House Tearmainn

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. I’ve actually been writing drafts and letting them linger half-finished due to time or focus issues. Looking over the half-written posts it seems like most of them pertain to either communication or managing others’ perceptions of my lifestyle. Given that those seem to be the big topics among M/s folks that’s hardly surprising, I guess.

What is a little surprising is how honest and open those posts are. I suspect that might be another reason why I’m not finishing them… the only thing worse than baring your soul to the Internet and getting mocked or bashed is baring your soul to the Internet and getting silence. Still, I think I’ll re-double my efforts and put them out there.

On that note I’d like to put down some recently hard earned thoughts on transparency. I’ve had a lot of back-and-forth with pais about transparency and how/when to communicate what she’s feeling. We each have issues around this topic that certainly exascerbate the proble. She has extreme guilt over any kind of negative feeling and that means it takes her a long time to get up the steam to communicate it to me. I almost always immediately notice that there is something up with her and have a nearly pathological need to find out what’s up.

It’s been a long-running issue, stretching back to before I collared her. I’ve tried a few different things including:

• Letting her sort out as much as possible on her own, and only bring to me the things she feels she needs to. The failure here being that she feels like she should never need to bring anything to me, which eventually leads to meltdown on her part or a freakout on mine when I can see that she’s struggling and not bringing it to me.
• Ordering her to bring any issues to me immediately, no matter how small. This worked in that I knew what was up, but failed in that, well, there are a lot of things that can be brought up. I just don’t have time to handle those conversations, and she felt like crap for having to bring tiny things to me that she was completely capable of handling on her own.
• Having a time set aside to discuss any issues from the day. This worked pretty well for her, since she could filter out any small things and only bring me the important ones. Unfortunately, it also meant that if there were no important ones the small things seemed bigger. The timing was also bad, at the end of the day when we’re both tired is bad, and the worst issues tend to happen in the evenings when the kids are around anyway.
• I used to have her journal for me. This particular method of communication went through several revisions and finally ended up pretty balanced. She could write as she needed to, delete small things or things she had dealt with, take the time to express herself well and politely, and append notes when she sent it to me explaining her current state.  This was the most successful, I think, but does consume a fair amount of her time which is extremely valuable to me. This fell by the wayside as she ramped up with work (or was it finals?) and time became compressed.

I know that along the way each of those took on different forms and shapes as I changed things that were obviously not working so it feels to both of us like this topic has been beaten to death. As of last night we’re back to journaling, and I think that will work out well if I a) can wait long enough to hear what’s up to actually get to post, and b) can give her enough time to do it effectively.

I’ve been meaning to get back into the habit of posting here again lately, but have been waiting to have something to say. Today’s the day, it seems, though my feelings on the topic are conflicted.

I had an experience recently which is not uncommon. I was in a room with a group of M/s and D/s folks, enjoying a conversation regarding the role of fear in the lifestyle. One person in the group, a dominant, drove the conversation. Dominated it, if you will, by speaking up often, loudly, and consistently changing the topic back to the things he was more comfortable talking about. The bulk of the group seemed happy with that direction so I let it ride, but the methods employed put me off.

This is pretty stereotypical dominant behavior, and I’d classify it as more clueless than assholular, but it’s one of the reasons I’m loathe to call myself a dom. I don’t feel the need to dominate strangers, co-workers, friends, or groups. I’m perfectly happy to lead, but I’m not overly interested in leading a group if I feel someone is more qualified to do so. Obviously I have a need to be in charge in my “romantic” relationships as well.

The rest I see as, frankly, impolite. At the end of the evening I was left with a nagging feeling that somehow I was less of a dom for being like that. After further consideration, I think that I was less of a dominant for not calling the behavior out for the slight rudeness that I feel it was.

What I’m taking away from this is that dominance, like most any trait, can take a variety of forms. I’ll just keep trying to engender what I see as the positive aspects and move on, I think.

I made a priority shift the other day that I haven’t posted about, which is sort of ironic since what I de-prioritized is posting. I still expect to get to it several days a week, but I made a deal with myself that if the “popcorn” tag outgrew everything else it would be time to drop the daily posting requirement. So be it! Better to post something useful infrequently than crap daily. Frankly the number of people who seem to care just doesn’t warrant the amount of sleep deprevation that it was causing me.

Perhaps when things settle down in 14 years or so I’ll have more time for it. I doubt it, though.

Last night Sunday night was a long, but good, night. No post because I needed all available time with pais. It was definitely the right choice.

There is a lot in flux… we are both likely to be starting new jobs within the next week, and the hours on hers are going to significantly impact our one on one time. I am lucky enough to have choices of where to go, but any of them are likely to be more hours than I have been doing at my current job.

Plus the brief period of having violet in the household has brought a lot to light in terms of what our needs are and if/how they can be met in a household context. For all of the thought I have given this, we have still only been together 2 years and change. There is still so much to learn that I sometimes despair of ever being able to live up to my own standards.

Still, here we are. Yes, there is a lot to learn, and to do, before my full vision of the Household can be realized. Yes I am very limited in the things that I can offer to help people. That’s ok. The important thing is that we make progress, do good, and live with joy.

So where does that leave us? Well, as a household of two we’re doing fine. I’ll keep poking around, as I do. Maybe something will pop up that fits life right now, maybe not. Either way, I’ve got a path to walk and while the last couple of days has been well spent licking my wounds, it’s time to get moving again.

