A Moment on Trust

Trust is defined as reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence, or the confident expectation of something; hope. This one word, something so simple by definition has been the ending point of so many of my past relationships, both vanilla and not. It has been enough of a problem that I doubted my ability to truly trust anyone again. Call me jaded or pessimistic if you like, but I wasn’t in a position where I trusted anyone with my emotions. I was doing your very classic broken heart thing of holing up and not letting anyone in. This behavior came about because of two of my recent relationships that ended in very messy ways. The first ended in December of 2008 the first time, she decided to leave me for some guy she met at work. It was difficult because this was a good BDSM style relationship, or so I thought. It was apparently in the end one sided, as she was unsure about what she wanted out of said relationship. So while she held parts of herself back I was giving everything I could. The story continues with the person I met a bit after that breakup. She was the type of girl that would tell you anything you wanted to hear. She swore she would never do that to me. Foolish me I listened, and the moment I was out of sight for a little while she was off with someone else. So I had pretty much stopped believing that people say what they mean or that anyone was honest and upfront. I will say this right now, it is not a good way to be, because when you start thinking that no one is honest with you or straight forward in relationships you stop being that way yourself. When things were going poorly between those relationships and while they were ending I can say that I wasn’t very honest with those two women. Not because I was trying to hurt them but because turn about was fair play. Being intelligent and observant I knew most of what they were doing before they ever actually spilled the information to me. In fact both times it was my prompting that finally got them to admit they were cheating in the first place. I never once took things as far as they had, but I stopped being as faithful to them. I allowed people to flirt more and in general pushed the line of acceptability inside of a relationship. Back to the topic at hand, trust.

Trust is something that is essential in a BDSM relationship. It permeates ever part of the relationship between a dominant and submissive. You must trust that your partner will voice their limits, that they know what they are doing, that they are honest about their past partners and activities, and finally that your partner will respect your limits and you as a person. Because the trust between a dominant and submissive is so essential it must extend to all aspects of your relationship. The second you lose any amount of trust in your partner the relationship will begin to crumble. Believe me when I tell you once you have lost some of the trust it is almost impossible to get it back. You see that is the problem, in order for many people to express their deepest darkest secrets they need to trust the person they are telling to not judge them. I know very few people that will tell someone the truth if they know that doing so will cause them to lose something they hold dear to themselves. Worse still is that once someone’s trust has been broken enough they stop trusting anyone. It usually takes an extraordinary person to restore ones trust in others. I have both broken trust and had mine broken. My hope at this point is that my transgressions have been balanced out by what has been done to me and that I can start again.

It is my intent to start things with Kai with a clean slate. I have no reason not to trust her no matter what has been done to me in the past. She has shown herself to be a trustworthy person in our interactions as friends and this person is the same one that I am with now. Just because we have entered into a different type of relationship doesn’t mean that the people we are changed. I can already tell you it has been hard to keep the slate clean. Not because I don’t want to trust Kai, but rather because I am afraid of being hurt again. You see I am of the opinion that the deeper you love the more you hurt. In saying that I must also say that I love very deeply and when things happen they tend to hurt. When that first relationship ended I was a zombie for couple of days. I just did what I needed to do and nothing else; really I don’t remember much of those days. The second one hurt a little less because I was expecting it to happen and prepared some. But everything that happens leaves scars and changes you. It is my hope that I have been changed for the better and not for the worse.

Finishing the Rant on Rules

I left you last time with my thoughts on safewords as a rule. I thought I would go over a couple of other basic rules. First there are a few safety concerns that people don’t often think about, like decent strike points for SM play. There are rules about where you should and should not strike on the body. In this I think there are some hard rules like areas over the kidneys, or any other organs including obvious things like eyes and less obvious things like lymph nodes in the underarms and neck. Well for striking the neck should be out for so many reasons. Now there are things that you should know a lot about before you ever strike them and still they shouldn’t be obvious targets, anywhere on the face for instance. There is so much damage you can do with only a little pressure to someone’s face. I know some people think it is a great place to strike for the humiliating effect of “putting the submissive in their place”. Really when it comes down to it BDSM isn’t about no rules and doing whatever you want. It is about calculated risks for the pleasure of yourself and your partner. Everything you do in BDSM can be dangerous is done without knowing the risks and taking the right precautions to make sure you are as safe as you can be.

So I guess the thing that I am wanting to get at with these last two posts is that everything has rules. When you know what the rules are you can decided which ones to bend and break. Knowledge is what makes a good dominant in the end, but you also need the desire to acquire knowledge. The same is true of a good submissive in a different way. A submissive must seek to know themselves and what they enjoy. They should know what their favorite activities should look like and feel like so that if a dominant is doing it wrong they can feel out the potential danger to themselves.

