Zille Defeu’s Fetish Fantasies

Posts Tagged ‘submission’

Graham has just posted a though-provoking post, which concludes:

Anyway. I’d be interested to know how you feel about submission v. masochism – do you identify more as one or the other, or both? Does it change depending on the week, day, scene? Are you so label-transcending and over this shit that you don’t even think about it anymore?

Well, Graham, I am both, obviously.

I would point out that submission can be explored just as well in roleplay scenes (or other limited time-period options) as well as 24/7 “Serve my Master’s Needs all day and night” situations … and for someone starting their explorations, the former is much, much better than the latter!

This is not the only aspect of submission. From: TheTrainingOfO.com

There is some confusion about “submission,” which I blame on the BDSM folk’s propensity to put forth an “I am more of a ‘bottomless pit’ than thou” attitude. It’s like there is some competition between subs about who can take more pain, who can be more submissive, who is willing to give up more of their life for their D/s dynamic. It’s horrid, and it really messes with the heads of the people who are new to the scene and trying to find themselves a place within it. (Speaking from experience, here!)

The confusion about submission comes in when people assume it has to be this full-on thing. But the fact of the matter is that if you bend over for a caning or some whacks from a hair-brush, you are in that moment being submissive (regardless of whether you are a masochist, and indeed, if you are not a masochist, you are being even more submissive in that moment!) Only if every spanking you get involves you being tied down so tight you can’t move, after being “taken down” because you were unwilling to stand still for being tied up, does a spanking not include some greater or lesser amount of submission.

That doesn’t make you a submissive. There’s times throughout any vanilla day when you are compliant, acquiescent, or just passive, and those are all synonyms for “submissive” – and that doesn’t make you a submissive either. As any dog could tell you – there are times when it’s just a plain good idea to roll on your back and expose your tummy and wag your tail.

So playing around with submission is no big deal, and to some extent it is in most spanking scenes, regardless of whether you admit (or recognize it) it or not. You can take it up to another level by talking about it, and adding more of that dynamic, but being conscious of it and playing with it don’t mean it’s suddenly an ingredient that wasn’t in the recipe before – you’re just changing it up from a tablespoon to three Tbs., and maybe using grated fresh submission instead of dried powdered submission.

To address the other part of the question, my Master* and I started out with a very D/s dynamic, partially because that’s what I knew (coming from that world and not the Spanko one), and he was excited about playing with that dynamic.

Over time that has evolved, and I’d say we are now more Daddy/girl, or more like the domestic discipline people (although we don’t have a lot of things in common with them, otherwise!) but my submission has not changed in a number of ways: I try to serve him in such a way that it makes his life better (this involves making a lot of tea for him – not a very difficult charge!) and I accept his discipline.

I don’t shift in my submissive level as regards my Master very much. I can get in a shirty mood and be less considerate and obliging (and refuse to follow rules) but that is not a shift in personality as much as it is me being a spoiled half-child half-adult who needs some discipline! (As regards other people, I am not particularly submissive at all — I’m a take-charge kinda gal! A favourite saying from the BDSM world: “I’m submissive — but I’m not your submissive!”)

So I would say that most people’s labels/definitions don’t fit us very well, although saying that he is dominant and I am submissive gets a certain amount of information across most effectively, and our unique variations can be discussed in the depth they deserve, if the person actually wants to hear all about it!

*I capitalize “Master” because to me it’s a proper noun and thus should take a capital. No one else has to call him “Master,” and if they want to say, “Your master is a wonderful and fabulous man,” they don’t need to capitalize the M-word. But the whole D/s capitalization thang is an aspect of the “kinkier than thou” problem, and thus deserves to be disregarded as juvenile and ridiculous. No, I ain’t mincing words on this matter!

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Yet again, Kaya’s brave-hearted openness leads the way for me. (This post in particular.) I’ve got stuff to write about, and I didn’t know how to write it. But now I do – thank you Kaya!!!

My Master and I are human – our relationship is not always perfect (although I do think we have an unusually good one. That, of course, being the reason he asked me to marry him.) I never want to write about our problems because I can’t bear to discuss his imperfections in a public forum (especially one that his friends read.) However, this is most-ways resolved by me just waiting to write about the problem until after it is fixed – any problems I perceive in him tend to be me exaggerating small meaningless things because I’m freaking out about something. Every time we have had miscommunications or disagreements, this proves to be true. He is more than willing to reach out to me, to meet me halfway or all the way. I just have to learn how to relax and accept both what he offers, but also that he cannot give me everything.

Our sex life hasn’t been great recently. Like Kaya’s Master, mine has slipped into “caring so deeply about me that he isn’t as mean and cruel as he was before.” (Yes, that’s technical terminology!) I’ve missed it. Terribly. I miss him making me be his slave, not just me being good for all the right reasons (i.e. — because I love and adore and worship him.)

To be quite objective: he is totally in the right. He has been care-taking me while I was sick. We’ve had travel with family, and house-projects, and art projects, and social obligations … and those have required us to step away from happy-sex-time and get stuff done – and it works best if I am able to function as a more independent person.

