Why I give up control

I believe for many, the most difficult aspect of D/s is the act of truly giving up control.  Many activities in the lifestyle feel quite momentary.  You have a task, you complete it, done.  You play or have kinky sex, you complete it, done.  While there may be rules out there, in many cases following them are optional, and breaking them only matters if you get caught, right?

Truly giving up control has no off switch.  Even when you are asked for an opinion, suggestion, or preference, that notion that you are expressing yourself in a meaningful way is because the dominant chooses it.

When I talk to "kink-curious" individuals, newer subs, and the like, the control aspect is frequently their biggest hangup.  How do you trust someone enough to give up control?  Some of it is faith, the rest is doing your best to read the dominant and hope their character and nature are conducive to the responsibility of control before making this choice.  I think what they are really getting at is why someone would want to truly give up control. 

If the answers were only about kink, then bedroom roleplay would probably be enough for people to get their fix.  Yet people press on.  I believe the reasons behind this are extremely personal.  It's often easier to cite ideals and principles that guard our emotions from being exposed, e.g. female superiority, but I think deep down, that people who reach this point do so gradually, over a long period of time.

I can speak from my own experiences as to why I relinquish control.  I always had too much control.  I was one of those kids that got left home alone fairly young because my parent's trusted that I wouldn't burn the house down or go running to that windowless van with the "Free Puppies" sign on it.  After my parents divorce this got taken to the extreme quite a bit.  At 16 I started being left alone for weeks on end.  If I wanted to eat, I had to cook or have enough money to order take-out, delivery, or go out to eat.  If I missed school there was no parent/guardian around to call in and excuse the absence.  If I was sick I had to go in, get checked in, go to the nurse's office and have her excuse me from school in order to avoid detention/suspension/loss of grades.  While I had a lot more freedoms than most of my peers, I also had a lot of responsibilities.  Laundry.  Every meal.  Work.  Car maintenance.  House maintenance. 

Basically, I had a lot of freedom but also had to bear the responsibility of my choices.  I ended up very independent, but also quite lonely at times.  I can remember the ache of being up at 3am watching Cinemax so that I could exhaust my brain in order to sleep.  From age 16 to 24 I was alone a lot.  I had the freedom to make whatever choices I wanted to because I didn't have to consider others in my life a lot of the time.  If I wanted to sit around and play video games all day I could do that.  If I wanted to go to a concert that wouldn't let out until 2:30am when I had to wake up for school the next day at 6am I could do that.  Eventually, it got tiresome.  That freedom didn't bring me happiness.  The freedom just reminded me how lonely I was.  It reminded me of how badly I wanted to have someone special in my life.  It let me know that having to consider someone else with my choices was far better than answering only to myself.

As my high school friendships had all but vanished by the time I was in my early 20's, I found myself feeling quite isolated, invisible in the masses of a huge university, and dreading the "rest of my life."  If the rest of my life was going to be as empty and unfulfilling as things were... was something I didn't want.  In my evaluation of self I began to sift through which of my personal characteristics were important to me... and which ones were not.   In the end I found that all I really cared about were the things that no one could take from me:  my mind, my thoughts, my tastes, my experiences, and so on. 

The list of things that were unimportant was rather extensive.  They mattered so little to me.  I didn't care about my hairstyle, the style clothes that I wore, the places that I went, the part of town I lived in, and so on.  My habits were a way to kill time.  Make the days pass in as pleasant a way as possible.  If I had something better to do, I would have dropped them in a heart beat. 

I wanted nothing more than to love and to be loved.  I wanted someone to be there when I lay down in bed.  I wanted someone to be there when I woke up.  I wanted someone who I had to think about when making decisions and anticipating her reactions to the choices I would make before I made them.  I wanted someone there who would approve when I exercised sound judgment and answer me honestly when I did not.  I wanted someone to grow old with. 

In a relationship, I expected to conform.  My adopted father conformed to my adopted mother.  When they divorced and both remarried, I watched my stepfather conform to my mother and my father conform to my stepmother.  Nearly all of my male friends conformed to their girlfriends.  In the world I was in, the woman always took the lead.  It was about the male giving her what she wanted and hopefully having enough time left to have some of his own time too.  Even in the absence of kink, this is how I viewed relationships.

By the time I found love and D/s, giving up control was no problem.  I had lived by my own rules and it never made me happy.  I wanted to have to check in if I was going to be late.  I wanted to be told where we were going for dinner and who we would be meeting up with.  I was okay for having the next 42 weekends booked out in advance.  I would still be me and have the parts inside my head, but no longer would I have to fear being alone or aching while staving off the loneliness.  Give up control?  Yes, please.