Coming to terms with things

Had I been aware of websites like Fetlife five years ago, I would've labeled myself submissive: I appreciate knowing explicitly what is expected of me, having certain things I am responsible for, and I have a habit of keeping track of my partners to make sure they are as taken care of as possible.

Flash forward a few years to when I met Mike. Here was (is) a man who had had submissives and slaves, knew what we wanted from them, and looked forward to having then again. It made me want to complete him; it gave me the challenge of being his perfect and ideal partner. Like with most of my boyfriends, I wanted to meet his needs and be better than all the rest. I wanted him to love me and treasure me above all else. I wanted to be magical. I wanted to be irreplaceable.

I wanted him to keep me.

For a long time, I felt like a failure because he pushed that side of me away. I would try to engage the part of him that he admitted he wished came out more, but he would shy away. On top of that, my sexual advances were equally useless, which left me feeling like I was treading water but never quite going anywhere.

From me, Mike wasn't looking for a sub. I didn't have what it took, especially because I couldn't drop the need for sexuality in these potential scenarios. It was confusing and stressful, but I focused on what I could provide in his life instead:

Understanding. Support. Encouragement. Love. Friendship. Laughter.

It took dating someone who actually actively wanted a completely submissive partner in their life to realize I wasn't actually naturally submissive. When I could get his dom side to come out, I kept being uncomfortable with the ideas he Mike was suggesting. I could go for bits and pieces, but he couldn't get into things piecemeal like that, and I couldn't just jump in completely like he needed. It was frustrating on both ends because we were both invested in him being happy and fulfilled. 

Then it hit me:

Thanks to my mother, I was raised with the idea that you did whatever you could to convince your partner to stay with you, since clearly no one would stay of their own accord otherwise. I was raised with the idea that oneself doesn't really matter, especially if being yourself means being alone.

So while the part of me that wants to take care of the people around me still exists, it isn't my main character trait anymore. For the first time in my life, I can basically be myself instead of doing what I can to twist myself to be good for someone else. It's still awkward at times, to be honest, and there's still that part of me that feels I'm letting Mike down by not being able to meet his needs entirely... But he isn't looking for me to do that, and I have no real problem letting him find someone else who can pick up where I left off. It takes some pressure off the part of me that still lingers from before, the part inherently feeling like a failure who worries so much about being abandoned.

I am starting to recognize my worth beyond my willingness to do anything for the people I love. It's difficult and stressful and painful at times -- and it's a long road to walk down on top of that. Thankfully I've got a pretty fantastic travel companion, so it's worth the trouble.

A brief introduction

I was originally going to write something different for today, but before I got too far into this blog-writing dealie, I wanted to take a moment and introduce myself, since a lot of people only know me as "Ash, illustrious other half of resident kinkster Mike Miner." While this is true, I'm arguably more than that, and I'm hoping to prove myself to be worth reading.

So! A few bullet points, in no particular order:

• While Mike is more on the lifestyle-kink train, my perviness has mostly been grounded in hypothetical sexual things. Despite these being more socially acceptable (in comparison to some kinks and interests), my partners have largely found my interests a little strange and/or unorthodox.
• I wouldn't label myself a sub or submissive, but my general attitude leans toward making sure other people are getting something out of whatever is going on before I do. 
• That selflessness has halted somewhat now that I have found myself with someone who sees me as worthwhile beyond my ability to satisfy them in bed. Mike will often reference my high sex drive while I point to my previous and long-held belief that the best way to show love and affection is through a basic willingness to do whatever is requested of me...which has not always worked to my advantage, so it's nice that Mike doesn't take me up on this terribly often.
• I'm not inherently monogamous nor non-monogamous: mostly just open-minded in how to achieve a stable relationship. I'm also not particularly jealous, which is helpful.
• I'm bisexual but hate the word; I'd say I'm 'pansexual' except, more often than not, no one knows what that means or implies.
• The older I get, the more picky I am about my partners. This, when combined with my increasing preference for being a hermit means I don't really take advantage of some of my marriage's freedoms.

My real goal in all of this is to have a space to say the things I can't in most of the circles I run in: namely the more off-beat and "perverted" things  I can't really explain or talk about to my office mates or family. My knowledge and understanding is a lot different from Mike's, but there is enough of a thematic overlap that we think I will be a worthwhile addition to the blog.

-Ash.

The Limits of Your Limits

I originally had a totally different idea for this entry, but I realized last night there was something I was much more invested in right now. When I started working through that, though, I realized there was really a prequel entry I wanted to do. I thought it through, and whether I could do them the other way around (I wanted to do one on a Tuesday and the other on a Friday), but it started getting complicated... And eventually I decided to just take it by the horns and do both.

I had a conversation with one of my friends... Hmmm. Let's call her Janet. I had a conversation with Janet about one of her friends who was just discovering the entire "BDSM" thing. Long story short, I ended up reading through "Submissive Training" by Elizabeth Cramer.

This book was well-written, easy to read, and - to me - nothing I'd never heard before. Since I've been involved in BDSM for creeping up on 20 years now, its not being new isn't immensely surprising to me. What did surprise me was how narrowly this book was focused. Essentially, this book is an excellent reference for a very narrow class of people - female total power exchange submissives beginning their roles as slaves.

Recently, I have encountered a number of people who are just first really exposing themselves to the wider world of BDSM. Bettina is the obvious example, who'd never actually encountered it before me. We've had a number of conversations around kink, her interests, what scares her, what she thinks about it... I've tried hard not to just teach her my own views - it wouldn't really be too hard to present my own views as gospel, given her relative isolation from the larger Scene - and rather am trying to encourage her to think about her own instincts and beliefs in the area. It's not just my own views I have to try and protect her from - she also has far more preconceptions and prejudices than I would have imagined before we really got into these topics. She finds herself trying to decide if she fits into some preconceived notion of "slave" or "sub" or "pet" or "little" or whatever else.

More than just Bettina, a number of posts have shown up on Fetlife recently as well... Which isn't unusual. There's inevitably a steady stream of people who are just discovering the entire world of kink, and it's not hard to encounter them if you want to do so. Similar to Bettina, though, most people ask the wrong question up front. One of the most frequent things you'll see is "Am I a X?" or "Do I fit in with group Y?" People almost always start off by taking an idea or a term or a phrase or a role and trying to ram themselves into it - frequently a square peg in a round hole... Or at least a rectangular one.

A couple of weeks ago, after To The Ends of Comfort and Beyond, Ash asked me a question - my advice to "know your limits" is great, but how do you figure them out? If you never step past your limits, how do you ever know what they are?

These are all symptoms of the same problem, unfortunately; kink is a huge world, kids. There's a lot out there to know. There are countless kinks, terms, adjectives, verbs, toys, bits of history, norms, bits of etiquette... It'll take anyone a lifetime to figure it all out. Coming into it from ground zero is imposing - and most people lose sight of the real goal in light of that barrier.

So, how do you figure out where you belong? How do you figure out if you're an "X" or a "Y" or a "Z" - a sub or a Dom/me or a little or a daddy/mommy or whatever else? How do you know what your limits are? There are a lot of possible glib answers. "Carefully," in particular, comes to mind. Really, though, the more important question has always been "what are you comfortable with?"

Names are very important to me - I wrote a whole entry on how much so. Names can cut both ways, though; they can describe who you are or they can constrain who you are, depening on how you use them. beginners to kink often take a name, a description, a role, and then try to mold themselves to fit it as carefully as they can. More often than not, though, they miss the crucial understanding that those molds are what they create for themselves, not what they have to make themselves to fit in.

So be brave; try a few things out. Carefully, of course; it's better to be cautious and drag it out than to rush in and panic. Don't do anything you're uncomfortable with; but if you are comfortable with it or aren't sure, try it! Safely, as carefully as you need to... But find out. If possible, find a mentor - someone who knows more of the pitfalls and possibilities than you and can help you fill out your identity.

How do you know your limits? Through conversation; through question and answer; through experimentation; through research; through careful consideration of the vast world now open to you. It seems scary at first, but some day you'll look back and laugh at how much worse it was just because it was all unknown. Never compromise your own self for someone else's definition; figure out your definition and own it. Most of all, be true to yourself and have fun.

Mountains out of Many, Many Kinky Molehills

I was talking with Daphne earlier today about her reaction to being subject to mild submission earlier in the week. She was fooling around and being told what to do while doing it... And as far as I can tell, she enjoyed it way more than she was prepared for. I think she'll get over that surprise pretty quickly; she's okay with the idea of enjoying it in general, I suspect. The conversation ebbed, and a little while later she just sortof blurted out "I still don't think I'm a sub though.." I responded "Oh?" in my own typical immensely helpful and encouraging fashion; and her clarification was "I'm not a masochist."

