“I love you, you’re perfect, now change.”
I’ve heard this from a number of submissives:
“He absolutely adored me just the way I am. Until I submitted, and he got me on my knees and on my back. Then it changed, and he started trying to reshape me into something I’m not, some ‘dream sub.’“
OK, this shit pisses me off to no end. I call it the “Pygmalion Syndrome.”
Is it good and right for your Dominant to challenge you, to encourage you to be the best “you” you can be? Hell yes it is; that’s a large part of why you have him in your life. But that is a very different thing from trying to transform you into another person, a different kind of submissive, an “ideal” instead of your rich, quirky, individual reality. Are you a tomboy, a sneakers and t shirts girl? Are you a tough little bitch with a mouth that would make a sailor blush and an attitude that would make a prizefighter quake in fear? Good! That means you are an individual, a human being. Does your Dominant embrace the unique reality of you? Good! You have one of the good ones, and you’re damn lucky to have found each other.
Or, does he try to transform you into someone with a perfect French manicure in a dress and heels, who walks three steps behind him with eyes downcast and who wouldn’t say “shit” if she had a mouthful? In short, into the “dream sub” of his onanistic fantasies rather than the living, breathing, unique sub that you are? This is absurd, unsustainable, and unacceptable. I’ve seen far too many Doms go the “Pygmalion” route and try to transform their subs the way Henry Higgins tried to transform Eliza Doolittle. What they tend to forget is that, at the end of Pygmalion, Eliza leaves Higgins.
Subs: be who you are. Doms: knock that shit off.
What @instructor144 said! And well said too!
Make you more of who you are? Help you meet your goals? Help keep you accountable to commitments you make? Should your top work on those things with you? You bet! But should a top try to make you somebody you’re not? Someone they’d rather you were instead of you? Oh hell no!
