Submission for the Right Reasons
Those who come to this lifestyle hoping to find a magic cure usually find themselves disappointed and ultimately more confused. Worse, they may find themselves easy prey for others drawn to the lifestyle for all the wrong reasons, those who will only exploit your broken parts and make it even harder for you to trust yourself and know your own value as a part of creation.
It only makes it more confusing to consider that some -- not all, but some -- have felt broken and incomplete in "vanilla" society because there is something deep inside them that is simply different. Not bad, not "wrong," just different from the path most people choose to tread. Our needs run deep and wind through the very core of us. Until we confront those needs, and embrace that "difference," we will always feel that something is missing.
If you are one who has those needs and hungers for the "right" reasons, just knowing that there are others who feel similar things will help you feel more comfortable in your own skin and more accepting of yourself.
I say "right" reasons for lack of a better term. Some have been so battered and twisted by their lives that they have come to loathe themselves, and seek pain, humiliation and degradation because they feel they deserve no better. They come to believe that if they will let people do terrible things to them, or if they are "good" enough in blind obedience, then finally -- finally! -- someone will give them the love they so desperately crave. In my humble opinion, this is not a healthy reason. Understandable, but not healthy. Not a "right" reason for giving yourself body and soul to another.
I suppose the question is: which came first? Yearnings for things you didn't understand that made you feel "broken?" Or bad experiences and people in your life that "broke" you, so that then you began to think submission, pain or servitude was either what you deserved, or the only way you could earn love? In other words, submission became a default survival behavior, not a choice.
Early in my life, I had this enormous capacity for devotion, to give myself -- physically and emotionally -- to someone with an intensity that could rarely be reciprocated. And which each failure, I felt worse and less "loveable." If I was willing to give so much, I wondered, why could they not accept it? I felt as if I were running after people, desperately trying to give them a beautiful gift that they would not even open. Or if they did, they did not recognize what was inside, how lovely and complex it was.
I became a bit of a bitch to compensate, unwilling to completely open myself to others because my submissive nature made it so easy for even well meaning friends and lovers to hurt me deeply. I wondered what was wrong with me. Why did I need to give so much, and why I was getting so little in return? My life as a submissive and slave has taught me that I simply am wired differently, and that level of devotion and obedience in me is not wrong or bad or unnatural, it was merely a facet of my personality looking desperately for the right person to give itself to.
Like many others, I always had dark fantasies that made me wonder what was wrong with me -- images of pain, muffled cries of suffering, imagined ropes straining the body taunt.... But my sense that something was “wrong” with these fantasies was tied to the seemingly opposite knowledge that I did not "deserve" to be treated this way. I knew I was intelligent, witty, caring, capable and responsible, a good and decent person. So why on earth did I want all those "bad" things?
Finding the lifestyle community gave me the valuable insight that I was not the only one who'd ever felt such yearnings. I learned that the things I wanted were not "bad" in and of themselves: kneeling or crawling is not bad, if done for the right reasons, in the right time or place, with the right person. Sex is not bad. Being called a whore and a slut is not bad. Licking someone's boots is not bad. Not even kneeling bound while someone urinates on you is bad; the right or wrong is all in the context. I was able to shed so many of the restrictions and "norms" that society imposes on us, to examine these acts in a objective light, to find out how I felt, not what everyone told me I should feel. And there is enormous power in that.
I came to see that pain is merely another aspect of pleasure, an exploration of sensation and all the glories of which our bodies and minds are capable. I came to see my hungers not as something sick that needed to be exorcised, but something requiring courage to embrace, to explore, to harness and control. And the more I am able to accept these yearnings, to explore them in sanity and self-awareness, the stronger I am.
I came to understand that for submissives, our "natural" urges to give service, devotion and obedience to someone who earned it (not just anyone, but someone who earned it by treating us with respect, care, compassion and understanding) were a bright and shining thing to be treasured.
I believe that whenever we deny a facet of our intrinsic nature, it is like denying a flower light and rain. It may subsist, but it never blooms and flourishes.
