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.
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ReplyDeleteOk, I'm done being obnoxious and glib. When it comes to relationships, I kinda disagree on the possibility of leaving someone better off than they were. At least in a NOW sort of way, maybe the later revelations as you get over it are better off but those are later. Maybe my views are distorted; I haven't had to directly view the results of my breakups. In the teenage bullshit ones, I just changed my main social circles for a while and ignored the rumors. In grown-up, real relationship world, I had states between us and they didn't really like the internet all that much if it didn't involve WoW or me (which I made sure it didn't). So I didn't view the way they were actually coping. My own experience with being broken up with being nonexistent, I can only rely on my long-term rejections, friendship-dumpings, or my friends' break-ups to extrapolate how someone comes out at the end, and it isn't pretty. Maybe I don't know enough because of the lack of multiple serious relationships and my lack of desire to get into another one, but from what I've experienced and what I've observed, nobody ever comes out ok.
Or is ok extraneous to what you mean?
Also what I was saying about it being harder for a sub to be broken up with than the other way around? I never finished that conversation and so never went on to explain my thought process. It was not that I forgot that doms were people too, and considering my leanings these days, well, that would be kinda depressingly self-depreciating (don't start).
ReplyDeleteNo, what I mean is this! In a more immediate way, a sub depends on the dom. When the dom leaves them before they're ready to be left, they're pulling out a much more complete and structured support than in either a vanilla ship OR in the case of the dom. In a lot of cases, the sub has come to rely on the dom for giving them direction, letting them know what's ok and not, gives them the support in the non-kink aspects of their life to make decisions because somewhere down there in their subby core, they know what their dom supports their person and as if it's a very subtle leak into directing the sub's real life, they take permission to make their decisions; or maybe they get a sense of strength or defiance from doing the opposite of what the dom thinks they should do and so, though more indirectly, still draw the support to do. What I mean to say is, the sub very right-up-in-front relies on the dom for a sort of what-to-do, how-to-live support in addition all the usual things in a relationship.
The dom, when left, likewise has a major trust-support pulled out from under them, but they didn't give over parts of their lives to being blissfully without the need to be in charge. Even if I'm completely stupid and wrong on the psychological out-of-kink influencing and it's only in scenes. That's still a tangible piece of responsibility given up and for that sort of thing it doesn't matter how short a period of time it lasted and how divorced from the rest of life it is. It still leaves a heavy psychological footprint.
On the other hand, I suppose I could argue against myself, saying that the dom gets it harder because they, on some level, needed that control over some small piece of the universe. With it pulled out from under them, the feeling of impotency could be devastating. But then again, the sub broken up-with would likewise experience impotency, which perhaps is something they're used to, but now it's an unpleasant, slimy mixing-up where there is no one at the end of the rope, holding them in place and stopping them from falling out of control. So it's impotency without insurance, still painfully devastating.
Ok, so in the end, that's all generalization and I think it really depends on the people involved. But my position is that the inherent generalized potential for the sub to be hurt when dumped is greater.