Agreements

Once someone enters an M/s relationship, do you think that it’s fair, right, whatever word you want to use here, for the Master to change the orginal agreement; or, do you think that s/he has the right to make whatever changes he desires without “checking” with the slave?

Another very good topic that I hope we can discuss this week…I love these journal prompts I’ve found. I’ve got about ten of them now and Thinking Dominant is one of my favorites. This particular topic is a fascinating and dense one. I really encourage your own thoughts on the subject. To get us started, here’s a few of my own thoughts:

For me it goes straight to basic relationship agreements…because ultimately a relationship is a relationship. Even if there’s a power exchange between the couple, if the basic relationship isn’t working, the power exchange will also sour in some way that leaves both feeling at best dissatisfied and at worst utterly miserable. Frankly, I think that’s why so many power exchanges fail- because so many people just don’t use good sense about treating it like a relationship of any kind and applying the same good boundaries to it that someone would a marriage or a business partnership.

I think when we make agreements with others at the outset of a relationship we do so based upon the best wisdom of our past experience. Yet we don’t know what the future with that person will bring for sure. We can make a good guess if we were smart enough to really get to know our partner before entering into any agreements, but we still don’t know how time, life circumstance and intimacy will change our partner. Sometimes changes will be utterly outside our wildest imagination.

I think that couples should always be open to renegotiation on many agreements.

But even within an M/s agreement, it should be a renegotiation, not a dictate. Agreements are all about trust and its a basic fact that agreements form the structure of a relationship; which makes those involved feel safe and also assures that are all happy and satisfied in the relationship. If you stomp on a person’s trust in you by just changing the rules of relationship without any formal discussion and agreements then you are saying at essence, ‘I do not value your trust’.

If the change a dominant wants is really a good idea and really of benefit to the relationship there will be no need to act from the ego or thinking that such a decision is all about staying in control. It will be a smooth and good negotiation if its a wise proposal. If its not in the best interests of both concerned or its inspired by a simple desire to control, then I would think the submissive really has no business trusting the dominant.

I think this brings the conversation back to a basic difference between dominance and control. Control within a relationship or within play time, depending on your dynamic, is an illusion. There are only three things anyone can truly control and that’s their own thoughts, emotions and actions. That’s it. To think you can truly control anyone else is just foolish. Seriously, short of bashing them senseless and binding them helpless, you can’t control anyone and certainly the topic of this discussion is about consensual power exchange; not abuse.

So…we are down to defining dominance then, which usually leads me to discussion of related topics. *smiles* To me this word equates with guidance and leadership and it is about the skill and charisma of the dominant’s seduction and integrity. In response to this there is the respect, devotion and interest of the submissive for that dominant. Obviously one influences the other, not controls. But the submissive has just as much power to influence through her devotion as does the dominant through his guidance and leadership in the relationship. To not understand this is to demean her contribution to the relationship. It is really the submissive that has most of the power in the relationship, not the other way round. Ultimately it is the dominant who must be smart enough to take up this tool he’s been given and use it wisely. Because her submission is a tool to bring happiness to them both. Making decisions to change relationship agreements just really isn’t the same thing to me. Some would think that total power exchange gives a dominant free rein to do as he pleases, but I don’t think that’s true. An agreement is still an agreement. If he breaks it, he breaks faith with the submissive. Its really that simple. Just as simple as breaking any sort of contract. I think that to break such an agreement with someone who is emotionally and physically surrendered and use that devotion to manipulate an agreement is the worst kind of abuse too.

Which brings me to a related topic actually. In the absence of that charisma, maybe because the dominant is having a bad day or a bad month, its the submissive’s interest and respect which maintains the submission. He’s busy, so he’s not maintaining the submission as actively, is he? That brings out the truth that really submission is an inside job. Its up the the submissive to adhere to the power exchange.

