Transitioning Roles

My BDSM is in a weird place.

It’s not going away, it’s just…in transition.

For as long as I could remember anything on the deviant end of the sexual spectrum turned me on. I remember being a kid and watching Silk Stalkings on USA. I was probably way too young to be watching it. I think that I would actually sneak to watch it. It was one of those shows where I had to turn the channel back to something else whenever anyone walked in the room. Silk Stalkings was like Law and Order: SVU except if the fashion was more Miami Vice and the goal was definitely more to titillate than SVU would ever own up to. By the time I was a teenager I was searching out any kind of literature about sex and gay-ness and BDSM. It was the trifecta my hidden interests. Goddess love the local library and a mom who would just drop me off and not pay any attention to what books I brought home.

In my mid-to-late twenties I started actually seeking it out. I met several Dominant men who scared me off. I also had several partners that had some interest in BDSM but weren't really interested in living it as a lifestyle the way that I seemed to be. But I kept seeking it out and then I finally found a partner who identified as a dominant but who didn't scare me off. Even though S and I were supposed to be a side relationship, we fell in love and stayed together for many years, creating a household and family with his (then our, then just his again) partner L. 

In that relationship, there were many ways where I felt like a kid in a candy store. I wanted to try so many things and when we did play together there were lots of things that he helped me explore. There were more things that we talked about and hoped to do in the future. In that relationship I also made what felt at the time like a natural transition from submissive to slave. I do have a streak of wanting to serve. I was the only child in my family and the only grandchild on my mom’s side, who we spent more time with. I was also a girl-child with a mother who liked to keep a fairly clean house. I had chores early on as well as just general pitching in when I could. Once when I was at summer day camp and I jumped right up to help clean up the tables after a snack and wipe them down, something that usually the counselors did, the counselor I had a crush on called me “very domestic.” Thinking about it now, I’m not sure that he wasn’t making fun of me. Back then, I thought it must be a compliment and went home to find out what that meant. Now it gives me the warm fuzzies to be told "good girl"  and "good job."  It makes me happy when I know that I did something that made my partner's life easier even if only in a really superficial way. Even now, without actively trying, I do still set up things for G (#2 in previous posts, now the only partner I have) and serve in little tiny ways that I can, even if that's just trying to make sure there is a big glass of water around and a wash cloth and towel for him.

But there was also something else going on there I think, in the transition from submissive to slave. I know that at that time of my life I was desperate to have someone else watching over me and helping me to continue to make the right decisions. I had gone through over a year of therapy to help manage the worst of my mental illness but I still struggled to be what I felt was productive enough and to keep everything in line. When I looked at relationships on FetLife and things I read about Master/slave relationships, that was something that these Masters helped the slave do and I wanted that. I know that in the beginning of that transition S wanted to help me with that too but I think often people taking on a Master role with someone who is looking for a lot of guidance and control don't always know what they're biting off. And I also think that a slave who wants that level of control often doesn't know what that requires. I know I sure as hell didn't. And for as much as I love to serve I also have a stubborn, "fuck you" streak a mile wide. Obviously that would prove to be problematic.

The other way that I used being a slave to patch over issues was that I still had no way to figure out how to negotiate the workload in a relationship. In that relationship with S and L I used having that role as a slave to patch over the fact that the people that I was with did not have the same expectations of house cleaning as I did and were not going to do that sort of work as often as I would want it done. I don't mean to sound disparaging because I believe it's just a difference in how people see things and where people choose to put their energy. For me, it can be energizing to clean or stop me from being able to relax until something is done. I know that it is not that way for everyone. I also know that L in particular worked a taxing job and also dealt with her own mental health struggles, and just wanted to relax when home, not spend precious time and energy doing cleaning things, at least not until they were at a higher threshold than when I would do them at. But when you live together either the neater person has to lower their standard, the less neat person has to raise their standards or the neater person has to take it on themselves to do then lion's share of the of the work. I chose to take on more of the work and then just pushed it into the slave roll. It was way for me to tell myself that it wasn't a big deal that I was doing a majority of housework because I was the slave and that was my place and it made my partners, particularly my Master pleased with me. And on one level that's totally true. On another, it meant that I didn't have to do the hard interpersonal work of negotiating with them to handle things in a more balanced manner or the hard personal work of deciding when that was not a good situation for me. I would also find out later that me doing all that work would make them feel guilty, even though I tried not to handle it in a passive-aggressive manner. Some times there is no winning.

