House Tearmainn

I had written a fair amount about anger earlier. I suppose I’ll get back to it, but I’m not in the morose place I was earlier in the day. I watched Tron with the eldest and pais, which has greatly improved my mood. It also made pais wet. My kinda pervert.

Hmm. I haven’t talked much about the kids here, I really like to keep those spaces as separate as possible, but if anyone ever stumbles upon this I suppose they should have a little context. I have 3 kids, all between 4 and 12. I have both girls and boys. I have custody of them 1/2 of the time, which is in the process of being formalized in divorce.

I love them very much and want to give them every advantage in life. Part of that, to me, is both an open mind and as much modeling of healthy behavior as possible. At current that means keeping all M/s aspects of my life as far from them as I keep s/m (that being “very”). I am not ashamed of my lifestyle, far from it, but it is my firm belief that they should have as much freedom of choice in their lives as possible. I feel that modeling a lifestyle so obviously different has a very good chance of generating in them an increased feeling of separation from “normal” life. There is no lack of “weird” in their lives, but I think this would be so overwhelmingly different that it would have a significant chance of damaging their ability to choose their own lifestyle.

Their lives aren’t risk-free, and I would not make them so if I could. If they come to this lifestyle on their own, on either side of the dynamic, I can’t honestly say I’d be more or less proud of them. I would still love them, though, and accept their choice. As long as I know it was their choice and not some artifact of my own choices.

Of course there will come a time when the cat will be out of the bag, on my timeline or not. I can’t rightly say when that will be at this point. It’s years out, at least, but I often think about what I will say when the time comes. Should be an interesting day.

In the meantime, pais and I act quite overtly vanilla in their presence. She argues, contradicts, teases, and in all other ways behaves in an egalitarian manner. It’s humbling, and I’m grateful for that. She is never anything but a slave, however… just one that is pleasing me in a most bizarre and difficult way. I have no doubt that I could order her to do anything in front of the kids and she would comply after ascertaining that she understood what I was saying. She trusts me to refrain, and I do… just as I do on the train, at restaurants, around our families, at work, etc.

Some will undoubtedly say that this makes us something other than what we are. I understand the desire to draw boundaries around the things that define us. To say this is (M/s|TPE|24/7|etc), and that is not. I encourage others to question their views and definitions of those terms, I certainly do. In the end, for me, what constitutes a 24/7 TPE M/s relationship is the following:

A D/s relationship where there are no limits to the dominant’s authority over the submissive aside from those the dominant chooses, and those may change at any time the dominant chooses, for any reason the dominant sees fit.

That describes my relationship perfectly, and so I feel comfortable claiming that particular alphabet soup for us. That said, I’m always open to other opinions and I would rather have an accurate description than one that suits my identity/self-image/vanity.