Storm Behind The Calm
I am a needy submissive. I am self-centered, insecure, and many other things that run contrary to my self-image.
I won’t go as far as to say that all submissives are like me, as surely they’re not, but I can freely admit that I, personally, am high maintenance. In most areas of my life, I am fiercely independent, self assured, and difficult to rattle. But my relationship with my Dom is different. It is my refuge, and with him the walls I build to keep out the hurt mean nothing, because he resides, with me, inside them.
Recently, something unexpected happened to prevent us from connecting the way I hoped. My reaction was unbecoming, to say the least. My first thoughts were of how this would affect me. I was sad, I was angry, and I was frustrated. Those feelings overwhelmed, and I spat them back at him vehemently.
As he always does, he handled it with a grace I so often lack. But it’s what he said in response this time that struck a cord with me.
“You think that I’m not as frustrated as you because you’re a submissive and I’m a Dom? … That because I’m a Dom I don’t feel the same level of frustration as you?”
My heart sank. I had been disregarding the feelings of the person I most wanted to please. Here is a man who devotes countless hours to tending to my needs, and when something was affecting us both I could think only of my own feelings.
I wish I could say that in the future I will magically step back from my insecurities, petty feelings, and selfishness, but my vulnerability is an essential component of our dynamic. What I can do is make a conscious effort in the future to consider his feelings. To remember that he is human too. That he feels anxious, scared, and sad, just as I do. I can choose not to take his calm to mean that there is no storm.
Because a D/S or D/Lg relationship is still a RELATIONSHIP! He is not a romance novel deity. She is not a cartoon brat. Both are adult human beings.
It is marvelous how much stress, pressure, anxiety, sacrifice, and sorrow we can withstand in service to a loved one. Phenomenal how much we can bear without breaking.
That we all as humans can does not imply we should.
Ancient Greek philosophy held that a person by them self might be a god or might be an animal but they can never be a human being except in the company of others.
A Dom who can’t recognize his lover’s humanity is alone and incomplete. A Sub who can’t acknowledge her lover’s humanity is alienated and alone.
Humans are capable of extraordinary stress and sacrifice. Vanilla people might never get it, but those of us in kink are primed to know if we don’t already get it: our relationships should not be the SOURCE of our stress and sacrifice. Nor should we be the source for the adult human beings who honor us by being in relationship with us.
This is true no matter which letters of the whole alphabet of kink you occupy. Or embrace.
A kink relationship is still a relationship. Whatever your role, be responsible to and for your relationship partner.
