amysubmits:

I’ve probably said things like “I need accountability.” (or “I need structure.”, or to feel owned, or a firm hand, or rules, or guidance, or to feel safe being vulnerable, and lots of others)” dozens, maybe hundreds of times on this blog. 

Of course, needs are things we require. I remember learning needs vs wants in third grade. The textbook said human needs are food, water and shelter. That’s it. The end. So I see why it may read to some that “needing” rules is absurd. Or why they may read me write “I need accountability.” and then assume that I mean “I need a disciplinarian in order to get by.” but that isn’t at all what I mean. What we require can change depending on our circumstances. You may only need food, water, and shelter to survive, but we can talk about need in ways that are totally unrelated to simply surviving. Most of the time when I talk about what I need here on my blog, I’m talking about what I need within a D/s relationship with @cynicaldom. This can include things I need in order to let go of control, what I need in order to feel safe submitting, what I need in order to feel vulnerable opening up about my desires, what I need in order to trust and admire my Dominant, what I need from him in order to give him what he needs from me, and more. 

I functioned just fine before I had rules given to me by my Dominant. Well before I had lived D/s I desired clear expectations, limits and boundaries, structure and to be told ‘no’ if I was doing something that wasn’t in my best interest. But I got by without that, and I was pretty happy even. I was drawn to the idea of "old fashioned” relationships from a very young age. In hindsight, I realize that was my subby heart often read Dominance and submission into the depictions of old fashioned relationships, and I was drawn to that idea because I was seeking to submit, to let my future man lead my relationship. So I’m not at all trying to say the bone-deep desire to live this way isn’t just part of me. It definitely is just part of me and I am certainly more fulfilled in life when I get to live D/s. But…

I don’t need a Dominant looking over me in order to be a functioning member of society. If I am going to submit, I need more than I would otherwise need.  I require a lot more when I am living D/s because submission is vulnerable, I give more of myself, and D/s is an exchange.

There are things that I need in order to fully open up my submission and to let go of control. For me, I need to rules, clear expectations and structure to be there so that when I let go I don’t feel like I’m just blowing in the wind. I need accountability so that if I somehow wriggle away a bit too far, there is something to pull me back where I belong. I need to feel the presence of his leadership regularly so that I can breathe and know that he’s got those things I let go of handled. 

While I let go of more when I’m submitting, I also pick up more responsibilities when I live as a submissive. Through living D/s, I now have rules and chores and the expectation that I will behave in certain ways, and the expectation that I will take my commitments to CD very seriously. Because of those, I need to see him committing to his responsibilities to make it feel fair that I am held accountable to my responsibilities so strictly. I regularly place his wants above my own which requires a bit of sacrifice, so I need to know it is appreciated to avoid feeling used. In part, I need to see his appreciation for my submission through his other actions. I need to see that he considers my feelings regularly, that he keeps space open to hear my opinions, and that when he makes decisions for us both that he does so with our mutual best interest at heart. 

So when I start submitting, I find myself with far more needs than I had before. I’m giving more so I need to get more. That doesn’t mean I can’t take care of myself or get by on my own in another setting. It means submission is vulnerable and it’s a big commitment, it requires me to be emotionally naked. If I’m going to get emotionally naked for him, I need to know he’s going to put in the work required to keep me warm. 

cherished-property:

I knew they’d be resetting everyone’s picture and avatar to default. But I thought that was to give all the cockatar guys and female-presenting boob girls an opportunity to change to be in compliance. I did not realize that it would no longer allow us to set an avatar at all. It sends a clear signal that we are nothing to them. I didn’t think I would delete. But I’m really thinking about it now.

Edit: It’s also completely impossible to view my page at all from the website. And completely impossible to view any of my tags. Rendering my blog nearly unusable. It is hard to overstate my sadness.

You can see blogs on the website if use a url like https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/cherished-property. Who knows how long that’ll last though.

amysubmits:

As I kinda tried to get at in my post called Our Core, this stuff we’ve been going through lately has caused us to make adjustments in our D/s that we had never had to make before, but that mostly felt necessary to save time and emotional energy. Since then we’ve added my water rule back in but we aren’t back to normal. We’ve been working to find a new, temporary normal of sorts. We are trying to find a middle ground of maintaining enough D/s to keep us both feeling supported, for our relationship to feel close, and our D/s sustained without overloading or draining ourselves. 

