Seriously, I seldom tell people they need to do things, but if you have any ambiguity at all about the role of kink in your life, listen to the Axe's
Masocasts. You'll find people talking about the sorts of things you're interested in (if you're reading this blog), people who are funny and self-reflective, and above all,
OK with themselves. Which is what motivated the following post.
Two things happen when you read a lot of blog posts: you get titilated, and you learn stuff. On the learning stuff front, I was touched by a blog post by a poly person in Vancouver who talked about being the misfit in highschool, and finding she fit in with the poly crowd. it was a link from a comment on another blog, so I may not succeed in finding it.
That was echoed by one of the Masocasts - I think it was the one on being submissive to a couple - where she talked a lot about Ren Faires, and how that is where she found herself.
That transformation - going from being "unloveable" - i think the Masocast interviewee put it: "No one's ever going to want to fuck me" - to loveable - is one that I haven't undergone, in some sense.
many many years ago, in a meditation retreat, the person directing the retreat asked, something to the effect of "what is the deepest statement that motivates you?" (I'm sure it was better put than that - but I know my answer immediately was, "Not good enough." This is all about that.
It's why the masocasts are so absolutely compelling for me. They'are about people who felt a lot of the way I used to feel, wanted a lot of the same things I want, but their inner monologue isn't "Not good enough", it's "Look what i found, look how I made a life from the desires and circumstances I was given."
I didn't do that. I made a great life - and it really is great - with a loving community, two amazing kids, a beloved who is a rock - more so than perhaps is good for herself some times, in a beautifuly place, doing a job I like a lot (well, it's early days), with health and probably enough money to put the kids through college and probably retire. Wow, who could ask for more? And I'm not asking for more. I'm asking for "different."
I'm asking for, "It's OK to be who you are." Which, just about every time we talk, my beloved says. But which I have to tease apart as well:
It's not OK to think I'm not OK. Wow, how self-referential is that! But to be submissive out of a sense that the only way I can have any worth is to be what someone else wants me to be is just never going to bring happiness. My beloved knows this, and, God bless her, refuses to go there.
is that what all submission is about? once could argue that it is, but I thank Masocast again for really opening out the definition of "kink" for me. being in to control, and in to submission, and a service submissive, and in to pain are (I suppose, arguably in the case of the first two) different things, and are only four aspects of the polymorphous perversity people label "kink" or "queer."
One of those is "I'm not good enough and I don't have any value unless you give it to me." That, I think, is a disfunctional one that will never make me happy. But when I had the first of the three pro-domme sessions I haver had, it was nothing about that. It was about "She tied me up and whipped me till her arm hurt" and That remains a peak experience in my life. Afterwards, I kissed her boots (because I asked her if I could - holy shit: asking for what I wanted! - Possible only because I was higher than a kite on endorphins at the time?), and that was, "It's OK to want to kiss someone's boots." dang - I get little emotional palpatations just writing that. Have I ever felt that OK with myself in my life? Or am I just romaticizing in hindsight. I really think not.
For a while, I did a distance-domme thing with someone I met on-line. Ignoring all the distance issues and 24/7 issues while being married to (to my beloved who knew about the whole thing), it feels to me, and I would conjecture, that that relationship was based in "not good enough", in "you suck." And that's why it felt so wrong.
So the problem of doing this with my beloved is that it's my problem that we're trying to solve. In the masocast I listend to today, the guy in the couple said there's no point being dommed by someone who's just playing a role. And it's true. The whole thing is about communication and energy going back and forth, and creatging something and having fun. I think a Pro Domme needs to either do that, or be really good at playing that she's doing that - good in an acting kind of way, where the acting is the truth in the moment - that thing that makes acting special.
