Domination & Submission: The BDSM Relationship Handbook (8 page)

Here are some of the tell-tale signs that may
indicate that someone may, indeed, be a
pseudo-submissive:
 

·
        
A pseudo-sub just
loves
following her Dominant’s instructions, just as long as those instructions
happen to coincide with what she really wanted to do in the
first place.
 

·
        
A pseudo-sub thinks it’s critical to
get her Dominant’s opinion on what color
panties
to wear, but neglects
to mention that she bought a car today.

·
        
A pseudo-sub is ever-ready to offer
her Dominant advice on how to be a better partner.  This usually consists
of recognizing her bad moods and just not bugging her at those times.

·
        
A pseudo-sub is never
wrong
. 
She’s just learning life lessons on her own, the
hard
way.

·
        
A pseudo-sub asks her Dominant if he
likes what she is wearing,
not
because she wants his opinion, but
because she is fishing for a compliment.  If she doesn’t get one, she sulks
or gets angry.

·
        
A pseudo-sub often cares less about
her
actual
relationship with her Dominant than she does about what
others
think
about her relationship. 

·
        
A pseudo-sub uses the word
“why”
as a way to
top from the bottom
.  Why don’t you like my
hairstyle?  Why won’t you let me do this?  Why can’t you be more
flexible?  Why don’t you want to have sex right now?

·
        
A pseudo-sub trusts her Dominant,
except when it comes to making actual,
important
decision.

·
        
A pseudo-sub thinks the rules only
apply to all those
other
submissives.  She’s
special.

·
        
A pseudo-sub tells other submissives,
“My Master is the best Master in the whole wide world!”  At the same time,
she asks
him
, “Why can’t you be like
other
Dominants?”

·
        
A pseudo-sub thinks that having a Dom
will magically fix whatever is wrong with her.

·
        
A pseudo-sub knows the
one true
way.
  It was on
Tumblr
, so it
must
be true.

·
        
A pseudo-sub has been tied up a
hundred different ways and in sixteen different languages.  This makes her
a
pro
, since everyone knows being tied up takes real skill.

·
        
A pseudo-sub has years of experience
at being told what to do by her former Dominant.  The fact that she didn’t
actually
do
any of those things is completely irrelevant.

·
        
A pseudo-sub describes her former Dom
as
abusive
, her future Dom as
perfect
, and her current Dom as a
work-in-progress
.

Now, before you go and get your panties in a bunch,
let me just say that this laundry list of pseudo-sub warning signs
isn’t
meant to be taken completely seriously.  Then again, if you
are
going to get your panties in a bunch, please get photographs and send them my
way.  I think that’s kind of
hot
.

This list was actually intended as a tongue-in-cheek
commentary on the incredible complexity of D/s relationship and of how
fragile
that dynamic can sometimes be.  If any of it seems to hit just a little
too close to home, if you recognize yourself or someone you know on this list,
I can only hope that you are able to laugh about it and perhaps find a way to
use it to improve your relationship.  On the other hand, if you have
actually known and been involved with me
personally
in the past and
think you recognize yourself on that list, I would just like to say: 

Ha ha ha!  Just kidding! 
(Does this building have a fire-escape?)

Jade simply couldn’t
believe
what she was
hearing, and had to ask me to clarify what I’d just said. “Master, did you just
say Joanne is going to be
moving here?
To
be with us?”

I nodded, and replied, “Well, of course! 
Remember?  The three of us talked about it when she visited us last
Christmas.  At the time, we all thought it was a good idea. 
Afterward, you even told me privately that you were really looking forward to
her moving here from Colorado.”

Jade closed her eyes momentarily, and took a series
of deep breaths.  It was obvious she was struggling to keep her raw
emotions in check as she searched for the right words to express exactly how
she felt about what I’d just told her.  “
Master
,” she confessed
haltingly, with downcast eyes, “I only said that because
I didn’t think you
two were serious!
   I honestly, never in a million years, thought
she would
actually
quit her job, take her son out of school, pack up a
rental truck, and
move here to Texas!”
  She was on the verge of
tears as she continued, “I love Joanne, but she is
easy to love,
as long
as
she
is in Colorado and
we’re
in Texas!  But
now
,
with her coming
here
... I...  I just don’t
know!
 
Master, what am I going to do?  How am I going to be able to deal with
this?”

I replied, “My
love
, you’ll welcome her and
her son here the way she
expects
to be welcomed and, to the best of your
ability, you’ll be a good sister-sub to her until things either work out or
they don’t.  And please let this be a lesson to remember
always
. 
I can’t make
good
decisions, if they’re based on
bad
information.  Please don’t
ever
tell me something just because you
think that’s what I want to hear.  There’s no way that can ever end well.”

Jade hung her head and nodded, uttering an
almost-whispered,
“Yes, Master.”

The coming months were about to get very
interesting, indeed.

# 
#  #

This sad but true personal story from the dusty
archives of my somewhat eccentric life illustrates just one of the
many
reasons why it is
absolutely necessary
for a Dominant to
always
know what is going on inside of his submissive’s head.  A Dominant may be
called upon to make life-changing decisions that affect not only
his
life,
but the lives of his submissives
and
their families, both immediate and
extended.  It is hard
enough
to make good decisions based on
timely, factual, and relevant information. 

