Monday, September 22, 2014

New (or new to me) blogs?

I know I keep falling off the planet.  It seems that very few of the blogs I used to frequent are still up and going.  Does anyone have any recommendations? 

I know if I am able to get more active here I will be more likely to keep up with posts and possibly drawings.

Words of Caution

I've seen a good number of negative comments in the past month on a few blogs I follow and to anyone reading this I encourage you to avoid negativity towards the relationships of others without consideration for their relationship's frame of reference.

I think that most D/s relationships stem from 1 of 3 sources:
----------------------------------------------------------
1.  The BDSM/Kink scene.  If you live in a metropolitan area, it's likely there exists one or more groups that provide regular meetings of a kink-themed nature.  These groups often serve as social networks for those with D/s interests with the common understanding of tolerance and discreetness.  Most BDSM groups have a fairly rigid set of rules about conduct, usually in place to protect subs from potential abuse. e.g. pre-negotiated activities, safe words, hard limits, etc. are expected to be obeyed or individuals may be ostracized from the community. 

Relationships that form in this environment generally promote mutual pleasure from shared/overlapping kinks. The rules of the community are generally represented and respected and are often considered the "right way of doing things."

2.  Discovered D/s. Discovered D/s happens when a relationship is formed on vanilla terms and at some point evolves into a D/s relationship.  This can happen in a variety of ways.

Discovered D/s is an interesting one because in most (but not all cases), one member's fantasies are often fairly extreme while the other is a novice just beginning to scrape the surface.  The way in which both parties educate themselves upon the lifestyle will often lead to the style and intensity of the relationship.  This often includes a mix and match of BDSM community morality and more intense activity, frequently in a "learn as we go" environment.

The trends in these relationships are for the Dommes to get more dominant and the subs to get more submissive as time goes on.  That being said, you will encounter couples in various stages of D/s ranging from mild to moderate to intense.

3. Negotiated Lifestyle D/s.  Negotiated D/s relationships are formed more similarly to BDSM scene relationships in that both parties enter into the relationship with roles and expectations in mind but differ in that the scene norms often will not apply to them in any way.  One party (generally the Domme) will have an idea of the intensity and activities they want and attempt to locate subs another who wishes for a similar arrangement. 

These relationships often evolve similarly to Discovered D/s relationships in the tendencies for Dommes to grow more dominant and subs to get more submissive, leading to changes in intensity levels over time.
---------------------------------------------------------

Which type your relationship originated from will heavily influence your views on what is "right" and "wrong" in D/s relationships.  The "when" matters just as much.  I guess I just get a little bothered when people try to ignore these factors and judge.  There are ways to give constructive input, such as "I can see how you got there but you may want to consider...," but too often negative comments simply show just how different a place someone is coming from.

/end rant.

The New Car Smell

Woman In Control is my favorite blog that I have had a chance to follow over the course of my blogging history.  Some recent back and forth comments got me thinking a bit about things and I wanted to further explore my thoughts on them without clogging up the comments with some borderline off-topic material.

The evolutionary process of D/s relationships and the changes that occur in both Domme and sub over time is a topic of great interest to me.  It is always interesting to see the trends that arise and what options couples use to keep things interesting. 

The topic that has most recently been on my mind is whether it is possible to recapture the exhilarating charge of early contact and fledgling D/s relationships that are still in their formative phase.  I believe this is something that is possible for a Domme that enjoys the courting/training process.  I do not think it is quite as possible for a veteran sub to feel this on the same level.  I think the key to these situations has to do with the frame of reference.

An experience Domme already has a good idea of what she likes and dislikes, what she will enjoy and what she will expect from a sub.  If she enjoys the training process, she can derive great pleasure from shaping a novice sub into the form that she wishes. During this process, she stays who she is while the sub undergoes a complete transformation.  If it is the process that brings her pleasure, this experience can be repeated with a new sub.

However, once a novice sub has been trained, he is now a veteran.  He will have developed things he likes and dislikes about the lifestyle.  There will be activities that bring him pleasure and activities that bring him pain.  He will develop an idea of his role and what is (or will be) expected of him.  Once this happens, I do not think it is really possible to wipe the slate clean again.  If he enters into a new relationship with a different Domme there may be the initial exhilaration and fear of the courting process and undergoing her training but certain things that have been etched into his psyche are likely to remain.  When the initial getting to know you process wears off, it is common to compare his previous experiences to the ones he is currently having. e.g. a sub who previously served a Domme that was a firm believer in chastity devices may feel a bit off if he serves a different Domme that believes in the honor system, especially if chastity served as a strongly intimate bond between the sub and his previous Domme.  

