More about Breakups and Support

I know I have been slacking when it comes to posting this month and I will try and make amends in the future. I have been a little busy getting used to the things that have been changing of late. I want to use this post to respond to the comments on my previous post. So if it doesn’t seem to make much sense to you check those out first.

 

The post was about breakups and the way that they “should” be done. The comment that was left was that in the context of BDSM the submissive has a much harder time with the break up. Now that was later amended by saying that they could argue with themselves on the subject, but I wanted to take a moment and address it in my own way.  First, I would like to thank someone for taking the first steps and commenting on a post. It is nice to feel like someone other than Kai is reading my thoughts and willing to share their own. If more of you read this I encourage you to comment as well, for one it will give me things to write about when I come up short on a topic, but it may also help you find answers or get another point of view.

 

Now onto the topic at hand, I guess. Do I think that a submissive will have a hard time with a breakup? Yes, I know submissives have a very hard time with breakups and I know that there is a lot of damage that can be done if the breakup is handled poorly. Everyone tends to feel like they aren’t good enough when they are left by someone else, submissives perhaps more than others. I personally can’t say. In the end the person that is on the receiving end of a breakup always feels like they weren’t good enough, this is try whether they be the dominant partner or the submissive.  Now which side is more damaged by the breakup? That is something that is really hard to say, it depends on the situation. This I can say, submissives often tend to show their hurt more, they wear it on their sleeves as it were, in contrast the dominant partner usually tries to internalize the hurt and keep it to themselves. I don’t think it is right to say that one side is hurt more than the other.

 

Now I am going to discuss something that may seem off topic but in honesty it really isn’t. I will do my personal best to try and tie it in at the end. I am going to jump to a discussion of community. In the communities that I have been a part of it seems that you have a very strong sense of unity between the submissives in the community. They are very good at building a support network for each other; they become very tight knit and protective of one another. This I feel is a very good thing and more dominants should do similar things. I have seen this unit of submissives warn a new comer about a certain dominant. They never shy away from standing up for a submissive that is being abused in a way that is detrimental to her health. These groups provide a great service in the community. They help to teach those new to BDSM how to look out for their safety and how to learn to do things the correct way. They become your mentors, friends, and so much more, when you are learning the ropes of the lifestyle these things are priceless. Now dominants really don’t seem to have this sort of community, for some reason they end up being a more solitary lot. We don’t really band together and talk about bad submissives or people that like to top from the bottom. Dominants don’t usually take the new guy under their wing and teach him how to do it right. I know that I was left to figure things out mostly for myself. I watched and listened and found things that I liked and others I did not but I never had someone teach me how to do it. In fact most of my education, as it were, came from submissives. In my case many of them were switches and I learned some from watching them play and some from topping them. We would talk about things afterwards and I learned that way.

 

Now trying to tie this all together, in the end the best things for breakups is a good support network. Whether that be family, friends, or what have you, those people will keep you going strong. If you are into BDSM then it is probably best if your support group at least include some people that are also into the scene. That way they can keep your spirits up when you start to get down on yourself about your abilities as a submissive or dominant. I hope that helps to clarify a little bit about who I think takes the brunt of the breakup pain.

Thoughts about Break ups

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the break ups I have gone through in the past. This isn’t for any of the bad reasons that you might associate with thinking about break ups, it is partly because of a post that Kai put up a bit ago about losing a dominant and because I have just been thinking. On a lot of levels I think it should be the goal of a dominant to leave their partner in a better place than where they found them. That said I have been asking myself if I have done that in my past, not only with BDSM relationships but with all relationships. I would like to think that I have in all cases but I guess you could argue that in one I didn’t do as well as I could have. Now this isn’t to say that the break ups weren’t difficult or that there was no emotion on either side. I would be lying if I told you that one, or both sides didn’t shed tears and feel bad that it was over.  When I say “Leaving a person in a better place than you found them”, I mean that you should leave them in a position where they are more comfortable with themselves and better off mentally and emotionally.

Some people might say that this ideology means I have a “hero” complex or the desire to fix someone. This couldn’t really be farther from the truth. Do I like helping my friends and partners? Yes I do. Do I need someone with problems in order to start a relationship? No I do not. I do believe that everyone can grow and change and that these are good things. I have gotten several of my past partners past blocks that they had against relationships and loving another person. I have helped my friends over come self-esteem problems etc. These are the things I mean when I say you need to leave a person in a better place than where you found them.

In thinking about the things I have done for others I wish some of them would have had the courtesy to return the favor. As many of you have probably read I have had some pretty rough break ups that did some decent damage to my self-image and caused me several problems. I am allowing myself to get off topic and move into some place where I don’t want this post to go so I am going to bring it back to the track. The importance of trying to leave your partner in a better place that you found them, which is the main point I was making in this post. Ideally, this should be the way you think about any relationship whether vanilla or not, but so many people don’t think it is that important. In the context of BDSM it is important to leave a submissive in a place where they can trust again and be willing to give themselves again. If you fail at this simple part of the equation then you haven’t done your job as a dominant. Instead of helping someone to grow and learn you have made them lock a part of themselves away. The same could be applied to vanilla relationships, and I have seen it in some of my friends. If a person is hurt enough, and it a way that can be generalized to all people they will do so and never want to put themselves into a position to be hurt again. This is a problem that I was having until recently, even now though I find myself fighting the desire to hide away on occasion. I was terrified of being hurt again, worse yet being hurt in the same way as I was previously. It is not a good place to be and you miss out on many of the things that you enjoy in life.

I guess the point I am trying to make is a break up is there so that both parties can move on to find something that is good for both of them. It isn’t there to hurt your partner. If you aren’t happy in a relationship then you need to be straight about it and tell your partner before you sleep with someone else, find someone else, or just let something happen. In my life I have dealt with my own share of lying, both on the doing and receiving end. What I can say is that it doesn’t make life easier or simpler for anyone. That said, if you want someone to be honest with you, then you have to be possessed of the control to keep your cool. Nothing scares people more than the thought that by being honest they will get nothing but a large scale freak out. The times that I lied it was always to spare both the recipient and myself the trouble of a large scale freak out. This is due to personally not wanting to deal with it and knowing that if I was forced to deal with a freak out I would be mean. That is a problem I have, if you start freaking out on me for being honest with you then I have a tendency to pull out all the stops and let you hear the brutal side of the truth. So for those of your that are my friends that read this let that be known.

I think I will leave this post there, open ended sort of, in order to try and attract comments.