#wynspers

Who controls the finances in your relationship? You have previously written about being the submissive “bread-winner” but a lot of your other posts seem to indicate that he controls your spending to some degree. If he controls your spending but it’s your money, do you ever resent that?

At this stage we tend to mostly control our own finances and our own incomes, although that may change over time.

We share household expenses such as bills and whatnot more or less evenly, but for the most part different elements of my budgeting has been left as is. For example: I have always put 2% of my income aside to be able to donate to charities or causes I believe in and want to support, I have always put aside certain amounts into various savings accounts and generally have always left the same amount for “entertainment” or “leisure” expenses (although some adjustments were made when I first moved).

Mister has control over some of the specifics of any purchase (e.g. style of clothes, or quantity of books) but those things are more tied to specific rules or elements of our relationship dynamic rather than being designed to provide him with control of my finances.

I know that your Mister daily picks out your clothes, but when you shop for clothes do you pick them out? Or is he completely in charge of your wardrobe?

It’s a little bit of a mix.

If we’re shopping together then we both might find things that we think will work as part of my wardrobe and I’ll try them on with Mister having the final decision call.

If I’m by myself I will make my own judgement - I know Mister’s tastes and preferences fairly well and I will try to make decisions with these in mind, but I don’t need approval on specific items before purchasing them.

Have you ever had a mentor who taught you to be submissive or is it something you have just learned as you went?

I haven’t had a formal mentor, although I am most certainly not against it, and there was a period of time where I probably would have ended up being mentored by two people I have great admiration and respect for had life and circumstances worked out a little differently.

Being submissive is part of who I am, I believe it to be an intrinsic part of me and just like every other aspect of who I am today, it’s been influenced and shaped in some small way by a wide range of people.

I learnt selfless devotion from my grandmother who was a single mother of 5 during the 50s and 60s who worked herself to the bone to provide for them and yet also always had a smile, a funny story and a sympathetic ear. I learnt the power of forgiveness from my biological family, patient perseverance from my foster father, acceptance and awareness from my foster mother…Friends, family, casual acquaintances, colleagues, lovers and partners…the good, bad and in between…they have all shaped me in some way, and each have taught me something I apply to my submission and my relationship with Mister.

There are also a great many people I admire in the D/s community, and I have also learnt a lot through the experiences they share and through friendships made.

Then, of course, there are the Dominants who have had a more active role in teaching, guiding and nurturing my submission.

So, what I meant to say, was that it is largely something that has grown both consciously and subconsciously (no pun intended) as I have gone through life, although even though there was no one official mentor along the way, there have been many valuable lessons from people along the way.

Your Mister clearly has a lot of control outside the bedroom; is there anything you won’t let him control at all?

Work and family.

Although we approach pretty much everything as a team, and he still certainly has some influence over the way I approach these things at times, an automatic veto is applied to anything that may compromise or negatively impact my work or the people I view as family.

Pretty much everything else is open for discussion, negotiation, guidance and varying levels of control as needed and/or desired.

Do you ever get punished? If so, what have you been punished for so far?

To our great surprise and disappointment, I’m not faultless or flawless and sometimes I make mistakes! Thankfully Mister loves me anyway, but yes, I do get punished when I make avoidable mistakes or when I break the rules.

Early on in our relationship I had a bad night where I was having panic attacks and was struggling to both calm myself down and get to sleep. That in itself wasn’t punished, but failing to tell Mister when it started rather than hours later was.

I have also been punished for leaving the house and not locking the front door (it was very common and safe where I lived in Australia to leave the door unlocked when going out for a short period of time, and I carelessly forgot this rule doesn’t translate here).

For Mister’s recent birthday I purposely broke a rule about getting a minimum number of hours of sleep each night so that I had time to work on making gifts as a surprise for him. Although the outcome and sentiment was appreciated, we have discussed better ways to approach this in the future and I was punished for intentionally breaking the rules.

There was also this time that someone asked me to list every infraction that resulted in a punishment for a “Meet the Members” questionnaire for Submissive Coffee Club and I failed to remember all of them correctly…I have the sneaking suspicion I am forgetting something. Sorry!