This was, probably unsurprisingly to those of you who know me, the point at which I facepalmed.

We discussed it afterwards, and I did my best to clarify the situation for her... At least as far as my not-so-humble opinion goes. In Daphne's defense - and very much relevant to Ash's point she made when I talked with her about it later on - to Daphne's experience, it really is true; submission and masochism had essentially been introduced to her as a single thing. She knows a number of people involved in the lifestyle to various extents, and as far as I can tell every one of them - myself included is into either both or neither. She actually has a lot more interest in submission than she had realized, but her own dislike of and aversion to masochism has ruled it out in her own head. Especially when one's new to this type of thing that can be misleading - it's far too easy to equate the limited sample of people you're exposed to at first as rules, and not as simply examples.  She needs to make the jump to learn that correlation isn't causation.

The biggest thing to remember here is that "kink" at large and even "BDSM" as a smaller pool are hugely varied and wide areas to discuss, with dozens if not hundreds of sub-genres. There's the standard bondage, including some fun and interesting ones like Shibari and mummification; power exchange/Dom-sub relationships or play; sadomasochism; restriction play such as orgasm control; role-playing, age-play, furries, rape fantasies, and all their various related fields; fetishes, including panty-hose fetishists and foot fetishists and whatever else you may conceive of; bathroom play/golden showers/scat play; humiliation; public play and exhibitionism; pet play of all types, including pony play or people who just really like butt plugs with tails attached... And that's just scratching the surface. Gang-bangs? Latex & Leather? Service play? Depending on who you talk to, things as straight-forwards and normal (cough) as threesomes and polyamoury and asexuality fall under "kink" rather than "alternate lifestyles". The possibilities are endless. The thing is, though, no matter how easy it is for people not involved - and even people who do fall under the umbrella - to lump all Kinksters together into some huge monolithic "Kinksters Of The World Organization^tm", many or most of these kinks are totally unrelated. They may overlap frequently and they may have quite a strong correlation, but it's totally unsafe to assume that one kink causes another... Or that two different kinks are the same thing.

So Daphne, from her own experience, just assumed up front that submission and masochism were essentially inseparable, which I couldn't really disagree with more... And yet Ash's comment was that I was the first dominant she'd ever met who was actually also a sadist. The funny thing is, in this regard kink - especially when you're first exposed to it - is remarkably like science; circumstances sometimes make it hard to realize the assumptions you're making even as you're making them. I'm far more conscious of it than I used to be but I still am working through my own assumptions on a regular basis.

The Kinkster community is definitely one of the more accepting communities out there when it comes to differences in taste - after all, the biggest defining characteristic of anyone who self-identifies as "Kinky" is their own differences from the norm. The simplest and most common assumption, of course, is just assuming that everyone feels the same as you... Which is also should be the easiest to have proved false were it not for humans' endless potential for seeing what they want rather than what is really there. The second-most-common assumption is the mistake that Daphne made - that your own first- and second-hand experience is actually a definitive experience... That your boundaries are the only boundaries. This one I find far more understandable, and this is the one I struggle against most frequently.

So here's my advice for the day: expand your boundaries, and understand that you're a tiny dot in the middle of the hundred-dimensional Venn diagram of kink as a whole. Be brave; do a google search. Go to a munch. Visit collarme.com and look at their options for "interests". Dick around (literally or figuratively, your choice) on Fetlife for an hour, going through groups and profiles from your area. Go to your local kink-friendly bookstore (if you're that lucky!) and explore their selection. Go to your local adult toy store and explore their selection. Take the time to realize how many other interests there are out there. And above all else, hunt down your assumptions and examine every one of them as closely as you can. Your assumption may not have been wrong... But until you understand what it is and why, it'll always be a blind spot.

The Young and the Restless...

I missed my "scheduled" post on Tuesday this week; it's a side effect of a bunch of craziness in my life outside of this blog.I know it's hard to believe that I have a life outside of this blog, but trust me, it intrudes regularly - even if just in my getting sick or having family things to deal with. I will endeavour to hold such interruptions to a minimum, and maybe even eventually build up a small reserve of advance entries. In the meantime, I decided it made more sense to simply let the 4/22 entry slip and post this on Friday.

It occurs to me that if I'm going to be referring to specific people, at some point I'll need to call them by name - even if just so as to avoid some level of confusion over the constant "her"s and "him"s and "she"s and "he"s. So to that end, let me tell you a small amount about Daphne.

