Total Surrender? In a Pig’s Eye!
By Sensuous Sadie
SensuousSadie@aol.com
www.sensuoussadie.com

Read Sadie's first column in this series: Total Surrender


A while back when Griffin was keeping me in a state of high arousal, a side effect turned out to be that visions of sugarplums danced in my head; also known as some mighty irrational ideas. These ideas had mostly to do with totally surrendering my life to Griffin.

A few months later my rational mind has regained a tenuous hold, so maybe it was just a winter-induced hormonal fugue. I've always been willing to surrender my sex life, which is why I call myself (proudly) a Bedroom Submissive. While a person's sex life is big in itself, this article isn't about that. It's about surrendering major life activities like your career, your checking account, or your children. Obviously we're not talking about breaking a Submissive of bad habits like leaving my laundry in the bathroom sink (eh hem), but rather of larger life-changing issues.

Let's say that you really do want to surrender your whole life, everything, to your Dominant. On the most fundamental level, they would need to be at least as competent, and preferably more competent than you in taking care of things. I'm taking a practical approach here, as that's my nature, but it's certainly a fair argument that the process is about the surrendering, not about who's better at what. A friend of mine and fellow writer, yielding, describes how her needs for self actualization are met not by managing her own life, but by becoming a better slave to her Master Stern: "The process of self-actualization is wrapped up with allowing myself to trust Master Stern enormously. That's also where the spirituality comes in."

The question for me is whether any Dominant can be expected to be equally competent with the complexities of money, jobs, and children; not to mention all the little things of life like unclogging a toilet. I think it is unreasonable and downright unfair to expect this of any Dominant, which kind of begs the question of how a Submissive can turn their life over to someone who is wholly human, with all the flaws, insecurities, and fears that entails. Yielding takes a less colorful approach, saying, "no matter how hard or how often you say 'total surrender,' it's never really total - not if you have an IQ above 75. 'Total' is just a word that's used instead of saying "unless you go nuts or endanger my future or my health or ask me to commit a crime."

Don't Even Think of Messing with my Career!
Say, for example, that you've found a Master anyway, who wants to control your career. It might not be so bad if you have an entry level job or perhaps one that is clearly delimited in terms of skills such as house painting. But say your job is like mine; a white collar techhead working in a specialized area of medical research. My Dominant Griffin, who works in the helping professions, cannot even conceive of what my workday looks like, much less help me make decisions about it. With so many jobs becoming as specialized as mine, it would be pretty difficult for anyone not in my field to give me useful career advice. Fellow writer Gary Switch agrees, saying, "Obviously you can't call your dominant during meetings to ask what you should say, nor can you get your dominant's advice on every little job decision you make during the day. Many of us can't even explain what we do to people not in our own field, so how could a layperson possibly give us good technical advice?"

My friend Stacey has a more unusual arrangement, "My career and finances have always been off limits to my Dominant. Careers are too complex for someone else to run them. And finances? Billie Holiday said it: 'God bless the child that's got her own.' I never want to have to make a decision about a relationship based on financial needs. I want to bring my own complete self to it, for the right reasons." Yielding's Master Stern also takes a broad approach to "controlling" her career, suggesting that she live day in and day out in service, "It would be a recipe for insanity to not allow her interaction in the world, the opportunity to contribute to society, and the ability to fulfill a passion." Of course a creative Submissive could use such an ambiguous edict to his or her best interests, but Master Stern and yielding seem to have found a practical way of dealing with this complex issue. As for me, I'll be listening to Griffin when it comes to dealing with a recalcitrant boss, but not when it comes to deciding which advanced degree will most advance me to the next level. Sorry Sir.

The Money Thing
Then there's my friend Daphne, whose Master wants to control her finances; not a radically unusual demand. The problem is that Daphne is quite the wiz at budgeting, and her Master is more of an impulse spender, often living week to week on his small paycheck from a veterinarian's office that specializes in exotic birds. He thinks he's good with money, and feels that Daphne should surrender her checkbook to him on principle alone. Who is right? Daphne is still wrestling with this, but if it was me, I'd have a death grip on that checkbook. My friend Susan agrees with me, saying, "I've worked my butt off to get where I am and I know of very few people as financially savvy as I, so I'm not about to go and give that sort of control to just anybody." As you can imagine, Susan's relationship is a very different flavor than that of Master Stern and yielding. Susan adds that, "Unless Jason demonstrates to me that he 'gets it' with money like I do, then forget it. That's a hard limit. He's no dummy but he doesn't have the financial savoir-faire I do, and he'll be the first to admit it."

On the other hand, even yielding admits that, "If, by unstable you mean someone who is simply incapable of handling finances, it would be foolish to simply surrender them. Since we don't live in a culture that takes care of slaves who are abandoned, dismissed, widowed, etc.; giving up access to money is a serious undertaking." At the same time, yielding has access to all accounts and property should Master Stern become incapacitated, and there are insurance provisions in the case of his death. Clearly they've found a passionate, yet practical way to surrender totally and "play safe."

Who's in Charge of the Kids?
Lastly, there is Donny who has custody of his two children, both of whom are in elementary school. His Dominant Anna Belle has never had children, and frankly doesn't have a clue. At 40, she'll probably learn some day-to-day techniques but it's a toss up whether or not she'll ever be a strong parental figure; after all dominating Donny is a different ball of wax from raising a strong-willed child. Donny wants to include her in his little family, but he knows that fab as a Dominant as she may be, his children deserve the clear line of authority that they are familiar with. What's a Submissive to do?

