The Use Of Ritual in D/s
Bringing what’s missing back, and bringing forward what’s fallen behind.


I saved this small quote from an email message: By repeating a specific pattern, you bring up a specific mental or emotional state. And it's quite powerful

To me, that’s ritual. Rituals can be used to bring about a certain mindset. To remind the people involved of a certain activity or incident. To renew the conscious decision to submit or dominate the person you are with. They create a structure in which a D/s relationship can flourish – remaining a constant safe place, or in some cases, growing to a new level of depth and understanding. They are pomp and circumstance for some people. They are security for some people.

When C and I first got together in Cheyenne, we had little rituals. Nothing major, but the one I remember most was – after dinner, and the dishes were done, he’d be in his recliner, and I’d go kneel between his legs and lay my head against his chest while he watched TV. We never talked about this – it wasn’t something that he said “do this” or I said “I want to do this.” I just started doing it. . It was a way to connect with my submission, after a long day of dominating computer programming code, and housework. It was my way of renewing that feeling on a daily basis. It was a secure time for me. We were physically and emotionally connected at that point, regardless of my job stress or his school problems – we were just what we had intended to be.

Years later –after our time apart – C and I talked about how we did a lot of things wrong when we were living together the first time. How we took a whole lot of misleading cues from our time in AOL Chat rooms (Le Chateau Dungeon, Le Chateau Serenity, Chateau Royale – circa 1994-95) as how we were supposed to be – and act – and believe. In the end, it wasn’t those things that separated us, but they definitely had a hand in setting us up for failure. I believe we’ve made conscious efforts since then to avoid the “trappings” of D/s, and to simply concentrate on our relationship, and its format.

As everyone who’s reading this knows ad naseum, C’s gone. He won’t be back now for over two months. There are a few things I wish we’d have had time to arrange before he left and a few well placed rituals is one of them.

I have a ritual. Every night before I go to sleep, I say goodnight to C and tell him I love him. That’s my thing – it’s my signal that it’s time to go to sleep (though, I often can’t. I sleep like crap these days). But it’s not a D/s ritual, and it’s got nothing to do with “that part” of our relationship. I’ll be the first to admit that I have trouble sometimes remembering that this is our chosen dynamic. It’s why we *got* together the first time, and it’s why we got *back* together. With him so far away, and so little communication between us, it falls by the wayside often. Part of the reason I’ve been writing like a fiend here the last several weeks is because I’ve made a conscious effort to reinforce that part of myself while he’s gone. As I’ve said, I’m sending them to him via the good ol’ US Mail and perhaps in reading them, it’s reinforcing the dominant part of him. And when he gets back, we’ll have time – or make time to start putting some structure in place – so that the next time he goes – I’ll have a little more solid ground to sit and wait for him on.

Thing is, C and I have never really talked about this kind of thing. The man is in the Navy, for gawd sakes – he’s got all the ritual and ceremony anyone could want. What makes me think he’s got room in his life for anymore?

And, what makes me think that I have a right to suggest it? (Don’t fall off your chair in horror. No, Screamer hasn’t been kidnapped and replaced with a “trew submissive”. I’ll come back to that, I promise)

I did some web research (as always) about this, before I started writing tonight. 95% of what I ran across was that “be naked at home/ask permission to pee/kneel before bed” stuff that I can’t wrap my mind around. Call me jaded. But I’ve seen far too much of that stuff used cyber-ly, and far too many relationships that were supposedly built on a set of rituals that included those be tossed to the wayside when a better looking dominant – or a bigger-breasted submissive came along. I did find a few pages that seemed to use ritual and structure in a more – and I really don’t mean to offend anyone, if you do have the above rituals in your relationship (if I was trying to offend you, trust me, you’d know it) – a more realistic way. However, as usual, I was disappointed in what I found.

I suppose, to make this a worthwhile endeavor, I should come up with an example, hm? Easier said than done. However, for the sake of not being vague (sorry, private joke to C), I’ll give one.

A question, with a specific answer. He asks the question – always gets the same answer from me. Depending on the question and answer, it could take me from my typical mindset (Type A – Anal retentive – never *still*) to another mindset entirely. This is something that could be used whether he was home or not.

There are, of course, tons of other ideas out there. And if, when C gets home, he wants to discuss implementing this in our relationship (and I hope that he will), I’ll have an idea of some other examples to present to him. I don’t want us to be so structured that he feels the Military Inflexibility at home as well as at work. I *really* don’t want that. I want home for him to be – as a very good friend of mine put it to me recently – an oasis for him from that. But, at the same time, there is a certain amount of structure that *I* do need – for my own self-identity. And I’m hoping there’s a way to make it work smoothly for us both. (this is re: the And, what makes me think that I have a right to suggest it? comment. Told you I’d come back to that)