Even after that relationship blew up, I still wanted that role. I still wanted to serve. And I got with a partner, T, who had never really had a slave but was more than happy to try for me. While that relationship was very different from the the one before that, I think my stubborn streak was probably too much for what that role entailed. He was involved in our local BDSM community and had experience with what someone being a slave looked like. He knew that I was trying for that, but some of the ways in which I bridled at his authority in the relationship as a whole did not come off like that. Also, a large part of T's social life was being involved in the BDSM community in our city and, in an attempt to find our spot, we took on roles in the community that meant I served in a different way and that took away from serving him at those events. We made friends with people who run a small local dungeon and that became a big part of our community activity, especially when I went back to school and was not available for as many events as I had been. In an effort to assist our new friends and to take a larger role in the community, I started running the door at their events. That meant that for the first 2-3 hours of the night I was away from my Master. While I can be somewhat shy with people I don't know well, running the door gave me a great opportunity to introduce myself and talk to many new people. It also meant that I met them as just myself, not at T's girl or slave. After I was done working the door, I started to socialize with people I was developing friendships with, which took away from serving him at those events. While I got more out of those events socially, it definitely took a toll on the Master/slave dynamic in our relationship.

There were other issues in that relationship. As I started making changes to myself and as I grew, I felt like what we wanted grew apart. This was also true in the sense of the BDSM relationship. The first time he and I broke up, I remember telling my good friend, who is the Dominant in her relationships, that I wasn't really sure I would ever find another dominant. I told her that I looked around at our community and was not necessarily impressed with the dominant men I saw. At that time, a year ago, I knew that I wouldn't be able to submit to someone that I didn't respect and who did not have their shit together in their life and I didn't really see that around me. She reassured me, saying that it might just take time but that it would be worth it. In the year since, there has been even less BDSM in my life. I went through a streak where I couldn't make it to events because I had children on the weekends at those happened. While I got back with T and tried to make that relationship work out, we didn't play in public because our dynamic felt weird and it made me more pissed off to get hit then anything else. Don’t get me wrong. I actually don’t mind getting mad during play and it can lead to great catharsis in the end. We did do that in private play. It just isn’t the public play that T and I wanted to engage in.

Now I am at a spot where I have no idea what is necessarily going to come next. I've broken up again with T. My only partner is G, who was my secondary for the last year, someone I've known for 7 years now, who has an interest in these things but not much experience and definitely no interest in any sort of 24/7 situation. He definitely isn't interested in having a Master/slave relationship. And to be quite honest I'm not either. If the last few years have taught me anything it's that no one can make decisions for me as well as I can make them for myself. Even when they are bad decisions, I'm probably better if I'm making them myself. I'm the only one who knows me and who knows exactly what's going on in my head. I am still at a place where there's always something I don't tell my partners, always some preference I have that maybe doesn't make any sense at all that if I then make a decision against that will come back to bite me in the ass. This isn't to say that I'm not happy to make decisions with a partner and that I’m not still working on being more emotionally honest. I am both of those things. But I still have to do the hard work of making the decisions myself. I can't use the BDSM dynamic to paper over my shortcomings or the shortcomings in the relationship, can't use it as a way to not communicate how I feel and what I want and to do the hard work of trying to find what fits everyone. Right now I live by myself and take care of the kids by myself when I have them. I know there will be times when that's really hard, when that is much harder without a partner to help pick up the slack. I also think that it's what's best right now. And I'm aware that if I ever live with anyone again there's going to be a lot of talking and they're going to have to want to do all that talking to figure out where everything fits for us.

What I do know is that I still like getting hit. It still turns me on to think of kneeling in front of or next to my lover. I want to explore sensations and have experiences that are typically outside of most people's sexual repetiore. I want to get to have other skilled BDSM practioners use their skills on me. Sometimes, I even want to be the one holding the reins. I want to find my own path and see where it leads. While there is a part of me that yearns for clearly defined and unchanging roles, I'm getting better at telling her to chill out and just let it be what it is for now.