Today I want to spend a bit of time talking about how D/s relationships deal with that pesky thing called “the real world.” But first, please indulge me as I offer some brief comments on style. A couple of months ago I penned what I thought would be a light throwaway piece titled “Ten Things Every Dom Expects a Sub to Know.” To my surprise, it took off (last time I checked, it was just north of 1500 reblogs) and it generated a lot of reblog commentary, both for and against. I think I found the “against” commentary the most gratifying, because it meant people were actually thinking about how this D/s life of ours works. One reblogger’s commentary, however, really irked me: “This essay has a lot of good ideas, but I couldn’t get past the offensively gendered language.” Jesus Christ. Look. I am not a tenured professor writing papers for presentation at the Modern Language Association convention. This is Tumblr, for fuck’s sake. I am a heterosexual, male Dominant. My submissives have been, without exception, heterosexual or bisexual females. When I write, I use (and will continue to use) the personal pronouns that map to my personal experience: “he,” “his,” “him” for the Dominant, and “she,” “hers,” “her” for the submissive. If the reader finds this offensive, please scroll on.
Now, to the topic at hand …
This piece is offered for both Dominants and submissives. The primary audience is the so-called “baby Doms” and “baby subs,” but sadly I’ve seen far too many “experienced” Doms and subs who just don’t get this. So here’s how things work in an ideal universe. The Dom lays out his tasks, rituals, rules, and expectations. His sub obeys, on time and without exception. Simple, yes? No. Because every D/s relationship must contend with this annoying thing called “reality.”
Let’s look at several ways in which reality can impinge on the “purity” of how some envision a D/s relationship.
Mary. A very good and dedicated submissive. She is a mother, possibly a working mother, possibly a single working mother. Work responsibilities. After work responsibilities. Weekend responsibilities. Soccer practice. School meetings. Sick kids. Sick self. Oh, and how about that monthly monkey wrench called menstruation?
Joe. A very good and dedicated Dominant. He works 70 hours a week. His normal life is frequently disrupted by business travel. Maybe he’s a single father, or has non-custodial children with whom he’d like to spend more time than he’s able. Let’s say he’s on a battery of meds, which he sometimes forgets to take. And oh dear, he’s losing that manly, luxurious head of hair that, in days gone by, won him the heart of many a lovely submissive.
Now, let’s take these two people, their lives, their baggage, their (often precariously juggled) priorities, throw them together into a D/s relationship, and … what? … magic happens? Depends on how you define “magic,” I suppose. What probably happens, more often than not, is “life happens.” And that’s where reality can impinge on a D/s relationship to a greater degree than on a vanilla relationship. Because here’s the thing about D/s relationships that is absent from vanilla relationships: they are founded on structure. Not on giving and obeying instructions (I abhor the word “orders”), not on spankings and blow jobs, but on structure. The Dominant and the submissive share a singular craving for this structure. The Dominant lives to provide structure, and the submissive lives to be wrapped safely inside that structure. But reality isn’t structured, not at all. Alvin Toffler once wrote, “the future arrives differently from what we expect, and in the wrong order.” The same can be said about reality.
Where too many D/s relationships run up on the rocks is when the couple’s hope for the idyllic serenity of a perfectly structured relationship gets pimp-slapped by that unexpected, disordered reality. The sub is getting her kids fed with her phone tucked under her ear taking an important work call, and a text comes in: “You are to go to the bathroom and edge for me right this minute.” The Dom gets home from a business trip, collapses into his recliner, promptly falls asleep, and as rosy-fingered dawn creeps over the eastern horizon, a text comes in: “You didn’t text me last night to tuck me in!” No, these examples are not absurd. Yes, they happen all the time. Such relationships are brittle and subject to breakage because, over time, as life gets in the way, both people come to feel the same subliminal resentment, a resentment that can be summed up in a single, dangerous sentence: “My needs are not being met.”
Here’s the deal. If your relationship does not have provisions for flexibly managing that royal pain in the ass called “reality,” then you would be well advised to build such flexibility and such provisions into the relationship right now. How does one manage this potentially damaging confluence of needs and reality? See, there’s this thing called “communication” ….
Outside of the relationship, God Emperor McDomly is a computer programmer named “Joe.” Outside of the relationship, Dirty Little Cum-Slut is a working mother named “Mary.” Because they are smart people who want to make it work despite their crazy lives, they carve out a space outside of the power dynamic’s internal energy and structure. A safe place, where Joe and Mary can sit down, put their heads together, and collaborate. “OK, so what’s our plan when X happens?” “How do we get around this recurring inhibitor to the full flourishing of our dynamic?” And, most importantly, “How do we make this even better for both of us?” Most people, one would hope, have such foundational discussions at the outset, but it’s even more important that such discussions be ongoing. Because life happens, and it happens all the time, and it happens in ways that are always changing and mutating. The best laid plans, parameters, and structures put in place at the outset of a relationship are all well and good, but more often than not they suffer the same fate as Germany’s vaunted WWI battle plan: “It did not survive the first shock of combat.”
Now, there are a couple of reasons why many people in a D/s relationship — and not just those new to the life — find themselves unwilling or unable to carve out that space and collaborate on a “meta” level, as “Joe” and “Mary,” and deal as ateam with the many situations where life just rears up and bites them on the ass.
The Dominant may feel that by engaging in freewheeling discussion, collaboration, and even negotiation outside the power dynamic, he will appear “weak” to his submissive. The Dominant who feels this is making a fundamental error: mistaking flexibility for weakness. The Dom believes that if he does not keep his sub in total, metronomic, lockstep obedience at all times, she is going to see him as “weak,” even “unworthy.” His greatest fear: his sub will leave him, because she cannot abide a “weak Dom.”
The submissive may feel very uncomfortable challenging any detail of the power exchange, even in a “safe place” where they’re just Joe and Mary. Submissives have a very deep fear and resistance to saying, “I want to meet your expectations with this, but here’s a reality check on that. Can I suggest this instead?” For far too many subs, the idea of having any kind of dialogue as equals with her Dom is deeply abhorrent, believing that doing so upends the power exchange dynamic and essentially “invalidates” the relationship. The submissive who feels this is making a fundamental error: mistaking collaboration for topping. The saddest words I ever heard from a submissive of my acquaintance: “Shit, if Sir and I have conversations like that where we collaborate as equals, then it might as well be a vanilla relationship!”
Talk to each other, people. A lot. Communicate. Collaborate. Find a common ground that works for both of you.
Dominants: talk to your submissive. Trust her enough to know that she will see your engagement as a sign of strength, not weakness. If your sub does see it as weakness, then you have a fundamental problem on your hands, and need to rethink your involvement with this sub.
Submissives: talk to your Dominant. Trust him enough to know that he will see it as a sign of your deep emotional investment in the relationship, not as an attempt to top him. If your Dom sees this as a refusal to “respect mah authoritah!” then you are in a dangerous place, and you need to run, not walk, to the nearest exit.
Reality sucks a lot of the time. It’s messy, noisy, inconvenient, and it gets in the way of any D/s relationship. Any kind of relationship, really. But if the two of you really respect and cherish each other, and this thing you’re building together, accommodations to reality must be made. Be willing to look honestly at the ways that reality intrudes, collaborate as a team, and forge workable solutions together that will serve you in good stead for the long term.
Mischief's Muse 