I have found my path, my Master Gardener... and freedom in my slavery. It is not an easy road, but it is my choice, and I am more, not less, because of it.
As always, these are only my opinions, and I never claim to be right, only honest.
It only makes it more confusing to consider that some -- not all, but some -- have felt broken and incomplete in "vanilla" society because there is something deep inside them that is simply different. Not bad, not "wrong," just different from the path most people choose to tread. Our needs run deep and wind through the very core of us. Until we confront those needs, and embrace that "difference," we will always feel that something is missing.
If you are one who has those needs and hungers for the "right" reasons, just knowing that there are others who feel similar things will help you feel more comfortable in your own skin and more accepting of yourself.
I say "right" reasons for lack of a better term. Some have been so battered and twisted by their lives that they have come to loathe themselves, and seek pain, humiliation and degradation because they feel they deserve no better. They come to believe that if they will let people do terrible things to them, or if they are "good" enough in blind obedience, then finally -- finally! -- someone will give them the love they so desperately crave. In my humble opinion, this is not a healthy reason. Understandable, but not healthy. Not a "right" reason for giving yourself body and soul to another.
I suppose the question is: which came first? Yearnings for things you didn't understand that made you feel "broken?" Or bad experiences and people in your life that "broke" you, so that then you began to think submission, pain or servitude was either what you deserved, or the only way you could earn love? In other words, submission became a default survival behavior, not a choice.
Early in my life, I had this enormous capacity for devotion, to give myself -- physically and emotionally -- to someone with an intensity that could rarely be reciprocated. And which each failure, I felt worse and less "loveable." If I was willing to give so much, I wondered, why could they not accept it? I felt as if I were running after people, desperately trying to give them a beautiful gift that they would not even open. Or if they did, they did not recognize what was inside, how lovely and complex it was.
I became a bit of a bitch to compensate, unwilling to completely open myself to others because my submissive nature made it so easy for even well meaning friends and lovers to hurt me deeply. I wondered what was wrong with me. Why did I need to give so much, and why I was getting so little in return? My life as a submissive and slave has taught me that I simply am wired differently, and that level of devotion and obedience in me is not wrong or bad or unnatural, it was merely a facet of my personality looking desperately for the right person to give itself to.
Like many others, I always had dark fantasies that made me wonder what was wrong with me -- images of pain, muffled cries of suffering, imagined ropes straining the body taunt.... But my sense that something was “wrong” with these fantasies was tied to the seemingly opposite knowledge that I did not "deserve" to be treated this way. I knew I was intelligent, witty, caring, capable and responsible, a good and decent person. So why on earth did I want all those "bad" things?
Finding the lifestyle community gave me the valuable insight that I was not the only one who'd ever felt such yearnings. I learned that the things I wanted were not "bad" in and of themselves: kneeling or crawling is not bad, if done for the right reasons, in the right time or place, with the right person. Sex is not bad. Being called a whore and a slut is not bad. Licking someone's boots is not bad. Not even kneeling bound while someone urinates on you is bad; the right or wrong is all in the context. I was able to shed so many of the restrictions and "norms" that society imposes on us, to examine these acts in a objective light, to find out how I felt, not what everyone told me I should feel. And there is enormous power in that.
I came to see that pain is merely another aspect of pleasure, an exploration of sensation and all the glories of which our bodies and minds are capable. I came to see my hungers not as something sick that needed to be exorcised, but something requiring courage to embrace, to explore, to harness and control. And the more I am able to accept these yearnings, to explore them in sanity and self-awareness, the stronger I am.
I came to understand that for submissives, our "natural" urges to give service, devotion and obedience to someone who earned it (not just anyone, but someone who earned it by treating us with respect, care, compassion and understanding) were a bright and shining thing to be treasured.
I believe that whenever we deny a facet of our intrinsic nature, it is like denying a flower light and rain. It may subsist, but it never blooms and flourishes.
I have found my path, my Master Gardener... and freedom in my slavery. It is not an easy road, but it is my choice, and I am more, not less, because of it.
As always, these are only my opinions, and I never claim to be right, only honest.