hatching vain empires

Hi there. I certainly think it is quite important. Most importantly because we can never rely upon another to meet our needs in becoming healthy and well functioning adults. We can have help from friends, counselors, partners, etc. but, ultimately, that task belongs to the individual. In regards to the dynamic, I’ve found that my submission is more meaningful if I willingly give my control to my Dominant KNOWING I’m fully capable of navigating my life without his involvement. He isn’t rescuing me. He isn’t saving me. That makes my submission more meaningful to him as well because he knows I’m capable.

Submission should benefit your wellbeing; but, it is not an escape from being able to take very good care of yourself.

“Are you blessing each other?” 

The question came innocently from my 6yo daughter’s mouth. T was standing in the middle of the room, caressing my face and kissing my forehead over and over while I buckled His belt for Him. It was an innocent gesture-He was about to run an errand and I couldn’t go with Him. 

“Come to Me, little mouse,” He had called, using a nickname that started a week ago by accident but has slowly begun to linger in our dynamic {more on that later}.

“Buckle My belt for Me. Then get My black boots and bring them Me.”

“Yes, Sir. Of course.” My voice was soft, my fingers light.

It was simple submission, nothing sexual or inappropriate for young eyes to witness. It was simply Him demonstrating the gift of our dynamic-something we refuse to hide from them. Not all aspects of D/s are sexual, and showing them the demonstration of a beautiful functional adoring relationship is something we owe to our children.

“Are you blessing each other?”

What a beautiful question. A perfect question. 

Yes, we were blessing one another. 

Our dynamic is a give and take, a delicate balance that benefits us both. It restores us, centers us, keeps us close and safe in our hearts as well as in our lives. 

Yes, we were blessing each other. 

Our existence is blessing one another. 

My submission is a blessing to T. 

His Dominance is a blessing to me. 

His touch is my invocation. 

My eyes are His benediction. 

@cynicaldom told me to start washing a load of towels. I did, but I realized the dryer had clothing left in it that included some of his clothing. Shit. I have a rule that says I can’t leave clothing in the dryer. I bring it to the living room and fold it just a few feet from him. He doesn’t say anything. I was surprised he didn’t notice. I knew he had been struggling with depression. He’s always a bit less aware or focused when he’s depressed. I wish I would have been more understanding, but instead, I was childish. I thought that if he wasn’t going to notice then why should I get in trouble over it? If he doesn’t notice then it doesn’t matter, right? Wrong, of course. Him not noticing doesn’t change what I’ve committed to. But in my grumpy mood, I convinced myself not to confess. 

I essentially stayed in that headspace for two weeks, off and on. “It doesn’t matter” became my excuse to ignore a variety of little rules and details. There were at least half a dozen little rules broken. The dog food container got left open. I neglected to pick up a couple of glasses that were in the living room when I did the dishes (it’s supposed to be all of them, every time). I made the executive decision to take something off my schedule when I should have gotten his approval. I didn’t finish my last glass of water one night. Some of them were genuine mistakes. I found myself surprised at how quickly I lost focus on the details, how easily I overlooked things once I knew he wasn’t watching as closely as usual. A couple weren’t just accidents. A couple were tantrums because I was frustrated by his slight change in presence and convinced myself I was somehow justified, that him slipping a bit accidentally meant I could toss things aside on purpose. 

One day he noticed he hadn’t seen me eating much and asked me to tell him what all I had ate that day. I told him. It was one junk meal and a couple of snacks. He was asking me near bedtime. He made me eat a yogurt before going to bed, which I struggled with a little bit. I tried wrinkling my nose and sort of shrugging off the conversation. He stared at me until I responded to his questions, and kept on me when I said I would eat a yogurt but didn’t stand up to go get one. It occurred to me that I was giving into his will, I was submitting - in this way that isn’t a requirement or a routine. I was a little whiny about it, but I wasn’t about to consider saying “it doesn’t matter.” or trying to truly reject his leadership in this way. The reason was, he was watching, and I would never disobey him when he’s watching…because I know he cares and wouldn’t let anything slide if he saw it in the sense of truly noticing it. 