Now that I have said that no one will know everything when they start their journey into BDSM. I wouldn’t even venture to say that I know everything now; there is always something else for me to know and experience. But, there is always something you can learn, before I ever lifted a flogger I knew things about it and how to hit the target and what not to flog. You can read about how to control the tails of a flogger you could watch someone use one and even be trained to do so if you thought it would help. When I picked one up I practiced with it first on a pillow on the air, I got taste of the feeling by hitting my arm with it. I wanted to know everything that I could about the experience I was giving someone else so that I could know how to change that experience. The point of BDSM is to create and receive enjoyment from acts you perform. It is not to endanger yourself or your partner.

I think I will end this rant there for now. It is something that I am looking forward to getting comments on by those of you that read this blog. Perhaps you will help me expand my views and provide me with new knowledge that I can use to further please my partner.

A Moment of Reflection on the Idea of Safewords

I was having a conversation with Kai last night about the differences between those in more “hardcore” relationships and those that are casual players. When it comes down to it I view this scale as a sliding one, a person doesn’t have to be all the way on one end or the other. If I had to rate myself on this scale I would say I am in the middle somewhere. I really don’t just play on the weekends or casually, though that is how I started. In the same breath, I don’t prescribe to some of the more strict things that are common to those in 24/7 power exchange or “hardcore” relationships either. Kai, on the other hand, really is the more casual kink, this is changing but that is still what I would class her as. The people she has played with have been sparse and the sessions they have done together few. So given that, I didn’t really find her post all the surprising when I read it. She prescribes to the classic BDSM rules, those that everyone that is breaking into the lifestyle should know and follow. This particular post of hers was about the use and prevalence of the safeword in the scene/community. She encountered some quotes that claimed that “a submissive with a safeword is a dominant on their knees”.

Her initial affront at this is from the casual player mentality, which on some levels I share with her. If you are a person that has had several partners or is changing a partner a safeword should be necessary. I say this for the safety of everyone involved in the scene. There are limits that everyone possesses. I do mean everyone; anyone that says they have no limits is an accident waiting for a place and time. So to a casual player a safeword is a hard and fast rule. If you don’t have one you are stupid and looking to be hurt. However, to a couple that has been together for some time and knows each other very well a safeword might not be required. In fact, it may make both of them get more out of a particular scene if there isn’t a safeword. I am not saying that every scene they have should be absent a safeword but that is their call not mine. What I am saying is that a lack of a safeword isn’t intrinsically a bad idea. The concept of safewordless play has come up in my experience in BDSM. This was because my partner thought she would get more out of this particular scene if there was no safeword. The scene never took place so I can’t tell you what the experience is like to go without one but it was a request that was made. This sort of brings us to the concept of BDSM “rules”.

Many people are insulted by the thought that BDSM has rules. Claiming that the scene is a place without rules and limitation is foolish and I pity anyone caught in a relationship with a partner that believes this way. Having said that there are rules in BDSM play doesn’t mean there are things that one should never do, it is merely saying that there are things you need to know. For instance, since it pertains to Kai’s post and this conversation topic, the idea of a safeword. This is a BDSM rule, as you read above I am not against choosing not to use this rule but it is still a rule. Now what do I mean when I say it is a rule if I also think that you can choose not to use it? Well allow me to explain. When I say that you can bend and break the rules of BDSM this is what I mean. If you know the risks involved with what you are doing and why you are doing it, and your partner knows the same, you can bend or break the rules. How does this apply to a safeword? Well if you are a Dominant you must know why a submissive would need a safeword in the first place. For some of you that fancy yourselves dominant this may seem unnecessary. If a submissive is submitting to you why would they need a way to retract that submission? Well perhaps you cross a boundary they didn’t know they had. Maybe conceptually playing with a particular toy doesn’t bother them but when you sit down with them and fire up that violet wand and touch them with it the sensation scares them. If they start to feel unsafe then something could go wrong and disaster strikes, you have a person that is bound terrified and struggling, your scene went from BDSM to the realm of torture and you have no idea how it happened. See, with a safeword the submissive partner can let you know that something makes them feel unsafe before you hit the point that they are panicking and the scene takes a turn for the worse. I can already hear the protests from those completely against the use of safewords. They sound something like this “But then the submissive is controlling the scene and that is topping from the bottom” or something equally stupid. I hate to break it to all those dominants out there but in the end the submissive is in control of the scene from the start. If you think that people should submit to you just because you proclaim yourself a dominant this is not the lifestyle for you. Why? Simply put, you are an asshole that likes to abuse your partner and have a false sense of entitlement. Submission is the greatest of gifts and can be retracted at any moment for any reason. As a dominant you must earn your submissive by being the best you can be. That involved admitting your errors correcting yourself and always trying to learn and be better. The best dominants I know admit to their errors and are ten times harder on themselves for making them than there ever are on a submissive that errs.

I will leave this train of thought for now before it becomes so long that no one will read it. I will continue with some other “rules” of BDSM in a later post.