… and I’m twice as tired as I was yesterday. Funny, that. Let’s see if the trend continues.

Still mulling over the events of the past few weeks. Got in late, not really up to writing anything. Got a bit to say on intensity, though, when I get around to it. Hope everyone is sleeping more than I have been.

I’m sorry to say so
but, sadly, it’s true
that Bang-ups
and Hang-ups
can happen to you

- Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

girl violet has left us and will be missed. I think it was the best choice for her. They aren’t kidding when they say that LDR’s are hard, and doubly so when I have so many other responsibilities (including a couple to myself that had been completely neglected for a while). She was with us only a short time, 10 days, but I learned a lot from the experience and I hope that she was able to take something away from it as well.

A large part of what I learned is that I’m not a super hero. Sure, with pais around I can feel like one. One of the best things about this relationship is that I feel like I can do anything with that kind of support. I need to remember that feeling that way doesn’t make it true. I can’t fly under my own power. I can’t play the cello. I can’t overcome the time and distance issues well enough for that kind relationship to work for violet right now, no matter how much we both want it. 

No regrets, just lessons.

Another day of “living M/s instead of writing it”. I was amazed to find this morning how functional I was given the sleep I’ve had the past few days. It seems to have caught up with me. I will take comfort in knowing that I have written quite a lot of meaningful D/s in other formats.

Given that I’ve written and deleted at least 5 paragraphs here and just forgot how to spell “sideways”, that’s all you’re bound to get.

I’ve been wanting to post again—not least because Sir wants me to—but I’m fighting a semi-nasty cold that seems to have rendered my higher faculties mushy.  If memory serves, before the cold got bad, I had in mind to write about distance. I’ll try to channel some of those ideas.

This is a tricky subject to delve into for me because I feel defensive about it in all kinds of ways. For one, I made myself a promise over a year ago not to enter into an LDR again. I’ve tried it several times with different people and different situations, and to put it mildly things seem never to turn out well. It is hard to know someone well over geographic distance; it’s hard to evaluate how they behave in different kinds of situations. It’s hard to be sure one’s trust is well placed. Then too there are the lonelies, which as a rather needy person I experience in depth.

It seems too personal to explain in this setting why I decided to break that promise to myself. Suffice it to say that certain sorts of people are incredibly rare, and when the heart recognizes one, promises made in the interest of self-protection can quickly come to seem counterproductive. Then too, it finally sunk it for me that all of my relationships have seemed not to turn out well, distance or proximity notwithstanding. The reasons are many and varied. I have plenty of work to do in this area no matter how or with whom I go about it.

Another reason I feel defensive about the LDR thing is that many lifestyle participants and thinkers whom I respect have evinced an attitude of condescension toward such relationships in a D/s context. I understand why, and ultimately, I need to not care about what anyone outside the household thinks about the nature of my dynamic with Sir. This is good for my ego, frankly, which places far too much importance on matters such as “belonging” to a category of people whom I consider “legitimate” practitioners of D/s.

Excellent, the defensive preliminaries have been dealt with in only 350 words! Now I may begin to actually write. Ahem.

The challenges that distance creates for any intimate relationship are obvious (communication, lack of physical touch, lack of immediate companionship, etc) and needn’t be enumerated here at length. In a D/s dynamic, those challenges are multiplied to include issues pertaining to power exchange. Because we are at the beginning, it’s hard to do more than identify some issues we’ve discussed and describe how we’re attempting to address them thus far.

The most obvious is control. An in-person D/s dynamic allows for direct control of various kinds, both psychological and physical. I will be the first to state that distance does not eliminate the possibility of using psychological control tools, yet I’m equally sure that the type and efficacy of such tools is limited by the lack of direct proximity. And obviously he cannot, as he put it recently with tongue only somewhat in cheek (eep!), bitch-slap me if I disobey him.

Sir’s opinion at this time is that his primary method of punishment will be to reduce my opportunities to please him. I don’t look forward to that. Already I have felt rather deeply the effects of a simple expression of disappointment with my behavior. How these tools will work over time in terms of control remains to be seen. But for these reasons we both perceive our dynamic to inhabit the category of ongoing voluntary submission, though I’m not sure either of us finds this ideal. It’s simply what is available to us at this time.

Have just decided that this post is to be part one of a series. It is time to listen to my cold and put myself to bed.

I seem to have hit the place with mastery where I feel that my own ideas are firmly planted. I can tell this because I have picked up non-fiction literature to read. I recognize that my need to come to my own understanding of things before reading up on them is counter-intuitive at best, and decidedly negligent at worst. Nevertheless, it is a core component of my nature and not one I wish to change.

I’m not sure where this learning style comes from. I don’t much want to know how other people do any specific thing (this extends all through my life, from washing dishes to computers to martial arts). Once I have made my own mistakes and learned to a level where I feel proficient, then I’m perfectly happy to go reading anything and everything on the topic. I think that this allows me the opportunity to have a unique perspective on the topic without the temptation to take what “the experts” say as gospel.

For those who are curious, the book I’m currently reading is Miss Abernathy’s Concise Slave Training Manual by Christina Abernathy, for the simple reason that it was the only book I could get out of the “kinky book” drawer while dashing for the rest room. Fortune has smiled upon me, though, I’m enjoying it quite a lot. I’m not much of a book review person (see above), but I find myself nodding as I read and that’s a good sign.