I also started realizing how during my two-week tantrum, I kept doing all the big things. The dishes, my workouts, following all direct instructions. I do these things always because they are obvious, they can’t go unnoticed. I did the big, obvious chores because I knew I’d be in major hot water if I didn’t because he’d see it. I never doubt that if he catches something he’ll follow through, because I know he cares. So it’s ridiculous that I could convince myself if he didn’t notice me acting out, silently and in the shadows, that meant it didn’t matter. 

Reality set in, and I knew it would be painful but I had to confess. I knew I would break his heart. I expected a pretty rough punishment. I expected serious disappointment. It took me a couple of days to find the courage, and it only came after he kept asking me what was up. He knew there was something I wasn’t saying and started trying to crack my shell. So I cracked, but we had been messing around and laughing moments before. So it came out in a tone of voice and in a setting that felt really inappropriate for how serious the situation was. 

I told him something like “I’ve done a lot of stupid little things that you haven’t noticed. I know you’ve been depressed and that’s why and I’m sorry.” his eyes just seemed so blank. He was so quiet. I wanted to cry but I just wasn’t vulnerable enough to let it out. The air was just so tense and awkward. I eventually asked him what he was thinking and he said “I don’t know” and I knew he really had no idea what to think or feel. It worried me. I’m not used to seeing him thrown off like that. I didn’t know how to feel about his reaction. It gave me anxiety. I told him “I like you” which is our ‘I love you’. He said it back earnestly, nodding and looking me deep in the eyes. I know he’s trying to reassure me but my anxiety ran away with me anyway. The next two days are awkward. He’s quiet and withdrawn, more than is typical when he is depressed, he seems lost more than anything. He never said anything to me other than he didn’t know how he felt about what I confessed. So I don’t know for sure what he is thinking or feeling. I just kind of push through, waiting on a response, trying not to let my thoughts run wild. The second morning, he wakes up after I do. He calls me into the bedroom to cuddle. This is typically common for us, but it hadn’t happened in a while so it feels like coming home. I massage him and we cuddle. He’s more talkative, he is clearly feeling better. I’m happy to feel more like us but I’m so confused about how we never talked through what happened. I hate not having clarity. I hate feeling like this huge mistake is stuck between us. 

We go on to have a good day that feels pretty normal. When he comes out of the bedroom holding his belt I don’t realize what his plans are at first. He motions for me to stand up and he takes off my leggings and panties. I step towards the arm of his chair, assuming he’ll put me over it but he sits down instead. I realize the belt is folded really short. ‘Oh…wait..’ I think as it starts to occur to me what is going on. We play in the living room once in a while, but always bent over the furniture, not over his knee. I don’t think he’s ever used his belt for punishment. It’s new territory all around, but my gut knows where it’s headed. As I go over his knee I bend my arm across my lower back, in place for him to hold it. Hoping proactive submission may help somehow. I imagine my expression would have been comical to watch because the first blow is shockingly painful. I don’t really have coherent thoughts for the first few blows, I’m just in shock at the intensity. He pauses and says “When you disobey me when I am depressed you are not being my partner.” and I go from being unable to think about anything but the pain, to being unable to think of anything but those words. I’m instantly sobbing.

 In these two days of awkward distance since I confessed, and in the day or two of worrying before confessing, I’ve felt very guilty. I’ve felt ashamed of how childish, selfish and immature I’ve been. I’ve been disappointed in myself for not digging deeper to stay the course and act like I should until he got feeling better. But I hadn’t thought of it quite the way he put it. It hadn’t quite hit me that skirting the little rules, and the details of rules when I know he wouldn’t notice wasn’t just blowing off our D/s, it was rejecting him. I wasn’t partnering with him in our D/s, I wasn’t supporting him or his dominance over me. Once we had a question sent in for the podcast about whether or not we could go back to being vanilla now. He said no, and explained how D/s allows us to connect more intimately than we could before. Going back wouldn’t work because D/s is how we connect the deepest, it is the core of our intimacy. That’s why blowing off the rules is rejecting him, and us. I sob through the spanking, and I think he’s starting to let up as he almost pauses, but he just sighs and then tightens his grip on my arm that he’s holding and lays into me even harder for a handful of more to finish it off. He lets me cry over his lap for a bit and then he tells me to stand. His voice isn’t soft yet, I know something is up, I know we aren’t done but I don’t know what that means.