Random Thoughts on Dynamics

Today I find myself very unsure of what to write. Recently I went on a trip to see Kai. Due to location constraints nothing of note on the kink scale could take place. There was still an amount of power exchange that went on; as I am sure will always be the case between the two of us. But there were no scenes or floggings or overt displays of control. I guess I will go into that, the dynamics of a kink relationship around others.

You have many different types of BDSM relationships. You have everything from the “weekend warriors” as I have heard them called to the 24/7 lifers. Each of them seems to think there is something wrong with or less genuine about the other. However, that argument is best left for another time. Right now I am going to talk about a dynamic, which in my opinion should be common to them all and that is the way the couple treats one another outside of scenes or around “vanilla” people. I think the reason this strikes me today is during my trip to see Kai we spent a great deal of time around vanilla people, specifically in this case her parents and relatives. Now the idea that a relationship between two people can completely change because of the presence or lack of people is very foreign to me and I have never seen it work. When I say this I mean examples like the couple that is constantly at each other’s throats when their friends are around claiming they are fine when they are alone together, or the abusive relationship that is “ok” when they are alone. So since you can’t completely change the dynamic of your relationship this is about controlling it so others see it as “normal”. In this Kai and I do very well together, when others are around we keep our dynamic below the surface. She is well aware of what is appropriate and what is not so she doesn’t us the presence of people to push that line. I also know what is appropriate for mixed company and alter my statements and actions accordingly. As I have read over and thought about the last bit of this post I realized that it has become somewhat of a “what I want/like in a submissive” post. I promise this was not the original intent and I will try and bring it back to something more meaningful.

I think what I am saying is that you don’t need to be the “freak controlling/controlled” couple nor do you need to give up what you are when you’re in public. There is a balance that can be maintained fairly easily. I have heard several great ideas for some of the common things that BDSM couples do in their relationships. If you like formal names such as Sir, or Master find a public name that you can agree on with your submissive. This could be something as simple as Mine or anything else that you both think is fitting for public circumstances. If your submissive likes being commanded you can insert the publicly acceptable please into the command but make her aware that this is for obfuscation purposes only and it still is a command and if she fails to perform it she will be punished later. You can very easily pass off your submissive sitting at your feet as being cute or cuddly if she is simply allowed to sit opposed to kneeling etc. I think the biggest thing in these cases is that both parties know the expectations before the situations arise. That way no one is left saying “I didn’t know that was the way it was”. While Kai and I had no specific things that were decided on before I came to visit I am certain that she knows that had she misbehaved she would have been reprimanded for it.

That brings me to a completely experienced based observation. I have noticed that with my play partners that if we scene more than once or twice our dynamic bleeds into our relationship outside of play a little. It is simple things like if I offer them a seat they sit simply because I said they could, if I ask for a drink they get it, there is always a different feel between regular play partners. I am not entirely sure where it comes from but it is something I have noticed. I will leave you with that thought, and perhaps you will evaluate your own play partners and see if you feel the same.

Knowing the Road Ahead

I left you last time with my thoughts on a collar. Today I am going to shoot for a long post as I will be headed out of town to spend time with Kai for the next five days. I may put another post up tonight to cover tomorrow but I don’t know. I consistently find that there is so much that I want to talk about and yet I don’t have a way to get into it nor do I know how to approach it.

I have decided that I am going to hit on something that a lot of people don’t think about when they think of D/s couples. There is a style to each dominant and submissive. Many on either side of the D/s relationship often things that a Top is a Top and a bottom is a bottom. I know once you have seen me say that it makes sense that each person has their own style. But I have seen a few cases where a dominant starts “training” a submissive in the hopes that they will become exactly what he wants. In the end this is bad for both parties, if the person that you are taking as a submissive doesn’t have the characteristics you want already the idea that you can train them to have it isn’t really sound. It is very difficult to change another person. In fact, I give my friends vanilla relationship advice that says just that. If you go into a relationship thinking that you will change someone or that they will change for you, then you have set yourself up for a disaster of a relationship.

Ok so I just want to say make sure you know your dominant/submissive before you shoot for a relationship. Take Kai and I for example, through talking and through a couple of scenes I have learned a lot about her as a submissive. I know I still have a lot to learn about her but at the very least I know enough to start something with her. I know that her desires as a submissive work well with my style as a dominant. I also know that my style as a dominant has so far worked well with her style of being a submissive. This isn’t the way it happens all the time. I have been in a couple of situations where the submissive I thought was something I wanted as actually in conflict with my style. I am not the type of dominant that likes to baby sit his submissive. If I set ground rules or something, in a scene or otherwise, I expect them followed. I don’t want to have to check on my submissive every few hours to make sure they are doing as they are told. Some submissives really like this type of play; they like to be punished and will disobey in order to get that. I don’t mind this type of play as long as the scene is supposed to be that or the relationship includes a little bit of it. It isn’t my favorite type of scene. I don’t like having to do it all the time. So if a submissive really wants that kind of attention then they probably aren’t for me. I really don’t like someone who tops from the bottom, again something that some submissives really love to do. I do like submissives that truly like to please their dominant. I find that they are very compatible with me, because I am a person that will push myself until I get what I want.