Punishments don’t come up too often, I have bad habits like biting my nails when I’m nervous that are addressed with training and discipline, and if something comes up that we haven’t properly discussed or addressed before then we will have a “Discuss and adjust” talk, but punishments are usually reserved for avoidable infractions of established rules and behavioural expectations.

You have written about experiencing pain as part of your relationship but I think you have also previously said that you don’t see yourself as a masochist. How does that work? Is pain something you just suffer through because Spencer is a sadist and needs that from you?

I don’t consider myself a masochist because I don’t derive physical pleasure from pain in and of itself.

Many of the things that I enjoy are more a psychological and symbolic pleasure than a physical one, however, and the fact that I don’t tend to physically enjoy pain is pleasing to me in it’s own weird way. I enjoy enduring pain, I enjoy knowing that I am persevering through pain in order to please Mister, I enjoy when we do things to try and push my body to new limits and a higher level of endurance…I derive a great amount of pleasure and satisfaction from those elements.

I’m not sure if that makes too much sense, it’s certainly not something I force myself to do, or believe is mandatory (although it would be extremely hard for Mister to be satisfied in a relationship if he weren’t able to inflict pain and explore his inner sadism) but I also consent to it for my own reasons and benefit as well.

Does your Mister enforce any rules that you hate?

I don’t outright hate any of our rules, we would be setting ourselves up to fail if there were rules which were genuinely hated or if we created rules that didn’t hold any purpose or positive outcome, and so it’s something that is purposely avoided.

We have rules that I find challenging at times, or that can be difficult to adhere to under different circumstances, but there aren’t any that I hate or would even want to get rid of.

If that were ever to change we would talk about it and find a better fit for achieving our goals or the desired outcome.  

When are we EVER going to get audio of you playing the cello?

Hahaha!

So, bit of a back story because very few people are likely to understand this question, I play the cello and a little while ago (okay, quite a while ago now) I made a voice recording which was followed by a request from a friend for me to post a recording of me playing the cello. Normally I would answer privately but they also stuck on a specific statement that this question was for meet the members so….here we are.

The short answer is I don’t know. The slightly longer answer is that right now I am using music as therapy to work through some problems within myself and my life which makes it a very vulnerable and personal experience to share publicly, but knowing my patterns I will be on the mend at some point and playing for fun, so as soon as that happens I will absolutely post audio of happy and relaxed cello playing.

It must be hard being in a relationship where you both have mental illnesses. Do you sometimes struggle to keep D/s going and do you think it’s harder to maintain D/s when you both have mental health concerns?

I wouldn’t say that the challenges Mister and I face in terms of mental health make it harder to make our relationship work, if we’re talking comparatively to other couples.

Mister having OCD and myself having PTSD may present unique, or different challenges than some. There have certainly been hard days, and it’s particularly challenging on days where we are both struggling with different mental health needs which seem to conflict with one another - sometimes the best we can aim for is to not make one another worse, rather than aiming to actively help each other feel better. Although those days are rare, they are definitely the most difficult for a number of reasons.

We both benefit from, and take great comfort in, having very clearly communicated guidelines, rules and structure in our relationship. We know what our expectations are of ourselves and one another, we know how to communicate when those expectations can’t be met for any reason and we both have an incredible amount of love, care, tenderness and trust in each other. In these ways I think there are times when the dynamics of a D/s relationship help us face, overcome and address certain elements of our mental health needs than any other form of relationship dynamics would.

We’re incredibly fortunate in a lot of ways, there are hardships and challenges we are blessed in not having to face, and regardless of the times when things are difficult we still choose one another over any alternative on a daily basis. Every day I am grateful we have a relationship that we both believe is worth fighting for, regardless of any of the challenges we may face.

If you could go back in time to when you first realized you were submissive and had to give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Oh my goodness, there are so many things that come to mind, and this is an interesting question because the pitfalls and the hardships all lead me to where I am now as much as the good, fun and rewarding times, and I wouldn’t want to rob any version of myself of the opportunity to be where I am now.

I think the one piece of helpful advice I could give myself to make things a little easier on the journey would be this: