted, but in more recent times she has assured me that she would never do this. A medically trained person she believes in the sanctity of life and she just couldn't do it, she said.

Still, she has also talked of 'living a nightmare' and I have tried a few different things to shift her thinking. Particularly intelligent and not remotely spiritual or religious, there are limited options. I suggested a psychiatrist to get at those thoughts and challenge them, but she's the one to take this step, not me, and I don't think she's ever going to do it.

What to do? Well, she's a woman who loves a bone to chew and she's good at what she does, so I put her onto my mother's health and in time she had that situation sorted with names of the just the right professionals. She won't answer emails about her own pains but she'll gladly write away to come to the aid of someone else.

I wanted to do something for her to say 'thank you' and it occurred to me that music might be a sort of medicine, so I gave her two tickets to a Parisian Jazz Concert in town for just one evening. She took her sister and with excitement emailed the next day to say how wonderful it had been; how the audience had cheered and applauded and stood up and danced in the aisles, including her sister. It gave her a boost like nothing else I had tried had managed to do. For one night at least, she had loved life again, and maybe, just maybe, it might turn things around for her.

She talks to her son often. She still sleeps in his room to be close to him. She knows he visits, which is troubling on one level but also sorta wonderful that this totally scientific and rational woman can be reunited with her son in this way. She blames herself for the sadness that took his life, even though she was a totally devoted mother, and she feels a need to care for him in death as well. She's the child of survivors of Auschwitz. Who am I to tell her how to live and how to think?

In moments when I glimpse the vibrant woman I once knew it feels to me that anything in this world is possible, and so when she dropped off into my letterbox a CD that they were selling that night enclosed in a beautiful card I felt a deep sort of reverence for the art of 'companioning'; of walking side by side with someone who was walking through a deep, dark storm. I can't pretend to feel her pain but I can continue to reassure her that living a nightmare won't last forever. The mind truly does wish to heal.

If you think about music it is an extraordinary gift to the planet. A set of notes is written and learned. They are played, last a few seconds and then they disappear, and yet they can change our mindset; change our lives in fact; change the state of someone's world. A set of notes can remind us that there is much to live for; that man is capable of creating abundant joy. Music is therapy. Music is life. If they try to drop music in your children's school, fight for their rights to experience joy.

Feeling Free

To feel free is to completely let go of anything and everything that holds you down. There are many definitions: to liberate, no longer confined or imprisoned; to let go.

Most likely, your personal definition or description of feeling free is quite different to mine. A person in China restricted from offering his personal opinions freely would have a sense of liberty if the situation altered and he was able to express himself freely without fear of punishment.

The child who feels constrained to become someone that their parents wish him or her to be would feel a sense of freedom if the parents were to assure the child that it was their wish simply for the child to be happy.

A man or woman who holds their opinions tight to their chest for fear of an upsetting argument would feel freed if the partner were to assure that they would remain calm and discuss the situation openly and rationally regardless of opposing views.

There is a beautiful sense of freedom away from home with no possessions but a few changes of clothes in a suitcase.

There is the freedom of the meditation cushion when the stillness of the still mind (they mean the natural/free mind which has nothing to do with thought) is reached.
 
 It's subject to interpretation as to whether freedom is achieved with no thoughts but plenty of feelings. There is a tendency for us to want to be free of what is sometimes referred to as the negative feelings - anger, sadness, hatred, jealousy. Yet, it's so interesting what happens when we quietly sit and allow those feelings full rein. It's hard to hold onto negative feelings for more than a couple of minutes. The physiological responses are so intense that after a few minutes of quietly sitting with them, they quite naturally begin to subside, to reduce and to  dissolve. There's a freedom right there.

There are people who seem emotion less and people who are too emotional and in both cases to sit quietly with oneself and check in - how I am doing? how am I feeling? - is liberating for the busy self. It's having an awareness of your state that can free you from being in an automated state, as if unattached from your self, or unhinged. We sit with 'our whole body' on the meditation cushion. We have arrived. There is no where we need to be and no-one else whose needs come before our own. It's a liberating thought.