He guides me towards a corner. I’ve never done cornertime before. We’ve talked about the possibility. We’ve talked about how for a typical mistake, it may make me run away with guilt too much, how I don’t usually need help with headspace in a punishment. We talked about how if I were to be angry when I should feel guilty, maybe corner time would be used. I knew this tool was in his toolbox, but he’s never felt the need to use it. I’m not angry now, I’m already feeling guilty, this isn’t to get me into a new emotion. I know it’s just to make me sit with the feeling I already have. With both of his hands on my shoulders, standing behind me he talks into my ear. “ You’re going to stand here for 20 minutes. Unless it gets to be too much, then you come sit on my lap.” I can’t find my voice so I just nod. 

It wasn’t what I thought it would be, or how I’ve read it feels to other submissives. It’s hot and sticky to cry with your nose in a corner, your breath bouncing back on your face. I’ve read about how embarrassing it is, like the embarrassment is the real punishment. It didn’t really occur to me that my whipped ass was on display until I adjusted my arms across my back and my fingers felt the heat off my butt. I’ve heard people say the boringness of staring at a wall is the punishing part. I didn’t get bored. I was consumed with my thoughts. I just stood there crying for 20 minutes, thinking about how this was a huge mistake. Easily my biggest failing this year, probably in two years. Thinking about how I hurt my Daddy so much it took him two days to process it himself and to deal with me. How I disappointed him, and how he was surprised at what I’ve done because he thinks higher of me than this. How I hurt our relationship. I tried to think of what I could say to him once I was done. Towards the end I started to calm down a bit. My eyes and throat itched, my stomach hurt - but the crying was cleansing too. As difficult as it was, I realized while still standing in the corner that I’m lucky that he’s willing to punish me because I need the catharsis. 

He physically pulled me from the corner at the end, and onto his lap. I buried my head in his neck and my hand into his beard. Having no physical distance between us was comforting, but sensing how the emotional gap had disappeared felt far better. I cried more. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t watching you closer. This is all done now. It’s over.” he said. I cried harder. It took me a while to find my voice. “I’m sorry.” I finally squeaked out. “Oh, I know you are.” he said in a voice so soft and genuinely that it hurt. I tried finding words but couldn’t. “No. It’s done. It’s over.” he said in response to seeing me try to find something to say. I shook my head. “I know. I do. But I just want to say that I appreciate you. It’s awful. I know it must be hard for you. I’m sorry for making you do this. I mean..not ‘making’ you? But..just..for putting us in this situation where it’s needed? I don’t know how to say it right..” he said he understood my point. We sat together for a long time. 

At first, all I saw was how she did me wrong. I had been depressed, I thought my emotional pain was not validated and accounted for, only my failures were. She should have came to me and voiced her dissatisfaction. Hell, she was trying to coerce me with guilt into acting the way she wanted by acting out!

It took a couple days, but I fought past my anger and eventually came to a different conclusion.

My anger mostly subsided when I considered her perspective. I was less present when I was depressed, I paid less attention to her when I was in a head space where she thought that I start to shut down things I found burdensome.

I had communicated to her that being her Dominant was a burden.

And I expected her to come to me with her dissatisfaction, to explicitly say to me aloud that she needed more of what I apparently found burdensome, when I was already hurting. What recourse had I really left her, knowing her as I do? She didn’t know what to do, she froze, and she acted out of instinct. She did not consciously & passive-aggressively lash out at me with the intent to coerce me, she just fucked up.

Depression is not actually a head space where you eliminate things you consider burdensome, it’s a head space where you cannot easily see over the horizon of effort. You become self-centered to a fault, your mind believes it needs all of it’s energy to process what it’s experiencing.

Being her Dominant is not a burden, this process has helped me come out of my fog, as it has before. A burden is hole you throw effort into without exchange.

All this does not absolve her wrong doing. I have made sure she knows, in her heart, that coming to me directly with her needs will never be an attack on me. Making sure her needs and my needs are met will never be a place where we struggle for power.