We both recognize that things are tough and will remain so for a while. Neither of us are aiming for things to feel as good as they used to. We know we are going to be stressed and emotional and we are both making sacrifices. Yet we don’t want either of us to push that too far, to the point of not having our true needs met. We’ve had some difficult yet important discussions when that balance has been off. It’s helped us to see what the very most important, most crucial aspects of D/s are for us both. 

Something I’ve come to recognize through that process is that submissive presence is a thing. It wasn’t something we ever thought about or talked about before, but I’ve recently become conscious of it because I realized it’s something @cynicaldom really needs from me. We recognized the importance of dominant presence a couple of years ago, as was discussed in the comments on CD’s post titled attention. Because our D/s is mostly obedience based, my submissive presence isn’t quite the same as CD’s dominant presence as we discussed in that post. CD doesn’t need me to try to guess or assume his needs. He is fine with telling me what he wants from me or giving instructions when he wants something from me. However, I am kind of a turtle. If I feel that life is shaky, my instinct is to snap my limbs into my shell for protection, yet I don’t fully shut down, I manage to keep walking along. I’ve done this my entire life, as far as I can recall. I think I am quite good at functioning in a way that looks pretty normal to most other people. I can wear an invisible turtle shell of sorts while going about life. 

But CD knows me better than anyone, and he feels the shell even though it cannot be seen. I can do the same chores with an open heart or a guarded heart, but he can feel the difference. When I am open, my submission feeds his dominance in a big way. When I am guarded in my submission he still appreciates the obedience, but it’s not the same. Guarded submission is not as good at building him up as when I an emotionally naked, looking him in the eye and being emotionally present in the moment as I serve. 

Another part of submissive presence is being conscious in my submission to avoid resisting him. When I’m in my shell, it’s easy to look past or reject things that don’t particularly appeal to me. I become so focused on my own feelings, that I can lose touch with the fact that I am supposed to be open to what CD wants even if it’s not what I want. Part of what made me realize he needs my submissive presence was when I instinctively was resisting what he wanted and it caused some tension. It became clear through talking to him after the fact, that he was right. Per the D/s hierarchy, I shouldn’t have resisted him when it was a want because his wants come before mine. I had just acted instinctively because I was self-focused in my shell. In working through what happened, I asked him to tell me how he felt and among other things, he said ‘challenged’. That hit me in the chest and that word has stuck with me. I didn’t like what he wanted, so I resisted and that made him feel challenged. Knowing that I made him feel challenged was pretty heavy. It felt like failure. Struggling for power isn’t supposed to have a place in our relationship. So I got thinking about what I needed to do to avoid repeating that, and I thought the main answer was to be more conscious of what I’m choosing to do. I know that my wants come second so if I had thought ‘do I have good reason to resist this?” I would have realized no, and I wouldn’t have resisted. One of my new goals is to be more present by being more conscious in how I respond to him. If I instinctively want to resist, just asking myself if I need to based on moral, practical or consent reasons or whether I’m just not wanting to do something. 

I realized I had been walking around with my invisible shell and focusing only on my own emotions for quite a while. In part, I have a lot of big emotions and I need time and space to process them and I think that is extremely reasonable given the circumstances. I know CD finds it reasonable too. But I had been so stuck in my head and my own shell for a while that he stopped seeing really, truly seen by me. That is unacceptable to me because he is my person and I want to regularly remind him of how much he means to me, not just with words but in ways that he can really truly absorb it. I’ve learned that he needs me to be 100% emotionally and mentally present with him more often than I had been in order to absorb those feelings from me. So I’ve tried to dig deep and be more conscious in my interactions with CD. 