Imagine how difficult the decision-making process
becomes when it is based upon information that turns out to be outdated,
irrelevant or flat-out
wrong.
  Not only does it become infinitely
more
difficult
, but the
quality
of any decision arrived at will
suffer. 

The process becomes a classic case of
junk in,
junk out.

“Tell me what you’re thinking”
is a question that every submissive should look forward to hearing from her
Dominant.  Unfortunately, many submissives
dread
it, perhaps for
lack of confidence or fear of being inarticulate.  That is always a shame,
because it is the submissive’s
golden opportunity
to influence her
Master’s decisions and opinions
the right way
.

Charlotte,
the Spider:  I'm versatile.

Wilbur,
the Pig:  Does versatile mean full of eggs?

Charlotte: 
No, it means I can change with ease

from
one thing to the next.

- 
Charlotte's Web, E.B. White (1973)

What is a Switch?

There are two groups of people in the D/s and BDSM
lifestyles who are quite often misunderstood and occasionally even the targets
of lingering prejudice even from others in the fetish culture:
Switches
and
Primals
.  We’ll discuss
Primals
at length in the next
chapter.  Switches fall into two general categories: BDSM Switches and D/s
Switches. 

BDSM Switches
are
individuals who enjoy
performing
in either the role of a
Top
or a
Bottom,
depending upon the circumstances, their moods, or their
partners.  D/s Switches are people who
feel
and relate
to
their partners as
Dominants
or
submissives
, for essentially the
same reasons.  Because the D/s and BDSM cultures are overwhelmingly
focused on issues relating to domination and submission, Switches are sometimes
regarded by others in the lifestyle with a certain degree of suspicion,
condescension or bemusement.  The primary source of this prejudicial
attitude tends to be the widespread misconception that Switches are simply
confused
or
unaware
of their true orientation.  This erroneous belief is
founded upon the naive assumption that
everyone
must either be a
Dominant or a submissive.   The truth of the matter is most people
are
neither. 
Most people have
both
dominant and submissive
characteristics and are able to draw upon them as necessary and appropriate in
both their day-to-day lives and their
kink lives
.   

As I’ve mentioned earlier in this book, I firmly
believe that most
people can be found somewhere on a spectrum between
the two extremes of Dominant and submissive.  I would venture to guess
that only about ten percent of the general population can truly count
themselves as Dominants, and another ten percent as submissives.  The
other eighty percent of the human race falls somewhere in the middle; they
exhibit characteristics of either, or both, depending on a variety of
factors.  These individuals should never feel pressured to
decide
whether they are Dominants or submissives because in truth,
they may be
neither,
and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.  Among the
vanilla
population, these folks are simply thought of as being
normal
. 
Unfortunately, in the BDSM culture, they are often considered
confused
,
just
experimenting
, or
still learning
when,
ironically
, it is
often the case that an individual has realized that he or she is a Switch only
after
a great deal of soul searching, experimentation and learning.

Decades ago, being a
Switch
generally meant
something else,
entirely
.  The
classical
definition of
Switch
used to refer to a person (usually a female) who was always submissive to
one person, and Dominant towards another.  Historically, this manifested
itself typically in poly relationships consisting of a male Dominant head of
household living under the same roof with two submissive females, one of which
was the more dominant.  In such a scenario, the more dominant of the two
females is
always
submissive to the male Dominant, and yet
simultaneously
always
Dominant towards the other submissive
female.  The meaning of the word has evolved over the past thirty years or
so to better serve the purposes of a post-modern BDSM culture that embraces
experimentation, self-determination and kink-tolerance.  Even so, even
today, there are still many people who consider themselves Switches who
categorize themselves as such on the basis of the
classical
definition
of the word.

In some ways, perceptions of Switches in the BDSM
community may be similar to how
bisexuals
are sometimes viewed by
straights
and
gays.   Many heterosexuals have an
unfortunate tendency to view bisexuals as
gay. 
Conversely, there
are members of the gay community who demonstrate a bias against bisexuals by
characterizing them as
straight people playing at being gay.
 
Perhaps this is all due to the fact that we all have a very
human
need
to interpret our environments in
simple terms
.   We want to
see things as being black or white.  We really don’t like all those pesky
shades of grey
in-between
.  It messes with our sense of balance; we
want things
uncomplicated. 
You try
one kind
of sushi,
discover that you don’t care for it, and you say,
“I don’t like sushi.”
 Never
mind that there are
literally thousands
of different kinds of sushi out
there that you
haven’t
tried. 
That
would be far too
difficult to contemplate.

This tendency to oversimplify things can lead people
to believe that certain things are
opposites
and mutually exclusive
when, in fact, they are nothing of the sort.  Domination and submission
are
not
opposites, nor are they mutually exclusive
in any way
. 
A person can be
both simultaneously
, as in the poly household with the
“Dominant submissive” who is always sub to the male head of the household, and
always dominant with the other female sub.   Many people also
erroneously consider
sadism and masochism
to be opposites and mutually
exclusive.  They are
not
.  A person can
easily
be
simultaneously a sadist and a masochist and, in fact, it’s
extremely common
in the fetish lifestyle.  If you’re still having a difficult time wrapping
your head around this concept, consider this analogy: when a thirty-year-old
woman takes her ten-year-old daughter to visit grandma, she is
simultaneously
a mother and a daughter.
  For the most part, no one thinks there’s
anything weird about that.