Secret Confessions of a Smart Girl

A few days ago, a friend and I started discussing our feelings about a hypothetical party that would be defined as “D/s Space.” While the idea of a few hours set apart in time where people could feel free to express theirr submission and dominance under an umbrella of formal protocol initially sounded quite appealing, the more I thought about it the less enthusiastic I got.

For me, submission is fundamentally a personal experience. I am, by orientation, a submissive female, but I am not submissive to the world. I choose to submit, when I do, to those people who do not see my submission as diminishing me. I am not less than anyone, because I am submissive. I am not weaker, less intelligent, or someone who can be pushed around. I am a strong, submissive woman who occaisionally chooses to give her power, her body, and her control to others… but I pick who they are.

I’m not certain how I would function in a protocol dominated space. Although I love submitting to my partner, and I love the delicious formality of the occasional bits of protocol that we choose to use, I feel no interest or willingness to extend that interaction to others. I am happy to be polite to everyone, but I will not moderate that politeness based on roles that have no relation to me. I can see the appeal of a high protocol evening with my partner, but can’t imagine how it would function in a group. I can’t picture how it could manage to be inoffensive without becoming silly.

For example, a dinner party with directed service by submissives to their partners sounds lovely and elegant, but I don’t think it’s practical. A table of five being served by five seems quite unwieldy. Again, I can picture it as a service “scene” for two to three couples or a small group of people who are comfortable with each other (Our submissives will be serving the group as we direct and within these limits) but not as a party experience.

As for a more general play party with a D/s theme, I just can’t imagine how it would work. I don’t think that most parties are inimical to personal protocol, and so either the play party would be pretty standard or it would seem to need some collection of formal rules. The first is innocuous, but the second seems like it would end up stepping on a lot of peoples toes. What rules would it actually be safe to make without worrying about offending people or affecting their feelings of autonomy? D/s relationships are unique and personal. There is no universal common ground.

When it comes down to it though, I think my biggest problem with the idea of a High Protocol party is that I don’t like the thought of people making assumptions about me just because a) I am submissive and b) I currently submit to a man. The assumptions those two conditions together inspire are often not only inaccurate but offensive to me, and I can’t get past my belief that any situation designed to encourage a group protocol might encourage those assumptions being made… while putting me in a position where I would have difficulty addressing them.

I am a big fan of cock sucking, preferably bio-cock, but I’m not picky. There’s just something about the activity that makes me profoundly happy. I enjoy being able to focus intently on my partner’s pleasure. Plus, cock sucking is a really excellent activity with which to explore power dynamics.

The thing about cock sucking is that the power dynamics are obvious - except that they aren’t. I know people for whom sucking cock is an incredibly dominant activity. They take a man into their mouth, and they take him into their control. I know people for whom it is power-neutral, just another way to show affection or lust. For me, however, it’s usually a intensely submissive experience.

I like to be on my knees, my partner’s fist in my hair controlling my head as he fucks my face, giving me no time to breathe or swallow. There is a delicious sense of degradation to pleasuring someone so intensely that drool runs down your face and you are forced to embrace the lack of dignity if you want to go on. It’s insanely hot to have your mouth - the organ that transmits your words, speaks the speech that gives you power - treated as just another hole to fill and fuck.

I like to crawl on my hands and knees to my partner’s side and take the time to cherish him. I rub my cheek against the soft skin of his cock, like a cat claiming her human, and kiss him from head to toe. I think of worshiping his cock. It feels almost like a form of prayer to to relax and focus on slowly taking him as deeply into my throat as I can manage and hold him there. It becomes, at times, less about simply giving him physical pleasure and more about showing him how much I want to give.

I like to lie on my side, after my partner has come, and keep him in my mouth, inhaling the scent of his arousal as we both slowly begin to relax. Sometimes I imagine falling asleep that way*, content in my service and submission, before I release him with a sigh.

–
*_{A terrible idea in reality, but awfully nice to think about.}

I went to the party I talked about in my last post, and it was lovely and wonderful and fun and then it was a mess.

The mess was not the party’s fault. Not really. By and large it was a wonderful space filled with a group of people I adore doing fun things and having a great time. I did have some issues, but they were the same issues I always have and reflect more on my tendency to be a bit judgmental about sexual behavior* than on any fault of the party itself.

