Pet Peeves

Here are a quick off the top of my head pet peeves when people discuss power exchange relationships and kinky things.

1) The use of the word “more”. I will not go with the words “real” or “true” as those should be automatic for all to think moron when people use those. But more is used too often as well. Relationships are between two people and how they make each other feel. One is not more of a slave if they clean their house spotless without being ordered. One is not more of a Master by how little they have to directly order their slave. Your values and enjoyments of your other and relationship are only in the end important to you and your other. You can feel more of something within that relationship by some act being done but it is misplaced hubris to think of oneself more of a Master or slave because you do or did something that you think other might not. We are not in competition with anyone!

2) Self esteemed challenged male dominants who proclaim one must first start out as a submissive to learn it from their side before becoming a Master. Look, I am not going to say there could be nothing gained by trying our side for a little bit. But pretty much most things can be learned multiple ways and this life is one of them. But on the bigger picture to think that someone who gravitates toward being a dominant can possible understand what someone goes through that gravitates toward being a submissive is quite foolish. All one learns is at best the tip of the ice berg. To think that some man tries being submissive knowing it is only temporary, not being able to truly get what the pleasure of suffering for one out of love, to get turned on by the power or being on the receiving end of something and on and on compared to someone who is wired for that and it is not for some small time frame but an indefinite one. To think you can learn or get how that mind set filters and feeds off things is ludicrous. The men who promote this come off as what most of them are, long time Top only players in their local community that are trying to score more play partners by trying to keep as few as tops around from being attractive to the bottoms. To really believe this is to basically think anyone can be submissive and it is just idiotic and cheapens all of us who are submissive.

3) Dominants who think every problem they hear can be solved by the submissive to just focus on being more submissive and submissives who think every problem they hear is an automatic red flag leave the person thing. Problems in relationships usually come from a lack of open and honest communication and effort between the two or personality and compatibility issues. Not every problem has a quick fix and base on the dominant is perfect or just needs to be encouraged by a submissive being more overtly submissive and until one knows all the facts a problem or bad action by a dominant should not always default into a leave him submissives.

4) The continued watering down of the important things of trust, safety and abuse by throwing those words around so cheaply. Trust and safety are critical things to people in relationships and avoiding abuse as well. Thinking everything that goes wrong in a power exchange relationship causes one ability to trust to be destroyed or every mistake or accident can mean the person is totally unsafe and especially thought of as abusive without any other analysis is just doing a big disservice to not only this life but for actual victims of abuse in all walks of life. These are not any different then any other relationships and you do not hear nearly as often about someone’s trust being destroyed and wondering if they can trust again after a three week relationship blew up. You were not abused because the top did not get you in sub space and the scene was bad or emotionally abused because the guy you met over the Internet still has a open profile on another site a week after writing you. I do not know how many times I have had to try to talk some sense into an actual abuse victim to where they basically think they are not in a bad situation because all they hear is that everyone’s abused so why try something different.

5) People who confuse themselves and mislead others by confusing just for kicks or trying to lose their identity by “discovering themselves” or “exploring who they” are within the context of looking for long term relationships. I have written about this before but I really wanted to focus on was the fact that most proclaiming those are often doing the far opposite. I knew a woman on a personal site/message board which she had been on for five plus years. She had kept a running journal on her life and had pictures posted throughout those five years. She was big on discovering who she was but in those five years probably had not learned one thing about herself. In her journal entry and pictures you would see a woman who adopted probably six or seven far different religions/spiritualities and types of power exchange roles between the two. Each time in a zealot and “I have found my true self” way that to an objective observer was an obvious lost soul in trouble. All she was doing was discovering a new role to play every so often and hoping that would make her happy. I doubt she had discovered anything about who she was. This may have been an extreme case but it can shine a spot light on the issue. I have no problem and encourage people to “discover” and “explore” who they are. Just make sure you start with inside out instead of trying to go outside in and hoping to stumble into something that makes you happy. But it is also critical to stop trying to do this while at the same time find Mister or Misses long term. If you have not figured yourself out how can someone else or how can you truly know what is the best fit and relationship type to go looking for.