That isn't her real name, of course; but she's a fairly local girl I started talking with off of Fetlife. She's a college student who's fairly new to the scene and is looking for information - knowledge about these types of things, people she can chat with, people to play around with... The usual stuff. She has very little experience with it, however; in fact, she has little sexual or kink experience of any kind

Girl, hah; she's 27, but she's seven years younger than me. Some days, I feel very old.

I was originally planning on making my next post about trust, because there's a lot of aspects of trust affecting a lot of aspects of kink. I somehow doubt that surprises too many people, considering how much risk is involved; but thinking about Daphne made me realize that she doesn't trust herself, and that's part of the problem here. Part of the reason she doesn't have much sexual experience is because she's managed to convince herself that it's... Wrong, or makes her a slut, that it's not okay to enjoy herself in that manner; and part of the reason she hasn't explored kink is the same idea. That her kinky interests are a sign there's something wrong with her, not just a bit of a difference in how she gets off.

This is probably the biggest reason why people who otherwise might never get into kink - the total conviction that there's something wrong with it. It's what made kink so hard for me to get into for so long, years after I'd realized it was part of me. Knowing intellectually that bondage or sadism is something you want, and really intenalizing it - really becoming comfortable with it - are totally different things... And they can be a lifetime apart.

I'm sure it doesn't help anything that she is so inexperienced, because the unknown is always easier to be scared of - or to think the worst of. Ignorance breeds fear, after all. So I already encourage her to discover things, to explore her kinks... And to try and get over her inhibitions. Sex isn't evil any more than a pair of handcuffs are - and she's got a really late start onto it.

A first time on the floor...

I talked previously about people getting into kink and BDSM, and thought I would expand on that. There are, of course, dozens or hundreds of ways to get into this wonderful world of craziness, and it seems like everyone picks a different one. It could be a book, a movie, a TV show, a game with their friends.

Personally, my first memory of BDSM is a movie. By weird coincidence, I saw two shows on TV late one night - the first was "What The Swedish Butler Saw", an "erotic comedy" which had some BDSM themes; and the other one was some random teen angst movie where one of the plot points involved a girl losing a bet and cleaning a boy's room naked. I realize that the latter really had nothing to do with kink in general - it was some random 80s teen movie, and there wasn't even any nudity in it - but the two became linked in my head, not the least of which because of the dominance aspects one could take from it. My earliest thoughts of D/s - not that I realized that's what they were, at the time - rose out of those.

In some ways, I got very lucky in that. My introduction was very gradual - I had the chance to think things through before doing anything. The shock when they realize what's going on is the biggest problem many people have when being introduced to kink, and it can also depend on how lucky they are with what they encounter first. Some introductions are far gentler than others. Having your first introduction being someone asking you about trying out fuzzy handcuffs is probably going to scare noone, while having your first time be someone peeing in your mouth without warning is enough to make someone panic... Or at least very upset.

The first thing you need to do is talk about it with your partner. If you're interested, or if you think they are, having enough up-front communication to make sure it doesn't surprise either of you is important. Shock isn't necessarily good or bad, but it is unpredictable - being caught off guard is guaranteed to make whatever it is scarier. It's entirely possible it won't matter - after all, shock doesn't mean you don't like it... But it can ruin trust, at least in the short term.

Trust is such a huge piece of BDSM and kink in general. The obvious part is that a sub has to trust her Dom - after all, they have so much power - but it's important in every aspect. A Dom has to trust his subs, to carry out his orders... And at least sometimes, to trust they won't be "outed". Kink is a very private thing in most cases, and it can bring social and legal troubles when it's exposed.

First encounters don't always go bad because of trust, though. Kink is an area you should be careful getting into without thinking it through first, and without taking your appropriate safety steps. I, personally, have some level of claustrophobia; it makes MRIs difficult but also makes blindfolds, masks, and a number of types of bondage totally non-viable for me - they'll lead directly to violence or a panic attack. When your lover is trying to go down on you is one of the worst times to find that out.

It doesn't have to be any individual thing, either - it could be that you try five things which individually you can handle fine and even enjoy, but if they were all piled up on top of each other the first time, it's enough to make you panic. It's very easy to do too much your first time.