Within a relationship, I believe it is possible to keep refreshing the excitement by shaking the sub out of his comfort zone soon after he has acclimated to it.  This puts an enormous load on the Domme.  The early stages of a D/s relationship are terrifying for a sub.  They need to prove themselves worthy: capable as a sub, interesting as a person, and able to connect with the Domme in a meaningful and positive way.  There is a great deal of fear because of the risk is so great: your greatest fear is rejection.  If a sub is accepted by a Domme, he reaches his first comfort zone but the first shake up often follows immediately.  Rules and conduct get tightened down, punishment regimens begin, and so on.  The sub learns her expectations and adapts himself to meet them.  At some point, he will err less and less and the subsequent need for punishment diminishes as well.  This is the second comfort zone.  Many D/s relationships can stay happy for a long time in this state but as both Domme and sub change over time, it is common to see the parameters of the relationship change at this point as well.  Additional rules, stricter punishments, and experimentation with new activities can all serve to remove a sub from his comfort zone, restore fear, and force him to adapt himself even further.  I believe the majority of the more extreme lifestyle activities come about in this way and I do think this is the closest a veteran sub can get to experiencing the same terrifying exhilaration as he does when entering a lifestyle relationship for the firs time.

I do believe in a relationship founded on trust and love that things inevitably work themselves out in this way. 

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Current reflections upon my submission


For all intents and purposes, I am a broken man.  Capable but helpless.  Potential for greatness bogged down by a life of shattered self-esteem, abuse, and failed expectations.  Adequate but inadequate: able to make someone happy but not attractive enough to be chosen. 

I am good at almost everything I set out to do.  I have experienced success academically and athletically, but this has never brought me happiness.  Life didn't always feel this way but I can see now the path that led to this road. 

At my core, I feel unworthy of love.  Being given up at birth and adopted into an unloving family were the start.  It was at a young age where I discovered I had to earn affection.  I had to succeed, to be the best at what I was doing.  This is what was expected of me.  Falling short of that goal resulted in passive-aggressive attacks and later on, outright physical abuse.  My sense of worth became precariously balanced on the head of a pin: when successful, things stayed together.  In failure, the whole world toppled down.  Expectations were never voiced, there were only reactions to the end results.  Little league, school, etc., this bled into all facets of life.

Eventually I became so terrified of failure that any change to my life became a source of high anxiety.  When I faltered I would punish myself internally, knowing the reactions would be negative.  When said reactions manifested themselves, the pain would compound upon itself.  After nearly a decade of this I found myself depressed, suicidal, and scared of life. A brief foray into drug and alcohol addiction helped me medicate through my high school years.

Upon reaching adulthood I was still scared and felt unloved and unwanted. I developed a means of coping through writing and philosophizing about idealized concepts of life and love. The notion of unconditional love was one that I often dreamed about. In my experiences, receiving love was always conditional.  Love had to be earned.  It was not something I deserved unless I proved myself deserving by meeting or exceeding expectations placed upon me.  In turn, I wanted to love unconditionally.  To give myself wholly to the one that I loved and be embraced for it.  This seemed natural and in some ways, it was the trade off for someone like me: I had to love and devote myself with all my being in order to deserve to be loved in return.

The vanilla dating world for young adults is not a kind one.  Unless you are physically attractive, successful, or brimming with confidence, your other qualities that deserve merit are easily overlooked.  The mind games and posturing often rival those of my youth. Guessing her expectations, being passive aggressively punished if I fail to meet them, dealing with being pushed away after disagreements and the like.  The idea that someone could love me unconditionally continued on as merely a dream. 

I started to think it would be easier if a woman was more demanding.  If she made her expectations clear and eliminated the guessing game. If she got mad she could channel her anger directly and we could then make things right.

Around this time I met my first Mistress.  Before our relationship started she was the one that spotted me as being well-suited for submission and everything sort of fell into place after that. 

I know this sort of paints a one-dimensional picture of myself.  I have a wide variety of interests and hobbies.  I delve deep into what I enjoy and try to share things with others that I believe they will enjoy too.  Over the years I have experienced success in a lot of ways: being on sports teams that finished top 5 in the state, performing music in front of large audiences, graduating valedictorian and magna cum laude.  I know why I downplay these things so much when representing myself.  First, they have never made me happy on their own.  Second, they have never felt like true accomplishments, they have merely felt like I met the bare minimum of expectations that were placed upon me.  Is it odd that I crave to be acknowledged but hate compliments?

