Search Terms: Lightning Round

Today I briefly answer several issues gleaned from the search terms. 1) I can understand submission but not dominance. 2) What games and things do you have to learn for a Dominant/submissive relationship? 3) How to act submissive to a Dominant. 4) Easiest explanation for a Dominant/submissive relationship. 5) Can a Dominant have more than one submissive?

What Does a Submissive Get from a D/s Relationship?

One of the searches showing up on my WordPress blog dashboard is (yes, you guessed it) “what does a submissive get from a D/s relationship”. That is probably a question better answered by submissives, but what the heckity darn, I’ll give it a try.

First, what sort of submissive are we talking about? Someone who submits only in the bedroom? Someone who submits 24/7? Someone in between? I think the submissive looking to inform her expectations from a D/s relationship needs to consider this issue.

For someone who is submissive only in the bedroom, there is probably a lot of exciting pleasure for you in a D/s relationship. Also, if The Dom Next Door is any indication, it can be a big boost for romantic intimacy. And I suspect you will learn things about your sexual desires you did not know before.

For someone who is ready to be submissive more than just in the bedroom, but is not quite ready to commit to a full time submission, you will begin a journey of self discovery. You will learn about not just your sexual desires, but your desires in other areas. You will learn about yourself in ways non-submissives will not learn about themselves. You will find what you think will be limits, and you know the fear and excitement and satisfaction of moving past them. In conversations with various subs, I have noticed one thing that they seem to have in common is the pleasure they derive from having a Dominant learn about them. And if your Dominant is any good, you will be pushed in ways that will help you reevaluate your perception of yourself. As you learn to obey, as you learn to relinquish control in certain areas, there will be (in various levels of combination) satisfaction, pain, doubt, surprise, disappointment, sadness, pleasure, laughter, tears, guilt, forgiveness, joy and happiness. You will also experience intimacy with your Dom at a level above that which any vanilla relationship can have on its own.

For someone who desires to be in a 24/7, full time D/s relationship, you will get all of that, only more intensely. Give yourself over to it completely, and it will surround you even when your Dom is not with you. As soon as you learn something about yourself, you will be confronted with another. You will find yourself letting go of things you thought were important, and thereby being paradoxically liberated by your submission. You will find a kind of equality in your relationship that will confound those who do not understand what D/s is about. For within the full time D/s relationship you will find freedom to be yourself and find that you are respected for who you are even as you respect your Dominant for who he is. For those without understanding, it will seem impossible. But for you, it will seem as natural and as obvious and as necessary as breathing.

Now perhaps you, submissive, are reading this and thinking it seems a little too general. Well, you are an individual. I cannot explain fully what you will get from a D/s relationship because I do not know you. No one can tell you everything you will get from a D/s relationship. This is why I will talk about and emphasize over and over again that learning about yourself is one of the most important parts of the D/s relationship. While you share qualities with other submissives, you are a unique individual. Also, your Dom is (even if you have not met him yet) a unique individual. How you experience and learn and grow within a D/s relationship will be, in its details, unique to you and your relationship with your Dom.

Hope that helps. Feel free to pose questions in the comments.

Answering Some Questions – Purpose

I know, I know. You are wondering anxiously if I will answer the tenth question. Your wait is over.

Day 10, the final day, of answering questions posed by Diane Owens.

Question #10
Does everyone in this world have a purpose? If so, do we ever find out what the purpose is?

Well, the Christian in me says, yes, everyone has a purpose. But I am in no mood for proselytizing tonight, so I am not going to be theological about this one.

Do we ever find out what that purpose is? Possibly.

Everyone has a skill set. Everyone has experiences that give a unique perspective. If you feel you do not know your purpose, go look for it. It might be what you expect. Then again, it might not. Find what drives you. Find what makes you happy. Find what gives you a sense of accomplishment. Hone your skills. Learn new ones. You can find a purpose, if you want to. And if you do not like the options the world presents you then create one you do like.

In a very general way of speaking, your purpose is to be you. Not to be self-centered. Not to do anything you want without regard to others. But to be you, to be who you are, and to be the best person you that you can manage to be.

That is what all this D/s talk is about. It is one way of being the best person you can be. That is why (in case you wondered) we bother to do it. If D/s is not your thing, don’t do it. If it is, embrace it. If your thing is something else, embrace that.

Embrace who you are. Do not be stagnant. Do not stop growing. I am not saying that. I am saying grow, improve you. Move forward. Be a better you tomorrow than you were today. Do that, and even if you never recognize your purpose, you will find it.

Answering Some Questions – Society

Yes, I know. The post immediately previous to this one is pitiful. Just ignore it.