So in short this post is a know your partner post. I could tell you so much about Kai but since they are personal things and you will likely never be involved in a scene with her it isn’t something I feel like sharing at the moment. I think I will leave this post here while I finish getting myself in a situation where I can leave for the weekend and I will see you all on Tuesday.

Scenes and Collars

So I have given you the start up to my first scene with Kai. Once again if you have been reading her blog you already know a great deal about how it was planned out. We talked over a lot of what was acceptable and what wasn’t, what we wanted to do etc. So in the interest of time I am going to skip over any of the specifics of that. I will only say that I think that pre-scene conversations and planning sessions are definitely a requirement for first time partners. Not only does it help the dominant get ideas, it also allows for limits, you can also learn about any medical things that could be important to the scene and so on.

If I can I like to very symbolically start a scene. I enjoy starting the scene in a way that removes the submissive’s control, whether that is collaring them, requiring them to kneel, or even choosing their clothing and making them model it. This first scene with Kai was started by collaring her. She had purchased a very pretty collar on the trip before the one out to visit me. Lucky for me it was a locking collar, I find that when you lock a collar on a submissive it is more impactful. It makes it even better when you can lock the collar in a seductive way, kiss the back of your submissive’s neck as you close the collar and lock it, make it something personal to the both of you. Now before you get all excited about what you think will be a piece of erotica I am going to disappoint you because I going to talk about collars.

For many a collar is a fashion statement or something you use for control. While it can be all these things to me there is a difference between a collar and my collar. A collar is nothing more than a piece of leather or cloth that you wrap around your neck. Whether you use it for a scene or as the perfect accessory to your goth night out it is still just a collar. My collar is more akin to a promise right or an engagement. If I offer you my collar then it is a very serious commitment from me. It isn’t just a piece of leather anymore it becomes a symbol of my commitment to you. It will be something we will pick out together or I will make for you. There is just so much that is implied by giving someone my collar. In this I might be different than many dominants. I have seen some offer their collar to anyone off the cuff with very little thought about it. Training collars and my collar as also different, I have been asked to train a submissive in the past with no intention of them staying with me. I have never actually done it but I have considered it and made sure that I knew what the difference was between a training collar and my collar.

I think I have impressed upon you what a collar means to me. So perhaps I will leave you there to think about the meaning of what might come.

A Bit About My Relationship With Kai

So by now you are probably asking yourselves (if I had more readers than one at the moment), I thought this blog was about you and Kai? Yes, I know I have spent five whole posts talking about myself. But, I felt it was important that you know where I have come from before I tell you where I am going. If you have been following Kai’s blog you know already that we were friends in college, though not part of the same groups inside of those friends. The whole truth is that for the first two or three years that I knew her it was my goal on some level to break her a little. I know this may sound odd but, I was one of those touchy friends that she had in college, though in my case the hugs were more often than not accompanied by complaining and struggle on her part. I find it interesting to imagine now what she might trade for a hug from me or a small kiss, because back then I would have found it difficult to imagine a world in which she didn’t protest at a simple hug. We didn’t really become better friends until our last year in college. I cannot really remember a particular event that lead to us becoming closer but I imagine a large part of it had to do with the amount of time we spent together, that and for a short time I was involved with one of her closer friends. We began to talk about both her relationships, which at the time weren’t going the way she had hoped but were at the very least fun, and my relationships. All that said though, we still weren’t great friends just close enough that the serious complaints at a hug faded. Even back then I could recognize traits in her that I would want in a partner, granted these were mostly friend related things and had nothing to do with kink but they were there none the less. For instance, she has an excellent sense of humor and can both seem an immature teenager and still maintain a certain amount of maturity about her. I would like to think I can do those things as well.

As you can probably guess, our relationship didn’t change much in that last year of college. I still like to find the occasional boundary line for her and push it a little and I think that carries over into the present on some levels. But, at the time the boundaries were rarely sexual actions, it was mostly casual touching or sexual commentary. That is another thing I really enjoy about Kai, she has a fairly dirty mind, even though it takes her awhile to show it. Odd as it may sound I think our relationship never progressed much until we were far from one another. Even with people you know I think the nature of the internet helps some with openness. I know there are things that in person I might not have shared with her on the same timeline that I did, but with the internet they came pretty easily. We spoke off and on for the three years that we were in separate places. Mostly it had to do with the fact that I was often up in the early hours of the morning when she was around. During these periods we had plenty of random talks and I started to see more in Kai. She became slightly closer as a friend. This could simply be because she was around and we still spoke, as that was something I couldn’t say for many of my other college friends, or perhaps we just started to like the others presence more. There was more of course, I got to see more of the inner parts of her that I didn’t really see much of in college. I am sure you know what I am talking about, the parts that you don’t just share with surface friends. These are the parts of people that I find interesting; double so with her because she hadn’t shared them in the past. I found out that the person I thought I knew in college, while a part of her, was the exterior she showed to people to keep them at a safe distance. It is something I think we all do to some extent in our own way.