With these things in mind, submission has become something completely natural. To meet every expectation and demand with the entirety of my being merely to be accepted.  To constantly feel I must earn her love with everything I do. To feel wretched when I let her down and normal when I succeed.  To accept anything she may throw my way and love her unconditionally.   To be my best at all times for her and to make her happy.

I no longer have dreams of my own.  My dream is to support her dream and help make it come true. 

This is what feels natural to me.  Therapists have told me this is wrong.  The women I have loved have loved this about me.  I have accepted this is who I am but sometimes wonder if I should change.


Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Ramifications of trained obsolesence

Lady Grey's most recent posts at http://womanincontrol.blogspot.com/  have gotten me thinking a bit more about the progressive escalation of D/s over time (I have blogged on this a few times over the years).  Something became readily apparent to me tonight in regards to my own submissive desires and how they have evolved over the years.

I train rather easily in the D/s lifestyle.  I have a good memory, high attention to detail, and can be reasonably intelligent at times.  This has been one of my submissive strengths over the years but it has also had major drawbacks.  If you as a sub are able to follow rules and instructions to the T, you don't give a Domme a reason to punish you. If your D/s relationship is based around sensual interaction for good behavior and physical punishment for bad behavior, a Domme that enjoys inflicting pain upon the sub is faced with the choice of denying herself something that gives her pleasure or punishing and attempting to justify the choice.  With newer Dommes, choosing the latter can lead to guilt and that guilt may reduce her pleasure in the moment or lead to negative feelings in its aftermath.  Being that I am not a masochist, a Domme can struggle with the "because I can" or "as a reminder of your place" reasoning behind punishment. 

As much as I dislike pain, as a submissive I crave the fear and exhilaration of intense D/s interaction, even if it involves pain.  By being mistake free in service (or as close as possible to this), I inherently reduce the intensity level of the relationship (often hurting the desires of both Domme and sub).  I frown upon subs that act out or misbehave merely to get attention.  I think this type of behavior is childish, selfish, and out of focus.  So where does a sub go from there? 

I think the answer to that question can be seen in my own fantasies of deeply sadistic Dommes. 
Some examples:
-A Domme that will enjoy punishing after perfect service because she enjoys the additional mental anguish a sub goes through when he doesn't deserve it. 
-A Domme that will ensure a sub will make mistakes or cannot serve perfectly and punish him for failing while taking pleasure in his added suffering from knowing he cannot succeed, e.g. being ordered to dust on top of tall shelves with your hands locked behind your back. 
-A Domme that believes perfect obedience is to be expected and should not be rewarded.

This type of situation is unpredictable and frightening.  It can also lead to a deeper level of subspace where you surrender to the situation. 

From a more realistic perspective, this most likely would be rather dangerous and fall into the "be careful what you wish for" category unless there is a strong and loving bond between Domme and sub.  That being said, I'm not sure if this desires is a strength or a weakness: the willingness to lovingly submit and endure through it all vs. my D/s relationships will eventually evolve to where I crave this, regardless of her wishes. 

The D/s has been absent for a while now in my relationship and I feel like it's driving me crazy.

Saturday, June 28, 2014

Drawings

I really want to get back to drawing.  The truth is, I want to draw better than I am able to at this point in time.  I have been working on some new techniques for drawing/coloring but the improvement is very slow and very gradual.  Having no art background really hurts me here.  It's a bit frustrating as growing up I was not allowed a lot of freedoms to take classes in things that I did not display a talent for (aka I couldn't risk my GPA with art classes).

I do plan to do more drawing.  There's two things I have been working on that need significant improvement:
1. I need to understand the balance of detail/realism.  I'm trying to draw fantasies.  If the characters look more like a comic or cartoon, that probably isn't a bad thing.  Learning what details/parts should be drawn and which parts should be omitted is something I need to figure out.  Being stuck in the tweener state I was in before isn't something I wish to return to.

2. I just don't understand coloring/shading/lighting on a fundamental level.  I think this is the part that aggravates me the most as it not only requires a deeper understanding of art in general but also a significant amount of understanding programs used for illustration.

Hopefully at some point I'll actually do what I need to do to truly improve and not just wish it would happen.

Disturbing the submissive balance of Giver vs. Receiver

Before I took my hiatus I had written a bit about D/s relationships and balancing roles of giver and receiver for a successful relationship.