But, and again, it’s a big but, that is very easy to say in theory. It’s another thing to come to your depressed Dom and discuss how your needs are not being met while not wanting to hurt them. I put her in a hard spot! Yes, we both fucked up, but I share responsibility in her fuckup.

I am not writing this to excoriate myself, to say I do not deserve understanding in a time of weakness. But I signed up to hold myself to a higher standard. I will never be an infallible arbiter of two people’s destiny, but I can get closer with each failure. That requires not hating myself for my failures, but above all, not excusing myself for them either. And that’s not just on the Dom side, she can’t excuse her mistakes either, and I’m proud of her that she doesn’t.

When I spanked her, I communicated how I felt hurt in a single sentence that I knew she would understand. I said when I’m depressed and you disobey me you’re not my partner. She understood instantly. My feelings were validated.

I felt betrayed that she did not factor in the pain I was going through when she acted out, that she didn’t come talk to me instead. But she felt betrayed when I turned inward to nurse my wounds, when I forgot about her.

You hide from yourself. You don’t let anyone in.

who have been told that they are ‘too preoccupied with kink’, or that they are ‘too Dominant’, ‘too selfish’ or ‘too submissive’ - do not listen to the people who speak those words. If you love something and it fills you this much, to where you would pursue it to the ends of the earth, do not ever give up your passion for anyone. Hold it close to your heart and understand that you are not obligated to dim your sparkle for anybody. In life, there will always be people who tell you that you are too much or too little. They will say you are too assertive, or too reserved. They will say “she” feels too little or too much, maybe that “his” ambition is selfish. Some may even be hurt or offended that you do not think the same way about concepts including love, trust, consent and control. Yet at the end of the day, know in your heart that you are not ever wrong for being yourself, for seeking your version of fulfillment, peace, adrenaline and adventure.

Don’t give up on wild dreams. Go out there and smash that glass ceiling to pieces!

Love you crazy kinksters.

.

But there is still going to be a reason as to why you are attracted to a certain thing you’ll call a ‘kink’ and enjoy it so much - just as there can be reasons why some people aren’t attracted to it and don’t find enjoyment in it.

It’s good that you question your kinks every now and again, but if your answer every time is a shrug and “whatever, I get off on it”, then you’re not really examining it? 

Put it this way: it’s not about why you’re submissive, it’s ‘why does being submissive get you off’.

Bear with me, and flip it for a second. Someone says they like being dominant. 

Why do they like being dominant? “Because it gets them off”. Okay. So,

Why does being dominant get them off? What is the reason for that person? Is it because of the relationship that they have with a consenting partner, the nuanced dynamics they can enjoy that are specific to them? Is it some other, healthy, well-considered reason that they’ve achieved through introspection and self-awareness?

Or do they get off on being dominant because it’s the one way they can hurt another person without being called an abusive asshole?

Obviously, not a lot of people are going to admit the latter. 

The thing is, I’ve seen a lot of people whose motives behind their kinks are exactly that. They’re the ones who are often quickest to say “it’s my KINK dOn’T kInKsHaMe Me!!!!1!!1″.

That is the existing, prevailing problem, that constantly needs to be addressed.

The fact is that kink and bdsm aren’t life-adjacent. Kink doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s not just about you.

Just as your actions and attitudes outside of kink can often have direct or indirect consequences, it is still the same for your kink-related ones. Are you conscious and aware enough in your kinks that you can confidently say they’re neither coming from anywhere unhealthy for you, nor have the potential to spread or perpetuate any underlying harms to those around you?

Especially when shared on an open, public forum such as tumblr, where you cannot entirely control the kind of people who will be interacting and exposed to what you share? Where you won’t know whether or not they would be mature enough, and decent enough of a human being, to take things with a grain of salt and evaluate the soundness of their own kinks?

The point is that people are out here saying “critically examine your kinks” because there are too many fucking people who don’t, who live their entire lives choosing to be obtuse and ignorant and too self-involved to think about how the way they’re sharing their kinks, or even how the “kinks” themselves, could be part of and contributing to some bigger fucked up shit that they don’t think about.

If you are confident that you are not one of such people, then obviously “critically examine your kinks” isn’t for you, since you already do so. In which case, keep doing you, and move along. And, frankly, no one’s going to give a shit about your kinks if no one knows about them.

