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Negotiating the Emotional Landscape of D/s Play By Sensuous Sadie (writing as a switch) My friend Ryan, a Dominant, tied me up every which way but loose for two and a half years. Ryan fit my profile for lovers. He was slim with long chestnut hair in a ponytail, and wore those little artsy glasses. He had a strong feminine streak and a penchant for litigation (although the litigation wasn't really part of the profile). He was also in love with his partner Rosaria, and so she and I were agreeable friends. When Ryan came to town, he strode in with a giant duffel bag of toys which he laid out on the kitchen counter in one hell of a display… scared the bejeezus out of me! The massive collection of implements, apparatus, and sex toys told me he'd been collecting and practicing for a while. Ryan wasn't one of those Dominants who are about the "stuff." He understood that while the toys were fun, the emotional component of our relationship was equally important. He understood that the feeling of submitting sometimes feels just like love. It's pretty easy to confuse the two, after all, what is love, if not allowing someone into your deepest self? I don't know if he thought about this as consciously as I do, but even so, every now and then Ryan would sit me down for the "talk." He reminded me about how he loved Rosaria and about his commitment to her. Because he understood the dynamics of D/s, his protection extended to the emotional realm, which is what made Ryan not only a responsible Dominant, but a sophisticated one. My fellow diva and friend, Elizabeth, is another good example of a responsible Dominant. During her demos at local events, she allows the audience to observe the pre-demo negotiation process, something which I have not observed anywhere else. Prior to the two demos she did with me as submissive, we didn't just discuss the basics, but also things like my feelings about public play, how I felt about various approaches, and how she would manage crowd control. After the demo, Elizabeth continued to protect and care for me, from making sure I was warm, to standing with her hands on my shoulders while she lead the audience discussion. The next day, she e-mailed me and asked about my feelings about the experience, which had been my first, of submitting in public, as well as how she could improve next time. Elizabeth understands that aside from "fun with floggers" the submissive is going to experience a whole bunch of emotions which might be scary and confusing, especially if the submissive is a novice. She took steps to deal with this, and this is what makes Elizabeth not only a responsible Dominant, but a caring one too. I also consider myself a responsible Dominant. I've had several relationships with male submissives and dealt with many of the same issues, the kind which heat up the emotional thermometer. The men I choose are usually in touch with their emotions and can express them, a good thing. The challenge is that these emotions can easily slip into drama in a D/s context. One of my submissives, Phil, was afraid I'd fall in love with him. Every week he'd sit down with me and tell me his concerns. Presumably my behavior as a Dominant seemed too much like love for him to differentiate. While I did love him as a submissive, I was never in love with him, and it took a lot of reassurances to make him feel safe. These issues are fundamentally about fear, something which is just as common in D/s relationships as it is in vanilla ones. Because I was aware of how things can get muddied, I was able to cope with this dynamic in a reasonable and rational fashion. A few years ago, my submissive Moby went through a self-destructive period during which he tried to provoke me to punish him, to hurt him. This wasn't play, it was serious. It was a challenge to me to separate out his submissive tendencies toward pain from this very real wish to be hurt, not hurt physically, but hurt in a way which would satisfy his own self-hatred. It took a great deal of restraint to respond from a place of balance and love. I recognized that I must not react as a Dominant, even if he wanted me to. I looked him in the eye and said "I know you want to be hurt and that you want me to hurt you. You think you deserve it on a very deep level. But I will not do that, no matter what you do to push me. I may express my dominance to you by sometimes hurting you, but I will never do it on the soul level." It scared me to be around him when he was in this state of mind because his deepest sadness, his grief, was right there on the surface. A novice Dominant might have gone ahead and "given him what he wanted," but I saw immediately that he had crossed over from "spank me, I've been bad" play to serious self-destruction. I may not have been able to rescue him from destruction, or even help in any way, but I didn't add to his despair, and that will have to be enough. Unfortunately the world is just as full of mediocre dominants as it is good ones. A while back I was negotiating with Master Tyler regarding a 24/7 relationship, a communication which ended abruptly with his withdrawal from the discussion. There I was, having discovered the deep yearnings I had to experience a 24/7. Not only did he not recognize my sensitive state of mind, but he had no interest in my feelings whatsoever. If he had a problem with how the discussion was progressing, he should have told me directly, with kindness and respect to my feelings. As the Dominant, he was in charge of the negotiation, and responsible for leading. In a similar situation, after a month of seeing Master Jake, he disappeared and I never heard from him again. I will never know if it was me or something else in his life. Regardless, I deserved to be told that our relationship was over. Communication isn't about BDSM, it's about courtesy and respect. Sadly, there was a time when I was a not-so-hot Dominant. This was early on in my experience, and up to this point I'd only played with one submissive. Ken was a novice, with rather considerable fears which we spent weeks discussing. In order to allay these fears, I sent him a detailed agenda of what would occur. At the beginning of our second meeting, I told him to undress, but he was unable to do so, even though he had no problem with this at our first meeting. I asked him if he was ill or there were some other problem, but he was unable to articulate. I told him then to either follow my orders or leave. He left without a word. I figured he'd call and apologize, but he never did. All I received were long letters of confused ramblings which never addressed why he would not undress. I have often considered how I could have managed that situation better. If only because I was the one in charge, I was responsible in a large part for the situation and perhaps could have salvaged a disastrous second meeting. I don't know what internal rules Master Ryan followed while tying me to the bedpost and ceiling joists, much less negotiating the emotional landscape of D/s. I do know that the complexities of a D/s relationship can both simplify and vastly complicate the development of a relationship. While the standard rules of dating behavior just don't cut it in our community, it is also true that an approach of kindness, sensitivity, and common courtesy will take you most of the way. At least in this respect, the rules of the vanilla world will do just fine.
*For a list of negotiation discussion questions visit http://ms.ha.md.us/~tammad/over21/bondage/sub-checklist.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sensuous
Sadie is the author of It's Not
About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene (http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html).
She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Copyright 2003 Sadie Sez Publications
*For a list of negotiation discussion questions visit http://ms.ha.md.us/~tammad/over21/bondage/sub-checklist.html
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