The problem was with me. I am an introvert even when at my most emotionally healthy, and I am so far from a state of optimum emotional health at the moment that it would take two full days of travel to get there on the Concord. I frequently get stuck in these maddening spirals of thought that swirl around so quickly that there is no way to escape, and when I am tired, depressed, or otherwise off, people quite literally get on my nerves. They make me angry and twitchy and upset simply by being physically near me. I can deal happily with small groups of friends in contained spaces, but if I am even the slightest bit off, which I have been most of the time as of late, surrounding me with flocks soon makes me overwhelmed. If I don’t have something I need to be doing, I simply can not cope.

So on the last night of the party, I fled. I made a valiant attempt to bring up my mood, get dressed in a sexy outfit, and go have fun, and lasted all of five minutes before needing to run away to my hotel room for a good cry. It was there that my MDP found me an hour or so later.

We’d had plans to play, and so he’d come down to find out if I thought I would be more in the mood to play right then or later (in which case he would go play with one of his other partners first.) “Not at all” was not an option (and that combination of considerate and still in charge is a truly delicious and delightful thing.) I left the ball in his court, but apparently was closer to the edge than I thought, because he touched me and I promptly burst into tears.

The most frustrating thing about depression, for me, is the disproportionate emotional responses to minor or nonexistent stimuli. It’s enormously aggravating to be that overwhelmed and upset when absolutely nothing in the world is tangibly wrong, except for being perhaps a little short on sleep. I explained that, or did as best as I could while blubbering, and then he decided it would be better to play right then (or as “right then” as you can manage when you need to inform several people about your scheduling plans) and flopped me into sub space by the simple expedient of telling me to take off my clothes and get ready to please him.

It got me out of my head. It shut off all the doubts and made me present. It, in fact, locked me into the present, which is something I have a lot of difficulty doing for myself. I took off my clothing and was suddenly ready and excited to be used. That is the joy of subspace.

So much of the sex that my MDP and I have takes place inside my mind. So much of what I enjoy is not just what we do, but the way I process it and think about it. It makes for odd, and useful, contradictions like the fact that thinking about him using me when I don’t want him to use me is such a turn on that I instantly want him to use me. I am excited by the very fact that he uses me because he wants to, which is of course why I have negotiated a relationship where someone can use me regardless of my interest at any given time. (I could, of course, always safeword out, but knowing that and believing it means I usually don’t want to or need to. Plus, he’s wonderfully considerate of my feelings, more so than he needs to be, which makes me believe that should he choose not to be because he really, really wants something of me, I would be even more inclined to give in than usual.) It makes me beg him to hurt me as much as he wants, to hurt me more than I like, because it makes me so hot to give more than I actively desire. It makes me fantasize about him doing the things I am most afraid of, and get off on those things, because of that very fear. I can lie in bed next to him, not even touching him, getting more and more worked up by thinking about all the horrible things he could do to me, that I would let him do to me, which I hate or fear… and end up wanting him to do the things I don’t want more and more with every passing moment.

We are conditioning me to give him, and my mental perception of him, rather profound control over my arousal and orgasm. I say we are conditioning, because it is an effort that I actively embrace and further. In fact, I realized the other day that I was asking him to do certain things** while we were playing because I wanted to more closely link sexual excitement to pain. I have fantasized about being able to orgasm from painful stimuli since I first read porn that talked about it over a decade ago, and apparently I was subconsciously trying to get myself there. I told him about it, when I figured out what I was doing in the middle of a scene, and I think he was amused (aroused? amused? such similar words…. let’s just say he didn’t object.)

But really, so much of sexual response is mental and as such can be conditioned. That’s a fun toy, but it also provides a useful conceptual window into other forms of mood alteration. My MDP can knock me into subspace pretty reliably with his actions, but it’s because I’ve - consciously and unconsciously- trained myself to go there. It’s in many ways a form of self hypnosis - learning to get off in the way my mental and physical proclivities drive me to. Why shouldn’t I be able to do that to stave off the worst ravages of depression? I’ve been wondering about practical applications - not of submission but of the mental processes that let me submit - a lot lately.

At the end of our scene that night, alone together in the hotel room, my MDP asked me if I thought I could stay in head space for the rest of the night while he was back at the party, holding onto it until he returned. He was trying to give me a way to function and enjoy myself while alone as well as help keep me from returning to my previously messed up state. I wasn’t sure if I could maintain the head space by myself for an extended period, but the knowledge he was coming back in a few hours made it seem vaguely plausible - so he told me to try and gave me instructions for what was, and wasn’t, acceptable behavior during the time he was gone.