Moving on to more current things, when she found out I would be moving closer to the East Coast shortly before her most recent visit to the US from her excursions abroad she decided she would come visit. This was a shock to me because she only spent the time to visit her closest friends or those that were very close geographically. During that conversation we had been talking about BDSM and what I had recently done and how things were going for me in that area of my life. She confided in me that she missed those things, the floggers, leather, and on some levels submission. So thinking she would refuse, I offered to play with her while she was here to visit. Again, I was shocked when she accepted the offer though neither one of us was sure we would be comfortable with that situation at first. In my own mind I kind of made sure that I would be ready for that kind of scene and started to think it through. I decided that it would be best to wait until later in the trip, since she was staying about a week, to play so if it went poorly it wouldn’t color the remainder of the trip. I will say upfront that whole trip is still a bit of a shock to me.

From the moment I picked her up at the airport things were different, not in a way that felt off or out of place but different they were. We were closer, she hugged me with little complaint and we left the airport for my apartment an hour away. I am ashamed to say I don’t remember much about this particular drive home, only that we spent most of it catching up. We talked about what we had been doing and that she was planning on heading back out of the country for after this short stay home. It wasn’t going to be a long trip abroad only lasting several months. There was talk about the friends she had visited before me since we shared several close friends and she had visited a couple of those. It was general catching up, more or less. The first truly shocking moment came when she was more cuddly with me than she had ever been. Our first kiss was amazing. Listen to me I am straying from the purpose of this blog as a window into our kink relationship, but I feel the other parts of it will show you why the kink works as well as it does. She had brought with her a collar and it wasn’t long until she had shown me it. Since we were sharing the scene goods we had I thought I would introduce her to my collection. Much of it she had scene before so I didn’t need to demonstrate on her how it worked or what I would do with it telling her would suffice. There was one particular piece that she was afraid of, mostly because I don’t think she had experienced, or even seen one before that was the violet wand. While I love my wand as a toy I wouldn’t recommend it to new players. So this toy I took the time to show her how it worked outside of a scene, I plugged it in and let her feel a couple of the attachments on her arm and hand, areas that aren’t too sensitive. I think after that demonstration she was a little less afraid and a little more curious but we still haven’t used that toy in a scene. I will go into the scene more in a later post for those of you that are curious. For now I wanted to give you the build up that lead to the scene. If you have been following Kai’s blog you already know that we had slept together before we played which eased a lot of the tension there. Let me be the first to say it was a fantastic night and it also made me smile to hear her ask if she could share my bed for the night. I think that single question has endeared her to my heart more than almost any other single thing she has done. It was also the moment I knew for sure she was a pure submissive and would be a delight to play with.

I will leave you in my story hear as this post is becoming far longer than I originally intended.

A short story/rant about safety

I find that I respond much better to questions than just randomly going on about myself. I like to teach as much as I like to learn so I think I will recount for you a couple of things I have seen recently in the online kink community. Some of you may find these types of things normal while others will think the same way I do. This has to do with what a good friend of mine and I saw in a chat room that specializes in kink scenes etc. We noticed a particular scene going on in the scroll in which an individual violated a rule that exists for health reasons. In his text based scene he switched from anal penetration to vaginal without a thought. Now being a biologist this bothers me for several reasons, one there are a lot of flora in your intestines that could cause problems if they managed to colonize other parts of your body, and two that just seems a little gross, in this case my problem is more one than two. This particular act spawned a rather heated conversation inside the room and in the end resulted in me being asked to give a safety talk based on by biological background. This talk would take place through a group called sanctuary.

Before I go into that much let me start by saying a couple of things about my views on the rules of BDSM. As much as I like that BDSM is becoming a little more main stream it has also brought with it some interesting things. I feel like it has created an influx of people into the lifestyle many of whom don’t take the time to learn to be safe before they jump right in. That said, I know many people will argue with me when I say there are rules to BDSM. I don’t think they are more than a handful of rules, so the rest are not so much rules as guidelines, but when you start into the life there are some things that you should regard as rules. The core of the rules is that your submissive should always be safe, when I say safe it is a relative word because many of the things you engage in during a BDSM scene can never be 100% safe. So when I say safe I mean that if you are engaging in something during a BDSM scene you need to know all of the things that could go wrong and how to avoid/prevent them, and more importantly what to do if they do go wrong. I personally think that every dominant should be trained in CPR and first aid, but this is especially true if you are dealing with things that would be considered edge play. If you want to get into things like electrical play, know the instruments you are using and what parts they are safe to be used on. Learn rules like never play above the waist or never run electrodes in a way that makes current run through the chest or your partner. Once you know these rules and know the reasons why they exist, then and only then, should you ever even think about bending or breaking them. This is a personal pet peeve of mine; you should never break these rules with a first time partner. There are so many things that you don’t know about them that could create problems in simply play let alone risky things. What if they are taking medications that make them more prone to bleeding? Well then your flogging or caning session could result in some serious problems. What if they have a history of problems with their wrists? Well you might not want to tie them certain ways. Those are simple things that so many scenes cover, if you are into electrical play what if they have a pace maker or something about them makes it so they can’t deal well with electrical current. You see my point? Now that said this isn’t designed to scare you off of doing the things you enjoy. I merely want everyone to know what they are doing and why. In the end it only takes one bad scene to ruin a submissive, or for that matter a dominant.