Responsibilities of the Dominant
In his article "What is a Submissive?," Megapig describes what a Dominant must provide his or her Submissive to make the relationship work. He writes, "The Dominant must provide her with all the tools necessary for her to find satisfaction within his rules. For example, should he decide to make her stop seeing all of her present and past friends, he has that right. But with that right comes the responsibility to see that the friendship, support and intellectual stimulation comes from other sources. If he makes her quit her job - he must replace the funds from other sources." Clearly Megapig is describing an approach to Dominance that I could never agree with; I believe that having friends that you choose yourself is part of emotional health, not to mention that making a slave stop seeing her friends smacks of a cult mentality. Another writer friend of mine, Master Alan adds that although his slave has totally surrendered herself to him, she did explain that, "if you insist that I participate in group sex, I will do it, but you will have to deal with the emotional consequences because I don't think I can." He sees this as her not having limits, but still trusting him to make the right decision for her.

The real point here is not so much in which area the Dominant chooses to have total control, but in whether they can make up for the loss of that thing in the Submissive's life. Can he provide options that will be equally as challenging and fulfilling as a career is? Will he set up a financial situation that she has access to if he gets hit by a bus? Will he be able to handle the challenges of changing the way her children are raised? And does he have his own plunger?

The Omniscient Dominant
Gary, being an editor from head to toe, reminds me that, "In fiction, the 24/7 true master is always infallible, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, able to see right into the mind of his slave, and always has the slave's best interests at heart. How do you reconcile that ideal but impossible 24/7 total submission concept with practical aspects like risk of financial loss or of having to act against your own best interest?"

The easy answer, the one I hear so often, is that a Submissive has to really know and trust his or her Dominant before turning over the big stuff. Okay, we all know that and we're all perfectly reasonable people right? Maybe we are when we're reading an article on a quiet Sunday afternoon, but we all know people who have gone kink-krazy with the bizarre hormones that BDSM induces and given up all kinds of weird things for a relationship that burns out in a few months, or even weeks. If being rational and practical was so easy, the field wouldn't be so littered with relationship disasters. When it's just people's emotions involved, it's one thing. But when someone loses their life savings, blows a great job, or loses custody because of some irresponsible partner – it's a whole different thing.

Master Alan, who is also a devotee of the Master/Slave lifestyle adds that, "Can anyone make a better decision than you about your life? Absolutely not. So, if you decide to give your life entirely and wholly to some fucked-up charlatan guru who takes all your money and tells you not to masturbate and clean his house for nothing while he screws the secretaries and steals the donations - that is your decision. Right?" That may be true, but we are not islands either. When a father's life gets messed up, his kids get their lives messed up right along with his. When a single Submissive moves across the country for some Dominant and loses her job, she becomes dependant economically, not good for either of them.

The other issue is that it's common for Submissives to expect their Dominants to be a little larger than life, and also understandable that a Dominant might not want to admit weakness. Heck she or he might be in total denial about it. For example, one Dominant I know has anger issues and goes off on a tear about people he has gotten a bug up his ass about. His Submissive agrees that he's irrational but she is unable to get him to see reason. This is an example of a Dominant who might be otherwise competent, but clearly is unable to see reason. Is this someone you want making major decisions about your life? Clearly she's okay with it, but I sure wouldn't be.

On an even more fundamental level, I wonder if anyone can make better decisions about my life than I can. I am inside myself, close to my soul and in touch with my Higher Power who explores my spiritual path with me every day. Could Griffin ever get this as intimately as I do? Even with my facility with words, could I ever really "explain" what it feels like when God tells me to do something? Does it make a bit of sense to surrender my own better judgment to anyone, no matter how smart, loving, and caring they are? How can I deny my own wisdom by doing what Griffin might want me to with my life, when I know perfectly well what my path is? And if you don't know where you are going, is it ever a good idea to let someone else, a human flawed someone, lead you?

I suppose it comes down to this. Each of us needs to be independent, in thought and act. I do not believe that dependence is healthy or optimal for anyone, Submissive or Dominant. This is not to say that Griffin and I aren't mutually interdependent for some things, but both of us are perfectly able to keep on keeping on without the other. It is this underpinning that will probably never allow me to become more than a Bedroom Submissive.

The Bottom Line?
When I posed these questions to yielding, she said "Master Stern and I didn't start out this way; it's been a six year process. I think a lot of people online tend to try to believe in fantasies, and while that might be fun for awhile, it's not real surrender and can never be." What I like about yielding's approach is that she doesn't allow me to dismiss those who are into the Master/Slave approach based on what she calls the "twittering masses of slaves who glorify their Masters like they are kings and/or gods." While I may never be able to really understand this kind of total surrender, I can appreciate the care and dedication which others, like yielding and Alan bring to it.

When I posed these questions to Master Alan, he took rather the opposite approach, "There is nothing to understand about complete submission. It is insane. If you want rational, call Merrill Lynch and get their advice." Well Alan, you must be right because I'd rather have my IRA intact than even the sweetest of sugarplums dancing in my head. Romantic? Maybe not. But at least I know that the next time those irrational ideas pop up, all I need is a mug of marshmallowy cocoa and a good nights winter sleep.




REFERENCES

Master Stern & yielding's website
yielding2stern@yahoo.com  
http://www.bdsmu.com/  

Master Alan
masteralan50@yahoo.com 

Welcome to PIG's WORLD: The true nature of Domination and Submission and a LOT more
http://www.xupstart.com/megapig/

*This guy is a very interesting BDSM writer. Definitely on the sexist side, but unusual ideas and funny writing.


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 Rose & Thorn, Vermont's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com. Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.

Copyright 2003 Sadie Sez Publications