Our Own Worse Educators

First this post refers to dominant and submissive in terms of male dominant and female submissive. I just do not want to type out the genders constantly.

Local communities, Web sites, blogs, message boards and probably even chat rooms all do the job of promoting two of the biggest problems with learning, discussing and maybe most importantly of all understanding of the power exchange life and/or the kinky things done. What are these big problems?

1) That often what is communicated in this life is that dominant equates strong and wise and submissive equates weak and naïve. 2) Look out you poor defenseless females for those big bad dangerous dominants.

Now for most of you reading I pray that you are thinking that what I just wrote is completely stupid. I am not here to write the poor confused people probably in need of mental health help who buy into statements like those. But I am going to write how many of us who do not think that at all will though still promote these ideas subconsciously when we talk about this life.

What do you mean subconsciously?

I am going to list just a few examples that often when we discuss the power exchange life with or without kinks or just talk about the kinks and show you the common way they are mentioned and the actual reality. Before I do that I just want to mention that I am going to discuss topics, phrases, and types and individual kinks but I am not going to every single time write what is subconsciously being promoted.

I will be using negative tones and too much gross generalization but when reading these things ask yourself that if you were a normal person in a normal relationship would you want to be treated or thought of this way by others or when they think this is happening to you.

Abuse

How we lightly throw around this word is quite alarming to me. I work in an ER I see almost on a daily basis abuse victims including children and their abusers at their lowest of the low. Understand something; these are people with very low to non existent self esteems from both the abuser and the victim. It is forged in their childhoods, their whole adult life and with a string of very poor decisions.

I am sorry for anyone who was crushed when their other cheated on them. I am sorry for anyone who got injured by a dominant going too far. I am sorry for anyone who had a very poor reaction to a kink because it brought up past abuse issues in you. But these things do not equate being abused.

Dominants that screw up once or cannot mind read what the submissive is feeling does not make him an abuser. A submissive that has low self esteem and has trouble dealing with real life is not representative of the average submissive. Are there dominants that are abusers of course just as there are submissives that are enablers but they come into the life that way. The life did not make them that way.

I will leave you with this thought on the abuse topic. It is so easy to throw this word out when discussing other people, kinks you do not partake in and commenting on isolated incidents but what if it was directed at you or your loved one. Think about that so next time you equate degradation play to abuse realize someone thinks you getting or giving a spanking is abuse as well.

Submissive wants to be protected and feel safe.

We women will use these words all the time but they often get misinterpreted by men and the way we word this often makes us look like we are afraid of the world and need protecting from it. This is of course not remotely true.

What a woman means when she uses words like wanting to feel safe or protected is that we want to trust our other enough to give up control in how we normally protect ourselves from the real world. Giving our Master severe control is a scary/nervous thing even for the most experienced as it puts us in a very vulnerable position. A slave has given over most of her defenses of day to day life to their owner. It is not that we cannot protect ourselves from the world but we have given over our power to the owner to do so. So when women talk about being protected and safe we really mean can I trust my owner with that responsibility.

I think too often dominants infer this to mean we cannot or do not want to do this for ourselves from our own words communicated. What submissives really need to do when communicating on this topic is to be clear that we are perfectly capable of doing so but in order to live a total power exchange relationship that gets handed off to our owner. Just communicating that we want to feel safe and protected subconsciously comes off as I am weak and need protecting from the big bad world.

Mind play often involving humiliation and degradation play.

It is not for everybody and in fact not really for most from my observation. But just because it is not for someone or someone has a problem with it does not mean it is any more dangerous then any other type play.

I am sorry for all those who have been abused verbally and emotionally in your past and cannot handle this type of play but for many of us who have not it is just not very dangerous especially when it comes to the physical things done. Because you were susceptible to being abused and staying does not mean anyone who gets something done in the realm of kink is getting abused or will become susceptible to becoming abused.