Well you have now received the short version of my safety rant. Feel better? Now onto the safety talk.

To be completely honest, I was nervous when I was sitting there preparing what I would say and how I would control the stream of comments question and statements from all the people attending this talk. Many of them had years of experience in the lifestyle, most of them had more experience than I did. So as you can imagine I was a little intimidated. But, I knew where my strengths were and what I had planned to focus on so I was just going to let it rip and see what happened. I started the evening off with some general safety questions that led to a range of topics from good places to strike, to the health concerns with switching places of penetration. We covered a little bit of everything that night, I was surprised how anxious these people, some of whom had 10 plus years of experience in BDSM, were to hear what I had to say and learn what they could from me. I wish all members of the BDSM community were so open-minded. I imagine that many of the “serious” players are, but there are some that are not. Ok well I am not sure totally where I was going with this post maybe it was just to point out some things that I wish there were more of in BDSM communities.

In closing I would like to say that dominants should never be afraid to be wrong or to admit they don’t know enough about a topic to do it safely. No person is ever perfect. No one has infinite knowledge and wisdom. I hope that nothing goes wrong in any of my scenes but I know that I am equipped enough to handle it if something does. To the submissives out there, you should never be afraid to question a dominant, if they don’t deal with questions well then that should be your first red flag and I would suggest marching the other way as quickly as your legs can carry you. In the end BDSM has a bad image because people don’t know the truth behind what we do. They don’t understand that most of us are very conscious of our partners and that in many cases, like my own; we love our partners very deeply. The truth is that it only takes one bad scene to be caught in the media for people to become afraid of all of us. So please for your sake as well as mine know what you are doing, know what is safe and how to be as safe as you can, know what is legal in your areas and what is not. In general just keep yourself informed, you will be happier, your partner will be safer, and then community will be better off for it.

Downtime

Sorry about the delay in posting Blogger was having problems and wouldn't allow me to post until just now. I will try and have another post up soon.

A bit of philosophy and desires

This post will be my thoughts on the lifestyle and how what I want has lead me to the person I am with now. This will likely be a huge post and will ramble back and forth between the things I have seen and have done. It will be a very interesting post I assure you, and I hope that you enjoy it.

I left you with the end of my relationship history. Where I am now in a sense, but I didn’t tell you much about how I view myself as a dominant or what I want in a submissive. I am not totally sure the best way to tell you about me as a dominant. I guess I can start by telling you what I am not, I am not perfect, nor do I think I am infallible, I am not abusive nor do I beat my partners in a way that would make me a danger to them, I am not a freak or something to fear. I guess in the end aside from my life choice as a kink I am pretty normal. I have a normal life, I have a family, I have friends, I have had a job, and now I attend school. I was going to try and spare you a few posts before I got into what I think about BDSM and how I approach it, but apparently that is not going to happen. I guess I will start with what I want in a relationship; that seems the easiest way to get from point A to point B.

I have always wanted something more in a relationship. Call it a desire to feel closer to my partner than anything else. From my first relationship to the last one that ended I was looking for someone that on some level would elevate me above the mundane. I in turn, would do that same. They would become more important to me than anything else, to a limit going both ways of course. I am not the type of person that would expect my significant other to die for me or abandon their lives for me. Personally, I think that would be foolish. How could you give up everything you were as a person for someone else? Don’t you think that would be counter productive? I mean, if I love you for who you are, then why would you destroy what I love in order to make me happy. Sorry, that was a tangent, back to the thought process. This was one of the first things that attracted me to D/s. The idea that there is a person out there that would want to give over a portion of their control to me was exhilarating to say the least. You could say it was because I am a control freak or something like that, and I am sure there are plenty of people that would do so. But, the key is I don’t want to control everything about my partner. I don’t care who they go out with or the friends they keep or the things they do. I would never force the issue of control and lord it over them like some. Control with me must be given, and if my partner ever wants that control back then they need only ask for it.

