Monday, September 13, 2010

Illusion of Choice part 2 - Conditional Choices

Lady Grey's comments on my first post about the illusion of choice brought up a very interesting idea:  conditional choices. 

If the standard illusion of choice breeds a lose-lose situation, a conditional choice situation gives the submissive slightly different outcomes to consider, and could be considered more of a win-lose-lose situation.  I consider conditional choice to still carry the illusion of power since actual choice in most cases wouldn't include said conditions.

A few examples:

-A sub can have an orgasm if they are willing to take 50 whacks with the paddle or they can continue to be denied orgasm without a consequence (or with a lesser consequence, such as 10 whacks with the paddle).

-A sub can be feminized and humiliated in public or avoid the humiliation in exchange for 90 days of chastity.

-A sub can sleep in bed with his Mistress while in chains and gagged or he can sleep unbound in a different room.

Conditional choices carry a slightly different type of emotional reaction for the sub.  While they have the potential to receive pleasure (or avoid something very unpleasant) it is at the expense of something that is unpleasant to a lesser degree or unpleasant in a different way.  This carries an even greater "this is what you wanted" factor for the Domme to hold over him but it can also make the pleasure sweeter since it feels earned/deserved after meeting the conditions.

Since feelings of deserving and entitlement can cause a sub's male ego to grow I tend to believe that conditional choices are probably best employed in one of these situations:
1.  The conditional choice is a means to avoiding great unpleasantness rather than a true reward. 
Or
2.  The conditions needed to be met for the reward are significantly worse than the pleasure gained by the reward.

In these two types of scenarios I see the greatest potential for a deep mind fuck.

2 comments:

  1. The illusion of power in a conditional choice is truly that, i.e. an illusion. That's what makes it so interesting, and I love to pose that sort of "problem choice" on my sub husband. I described one that involved 3 choices in an early blog entry when I was first training my now husband ("The End of the Beginning"), where 2 of the choices were clearly unpleasant and the 3rd was less unpleasant but involved a paddling as well. Karl chose the one with the paddling, so he made his "choice" but I knew that would happen because of the extreme unpleasntness of the other options. Thus, the choice was an illusion all along, but great fun for me. All part of the joy of mind fucking one's sub.

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  2. Thank you, Lady Grey.

    "Illusion of Power" is definitely a better phrase than Illusion of choice in this case. Subs can be easily led to the outcome the Domme desires in this way.

    I did draw from one of your earlier posts for one of my examples :)

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