I have been working on intentionally ignoring any stray thoughts about other aspects of life when we are talking or cuddling or interacting in any way. I’ve tried not to linger at looking at any sort of screen if he starts speaking, I turn to look at him right away. If he and I are spending time together I try to think of nothing but what is happening in that moment. I’ve been trying to stop and question myself to make sure I have good reason when I find myself wanting to question him or resist his instructions. It seems to me that he’s back to being able to fully absorb the love, appreciation and admiration that I feel for him. I am focused only on him when we interact, so he absorbs more from me because my interactions with him show him that he is my only priority in that moment, as he should be. This dedicated attention refills him because it shows him admiration, love and respect in a very obvious way and he needs a lot of that from me as his girl. Like so many other elements of our D/s, it isn’t just a single layer benefit, either. It is often better for me when I shut out those other worries and intentionally stay present. Having that focus in the present moment gives me more room to breathe and makes me feel less stressed, and I can absorb more positive feelings from our interactions, too. When I behave in ways that allow him to absorb more admiration and respect, that refills him - and then he is able to give more back to me, and the exchange continues back and forth, benefiting us both in multiple ways. 

k1ng0fbeasts:

thetriskeliondiaries:

I’m Gonna Spell It Out.

I don’t care how long you’ve been doing this.

I don’t care if you’ve been in the lifestyle for two weeks or 40+ years.

I don’t care how old you are.

I don’t care how “well known” you are.

I don’t fucking care.

If you are making a submissive break a rule for the express purpose of punishing her for that rule break? You’re an abusive fuck.

If you make a rule that is “no cumming without permission” and then bind her mouth so she cannot beg and belabor her clit mercilessly until her body breaks and she orgasms beyond her own will, and for that, you punish her?

You are an abuser.

You are an abuser.

You are not controlling her mind. You are not bending her will. You are not a dom above doms. You are not an expert. You are not a master.

You are practicing mental and emotional abuse. You are breaking her. You are pushing beyond safety. You are pushing beyond consent.

This. Is. Abuse.

Submissives, eyes open. Ears open.

This is not complete surrender. This is not your utmost for his highest. This is your destruction for his delight.

Run.

{straight from an ask given to @instructor144 and my own recent run-in with a wannadom named @tigerbdsm. Fuck this}

@his-queen-my-king very well said.

The person you speak of is a domineering asshole who does not understand the concept of D/s.

D/s is a love story where each in the relationship have a deep desire to please the other. It is often mistaken for BDSM.

I’m not an expert on anything other than what makes a successful D/s relationship between myself and baby girl. The reality is there are no experts on the subject. There are many who will give you an opinion on how they feel a relationship should be. And that’s great but there are no experts on the subject matter because the dynamics are different in all relationships.

The one thing that remains a constant is the trust required for the exchange of power along with realizing she can take her power back at any time. Personally I don’t use the self given title of dominant. It’s become convoluted and I no longer want the association of what it has come to represent. I don’t use the word submissive for baby girl either.

I have been in the life a long time. I offer no advice and I am certainly not an expert. I do know that I no longer want to be associated with the terminology of D/s due to what you have written above. It has come to represent abuse and I will not be associated with anything or anyone who abuses a woman.

The man who abuses a woman is weak and a coward who makes himself feel good abusing a woman. But let me also add the fact of the woman who stays and takes abuse is 50% of the problem. Don’t put all the blame on a man. Blame both of them.

As always I offer whomever a chance to respond. I said it and I will not hide from anyone having a different opinion.

The man who abuses a woman is weak and a coward who makes himself feel good abusing a woman. But let me also add the fact of the woman who stays and takes abuse is 50% of the problem. Don’t put all the blame on a man. Blame both of them. 

Of what use is it to blame the person who was abused and stayed? Do you think people who are abused do not feel shame? Deep, endless, unabiding shame? Is your goal simply the interest of fairness? It can’t be in fairness to men, because not all men are abusers. So is your concern fairness to the man who abuses women? Ask yourself, why does a part of you identify with the abuser in this situation, why do you want to see them treated “fairly”.

There is a clear difference between someone who abuses another person, and a person who does not immediately recognize their own worth. And that’s completely ignoring all the people who can’t leave because they don’t immediately have the resources.

I think the following applies to you. I think it does because you think the abusive man deserves fairness. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, but it certainly applies to the majority of men who think like you do.

