Testing…Testing….1..2..3..4…
Or, why I need to know I can’t win

One thing I’ve discovered over my years of exploring BDSM is that submission takes a great deal of trust. Not only to know that your partner won’t harm you – that’s only one small part of it.

For me to feel safe, and completely surrender myself to someone, I also have to feel some other things.
- I need to know that he means what he says. That he won’t back down. I need to know that he won’t stop just because I whine a little. If I am in any way, shape or form in control of what’s happening, I won’t be at all satisfied with what I’m doing, and frankly, it’ll feel like a waste of energy.
- I need to know that he’s at peace with what he’s doing.

I only want to deal with one of those things right now, but actually, all three bear some looking into.

This is the important one for this entry: I need to know that he means what he says. That he won’t back down.

For me to be able to submit to someone body and soul – in a completely surrendered way – I have to feel that I’m safe. Not just physically, but emotionally as well. If I can get my way – if he backs down because I complain or whine – if he doesn’t do something that he feels he wants to do, because he doesn’t know how I’m going to feel about it – I don’t feel safe. I feel bad. I feel like I’m “topping from the bottom”. I feel like I’m manipulating him. I feel that for some reason, he has to hold himself back from me – and then I start to do the same.

I’m the kind of person who tests boundaries. I poke at something until I feel completely sure that it’s iron-clad. Once I find it is, I’m at peace with it, and it becomes part of me. If I find that it isn’t, I start to feel like maybe none of the boundaries are, and I start to poke at all of them as well. I don’t do this maliciously or sometimes even consciously. But it’s a behavior pattern that I recognize within myself.

To be completely vulnerable to someone, I have to believe each thing they say. Thus, if they say something – I expect them to follow through. If they don’t, I become less vulnerable to them. To be completely open to someone, I have to know, without a doubt, that they’re strong enough to handle their end of the bargain. If you give me a safe place to be open and exposed to you, I need to know that you have enough courage in your convictions to keep it that way.

Don’t get me wrong, I am able to submit to someone without all that. But to me, that submission comes with limits (not your garden variety BDSM limits – personal boundaries). I wouldn’t be completely open and vulnerable to someone in that situation. I would be submissive, but it, for me, would not be a complete surrender of my “walls”. There would always be pieces of myself that would hang back, waiting to see what he did next, and if he stuck by his word. I had a couple of relationships like this. They were satisfying for a time, but they never got me completely to where I wanted to be with my submission. I never felt completely exposed, nor did I feel completely safe. Happy, yes. Vulnerable? No.

I don’t think you can achieve this overnight. I believe that a relationship like I describe above takes years of work from the people involved. Trust like that is not built in a day.

Nor do I think it’s a goal that all submissives subscribe to, nor should they. Not everyone wants that kind of vulnerability in their lives. It’s not a goal to work towards for every submissive. It’s a current personal preference of *mine*, and one that I continue to work on daily.
--

Over the last several weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of writing – about D/s and about my self-image and my weight. When I spoke to C last, he made mention of the fact that he’d learned quite a few things about me that I hadn’t shared with him before. He had gained some insight into why I feel the way I do about certain issues. The reason for this is two-fold. First, it’s an “act of good faith” on my part to begin unraveling who and what I am, so that he can see beyond the walls I’ve erected around myself, and second – it’s so that *I* can see around them as well.

Over the years, for one reason or another, I’ve set many parts of myself aside. While I was with M, it was because I was more focused on *his* problems than my own. And with C, it’s of course been the Navy that’s taken first priority in our home (and will continue to, I’m sure. The Military has a way of doing that *chuckle*). But it seems to be time for me now to start taking a look at those parts of myself that I’ve shut down, or put away until “later”, so that I can get a good clear picture of what the rest of my life needs to be. Taking down those walls, one at a time, is hard work. I’ve taken y’all along with me on this journey, and I thank you for your comments and e-mails along the way. I don’t think when I started this blogger, that that was my intention. But for whatever reason, here I am.