People outside of D/s are just as baffled when those things happen to them.

It took me far too many years to catch on the psychology of this kind of behavior. People often won’t tell you why they are dissatisfied with a relationship. They may not even tell you that they aren’t happy and fulfilled. They’d rather just retreat and hide.

Despite all the social aggression we witness most people are reluctant – afraid – to cause a fuss, endure friction or be thought a ‘negative’ person. They’d rather hide in silence, retreat behind walls.

Have you ever applied for a job only to find it nearly impossible to discover whether or not you’ve been hired? You haven’t but the person who chose someone else gets his or her stomach in a knot at the prospect of telling you. So they hide behind their secretary.

Many years back the stress that bosses felt when firing employees caused ‘dehiring’ consultants to do the dirty work for them. Corporations paid fat fees so managers wouldn’t have to look a discarded employee in the face.

It is the same weird timidity at work.

Similarly in the most conventional romance people will suddenly become unable for a date. They claim to be too busy with work or school. They’d rather invest huge amounts of time contorting themselves than admitting that something about the relationship hasn’t worked for them. And rather let it end than cope with the emotional risks of being open enough to discover if there is a solution.

Some fear appearing in a bad light. Others just want to move on if the thrill they expected wasn’t found.

A bottom may have found what he or she was experiencing boring. Boring in a way that left them without any desire to continue. While enduring ennui can be a part of submission it can just be tedious and nothing more.

Or the bottom may find some experiences uncomfortable and unsatisfying. But be trapped by that. Emotional state that leaves a bottom unwilling or unable to complain and explain. So they just give up.

Tops may feel that their authority or competence has been challenged. There are tops that feel confused or guilty about this. The ability to negotiate vanishes and they lapse into silence. While tops are mere mortals like the rest of it some find admitting that unendurable.

Unconfident, playmates and lovers would rather let a relationship die than undergo the demands of honest discussion, the challenge of emotionally naked conversation.

This is sad. The shy man or woman, rendered unwilling o speak loses a valued friend in fearful silence. And as those who can push past these fears can attest many of the best relationships are built on foundations that looked rocky at first.

It hurts to be shut out. Equally it hurts to be the one closing the door.

Fetish Meme | Fetish Pop Culture

This short profile from someone in rural North Carolina gave me pause:

46yr old single father of two looking for a submissive, slave or switch to join me and my sons in kinky BDSM play

Genetic considerations aside I can see no justifications for the incest taboo assuming the two are fairly mature and sensible. Not that I find the idea exciting myself. I once did have a dream of having sex with my sister. I didn’t welcome that dream and am glad it never reoccurred.

But – call it cultural conditioning – something about a dad and his two sons binding, beating, sexually using the same woman leaves me inexorably queasy. Images of an inbred and dysfunctional redneck family flash into my mind. Perhaps unfairly.

Fetish Meme | Fetish Pop Culture

Ebooks have been common in the make money the easy way online sucker market for some time. Now they are invading BDSM, at least the Femdom portion of it.

Ebooks are often written by people with no expertise in the subject they are covering, just a desire to make a buck. Often the rights to the books are sold to other people who also peddle it online.

The page count is often low and sometimes a series are sold as an online course. It is a real sucker’s market.

Don’t be fooled into buying an ebook or online course promising to teach you how to be a submissive man, turn your wife into a dominatrix or win a Mistress.

Everything that you need to know about male submission and female dominance is out here on the web. Again and again: there is no secret, no hidden lore; any promise of special techniques is sheer bunk.

Being a good submissive man is mostly about being a good man; taking a pleasure in deference, needing to surrender to control. And often – hooray for masochism! – happiness in pain.

The people you can learn from are the men and women who have forged successful female dominant relationships and share their experiences on blogs and forums. Don’t be tempted by the bogus offers you see on the web.

Fetish Meme | Fetish Pop Culture

Using game as an implicitly understood negative quality brings to mind something that irks me in many D/s personal ads. It implies there’s something wrong with having fun. Too often tops – excuse me, Masters and Mistresses – make kinky relationships sound as dour an enterprise as a Baptist Sunday School service.

Without pleasure, why bother?

As a man who once identified as exclusively queer the word lifestyle makes me cringe. Fundagelicals babble on about the gay lifestyle as if gay men and women went about homosexualizing all day long. As if same sex sexual and affectional orientation defined everything about how their days are lived.

And even if your BDSM relationship is in some sense 24/7 surely you do other things than exchange power all day long. Hopefully there’s room for affection and creativity.

What is the point of BDSM if there’s no romance, beauty or joy?

Fetish Meme | Fetish Pop Culture