House Tearmainn

I had slightly over a year of steadily increasing D/s with Master before He collared me.

I have been a little surprised to hear the opening stages of a budding M/s relationship described as a negotiation. I would hope that most M/s relationships start with a discovery of compatibility, rather than negotiation. To me, that sounds like either one or the other or both parties having to compromise (themselves, their values, their deeply held desires) in order for the dynamic to be mutually acceptable, or the kind of negotiation that precedes a scene between people who don’t know each other well and who both expect to “get something” out of the interaction, and for whom the arrangement is strictly temporary.

Accordingly, I would characterize the first year of our relationship more as exploration than negotiation. We each evaluated, more or less subconsciously, our compatibility on a variety of levels, including sexual chemistry and shared kinks; communication styles, including sense of humor and how we handled conflict; and emotional triggers and hot button issues. We both freely expressed our ideal dynamic, both short- and long-term, as well as acknowledging real-life constraints and the kinds of compromises we expected to have to make. Over the course of the year that these conversations were taking place, it became clear that there wasn’t really any negotiation per se that needed to take place because our desires were well-matched.

I’m stressing here that my ideals were as freely expressed as His. I was still a free person, and I was walking into the situation, and consenting to it, with my eyes open, knowing that I wasn’t always going to get what I wanted once I’d signed on.  That first year was my chance to find out what I was getting into as much as I possibly could, so that I would have some idea as to whether or not I could actually handle it.

I would guess that Master evaluated me in many ways of which I am largely unaware, but for myself, during this time I was especially concerned with evaluating His character, so that when He accepted me as His slave I would feel ethically able to offer Him everything. He has a very good understanding of my ethics, and while His are not identical, so far (in the year before He collared me, as well as this year since) He has respected mine completely. He takes his responsibility to Himself and His own ethics very seriously, which I consider far better protection than an obligation felt towards me.

We arrived at an understanding, although it was very basic and still open to some interpretation at the point when He agreed to collar me, and we continued having similar conversations about what we each wanted the dynamic to look like. I continued to have some reservations, what I would call voluntary limits, which He always honored. To clarify, my distinction between voluntary and involuntary limits is basically that if Master were to order me to jump off a roof and fly I could only follow the first part of the order (and I’d try to find a low roof with a trampoline below before following the first part)! We had many conversations–-the crazy, “this would never happen in a million years, but what if . . .” conversations. In fact, these are the kinds of conversations I think people should be having in any committed relationship. If I were going to say I would submit to anything, I wanted to mean anything. What about this? Yes, if it pleased Him. This other thing? Hm, I might have more trouble with that, ethically or emotionally.

I’ve read accounts from individuals online claiming that they had followed a ‘master’s’ orders unhappily until they’d been driven to a mental breakdown. There are orders I would follow that would result in Master having a pretty mentally-dysfunctional slave, no matter how emotionally strong I tried to be. On the other hand, Master has shown time and again that my mental health is important to Him. He constantly monitors my emotional state and takes steps to strengthen me when He feels it is appropriate. Furthermore, in my profession, we talk a lot about “vicarious traumatization.” It’s possible to end up with PTSD from doing the work that I do. If that’s a risk I’m willing to take for a job (chosen before entering into this relationship, but Master-approved), it’s certainly a risk I should be willing to take for the most important person in my life. I recognize that this not a risk that most people feel is safe or sane, but if everybody had the same standard of acceptable risk I think we’d have a lot fewer firefighters, eh? However, when I believe that my ability to serve Him the way that He desires is in danger, I am required to inform Him. I tend to err on the side of not telling Him soon enough, unfortunately, but He’s begun to take that into account.

Within a few months after the collaring, it gradually became more evident that in fact it was possible for us to live closer to our ‘ideal’ than we had thought before we’d tried it. There was no final point when Master said, “All right, from now on this relationship is based on the premise of consensual non-consent.” It was not a flip-the-switch moment to remove the last few limits I brought with me when I was collared. There was a process of building trust, resulting in a dawning realization that I no longer had any voluntary limits, which inspired a commitment. This was not an agreement, a contract with a list of rules, or a specific protocol. This is simply my promise to Him that He owns me completely and absolutely, body and mind. He has the right to change or damage them as He pleases because they belong to Him. I don’t feel damaged, but I’ve certainly been modified, mentally and physically! He manages my risk, He sets my priorities, and He controls, almost completely, how I feel about what He’s doing. I have no safeword. I have no right to end my relationship. Despite my current orders to keep Master informed of any emotional issues I have, even that is not a right that I have.

Our arrangement is as flexible to Him as He wants it to be and as inflexible to me as He wants it to be. He chooses to put certain strictures on Himself, partly because of His own ethical standards and partly out of self-interest and a desire to maintain a slave who is functional in many different ways. I have a great deal of trust in those ethical standards and that enlightened self-interest!

I could say no anytime if I wanted. I can say, and have said, “I don’t want to.” I can even whine about how hard something is, and do that frequently! It’s just that none of these things make any difference to what’s going to happen. I am encouraged to beg for help when I hit an involuntary limit, but even then I accept that He has no obligation to listen to anything I say. I have His promise that He will ignore any protest of mine that does not please Him.

He is not a predator nor a lunatic. While it’s important to both of us that He has the right to remove or overstep any limit of mine however He can, just because He can doesn’t mean He does. Some of my former limits are gone and others will likely follow in time, but He has His own limits as well that He will not overstep. The point for us is that He can.

Because our dynamic was built gradually and with hard work, we are both very aware that it could erode and actively work to maintain and deepen it, in a variety of ways. I am a creature of habit, and the more in the habit I am of not arguing or questioning the easier I hope it will become. So I try to be as graceful and joyful as possible about my obedience. I believe I’m helping build a pattern or habit of obedience within myself. Building on that, there is a concept in the mental health field known as engulfment, which describes the gradual subsuming of patients’ identities into their diagnosis. In other words, they go from being an individual with schizophrenia to being a schizophrenic, completely defined by their disorder. I hope that I can become engulfed by slavery, by constantly thinking of myself as a slave and asking myself, “What would Master’s perfect slave do?”

When these techniques become difficult, when I am faced with what seem to be impossible or distasteful expectations, I maintain an attitude not of “I won’t” or “I can’t” but “I’ll try,” or sometimes, with gritted teeth, “I don’t want to, but I’ll try anyway.” I think this attitude might be one of my most important contributions to my successful enslavement. Master has said that one thing He enjoys about ownership is the opportunity to help me please Him by giving me the support I need to overcome these kinds of situations. This also builds my confidence that He won’t just let me get out of things I don’t like. My fear that my disobedience will somehow destroy our dynamic has faded, but lingers, possibly because as far as I can remember I have never been disobedient on purpose. (If I had been afraid that my forgetfulness or poor time management would destroy our dynamic, that fear would have long since been laid to rest!) Perhaps someday we’ll have a chance to prove my fear ungrounded, which might ease my mind, but I’m not in any hurry to test it.

There are likely a few circumstances that would damage this relationship. For example, one of us could suffer a traumatic brain injury, completely altering our personality and mental capabilities. I’m more concerned about that than just about anything else, since organic damage isn’t the kind of thing to which you can choose your response. Of course it’s easy, right now, for me to say that there are only a few things that could damage our dynamic when I’m not actually faced with any of them. All I can say is that in my experience of myself, I have not tended to let difficult events interfere with my commitments, and leave it at that.