When he left, I basically half napped/half writhed around in head space for a few hours until he returned. He stopped in a few times to check on me, slap me around a bit (Gods, but that was hot), and pick up things he needed, and it worked. I didn’t descend back into the Pits of Despair and what could have been a miserable evening turned into one that was quite intensely wonderful instead.

I really need to figure out is how to apply that trick to myself. It’s been made abundantly clear that I can usually fight my way back to emotional functioning if something or someone needs me to do so, I just have to learn how to manage it on my own volition. It will help, I think, that I have become more and more conscious of when my thoughts are being made irrational by brain chemicals. I just need to determine how to move from recognition to being able, and willing, to do something about it. I shouldn’t need the glorious self-hypnosis of subspace, although it is certainly a tool I can use - even alone in the privacy of my own mind.
–
_{*Not judgmental in the way of “judging their character” but judgmental in the way of “things that make me unwilling to sleep with them no matter how much I might want to.”}

_{Although I must admit I have occaisionally failed to live up to my own standards, it makes me really queasy to see people have sex, even safer sex, with multiple new partners - particularly new partners who they have just met - over the course of a few hours or days. I am frequently envious of the opportunities that they throw freely themselves into that I feel are outside my comfortable level of risk taking, but at the same time I have trouble believing that they’ve all had good talks about testing and safe sex and levels of ongoing risk with each casual partner and are making informed decisions about their sex lives. Given my work-related somewhat privileged place as a Holder of Personal Information In This Area, I also often wonder if I know things that they don’t, and wondering that… makes me uncomfortable. I would never break anyone’s privacy about it, but it makes me uncomfortable.}

_{Unfortunately, another thing that this weekend made me quite clear on is the extent to which I am already unhappy with the size of my sexual network, and I have come to terms with the fact that I’m not terribly inclined to make it any bigger through my own direct actions unless I find someone who has the potential to be a primary partner, or at least a significant, ongoing relationship. I may change my mind, but… for right now my level of risk is high enough and I’d prefer to avoid taking on a new sexual partner who has lots of partners already (or a tendency to pick them up on the fly,) which pretty much eliminates the possibility of “casual” sex. Oddly enough, I’m feeling totally fine with the person who may be coming in once removed, but that’s largely because sie seems a uniquely sensible sort about all the issues involved.}

**_{Like begging him to hurt me when he tells me I can orgasm so that, as often as possible, I don’t come with him except when I’m either in pain or doing something that makes me feel even further under his control.}

I tend to be extraordinarily leery of using BDSM as therapy. That having be said, however, there are times I find it to be extremely therapeutic.

For various reasons, including a parade of weasels, I have been considering bailing on a play event at which I will see (among many other adored people) my MDP. This morning he told me to find a way to make it possible for me to come to the event and… it helped. Having him tell me to find a way to make it work shut up the weasels long enough for me to reframe my problems in a way that I -could- make it
work.

I’m good at being a high-functioning depressive for work.

I’m terrible at doing it for life.

Still, it seems as though having given my mind permission to put his desires above mine in scene space, and in fact finding great comfort and joy in doing so, has also given him the quite useful ability to tame my social anxiety (and related) weasels. I can’t quite do it for me, but it does seem I can do it for him.

I find this both fascinating and somewhat disturbing, because, while I’m amazed at how well it works, it makes me very uncomfortable using someone else for emotional caretaking. I like being that person, but I can’t quite grasp, emotionally, that someone might like being that for me. It’s awfully nice though, that he seems to. (I can’t quite bring myself to write that as “he does.”)

We were discussing this in a related context the other week and he said to me “I don’t know, in this case, where to draw the line between respecting your worries and just Being The Dom and having you do what I want.” So we talked about it, figured out which worries were legitimate concerns and which were acceptable for him to D/s me through, and moved on from there.

That sort of respect and conversation is why I can let him push my limits and take me to the places I am not always comfortable wanting to go - because I am confident both that he won’t try to take me anywhere I don’t really want to go and that he will listen to my worries and address them constructively (by stopping or altering or whatever. For that matter, I suspect the fact that he knows I will tell him if something he wants is a problem also allows him a great deal of comfort in just assuming he can take) It enables me to love letting him use me without regard for what I want or like at any given moment, because I am completely confident that he has complete respect for what I need.