The child of an abusive father hates his mother more than his abusive father. I understand she could not recognize her own worth, but she couldn’t recognize mine? She did not recognize her baby boy’s worth enough to leave? To not have been in that situation in the first place?
What the childhood survivor of abuse fail to realize is this is a psychological survival strategy. They know, deep in their bones, how useless it would be to blame the abusive father. What shame the abuser feels is transparently dishonest, because they always abuse again. There is no hope for a sense of control in blaming them, their disregard for you as the child is all too clear, there is nothing that could have made them act differently. So the focus shifts to the mother, to the other victim. Why didn’t you save me? In this betrayal, the child of an abused mother finds some sense of a hope of control. 

Male children of abuse must put aside their hatred for women, and recognize it for what it is, hatred for their fathers that they knew their father’s wouldn’t give a shit about. So they put that blame in the only place they knew someone would give a shit about it. It’s truly terrible, how even this betrayal is almost an act of love. They hate their mother’s because they knew they would actually care.

Say the above is not your story, as it is the story of so many men who think abused woman share in the blame in their abuse, let alone 50%. The fact remains, one has acted, and one was acted upon. Saying the abused do not deserve blame is not some man-hating meme to shield weak women from their due, it is recognition that one acts and one is acted upon, and everything else is rationalization. However tragic that rationalization may be.

amysubmits:

One of the first things we remember learning from others in the D/s community (partly through a BDSM podcast called A Royal Pair talking about their structure falling away when life got in the way and that causing trouble for them, and partly through @cherished-property writing about how to lean in.) We understood the idea of how it can be helpful to fight past the inclination to lay off of D/s when you are busy or stressed. That while our instincts may be to allow for more slack, that tightening up, or at least holding things steady can provide structure that can feel like more relief than a break would. 

When we first learned of this concept @cynicaldom decided he wouldn’t usually cut me slack for “ordinary” bad-days or routine little problems. For example, being extra-tired or having a headache, or period cramps, wouldn’t be a good enough reason to skip doing the dishes. Not remembering it was my workout day wouldn’t be an excuse to get away with not doing it when I have a set schedule I can reference. Ultimately, the decision for when I get excused from routine chores is up to CD. Sometimes he cuts me breaks for smaller things if he feels it would help more than hurt, but generally, he won’t excuse me from regular rules for fairly ordinary stresses or problems for the sake of holding our D/s steady. Most of the time, I think that works well for us. 

With what we’ve been going through lately, we’ve dropped more rules than we had in over 2.5 years. We were well beyond normal stress, and it just felt necessary. 

My household chores, working out, caring for our dogs, and drinking a set amount of water are the rules of mine which are routinely on my to-do list. Those are the rules that have been dropped since my dad was hospitalized for a week, about a month back. The household chores and dog care got removed because we weren’t home much. CD wasn’t going to make me workout in a hospital room, so that got dropped too. The water ruled was mostly dropped just to allow me to lean on an unhealthy crutch, honestly. 

Since that week at the hospital, our schedule has been all over the place. We thought things were getting closer to a new normal but then things got really chaotic again. This week we’ve had about 4 normal days out of 7. Though even the normal days haven’t really felt normal, as we fell behind on work and are trying to do double-duty to catch up, there is still the heavy emotional weight of everything which is difficult to describe but many days it feels like our focus is just on getting through. 

These past 5 weeks or so, I’ve been doing housework as he tells me to, which has been less frequently than used to be required by rules. At times, the dishes have piled high, as has the laundry. His side of things has been impacted some too. Our lawn is overgrown and so on. He’s been helping with laundry and for a while he was doing more cooking too. I’m back to drinking water but most of the other rules that were initially dropped have been switched to when-instructed instead of at a set schedule like they had always been. 