There is a huge difference to this type of play when it is done with love and for fun then when someone is abused out of sickness and anger. When all people do is write “look out” to anything it once again paints an inaccurate picture that a submissive is weak and any dominant could very well be an abuser.

Over romanticizing our journey into submission.

It feels absolutely incredible to find that perfect fit that we went through life without feeling when we first enter our power exchange relationship with our beloved other. So many things are different and pretty much everything has a new, better and more intimate feeling about it. As a submissive we love to communicate this as it is a huge change in our life and very much for the better.

But that does not mean we have been changed or transformed. It just means we have found the right fit with the right person and it has allowed ourselves to flourish. But so often submissives love these types of words but once again they get mangled in wrong interpretations. Too often dominants interpret this as a weak person needing to be rescued and other submissives who are miserable think the only thing they need to do is find a dominant and they will be instantly happy that there is little or no work on their end.

What can be done that we in the life communicate a more positive, healthy and realistic way about this life?

1) Stop throwing around the words safety and trust into everything that we do not like or have had a bad experience with or to protect ourselves from a non threat.

If you do not like a kink that is fine and you are welcomed to your opinion but whenever the kink is discussed all you have to offer is a worse case scenario and the health risks without any perspective then all you are doing is fear mongering and painting the picture of this life to be dangerous along with the people in it. We do not like it when regular people or people not into things we are do that and we should always be careful not to do it as well.

Trust is important but do not cheapen the word by using it as a catch all excuse to stall or the reason why a relationship failed. Throughout time men have pushed women faster then most of us have wanted. We all have dealt with this and communicating not ready or something similar is been good enough. But in this life often submissive’s use trust as a way to present a nobler phrase for not ready or destroyed my trust as the clichéd excuse. Of course there are plenty of times when trust is the reason and that is my point, it is an important thing in relationships so we not need to water it down or emphasize it so much that other important factors are ignored.

2) Stop giving super powers to our dominants and painting pictures of submissives being wrecks before being owned and transformed into incredibly happy 24/7 aroused orgasm machines once owned.

Sorry dominants out there who get off on the fix./rescue/transform vibe of power exchange. These are relationships just like any other and in the right relationship BOTH people flourish and are happier in it and both people work hard in the relationship for this to happen. I would shout from the world about how awesome my Master is for me as well but if that is all we communicate it leads to a very wrong impression that we the submissive are not bringing anything to the table.

3) Communicate better

We need to when communicating our lives and our opinions to be conscious of what we are projecting. Often we project without realizing the submissive weak and naïve while dominant is either perfect or an abuser with nothing in between. We need to stop doing this.

We need to communicate “feel safe with our owner to give up power and make ourselves vulnerable” instead of “to feel safe”. We need to call out dominants who take all the credit for anything good their submissive does or becomes or communicates that a submissive is somehow weak or broken in some way whether subconsciously or consciously.

Conclusion

Many of us who are active in blogs, local communities, web sites and message boards can be quite hypocritical in how we communicate this life. Most if not all of us have been in a situation or at least fear a situation of a regular person judging us or our other in a severe negative light from the way we live and/or the activities we do. We do not like that judgment and think it is not fair. It demeans us as being unhealthy and stupid or even worse abuser and victim. Our legitimate defense is of course they do not get it, I know what is best for me and this is very much consensual. But yet we often judge others in this life but doing things differently or things we might not do in a similar fashion without thinking of how we feel when people do that to us.

We owe it to all the people in power exchange relationships, people looking into it for themselves and for people just wanting to get a better understanding to communicate in a more accurate and open minded way how this wonderful life is. We need to communicate that these are like any other relationships and a good one involves two mentally healthy people who are personally responsible for themselves. We need to communicate the risks involved in doing things but in a perspective that is less judgmental and hypocritical.

It is easy to want to stroke our own egos whether directly or indirectly. It is easy to revert back to a high school mentality and want to think the fewer people who are able to live like this in a healthy way makes us somehow more special. But when we indulge in such things all we are doing is giving others freedom to do the same thing and being judged is something no one wants.