In The Beginning

© Rick Umbaugh

While I think I have a submissive personality, I feel very uncomfortable with the prospect of someone else controlling my life. In fact this kind of relationship doesn't sound very mentally healthy to me. Is there some part of this lifestyle that I just don't get?
~Skeptical

Patrick Califia has a wonderful way of describing how the scene works in her book Sensuous Magic "If it isn’t sensuous or consensual, it isn’t S/m." What we do in the scene is always consensual. If you wanted to have someone control your life, and there are a lot of submissives who do, it is always with their consent, which can be withdrawn at any moment. The reason this works is that real as it seems, the scene is the freedom to bring to life of one’s fantasies, one’s desires. If you feel that you are submissive by nature then the scene will allow you to explore that part of you. If that means you wish to define yourself as a slave, then so be it. But within that definition is the right to change your definition of yourself as well. If you want to change from a slave to a Master or a Mistress you can do that as well. Indeed there is a group of people who define themselves as changeable and call themselves switches. This means that they can sometimes be on the top of the relationship and sometimes on the bottom, changing as they and their partner wishes, sometimes within the same scene.

The conventional wisdom on sexuality for so many years had to do with constraints. Reproductive sex was enshrined as "normal" by the first sex researchers and given the imprint of Freud, but when Ellis went out to discover what exactly was normal (studying both sexual criminals and people whose sex lives didn’t intrude on their functioning in society) he found that people’s sex lives were much more varied than people could imagine. This finding was reinforced by Dr. Kinsey, who never really had the chance to study kinky sexuality, but made discoveries about other variations that sexuality can take.

Freedom and variety are the hallmarks of mental health. Alice Miller, the noted Swiss therapist (The Drama of the Exceptional Child), says it best. "The opposite of depression is" If you want someone to control your life, sexually or any other way, that’s fine, find someone who will make you happy. If you want only to be controlled in the bedroom, fine, find someone who will make you happy. If you have any other variation to that, fine, find someone who will make you happy, and be sure that they are happy too. In the end that is what mental health is all about, living the moments of your life, finding ways to be happy in them, no matter the immediate emotion, and then spreading that happiness as far as you can.

My partner and I started practicing a D/s relationship about 6 months ago. At first, it was very fun and exciting. As time goes on I'm finding that my workload has doubled, while my dominant seems to have cut hers in half. I guess I feel like I'm being taken advantage of. Is this how things are supposed to be?
~Wendy

There is a famous quote from Patrick Califia, the writer in his article for "Variations Magazine" back about 10 years ago. In it she was discussing power relationships within an S/m relationship. He said (and he was she at the time) that while he could have ordered his partner to do the dishes, but that he couldn’t because he was too much of a feminist to expect one person to do the dishes all the time. This is how S/m relationships work; they are negotiated and change as the environment of the relationship changes, so it is not the BDSM nature of the relationship. It is not the way it is supposed to be because there is no supposed to be.

There are several things that may be going on here. The first is that she may just be busy with other things and forgetting to do her part of the chores. This is the simplest explanation and there is nothing wrong with reminding her of her responsibilities. I have always thought that Dominants have the obligation to be more reliable than the submissive, to serve as an example. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

She could be taking advantage of you. New Dominants (and some more experienced ones for that matter) will find the perks of being Dominant very seductive and forget their agreements. In this situation you will have to confront her and ask if she needs to renegotiate the housework. Remember, you are submitting to her because you want to, and you can withdraw that consent at any time.

Lastly, this could mean that she is no longer interested in the relationship. Housework, whether in a kinky or a vanilla relationship is a labor of love. We do it to show love for the other people in the house, whether that housework is one person’s responsibility or the responsibility of all the members of the household. When it is approached that way, then it is fun. When it becomes an obligation, then it becomes a chore. Lastly, I would like to remind any would be doms out there that in Zen monasteries those of the highest rank usually perform the most onerous of the household chores.

Rick Umbaugh

Qui bene amat bene castigat