So perhaps that is the crux of it, I like control. But, the story really can’t stop there because it misses a lot of key elements to my personality. I also like to learn, I crave knowledge of everything from the mundane to the exotic. I like to know people, it is fun for me to guess what someone will do before they do it and find the right buttons to push to make someone do what I want. Knowing what to withhold and when, to make their pleasure and my own the most it can be. I won’t lie and claim that I have always used this ability for that. There was a time when I used my ability to read people to get what I wanted and nothing else. It is something I am not proud of, it was childish and stupid. I was no better than many others I have encountered who do it now. I would like to think I have come beyond that, but it would be meaningless for me to claim it, so I will let others speak for me on that. I also on some level like to please, I know it sounds like a very submissive thing to say but hear me out. I like to please my way, I will not do what another person says because in my experience most people don’t know what they want in the first place. I will please my partner my way, but I know that my way works for them. Or at least is has worked for all of the ones I have come across.

What else can I include on the topic of me? I have never been good at talking about myself so perhaps I will just sum up what I think about being in a BDSM relationship. It is, in the end, about being closer to your partner. It is about being greater than the sum of your parts. In the couple of kink relationships I have had I have seen that what I want exists out there. I want to be everything to my partner, not in the way that they would give up themselves for me because that isn’t being everything to them, that is allowing them to be obsessed with me. When I claim I want to be their everything this is what I mean. I want to be someone they can be proud of; I want to be there to push them when they need me, to share their successes and their failures. I want to better them, be that firm hand when they stray and the loving embrace they can take shelter in. I want to give them a reason to push themselves further than they thought possible. This in turn makes me a better person, because I need to be that for them, I need to constantly better myself, learn, grow, change, push myself harder. In the end we both become better people and closer through their submission. Now, some of you may think this a crazy ideal or wonder how one could accomplish such a thing, if you ask me I will at the very least tell you how I am doing.

So now you have a mash of idea as to what I think a BDSM relationship is and what it is not. Now we can move onto what I look for in a submissive. I have met many submissives in my time in kink circles. Let me tell you they come in all different flavors, some of them will submit to the first man that walks through the door and demands it of them. They will kneel at his feet at his beckon call and do everything he says. My personal thought on these women is they have a low self esteem and it makes them feel better to be desired, that isn’t to say their submission is less genuine or faulty because of this, it merely says they aren’t my type. That kind of submission doesn’t interest me because if I leave them in a room alone with other dominants, in my experience, they fail to be loyal. Something shiny comes along that is new and different and they are off after it in moments. There are others who are more careful about their submission, but still don’t seem to have that fire about them. Many of these are my close friends, and you couldn’t ask for a more loyal friend, and in the past I have had many fun scenes with people in this category. They will only submit to one person but their submission doesn’t feel earned, it is like it is freely given to the one they choose. This is again not to say that it is wrong or that something is bad about this type of submissive, just that they aren’t for me. Then you have my type, these submissives make you earn your place as a dominant. They have to be confident that you know what you are doing and that you are worthy of their submission and trust. These are the ones I have made the strongest relationships with and I wouldn’t sacrifice a moment of our time together for anything. Many of my greatest kink friends are these types of people. My current partner Kai falls into this category, I like this type because their submission is earned and feels more valuable. They don’t freely give it to anyone that asks, you have to fight for it. They may take longer to give in but in the end it is so much sweeter when you see them fully give themselves to you.

So there you have it. A view of what I think and what I want. If you have anything you would like me to speak on more simply comment on this post and I will try and add more depth in future postings.

More on My Beginnings

So when I last left you we were at when I left college. At this time I was back with the partner I entered college with. But, that didn't last terribly long and there was still little kink involved. So we will just jump to the things that happened post the break up. I immediately jumped back into the kink scene, but in Salt Lake City, Utah the scene is tough to find. So I had a couple of play partners that were into light wax use, flogging, and things that were a little deeper than my previous partner but nothing all that deep.

Each time I found someone a little deeper into the kink I seemed to find my rhythm and want to get further into it. When I found someone that liked being flogged I made my first flogger. I spent hours practicing with it to control the tails. I figured out what weighting I liked, and started to think about the next flogger I would make. It was around the time I was making my floggers that I got serious about a relationship with a submissive. We had first met online, in some ways it is easier to meet new people in the kink world online. I think this is a result of the fact that the internet adds an element of anonymity which in many places is important to kinks. I know at the time I was very much hiding my kinks from my friends.

Okay so on to the relationship. In the beginning it was all I had ever asked for, it fit very much into what I wanted, or so it seemed. I thought that the two of us were growing together, we pulled down each others walls and started building. I feel that when you are in a BDSM relationship the two partners grow together. They come to depend on one another for certain types of support and sensations. It is what makes kink relationships seem deeper than my vanilla ones. There is an element of connection that was lacking in all of my other relationships. It was fantastic, it was the first time I really truly experienced a different space during a scene. It was also the first time I had to deal with Top Drop (Which I am sure I will go into later.), but things seemed really good for a period of time. Then the unthinkable happened, having come from a family that was religious and very controlling she started to question her choices in a BDSM relationship. In the end this led to her cheating on me. That was probably the most difficult break up I have ever gone through. It felt as though parts of my personality and who I was were shattering. Needless to say it was a difficult recovery, but with the help of my friends I made it through it.