Take it slow. Don't pile too much up. Try it one piece at a time, with someone you trust. And make sure you've thought it through before you ever try it, no matter how innocent it seems. Make sure you know what you're getting in to.

A new thing to try...

I had a fairly long conversation yesterday with one of my old friends. We'd lost touch over the last year or so, but when she had surgery recently and we had gotten back in touch. We actually dated for a while, many years ago  - 18 years ago? Wow... - before she moved away; and have hooked up more than once since then both when I was near her on business, and when she has  visited me here. She was, in fact, also one of the first people who was ever my submissive. Maybe at some point I'll ask her to give me her thoughts on being a submissive, and why she isn't any more... But that wasn't why I brought her up. I bring her up because of yesterday's conversation. Specifically, while talking with her yesterday, she brought up her... Research partners from earlier in her life.

When we say “research”, in this case we mean trying out sexual practices… Or perhaps a more accurate term is “practicing”. To paraphrase her slightly:

The second one, we had a longer term agreement.
We would try out things we read about together.
Get feedback.
Figure stuff out.
Techniques mainly.
I basically blew him once or twice a day until I got great at it.
We worked on where it was ok to put his hands while I did it.
We worked on where I should put my handswhat he should never ever eat beforehand.
Ever.
We tried out different locations in the apartment.
Putting the pillows certain ways...

The conversation went longer than that, obviously… But I found the conversation fascinating. I spent a fair amount of time over the days since, and how it may have - or could - relate to other people I know. My circle of friends and acquaintances includes people from the most innocent, vanilla, virginal girls and boys you could hope for all the way through to what can only be described as "kinky perverted sluts"... And yet with just about every person I've ever discussed sex or kink with, I've seen blind spots... Things they were interested in but never explored, things they hadn't even considered but ended up interested in, things they didn't realize they desperately needed to avoid... Having a safe place, a safe person, to just explore things.

A number of people I know (the more conservative ones, at least) would immediately make the mental jump to "SLUT" and "WHORE", but to me it's just such a rational response. Sex is one of those areas with an enormous potential to turn bad; look at the mess surrounding things like erectile dysfunction. Being good or bad in bed, or even just inexperienced, can have a major effect on one's self-confidence, one's self-respect... And relationships are not inherently the best place to explore this because of the pressure involved. Even some of the most open and relaxed relationships can impose huge pressure and expectations on the people in it - even if the pressure is entirely self-imposed. A relationship specifically with the intention of exploring how things work, how to do them, trying them out could offer a lot in that direction.

I suppose the biggest problem there would be finding a problem with whom that type of relationship is even possible. Most people, I think, aren't really equipped for a no-strings-attached relationship - humans are too good at attaching the strings whether they intellectually know it's not what's happening or not. But that's a whole other topic for another day.

One of the things about BDSM is that it's very imposing to people from the outside. Ignoring the stigma and the fear and all of the baggage that arrives with the whole topic, it can be a very scary area to get into. It's all about whips and chains and spanking and handcuffs and masters and slaves and sadists and ropes and dungeons and... Well, any number of strange and frightening things. It is, in fact, a place where only in the rarest of cases will two people actually have the same desires and experiences, which makes it all worse. BDSM and Kink are areas where you can go a lifetime and never find a person who actually agrees with you on everything, and that makes it - sometimes - a very lonely and isolating place.

There is community in BDSM; there's "The Scene", groups of (approximately) like-minded people, all over the world; there are munches; there are dozens of major websites and scores of smaller ones; there are hundreds of pundits, professionals, columnists, bloggers, authors, and speakers... And yet when it comes down to it BDSM and kink are incredibly broad, incredibly big, incredibly imposing.

And there is a lot to be scared of. Not only are there an incredible number of things to try, but some of them are dangerous. Safewords aren't something to be scared of, but they are something to take seriously - they're there for a reason. People can be - and have been - hurt, injured, scarred, and killed by their kinks. This is part of what gives the entire culture such a bad name... And yet at its heart, it's still all prejudice - after all, the most dangerous thing most people do every day is drive to work.

So I guess this is my advice to all of you out there: take my friend's idea, above, and apply it to BDSM. Don't jump in with both feet; don't let it scare you or overwhelm you; try. Find someone you can trust, and just try one small thing. Something stupid or silly. Eat dinner wearing handcuffs. Watch a movie on the couch with a butt plug. Intentionally add one small thing to your sex life each day or each week - something different - and instead of letting the entire idea scare you, find out whether or not it works.