This sort of submission is really nice. It’s oddly comforting, even in the moments where it’s terrifying. It’s also incredibly hot to know he can take what he wants when he wants it (within what we consider reason) and I suppose the proof of my submissive orientation, at least in this relationship, is the fact that him wanting something almost always makes me instantly want it too - even if moments before sex, pain, or service was the last thing on my mind.

It’s quite weird, as an extremely introverted and often exceedingly selfish person, to find so much pleasure and joy in having someone who wants things from me and in being able to just give to them.

I guess that, if push comes to shove, when you can get me out of my own head I really like to care.

It was the middle of the work day for him, but I work at home and make my own schedule. Lately I’ve noticed that I tend to spend more time online during regular business hours so that we can chat, and so that I can spend time shmooping with my girlfriend in another window. It’s not the most productive part of my day, but it’s a nice connection when the people you care about live several hours away.

I had just stated my intention to walk away from the computer to engage in some “focused daydreaming” to improve my mood. I was feeling tired, cranky, and a bit out of sorts, and I wasn’t certain if it was a euphemism for napping, masturbating, or cleaning out my closet. Fortunately he had his own ideas.

The phrase, “I think it would be appropriate for you to” is not usually followed by “find something just a bit larger than is entirely comfortable inside you, fuck yourself with it, and come for me.”

That time it was. Apparently, we are redefining the term “appropriate.” Not that I could find it in me to object. To blush behind my screen, yes. To be slightly horrified that he was telling me to do that from work, yes. To become instantly, enormously turned on - to deny it would be to lie.

So I went browsing through the sex toy drawer. I had actually done a big clean out around 6 months ago, and gotten rid of most of the toys that I considered to be too large for comfort, but I thought I still had one or two of them left. My favorite of the two I found - the vibrator I use when I want the sensation of being filled to be just on the right side of pain, when I want to fantasize that it’s “too big, too much” - wasn’t suitable for fucking, but it turned out that I had a toy of a similar width that was. A little short, perhaps, but wide enough that it would be difficult to push in, and shaped so that I could fuck myself with it and stay on the boundary of discomfort without falling over the edge.

My instructions were to fuck myself and come, that was all, and so I decided to take them literally. I would be allowed no other stimulation - no pain, no vibrator on my clit - my orgasm had to be from the sensations of the toy alone. It was my only allowable source for pleasure or pain.

I took off my clothes, put a condom on the toy, and heard his voice in my head as I slowly worked it into my cunt. As I thought, it was a little too wide for easy insertion. I had to push it in slowly, and firmly, and it still was a bit large to slide easily along my inner walls. I wanted to touch myself further, but I forced myself to follow the instructions I had been given and just slowly fuck myself with the toy - pushing it in far enough to hurt, and then twisting the head so that it would press against different places inside of me. I imagined that it was him fucking me, because in a way it was, and pictured him above me as I pushed the toy deep against my cervix so that it would make me ache while it finally made me come.

Then I came back to the computer to tell him what I’d done. It seemed, somehow, like it would be appropriate.

I have, of late, been particularly fixated on control.

Things are going almost disturbingly well in my main D/s relationship, and I find it somewhat frightening how turned on I get by my partner doing things that speak to me of control.

It’s one of those things that it goes against the grain for me to speak of longingly. I had the same problem this weekend, when I was in bed with my partners trying to describe a particular rape fantasy. It feels wrong to want these things, even though I know that by wanting them I am not endorsing their existence in the universe at large… or even in my own personal bailiwick.

I am a bit of a control freak. I have a visceral need to be self contained that I sometimes have a great deal of difficulty giving up. Thus I find it disturbing how comfortable I am, and how much I like, giving up control to my MDP* - not to mention how much I want to do it.

I have a conceptual difficulty with begging someone to do things that make me feel like I am under their control. I am therefore usually extraordinarily pleased when my MDP does them spontaneously, and I am now going to speak rapturously of something that happened that is so weird to speak rapturously of I’m not entirely certain how to do it.

He kept playing with my mouth. Not in the “sexy finger sucking” way, but in the exploratory way in which you would evaluate a horse - a creature for sale. His fingers pushed against my teeth, my soft palate, my tongue, and it was freakishly erotic - not the activity itself but the fact that he could.