Day 9 of answering questions posed by Diane Owens.

Question #9
What do you think today’s society is lacking?

I think today’s society lacks serious respect for the individual. We treat people as members of groups. In some cases we even insist people who we think should be members of this or that group, or even our group, are traitors to the group in which we have decided they belong.

If an African-American man decides he will be Republican, he gets branded an “Uncle Tom” or “not really black.”

I have seen it said that women who do not support abortion cannot be feminists.

If a Republican politician does not believe in the latest war, well then he is a “Republican-in-name-only.”

We talk about the Hispanic vote or the African-American vote, as if these people are expected to all think the same. We discuss what women want as if they all wanted the same things. Men speak of how hard understanding women is. Women speak of how hard understanding men is.

Yes, speaking of groups of people is convenient. I do it too. But at some point, we have to recognize that people are not the groups to which they may or may not belong. People are individuals. When we stop recognizing that, we dehumanize the people in those groups. And when we dehumanize, we lose sight of the individuals.

Laws to control others are easy to support when we think drug users or homosexuals or sex offenders are all the same. Being misogynist or misandrist is easy when we lump all members of a gender together.

But when we start saying a black man who does not support the Democratic Party is an “Uncle Tom” or a “traitor”, we start implying that black man has no right to form his own opinions, no right to be an individual.

The more we think of people in groups as just members of those groups, the easier thinking in Us versus Them terms becomes. And the easier stepping on the rights of others becomes. Because They are not like Us. They need this or that law to tell them what to do. Those people, They, need to agree with Us; because we, Us, are right and They are wrong.

Respect the individual. You do not need to understand all women or all men or all this or that group. Just try to understand the ones you know as individuals.

When we treat individuals with respect, then we will be more respectful as a society. When we protect individuals, then we will make society safer. When we respect and protect the rights of individuals, then we will be serving the good of society. Not the other way around. Do not put the cart before the horse.

Answering Some Questions – Threat

Day 8 of answering questions posed by Diane Owens.

Question #8
Have you ever felt threatened on any scale? How did you handle it?

There was the time I was working at a gas station, and a man came in to rob the place. Something gun shaped was under a washcloth. The man pointed that at me, told me to give him the money, and I gave him the money in the till. I handled it pretty calmly. I called the police as soon as he left. A few weeks later I was sitting in a courtroom. The guy plead guilty. I went home.

Answering Some Questions – Politics

Day 7 of answering questions posed by Diane Owens.

Question #7
Are the politics of today’s society helping or hurting us?

Both. In many ways liberty is expanding at the individual level. There is less institutionalized discrimination than in the past. People have more choices of lifestyle now than ever before. But in some ways liberty is being compressed. Politicians continue to try to find new ways to tell people what to do and how to live. And people constantly demand government do something.

In addition, when it comes to politics, people seem to do a lot of “if you’re not with us then you’re against us” thinking. By that I mean many people seem to have this notion that the political positions they like are held by good people, and the political positions they do not like are held by bad people. Liberals talk as if conservatives want people to get sick and die in poverty. Conservatives, on the other hand, talk as if liberals are a bunch of immoral idiots who do not care about family. And do not even get me started on how liberals and conservatives both make nasty comments about libertarians. And to be fair, many libertarians say the same kind of thing about liberals and conservatives and even some other libertarians.

And as a libertarian, I do think the mentality that the only practical solution to any given problem is for government to do something is hurting us. We keep turning to this “government has to do something” and it keeps having detrimental unintended (though not always unforeseen) consequences. Rather than admit that, we tend to say “next time it will work if the government just does more.” So government escalates the war on drugs or makes new deals with corporations or finagles some legal mumbo-jumbo justification for more authority to do something, and the “practical” people keep saying “next time it will work if the government just does more.” Meanwhile, people are getting fined, or thrown in jail, or having their rights infringed, or killed. This is harmful to society.

But I think people are starting to wake up to this, even if only a little so far.

Answering Some Questions – Weakness

Day 6 of answering questions posed by Diane Owens.

Question #6
Having answered the last question….is your weakness really a weakness or something that society has pegged as a weakness?

Is my social ineptitude really a weakness? Yeah, I guess it is. It interferes with me being able to effectively communicate with people because they do not always understand me. I am usually straightforward and often blunt. I generally do not mess about with trying to couch what I say in softness. Which means that sometimes people take what I say as having an intent more harsh or more critical than I actually intend. And I have noticed that some people are so used to trying to hidden meaning in the way most people talk that they cannot grasp that I simply mean what I said and nothing more. All of which interferes with me being able to communicate clearly and effectively.