This ‘off’ period has helped me learn more about us. On a typical Saturday, I normally would wake up expecting to take the dogs out and feed them. Then throughout the day I would do two loads of laundry, workout or do the dishes depending on the schedule, and drink 5 glasses of water. It’s a little odd knowing I don’t have that list that I will be held to today, or what my day will look like on other days. I’ve found myself feeling a bit more sassy than usual, and looking to roughhouse more, to tug at the leash a bit - to make sure it’s there. It is there, as much as it ever was. And I see I’ve seen our power exchange in lots of little ways even without that handful of structure-based rules. In some ways I would have noticed either way, but others I normally wouldn’t think much about. But with some rules gone, I see my brain looking for our D/s more, and I do find it, and when I see it then I feel it. 

• I struggle to eat when I’m stressed as anxiety gives me a nauseous feeling. One day at the hospital with family around, he handed me a granola bar and his eyes lingered, staring me down for a few moments afterward. I wasn’t hungry and I didn’t want it but I understood that he wasn’t asking and I felt his dominance. 
  
• I felt it this morning when he told me to put my seat belt on. 
• I’ve had a bedtime more frequently lately than I used to, due to us being busier. It’s caused some friction but we’ve gotten through okay.  
  
• He’s still been the one to say when we are going where, like when we will go to someone’s house or what time we’ll run to do an errand. 
  
• Yesterday evening I texted to ask if he’d rather I meet him where he was, or head home, I realized I was seeking his guidance and trying to please him. 
  
• One day as we were leaving I sensed that CD was unhappy. Not mad, but something was up. “I spilled my drink, you looked up at me, I said ‘i’ve got it’ but you kept staring at me the entire time I cleaned it up, and you asked again what you could do. I just wish you would have listened to me and trusted that I had it handled.” He explained that it likely bothered him more because of the stress that we were under. It wasn’t a big deal, and I don’t imagine we would have discussed it if I wouldn’t have asked what was wrong. But it helped drive home the message he is always telling me - that obedience is something he highly values from me, how it makes him feel trusted and loved. That doesn’t go away when we drop a few rules. He is still the man who wants me to trust him and obey him. 
  
• When he tells me what he wants me to do and I joke about not wanting to, to tug on the leash, he pulls back with a look. 
  
• When we were kind of “on shift” caring for my dad and he desperately needed a nap texted me “I’m going to try to nap on the couch but wake me up if you need anything, and don’t worry about accidentally waking me up with noise.” His desire to be there for me never goes away. 
  
• One day he gave me a spanking that I didn’t want but I later realized I needed.
  
• When I’m overwhelmed by choices or options he still helps guide me through or make little decisions for me. The tiniest of things. “Should I shower tonight? Should I diffuse or go to bed with my hair wet? What should I eat for lunch?”
  
• When someone said hey can you guys bring plates, napkins and cups for the party? I still looked to him before answering. 
  
• On top of everything else, we’ve had car trouble, and he has jumped on getting that handled and just filled me in on the plans for things. 
• One day I was worried about our schedule and I was asking several questions while he was trying to shower, do his hair, etc. Along the lines of “if its X-miles away will we really have enough time if we are doing at 4? Are we taking this way or that way?” kind of things. Eventually he said “I have it handled. It’s not your place to be worrying about it.” and it kinda stung at first even though his tone wasn’t rude. He is usually very willing to answer all of my questions so it surprised me that he wasn’t, I guess. But I realized he was again feeling like I wasn’t trusting him to lead, or stepping on his space.  
• I’ve asked to buy more little things than usual. Probably a poor instinct to try to make myself feel better. He’s said “yes” a lot, but I’m the one asking and he’s the one deciding and that is still D/s even if it feels like he spoils me..it’s not my decision. 
  
• He still instructs I still obey. 
  
• He leads, I follow. 

We’ll go back to more rules and structure when he thinks we are ready. We like our rules and our normal structure. I would miss it if we didn’t go back to it when life calmed down. But in the meantime, obedience is enough. He’s tried to explain to me why obedience is at the top of his priority list dozens of times in the past. Of course I understand disobedience is bad, but I’ve never understood why he ranks obedience as sooo valuable or powerful to him that he lists it as his #1 need within D/s. Obedience feels rather simple or basic to me much of the time. But maybe I’m starting to understand his perspective in a new light. It has the power to be our lifeblood when other things have to fall away. Maybe the core of our D/s has always been obedience, but it certainly is right now. That’s pretty powerful and valuable.