For several years it was possible with very little effort to take me to a bimbo state of mind. A translation of that state would be sexually liberated, or the object state of mind/no mind. This happens less now than it used to and the question for myself is if I am in some way to blame for the situation. Am I less inclined to 'let go', something that was so natural, so easy for me not so long ago?

Philosophies and spiritual teachings tell us that there are no mistakes (which I find hard to accept but let's go with it for now). That is, we are not dust in the wind. We are the wind. We are not part of life. Life lives through us. If that's the case, I haven't made a 'mistake', it's just that 'letting go' into the bimbo part of me is not often available to me at this juncture in my life.

On my meditation cushion the experience is with myself. I am in relationship with my self. The experience of being free is available to me at any time when I choose to let go and enter the stillness of the still mind.

In my dreams or daydreams, my fantasy life, bimbo is readily accessible to me. She simply never goes away for the very reason that she is respite from the worried, harried mind. I can, if I wish or must, enter a state where liberties are few and expectations are sordid, and this frees my mind; relaxes me and subdues anxiety. I would never banish her for the very reason that she is so necessary to me.

Needless to say I thrive, not just survive, when bimbo in all her vivid colour splashes onto the canvass. This state is not available to me without the aid of the artist who wishes to paint a particular image; who with instinctive and particular knowledge can apply the brush strokes with just the right flow and smoothness to create the texture most satisfying.

It happens effortlessly when the artist is in sync with the canvass, knows what he wants and feels into his heart how the brush will work with him and for him to create something of beauty and liberating force. Each painting created in this way will have its own essential life force. Like love, it happens when both elements in play reach into something innate; something derived from nature. Only then can they both be liberated.

Feeling State Theory and Intense Sex

I am becoming familiar with Feeling State Therapy. An example was given of a young woman who was crying herself to sleep every night because she missed her boyfriend so much. They had recently broken off their relationship.

The therapist asked her to think of a time that was particularly memorable with her boyfriend and she remembered immediately a time when they went dancing. She was asked how that make her feel and she replied that at that moment she felt "special" which is, of course, a perfectly normal and natural human desire.

There were lots of aspects of their relationship that she didn't miss and hadn't enjoyed but dancing with him, feeling special, had become associated with him, and she missed that feeling, more than she missed him, which was quite a revelation to her. This conversation eased her loss of the relationship and she stopped obsessing and stopped crying too. Now, she was free to find the feeling of being special in some new way other than feeling it all hinged on her boyfriend.

This prompted a somewhat new line of thought for me. I thought about the times when I have felt elated, buoyant, fully present and alive and I would have to say, as sluttish as it is going to sound, that I have felt most thrilled and exuberantly happy and authentically me when I have had sex in something of a primal way.

I remember once thinking that if a man gives a woman an intense full body sort of orgasm, in her mind regardless of their future projectory, they would be somewhat wedded for life. That is, in the corner of her mind, no matter how far into the distance the experience was, she would hold a torch for that man. For example, I remember once an orgasm so overtaking of my senses and so overwhelming that my mind completely shut down in a total yogi sort of way. I go to that particular second in time quite often and relive it in my mind and my body because it was a moment that stands out to me as one of the most significant moments of my life.

I don't think I felt "special" or that I "belonged" or that I was "cared for", the big things that people desire. I just felt authentically me. I felt...alive. I felt..."free". Yes, feeling free is a big human desire of some people.

If we associate our big desire with a person, or a thing, we get some addictive or obsessive thinking going on. I know this from experience. In Feeling State Theory I believe the idea is that if it is not possible to feel free with that person any longer for whatever reason, it's the therapist's job to help the client find some other way to feel free, or whatever it is they desire to feel.

It seems that for some of us, intense sexual experiences are deeply desired and freeing, and there's nothing wrong with that, so long as you embrace that with someone who also wants to give you those intense experiences, and that this arrangement works into your life in a harmonious way. It's perfectly simple really, in theory anyway.