On a tangent, sometime in that relationship I outed myself to my friends. It was during a party when I had a little too much to drink. They started talking about a sex toy party and I was keeping up with the conversation. Then I started talking about more sex toys and how you use them and what I have done with it, they kept asking the questions and I kept answering them. Before I knew it they were asking me about BDSM and kink things and it was a bit late for me to say I had no idea. So that was the way I was outed to my friends, it was a pretty good way because it made me learn that more of them were interested than I would have imagined. I have since had many conversations with them about kink and toys. I even found my next kink partner in their midst.

A good friend of mine had several female friends that were interested in kink. He fancied himself interested, but in the end he is more submissive than dominant and his female friends were of the same persuasion. I was introduced to my most recent disaster of a relationship through him. It started out good, he introduced us at a gathering of friends and she later came to a party with those same friends. By the end of the party I had her kneeling at my feet and calling me Sir. We talked for awhile about interests what she knew and what she wanted before we ever got together and started to play. Things seemed to line up well, we liked the same things we both wanted to learn and grow. It was a good arrangement, she later found out she had the opportunity to spend a year abroad. We decided to keep things going and try the long distance for a year. Not a couple months into the trip she was out with another man, a week or so later they were together and I was stuck holding nothing yet again.

This pretty much brings me to to the present relationship wise. I had left for grad school in August of 2009, just before that I had spoken to a friend from college and she said she wanted to come out and visit me. Not only did she want to come out but she also said she missed kink and wanted to scene with me while she was out for her visit. Now we are both taking it slow and working our way into every aspect of relationships. This is my experience in that journey, you can find hers here if you would like to see it.

The First of Many

This will be the first post of what I am hoping will become many. I figure I will start with outlining my past. The problem with starting with the past is it is often difficult to form a beginning. Where does the beginning truly start? For the purpose of this blog I guess I will start the beginning when I started thinking a fair amount about BDSM. But even that isn't a good place for the beginning simply because thinking about things that are kinky happened at a young age, and by young I mean around the time that I was starting to date and be interested in the opposite gender. But, when you are young you convince yourself that things like that are wrong, or rather others convince you of it. The idea that you would want to be with a partner that wanted, on some level, to be controlled is something that you really shouldn't be thinking about or wanting. The idea of getting pleasure from causing others pain is extremely frowned upon, as is the receiving of pleasure from pain. Things like abuse and domestic violence come to mind when anyone thinks about someone liking to cause pain. Society seems to instill in you from an early age that things like being a sadist make you a bad person.
Look at me, rambling on about philosophy without actually doing what I set out to in this first post. So this beginning will be in college, simply because it was then that I learned to be okay with the thoughts I was having. I was in a vanilla relationship at the time, with a person that had never done anything "out of the ordinary". Early in my freshman year I learned that there was a club on campus that was into things of this sort. Though in the end, I never did really attend their meetings more than a handful of times.
I found my comfort in the online community, this was because it was a place where I could learn at my own speed and in my own way. This isn't to say that I trusted everyone I met and never spoke about it to those of my friends I knew were interested. It is just that I prefer to learn by listening and reading more in the background. You have to deal with less "experts" that way, and as I have found in the now eight years that I have been learning and listening, there are a lot of "experts" that really don't know what they are talking about.
In a very casual way I started to suggest things to my then partner. At first it was in the form of toys, vibrators, dildos, and the lot. It advanced to things that were a little "kinkier" vibrators you wear in public, or the first set of cuffs I owned (a rather interesting pair as they had flames on the cuffs themselves and were cloth). Regrettably, I quickly hit my partners kink ceiling and things became interesting, I wanted to continue learning and delving deeper into what I wanted and the things that I wanted to do, she on the other hand was more than satisfied with the occasional act of being cuffed to a bed and playing with vibrators. During my time in college there were several points that this relationship went on "break" during those I soaked up everything I could about BDSM and even managed to find an internet submissive. In retrospect it was pretty solidly a joke and I would never do an internet relationship again, but at the time it was new and interesting and exciting. Through the internet community I have made many friends whom I wouldn't trade for anything. I have had my share of drama and foolish things as well. While still in college you could say the two "relationships" I had were very low on the kink scale. The involved scarf bondage(in one) and a lot of biting. You could say there was an element of power exchange in them because the kink was always one sided, but they never truly got to the level of Dom/sub space.
I think that is where I will leave you for the moment. Perhaps in the next update, which may come later today, I will go into the post college years where I got more into real time (RT) relationships. I think you will be more interested in hearing about that part anyways. For now this is the background you get.