It is mystifying to me how much I liked it. It made me feel some strange combination of (literally) objectified and safe. It felt like how you’d idly play with a toy, a possession, that you like to use, rather than like how you’d treat a person, and it slightly horrifies me that that’s something that so profoundly turned me on.

These days, with him, I’m kinking on all sorts of things I don’t particularly like, or that intellectually bother me. In part, this is because the fact that I don’t like them makes me feel particularly blissfully submissive when they happen, and in part it is because the kinds of things I tend to not objectively like are those that also speak to me most viscerally of control.

The most obvious example of this is that I don’t like breath play. It scares me and it isn’t particularly inherently erotic, but I find myself wanting him to hold his hand over my nose and mouth and cut off my air just because he can. Just because it makes me feel instantly under his control. This is something I usually won’t even consider negotiating with people, and with him I long for it? How bizarre.

It’s so strange to me, where this relationship is - what this relationship is- and the odd things about it that I value and cherish. There’s so much about it that makes me really happy, and very little of it is what I normally would expect. It would make sense to me if what I was jonesing for was more of the incredible sex, but the fact that the craving is for more, and deeper, submission is somewhat more confusing. I don’t dislike it. It just requires some more work to understand**.

_{*MDP = Main Dominant Partner. He who is colloquially known as The Boyfriend, although that doesn’t quite feel right as anything other than convenient shorthand. It’s not wrong, it’s just not as semantically apt as calling The Girlfriend The Girlfriend - a descriptor that speaks more accurately to the fundamental nature of the relationship.}

_{**Interestingly, it doesn’t reflect a desire for more submission in my other relationships. If anything, the more intense the submission gets with my MDP, the less I tend to want that particular type of submissive headspace with other play partners. It’s almost embarrassingly kinky-shmoopy to say it out loud, but that’s his headspace, and I don’t particularly want to give it to anyone else.}

Not so long ago, my main dominant partner told me to do something that, had you asked me in advance, I would have said was:

1. a hard limit
2. massively squicky
3. not hot in the least

In the moment, however, I did it without question, because he said to, and it blew my mind.

I feel like I should find this problematic, but I don’t. Even though the act in question is still rather squicky in retrospect, I’m not actually bothered by the fact that I did it. In fact, I find it rather insanely hot that, in the moment, I just did what he told me too, and I’m reasonably certain that had it been something that was going to bother me upon sober reflection I wouldn’t have… but I’m only reasonably certain.

This, then, is where my intellectual and emotional responses to submission take a divergent course.

• There is a voice inside my head that  keeps telling me that I should be disturbed by the fact that I not only can give up enough of my control to someone else that I will do things I find instinctively objectionable without even thinking about them  but that I enjoy doing so.
• There is a separate, and much louder, voice that is thrilled to have found a situation in which, and a person to whom,  it feels so safe to thoroughly give up the control that I normally grasp so tightly in my tension filled hands.

Time out of mind is one of the things I most value about submission. It is not something I find easily, and once I get past the difficulty of letting go of thought, giving up control, freeing myself from the usually overpowering constants of analysis and worry, it can be exhilarating, quiet, peaceful, erotic, terrifying, comforting…. or all of the above. To unquestionably do this thing was, in some ways, a proof to me of how much I had given - how much I had let go. That was a good portion of the reason why I found it so hot.

With the partner in question, I’ve noticed that I  tend to say “yes” these days  before the question is even asked, and it is sincere. This largely feels safe because I honestly do not expect him to ask anything I’m truly unwilling to give. Realistically speaking, however, that instinctive and preemptive “yes” actually worries me more than the acting without thinking, because I know that there is every possibility that he could ask for something I am not willing to agree to… and I would hate to renege on my word.

I suppose that’s where I have to, and do, trust in the balance - that he knows me well enough to not try and take me places to which I can not in good conscience travel, and that if he does I will be able to say “no.” This is a trust that has to go both ways, because if I did not choose these things willingly; if I came out of an activity feeling I had been coerced; if I did not like them so very, very much; or if I was unwilling or unable to stop a scene that was going badly wrong, I could, as he is so fond of joking, press charges. The risk for him is low as long as I can, and do, say “no” when I need to, but some of the pleasure for, I believe, both of us, is in the expectation of acquiescence. The alternative would be giving up the simple joy I take in giving him the ability to take me, and I like the feeling that he has blanket permission (within the boundaries of previously expressed limits) to take anything he wants… even though I know intellectually that it isn’t true.