I am better than I used to be.

But there is a part of me that does want to blame society a bit. I do not fully understand why being direct and honest so often is interpreted as harsh. My sibling read a book some years back about how everything people say should be couched in uplifting, healing language. I did not read the book. For one, I am verbose enough as it is when I get to talking (as readers of this blog know). For another, I really do not want to have to put layers of softness into everything I say. I speak with softness when I think it is required. But most of the time I speak plainly. No one has to guess where I stand or what I think. Ask me, and I will tell you exactly. Why this ends up being barrier to communication I do not fully know.

I do know that some people are not used to it, and they take it badly. And some people, as I said, think there is some hidden meaning to what I say. Why is that my fault? Well, part of good communication is knowing how to communicate effectively with your audience. Maybe someday I will learn the fineries of small talk and tact. But don’t hold your breath.

Answering Some Questions – Strength

Day 5 of answering questions posed by Diane Owens.

Question #5
As a person, what is your greatest strength? Your greatest weakness?

My greatest strength… hm. That is a tough one. It is the sort of question I would normally leave for others to say because I feel I cannot be objective about it. But in this instance, that would be a cop out.

I would say my greatest strength is my tendency to be patiently calm. I am not easily rattled. I am, usually, emotionally steady. And despite the fact that I often gripe about drivers doing things that annoy me, I am slow to anger. It helps me be mentally and emotionally stable.

My greatest weakness… crab thermidor.

Okay, seriously, my greatest weakness is probably my social ineptitude. I do not do small talk well. I am not the most tactful of people (though I am trying to improve this). My social ineptitude stands in my way sometimes. And I am reluctant to do much to change it, because I am, frankly, comfortable being direct and honest, and I see being more sociable as something that would require me to change that.

Answering Some Questions – Emotion

Day 3 of answering questions posed by Diane Owens.

Question #3
Which emotion is stronger, love or hate?  Why?

I believe which is stronger depends entirely on the individual. It is like the old two dogs or wolves story. Which one is stronger will depend on which one the person feeds the most.

As individuals we choose which emotions we feed. True, some emotions are felt as automatic reactions to things outside our control. But we can feed anger or resentment or envy and let these things fester into hate, or we can feed forgiveness and love and let them prevent hate.

Some people are, unfortunately, taught to hate. That kind of hate can be difficult to overcome. Even so, if the individual recognizes his hate and chooses to make the effort to overcome it, he can do so in time.

The version of the two dogs story that I heard first, in case you were wondering, goes something like this: There was a villager who had two dogs, a black one and a white one. Every week, he would bring his dogs to the village square to fight each other, and he took bets on which one would win. The dog owner always knew which one would win, and people wondered how he knew. Eventually he explained his secret. “Sometimes I will feed one and starve the other,” he said. “And the one I feed most will win.”

There are other versions of the story, and you can find them online.

Of course we can also, to a limited extent, feed these emotions in others. We can feed love in children or friends or subs or Doms. We do this by treating them with respect and kindness and love. That will take different forms with different people, but the principle is the same for all.

The point being, if you want love in you and around you, then you have to feed love in and around you. If you want love to overcome hate, then feed love and starve hate. Accept people as individuals. Avoid “us versus them” mentalities. Learn forgiveness. Give generously. When you feed love most, love will prevail.

Answering Some Questions – Universal

Day 2 of answering questions posed by Diane Owens.

Question #2
What is something that is universal to ALL human beings?

Death.

And of course, my libertarian philosophy prompts me to say also that there are fundamental rights that all humans have. All humans, not just the ones who are citizens of the U.S. Which is to say, rights are not privileges granted or revoked by a government.

Rights are something all humans have, above or prior to government. Which is to say, government cannot give them to us and it cannot take them away. Yes, a government can infringe on the liberty to exercise one’s rights, but the rights remain regardless of government policy or action. Which means something a government grants you as a privilege to do or to have is not a right. For example, voting is not a right. Voting is a privilege.

And all humans having these rights means even the humans we do not like have them. Racists have them. Fascists have them. Socialists have them. Murderers have them. Terrorists have them. Even the rude people who talk during movies in the cinema have them.

I know this will annoy people of certain political philosophies, but fundamental is the right of property. At the heart of the philosophy in which I believe, is the concept that a person owns himself. Other rights stem from this. And the notion that I do not have the right to infringe your rights also stems from this.

I know this is a subject which people have argued for several hundred years, and maybe you, O reader, disagree with me. But this is my answer to the question. Self-ownership, and therefore basic human rights, belong to all human beings universally. No human has more rights or less rights than any other human.