On the other hand, there’s a great deal of responsibility in being a dominant in a relationship I think. If I surrender to someone, I want to know that I can trust that person implicitly to be good to me because I’m baring the most tender part of me there is…my heart. I’m giving it in to his hands in the deepest way I can so I need him to use the influence of my regard for him to bring out the best in our lives and in me. I want to feel proud of the man who is guiding my life. I want to feel a dignity in my exchange with him. In order to be such a person, he’s got to have extraordinary integrity, wisdom, strength of character and be capable of great understanding about what makes me tick; what makes my heart soar and what makes it sore. And he’s got to respect those things about me. Because my surrender to his guidance and sexuality, to his whims and his wishes is a blessing. It enhances his life and he’d best be treating me like its a gift and a blessing…because the surrender is profound for me. I’ll walk through emotional fire for someone I love like this. Literally. And I have done so for the men I love this way. Trust is crucial to such a gift of love.

Love cannot be boxed or controlled. It has to be held with an open hand. A very mature dominant understands this is the case.

One thing I’ve noticed a great many times is that as soon as the dominant’s regard or attention is necessarily placed elsewhere and the submissive is left to her own devices, there’s a couple things that happens. Either the submission and relationship are truly safe feeling and truly healthy for the submissive and so she continues with her sense of relationship being strong and firm; else she topples and finds herself feeling neglected, out of sorts, scared, isolated and unable to function without feeling anxiety ridden and depressed.

The latter used to happen to me in more recent relationships. With my husband, I generally felt quite secure. So I understand what I’ve said to be true on a very essential level. I’ve been offered submission several times in my life…and had someone place their trust in my spiritual guidance of them far many more times. If I do well, that leadership can guide the person in my care toward a splendid experience and connection or it can bring about alot of turmoil and pain…depending on it I constructed things. And one key ingredient in that is to work from within my own nature to put someone under my wing- to be comfortable in myself and confident in my ability to guide things toward a mutually satisfying outcome. And it truly is me who set the tone. And I guess that’s my point. If someone is looking to you to set the tone with integrity, then you should do so with integrity and not with ego.

As I’ve come to understand this dominant streak in me, I’ve also understood that the reason my sense of peace wasn’t firm as a submissive despite His attention being elsewhere is because I didn’t actually trust the relationship and him enough. I didn’t actually trust myself to be whole if the relationship changed. And because the intensity of his dominant erotic attention had passed on to something else, I would find the distraction from the reality of my trust didn’t match my euphoria and that made me really nervous indeed. Being able to see both sides of the coin as a switch has helped me to see that I needed a man who wanted my independence as well as my dependence on him. Its healthier…because the fact is, sickness comes, old age comes, stress comes, loss comes and he won’t be able to bring me intensity all the time. I can’t live life in a state of euphoria. When the rubber meets the road, if I’m not happy inside my own skin, if my life skills don’t match the setting of our lives together, then I’m going to be seriously unhappy with him paying attention to anything else~ and oh my what a drag that is for all concerned.

Its just a fact that he won’t be able to be ‘on’ all the time as the one in charge…so submission, to be healthy has to be something that’s internalized the same way we internalize self discipline or self esteem. It should not be wholly dependent on this person we love any more than being dominant disappears because we’ve no submissive under the hand in that moment.

All of this is about trust and about agreements and about how we construct a relationship that is suitable to real life and not some fancy dungeon fantasy that just can’t be maintained through real time life…at least not unless there is that internalization process going on because of the structure the Dominant sets down as the milieu for how he’s creating the submission to him. For some that may mean formalized manners, for others it may mean a certain standard of housekeeping or a certain form of personal grooming or maybe even all these things. Regardless of the formula used, its up to the dominant to make sure the submissive is indeed autonomous in her submissive feelings, else the relationship will become a rollarcoaster of emotional messes.

Then the power exchange does become real and its not dependent on whether someone is well enough to spank you on a given day or not.

In any case, I see this viewpoint of D/s as the sort of structure that will last in to old age, not just something that’s a today way to relate to each other. To me, the relationship agreements that are made between a D and a /s are as holy as a marriage vow. In fact, such adherence to behaving with integrity becomes all the more important for the fragility of the trust that’s necessarily involved in a power exchange.

Then again, I’ve got something of an old fashioned marriage idea when it comes to D/s…though I’m enough of a feminist (maybe read switch here? I don’t know….) to want household chores to be shared. *grins* What’s your take on things?