To briefly summarize:
A Domme has a balance of her enjoyment of giving (G) and receiving (R).
A Domme that predominantly enjoys doing things to her sub will lean more heavily towards G.
A Domme that predominantly enjoys having things done to/for her by her sub will lean more heavily towards R.
The balance can be displayed numerically in some examples:
50G/50R - A Domme that enjoys giving and receiving equally.
90G/10R - A Domme that strongly enjoys doing things to her sub and mildly enjoys having the sub do things for her.
33G/67R - A Domme that moderately enjoys doing things to her sub but more strongly enjoys having her sub do things for her.

A sub has a similar balance of giving and receiving.
A sub that predominantly enjoys doing things for/to his Mistress would lean more heavily towards G.
A sub that predominantly enjoys having things done to him by his Mistress would lean more heavily towards R.
subs thus have a similar balance of G/R.

A D/s relationship is most complimentary when the ratios of G/R for each party coincide, e.g. a 30G/70R Domme with a 70G/30R sub.  In these cases, the sub is less likely to annoy the Domme by trolling her for excess attention and the Domme is most likely to maximize her pleasure with a sub that will serve her to the extent that she desires.

I know this isn't a romantic way to look at things but from an objective standpoint it seems to make sense.

Something I've noticed over the years is that my own balance can change quite drastically within the moment (often to my own disappointment).  Rationally, I've always prided myself as being very service-oriented and it is possible for me to stay focused upon her needs most of the time.  If I had to rate myself I would probably say as a sub I am around 67G/33R as an average. There are other times where I'm feeling 95G/5R and completely focused and in a good submissive mindset when it can abruptly grind to a halt and transition to a less than appealing 1G/99R. 

In hindsight, these transitions are rather shameful.  The submissive pride I have towards being a strong service oriented submissive falters and leads to regret.  Upon further reflection, the primary factor triggering the transition seems to be when arousal becomes stimulation.  This is a very fine and very important line.  I root my own arousal at my sexual connection to submissive activities but there is a threshold where stimulated arousal brings upon a sudden shift to an uncontrolled "me me me, please don't stop" type of impulse. 

I know there are many Dommes that take pleasure in teasing their subs, treading the line between arousal and stimulation and twisting the result as they please.  In other cases, a Domme or sub may wish for intimate contact but not want to disturb the sub's existing G/R balance.  A chastity device can serve as a physical solution to this problem.  I tend to more strongly enjoy the psychological aspects of D/s and wanted to seek an alternate answer rooted in the mental and emotional sides of things.

The best idea I could come up with was fear.  I'm not talking about a basic "she'll get mad" type of fear, but deeply ingrained fear that shakes a sub to his core.  To be successful, the fear needs to be strong enough to subconsciously override the sub's selfish sexual impulses.  In this way the fear has to be somewhat on par with trauma.  If the G/R balance shift is punished severely enough, future occurrences could be prevented by having the sub impulse fear when stimulation reaches a point close to their threshold.  Basically, a Domme could inflict some psychological trauma upon a sub through punishment once in order to prevent it from happening again.

I'm sure there are people out there that would disagree with this method.  In many cases, subs are trained to rules through simple and rational deterrents and/or rewards. E.g. a sub may have an order to clean the bathroom. If they clean it poorly they will be spanked, if they clean it well, they will be rewarded with approval or beyond.  The sub can decide for themselves based on the pros and cons of the choices at hand.

However, the G/R balance shift is not a rational behavioral choice.  I do not choose to turn into something I do not wish to be as a result of stimulation.  It is not a behavior I am proud of nor do I have control over it.  If a sub wishes to rid themselves of it and their Domme holds the same desire, would it be wrong for them to undertake extreme measures?  While the idea of consensual trauma may seem strange, does that make it undesirable?

I know in some ways I probably try to romanticize the role of submissive too strongly in my head.  As the years go by my fantasies grow ever darker and more extreme in order to continually evolve my idea of the ideal submissive.  In most cases fantasy becomes less of what I might physically enjoy but more of the way I think it should be in a perfect D/s world.  I know deep down that I long to love and adore my Mistress but to be terrified of her as well.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Checking in

It's been a long time...

I took an extended break after realizing I had fallen into an unpleasant mindspace.  Being trapped juggling life and my internet persona took a rather large toll on me and I found myself getting too high strung and depressed so I pretty much abandoned my fetish-related social networking cold turkey.  I think the death of a fellow blogger from a blogging couple that Ms and I had befriended in the real world affected me more than I knew at the time.  I'm no stranger to losing people but I'm not good at dealing with it either.

I don't know how often I will post but I wanted to let the people I have been in contact here that I am around and haven't forgotten.

I hope everyone is doing well.