But if you run to kink with the belief that it’s to be some faraway corner where there are absolutely zero potential repercussions to anything you take part in and do, especially when it becomes something you talk about openly and share with others whose motives and genuine maturity you don’t know, then maybe you’re not mature enough yourself to be doing any kinks, much less to go talking about it. Then you need to sit down and really, really think about your whys and why nots.

There’s nothing wrong in frequently thinking and examining your own kinks, you’re not going to lose anything by doing so. At the very least, you get to understand yourself a little better. Not only that, but it can help you recognise red flags in others who are just bad, awful people hiding behind a thin veil of ‘kink/bdsm’ to protect them from their just desserts.

Which leads to the other point being that some things don’t need to be called a kink and some things aren’t worth being considered kinks at all. 

I write a lot about the perfect moments. The moments when we are completely in sync, when he does the exact right thing and I respond in the exact right way. D/s feels so natural to the both of us that it sometimes takes something significant to remind us that we have only been living this lifestyle for a year and a half. That’s no time at all, and we will fuck up.

I was stuck in my head. I’d experienced an awkward social situation earlier in the day and just could not stop thinking about it. BB and I had dinner plans and while I was getting ready I was quieter than usual, silently obsessing over what had happened. I couldn’t stop overthinking, couldn’t communicate with him beyond a few words, couldn’t do anything but replay the awkward situation in my mind.

So, he thought that in order to snap me out of it, he should spank me.

It was not fun. He delivered hard swats over my panties, the spanking going on longer than I expected it to. I fought it, squirming and crying out and trying to get away. Eventually, I started begging him to stop. I’d never done that before–not even during a punishment spanking. But I took a couple more hard spanks before he stopped and held me.

I felt like I had just been punished. I didn’t feel that I deserved what I’d gotten and when I expressed as much, BB said, “You didn’t deserve it, but you needed it.”

But when we left for dinner, I was right back in my head. On top of that, the spanking had managed to hurt my feelings. I wasn’t upset with him, but I felt like he had been mean. Normally I like mean, but this was different. It felt like he’d punished me for overthinking, and that wasn’t fair.

The night went on and we had a really good time. We had good food, took a romantic stroll by the water, and went to a bar. The spanking was, for the moment, forgotten. When we got back, I was suddenly not feeling well and was exhausted, so we went to sleep. 

Days later, the spanking came back up in conversation. The feelings of hurt resurfaced, and when I got emotional I realized that I hadn’t processed what had happened. We barely did any aftercare before we left, or when we got back. It didn’t occur to either of us that I’d need it, because it hadn’t been a “scene.” 

BB said he’d been aiming for a maintenance spanking, and I admitted that it absolutely was not a maintenance spanking for me. It was much too intense, and because it was a reactionary spanking, it felt punishing. Did I mention that I’d never had a maintenance spanking before? Yeah, we learned the hard way that that was not it. Wrong context. Wrong time.

We also agreed that I probably should have used “yellow” to slow him down. I don’t think safe-wording even crossed my mind during the spanking, even though I was emotionally distressed. Endurance is something that we love and find arousing—enduring what he gives me, submitting to pain, etc. Enduring his sadism is part of our “sex” life, and I love it. But when something I’m submitting to affects me emotionally in a negative way, we need to stop and reassess.

We never claimed to be perfect at the D/s thing, but we were proud of how effortless it felt a lot of the time. This experience ended up being a humbling one. BB learned that his judgment is not infallible, no matter how well he knows me, and I discovered a boundary within my capacity to endure.

I think you are right about maintence spanking feeling different. I’ve found it works best when I have time to mentally prepare. I’ve had times when I’m buried under a mountain of stress, but I know that I will be over his lap at 6pm. And even if I don’t want it or I’m in a weird headspace, I can usually manage to relax and accept what he is giving me.

Then there are the other times—the times when I don’t need space or warning. Sometimes the problem isn’t that he spanked me when my head was too noisy; sometimes it’s that he didn’t spank me enough. Sometimes it feels like a half-spanking that was just enough to annoy me but not enough to break through the noise in my brain.