And also – it makes me feel so horrible that I’ve even had complaints in mind when I look at what the reality of our relationship changes truly entail. The fact is, we’ve changed and grown closer, more deeply in love, more truly along the path to becoming “man and wife” as we will be made next May. We’ve bonded so profoundly, and the dynamic between us is so fun, so vibrant. We are not just growing as lovers, but as friends and partners (in the sense of creating art together, or doing other projects.) When I look at him, I feel such affection that sometimes it seems my heart can’t hold it all, and I’ll burst into a million pieces. And of course I am glad that this is 100% reciprocated, that he feels exactly the same way.

But I don’t want it to get in the way of our Master/slave dynamic. So, I guess, I want to have my cake and eat it too – I want the comfort of our love as equal passions, but at the same time, I crave the inequality that doesn’t seem to allow that comfort. I long to hear again the cold edge in his voice when he disciplines me, the aloof punisher – the distance from him being so far above me, the slave on the ground.

When we first started being Master and slave, he gave me two books to read. They were tests, I think, to see if we were compatible. The first was The Course of Honour in which a lowly slave-girl and a Roman land-owner (who happens to end up as Emperor) fall in love. In it, society imposes caste differences upon them – she is first chattel, and then a freed-slave who is his subject. They are never social equals. But they love each other as equals, and even though he always holds the power of life-or-death over her, he treats her with the deepest respect and … honour.

The second book is River God: A Novel of Ancient Egypt. In this book, slave and eunuch Taita belongs to Queen Lostris. He is first the property of her father and her personal attendant, and then her own possession after he is gifted to her. He worships the ground she walks on, and she loves him as a friend and mentor. When she tries to do him the favour of setting her free, he begs her publicly to burn the emancipation, because he wouldn’t be able to spend his life serving her if he was a freed man. He spends the rest of his life as her loyal and loving slave, and she his devoted mistress.

I think I passed my Master’s tests (evidence suggests it, at least!) When I read the books, I felt pangs upon my heart-strings at the exact same places that play upon his own heart and soul. The books mean more to us than just shared reading experiences. They are links in the chain of our relationship, the chain from the collar (that is around my neck no matter whether I wear a physical collar or not) that is held tightly in his grasp.

Because of those shared referents, I have largely been able to stifle any passing concerns about whether I was “slave enough” in the kinkier-than-thou contests that happen in both real-life and online leather communities. When other slaves write about their relationships, I don’t have to compare them to my own. I have the relationships between Caenis and Vespasian, and Taita and Lostris to hold as my role models – knowing that those are the models that my Master set for us. And, for day-to-day life, it suits us both right down to the ground.

But it doesn’t fulfil all my fantasies. I almost never have romantic day-dreams while I hold the vibrator to my clit – they are tales of violence and abasement. In my own fantasies, while I make myself come, I never get to come. I am used by cruel rulers, depraved thugs, manipulative uncles or brothers, sadistic headmasters – they all use me for their own pleasure, and often take steps to ensure that I get no pleasure at all from their sexual use of me. The only fantasy figure who is remotely kind to me is Daddy, and even he has been known to plot and scheme to get me into a compromising position!

Last weekend, my Master and I had our worst-ever … um, thing. We don’t actually fight, so you can’t call it that. “Period of disharmony” comes closest, but doesn’t sound as hurtful as it is. Neither of us can stand them – it breaks our hearts when we’re in them, and we both work to get them over as soon as possible. (Actually, to be entirely honest, I tend to hold on to my pain and hurt feelings for longer. But when I do break down and release, I hope I make up for it with my eager desire to patch and repair with kisses and sweet words and even [to be quite painfully honest] a certain amount of shameless grovelling.) Anyway, it was bad, and it lasted two painfully long days, and I am so glad it’s over, and we’ve talked it all through.

We’re still in a space of uncertainty. (Errr, or at least I am – he may be feeling quite settled and resolved, and have intricate plans for my future subjugation and torment!) But I do know that we are resolved to both do our best to meet each other’s needs. In that way, we are equals. And that equality is, I think, something that is needed for a real-life relationship. Some fantasies are best left to keep in fantasy-land. I can think I want him to just take what he wants from me, without care for my needs and desires. But I want him to take from me those things I want him to take from me, and if he doesn’t, I will be upset and unsatisfied. What’s the point of a relationship that leaves you unsatisfied?

Well, it’s a moot point for us, because we will work together on it – and no, it won’t be just like fantasies, we do both need to be equals in that way. But I’ve come away from all the hurting and the thinking and then the resolution and the talking and rebuilding of trust and love even stronger than before with a feeling of … I don’t know, maybe “calm reassurance”…? Something like that. Oh, maybe it’s what they call, “trust.” I trust that he will do everything in his power to make me happy, and that kind of sets me free to let my needs go, and say, “Oh, yes, that need, it will be taken care of,” and “Oh, that fantasy will be played out in the fullness of time,” and “Oh, he’ll try that thing with me and maybe he’ll love it and want to do it again to me all the time, and maybe he won’t and that will really be okay.”

I know other “periods of disharmony” are waiting ‘round the bend in the future. But today I feel that we can deal with them, that I have learned enough about how to trust, how to really truly “let go and trust,” that things will be okay. It’s a good feeling. He keeps telling me that there are great scenes ahead of us in the years that we’re going to share with each other. Now I can finally let go of the worries and believe him.

And isn’t that part of being submissive? Letting go of control. Yes, maybe I am starting to learn how to do that not just in a scene, but in real life.

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