That idea of blanket permission  is a fantasy that I get to live in by giving more than is easy and more than is comfortable and sometimes by giving more than the things I would choose. I think it would be naive to believe that it is a fantasy in which my partner can fully share, since even though our desires in these areas are quite well aligned I know he must have to moderate the things he asks for and the things he takes… if by nothing else than in their timing.

I often think that it must be a very frightening thing to be an ethical dominant sadist, to enjoy controlling and hurting people while worrying about doing physical or emotional harm. To, in particular, enjoy controlling and hurting people who you care about, who you don’t want to damage or drive away. To sometimes actively choose to do what you want regardless of whether or not it’s something your partner would choose for themselves or even like*. To constantly have to worry about consent.

It’s easier, I think, from the bottom - where I can take a perverse sort of pleasure in choosing not to safeword and letting him beat me until I bleed…  even as I am sincerely begging him to stop.  Where I can be constantly surprised by how much I enjoy it when he doesn’t… because it is a visceral reminder that much of how I find pleasure in submission is in giving someone else what they want rather than in getting to live out a particular fantasy, experience, or dream.

–
_{*And even writing that, I doubt that my feelings on these matters are ever not a consideration. They may not be the driving one, but I suspect they are usually at least subconsciously weighed - thus the ethical part of the formulation.}

–

EDIT: Because it came up in a discussion of this post on another site, I should say that the !squick  in question had NEVER been discussed as a limit.  In the middle of a scene is not when you renegotiate boundaries, and if that had been what was going on I would have been livid.

I am a highly suggestible person.

This, in most circumstances, is extraordinarily aggravating. I yawn when I hear someone yawn on the other end of the phone. Anytime someone mentions having to go to the bathroom, I suddenly have to go too. It’s a little ridiculous.

Still, in the context of sex and submission, I have discovered that suggestibility isn’t a bad thing at all. It means, among other things, that I am highly susceptible to conditioning… even when the conditioning isn’t intentional.

We have reached the point where when my main dominant partner touches my face in a certain way I become instantly turned on.  I don’t even know how or when it happened, but lately when his hand comes to my cheek I am suddenly wet and ready without even a thought.  I like it.

I also seem to have gotten past my orgasm issue. It turns out that what you can accidentally train yourself out of you can also accidentally train yourself back into - particularly if you have inspiring help. Why having to ask, or beg, for orgasms makes it easier to have them is inexplicable to me, but I will not look this gift horse in the mouth.

I really like the intense comfort of this submission. It’s odd to think of something that’s so often frightening or painful as comforting, but it is. It’s one relationship where I usually feel pretty confident of where I stand and what I should do and that’s lovely. It makes it easy to keep saying yes. Even when it scares me…. possibly especially when it scares me.

I am not comfortable with women* who need to be taken care of by men (or other women) because they are incapable of taking care of themselves**.

I am particularly not comfortable with such women seeking out, or ending up in, D/s relationships that seem to further rob them of any personal power.

All  of this came up in a conversation last week with two girlfriends when we were discussing some of our issues with TPE and submission and the varying ways in which they made each of us twitchy.

As I have mentioned before, I did not start out in the scene as a submissive. When I first started playing, more than 10 years ago, I did so mostly as a smart ass masochist, although I officially identified as a switch. I was shocked when I discovered, 3-4 years in that I had a strongly submissive side. I am even more surprised, these many years later, that it is now so much of a part of how I identify, sexually, and how I play.

I still maintain that what makes my submission valuable is that it’s an active choice, and the times that watching or reading about other people’s submission makes me nervous is when it seems like it isn’t. In situations like that,  I worry that makes it far too easy for D/s to turn into abuse or, only somewhat more benignly, a way to enable a person’s weaknesses or bad habits.

I recognize that this judgment comes from a place of privilege, but I am uncomfortable watching people do things that make them less. I’m not talking about humiliation scenes or pony play or situations that subjectively may seem degrading but are actively chosen with an informed mind and an open heart. I am talking about things people do to avoid the responsibilities of life.

There’s a fine line there. Part of what I enjoy about submission is that it allows me to take time to escape all the worries and stresses of day to day living and focus all my energy on simply being pleasing to another human being. It’s lovely to not even have to think about if something is what I want, just whether or not it’s in my capacity to give. Then, when I leave submission, I feel stronger and happier and more able to do the things I need***.

On the other hand I have seen far too many people in submissive relationships that make them weaker, less confident, and less competent. The way I was raised tells me that if you are the sort of person who is afraid to speak up for yourself,  a good relationship would be with someone who helps you conquer that fear and encourages your voice rather than with someone who makes you even more afraid to ask for the things you need. They end up in submission not to find a part of themselves, but to lose one. It’s the difference, in my mind, between “I choose to give myself to you” and “I give myself to you because if I don’t I’ll have to be myself, think for myself, and take care of myself and that’s hard.”

Part of all of this, I suppose, is a pathology I will admit I own. I am terrified of needing people, terrified of counting on them, terrified that I will start to rely on them and then someday they will no longer be there. I am pathologically**** self-contained. I can not believe that there is anyone in my life who I will not sooner or later lose and, as such, I can not structure my life so that it requires anyone other than myself for success. I hate asking for help and I hate needing help and I’d rather poke myself in the eye with a fork than choose to work on a group project or anything that needs to be run by committee.

Still, mostly I am judgmental because  I am proud, I am capable, I am smart, and  I am strong… and I don’t want people to think that my submission takes any of that away. I don’t want someone to look at me and see a woman who is submissive because:

1. She thinks it is a woman’s place to be submissive (as opposed to her choice with this person in this situation.)
2. She can not function on her own.
3. She does not have opinions or interests.
4. She doesn’t want to have to do anything in bed*****.
5. She refuses to take responsibility for her own pleasure.

I want them to look at me and see a smart, outspoken, opinionated, successful feminist who loves sex and chooses, sometimes, to find her pleasure in the satisfaction of someone else’s.

–

_{*Men either, but it’s more often women.}

_{**Unless they have a mental or physical disability that inhibits self-care. I can understand that. What makes me twitchy is when it feels like learned incompetence.}

_{***As well as, sometimes, sore, spent, and desperately in need of a nap.}

_{****I choose the word intentionally. Pathologically meaning a behavior that is unhealthy or maladaptive.}

_{*****Someone I recently went out on a few dates with equated “submissive” with “lazy do me queen”}

The fact is that, even though I am a workaholic who can often barely stand to step away from the computer for 4 hours at a time, I would be quite happy to spend a few days chained naked at the foot of my lovers’ bed… as long as I was confined by a snack-length chain. Long enough to get to the kitchen for snacks is also more than long enough to get to the other necessities, and so we have agreed that, in theory, that this is a reasonable condition. Also? There’s something inexplicably delightful about the phrase “snack-length chain.” It’s impossible for me to speak or hear it without smiling. The perfect combination of submission, preparation, and whimsy.

I haven’t been involved in a relationship involving this much D/s in a while - not in at least a decade, possibly not ever. I really like it. As I’ve grown more comfortable in my sexuality over the past few years I’ve learned that I don’t need power dynamics and pain to enjoy sex, but I’m still unquestionably an intensity junkie and I really like not being in control.

The simple fact is that everything is easier when it’s about doing it for someone else. Excesses of pain, excesses of pleasure are transmuted from horrible and overwhelming by the phrases “But I like it” or “Because I want to.” It’s insanely hot to see my partner get visibly excited by causing me pain or otherwise taking control. I can’t explain it, but getting to see that look is totally worth the price of admission. It takes my head to very dangerous places where voices whisper in my ear “what wouldn’t you let him do?” and instead of being chastened by them I kind of want to find out.

The snack-length chain, however, isn’t about that fear or about how much I enjoy playing with someone who enjoys testing my limits for his own enjoyment (no matter how nice those both are.) I think it’s mostly about feeling wanted and feeling safe in that. Not to mention the thought of the  sheer, sybaritic bliss of spending days wearing nothing but restraints with nothing to worry about except how to be the most pleasing and nothing to occupy my mind except for thoughts about how next I’m going to be used.

Gods but that thought is hot. Committing myself to being completely available for pain, for sex, for someone else’s pleasure for a more extended amount of time than just an isolated scene.  Even if nothing happened, the waiting itself would be exciting, not knowing what, if anything, would occur or when. Knowing I’d have no say in whether it would.  Yum. I know how my brain works. I’d likely muse myself into a frenzy of alternating lust and fear… and when it all wore off  I could test the limits of my snack-length chain.