Boundaries: Good Idea

Have we talked about boundaries lately?  I've just read something that demands sharing.  I'm sitting in my happy spot nicely bounded and feeling pretty secure at the moment, so now is a good time to revisit this idea of boundaries.

First, it is empowering to realize that it is our own responsibility how we let other people treat us.  [It is not our fault if someone abuses us!  Not at all.  Abuse is a whole other dynamic.] 

In day to day living, we teach people how to treat us, and we teach them what we will accept and what we will reject.  We do that even if we aren't aware we're doing it: and regardless of what we teach them, there are people in the world who will bulldoze right over established boundaries anyway (or, will try to!) without regard for your boundaries.  Which is why you need to know what those boundaries are, and where the warning signs are posted, and when to sound the alarm.  "Learn to say no," in other words.  "Know what actions you need to take if your wishes aren't respected."

"Recognize that other people's needs and feelings are not more important than your own," is another good idea.  When you start imagining a relationship in terms of "more important" and "less important" then there is an unhealthy dynamic at play.  It is not about more or less, when there is love and trust to bind two people.  Domination does not mean "more important."  Submission does not mean "less important."  There are people in the world who would tell you that you are obligated to do something because you are someone.  Your submission obligates you.  Your obedience obligates you.  And the truth is, while submission means that you are inclined to serve and to obey rather than to give orders and dominate a situation, submission does not mean that you will obey blindly.  Rather, submission simply means that, in the relationship between a dom and a sub, the dom sets the mood and the tone of the activity, and the sub reacts and responds to this setting.  In a dance, one leads and one follows.  Neither takes priority: both are required, and the dance is beautiful.

You are never obligated to act against your own conscience.   You are never, as a submissive person, obligated to obey rules that insult your soul.  You are never obligated as a human being to perform actions, feel guilty, subjugate your own self-esteem to benefit another's ego, debase yourself for someone else's gratification... you are never obligated to perform as a slave for the selfishness of another.  Ever.  (Of course, if you want to do those things, then of course the world wants you to get what you want!!  But you are never obligated by virtue of your being submissively inclined.)

Domination does not mean "ownership."  There are some subs and doms who speak in terms of ownership, but it is not an obligation by virtue of submission and domination.  Ownership need never come into the relationship if you aren't comfortable with the word.  For some, it's perfection.  For others, it's overkill.

The idea of boundaries is a good idea to revisit from time to time.  It is good to clarify words and meaning as they relate to one's own experience.  One's own brain is the sole source of pleasure in this world, and it wants to know what's on the menu before selecting.

Also from the article, signals that there are boundary issues:

- you go against your values to please someone else

- you give as much as you can for the sake of giving

- you take as much as you can take from someone, for the sake of taking

- you let others define your personality, your rules, your acceptable limits

- you expect others to fulfill your needs automatically

- you feel anxious and guilty if you say "no" to a request

- you do not speak up when someone mistreats you

- you fall to pieces so that others will take care of you

- you fall in love with someone you barely know

- you fall in love with someone who reaches out to you for a conversation

- you accept someone's advances, touching, and sex when you do not want it

- you touch someone without asking first

These signals should send warnings that it is time to have a conversation.  It may be that everything is alright.  It may be that "it's just meant to be."  And that's great!  But have the conversation to make sure.  That, right there, is a boundary worth enforcing.

The Dictionary, Page Eleven

Rendering is the word that begins the new year.  A joyous 2013 requires a joyous space for contemplation and so I have renovated the contemplation space.  It gets me in the mind-set required for "rendering."  What does that word mean?  It has several meanings, depending on the artistic or engineering or food-manufacturing contexts.

To render is to shade and texture something until it becomes the most "itself" it can possibly be.  It could mean the preserving of slight, tiny details that may otherwise be lost in production, thereby making "itself" the most "itself" it can possibly be.  It could also mean separating the "itself" from the layers of indigestible fat, red herring, white noise, grey smoke, invisible demons, and black thoughts that detract "itself" from its real self.

The relevance, then, to my ongoing journey:  it's a sidewinder, so I will try to clarify this for myself and any others who may someday find it interesting.  In a discussion about "pushing someone's limits" I thought very carefully about all the time during my D/s journey that I have spent trying to defend my personal limits against people who insist on pushing them instead of respecting them as I wish them to be.  As I mentioned to my friend in this discussion, it just feels to me like whenever I state a limit, someone is there to try to bust through it -- as though stating a personal limit were the equivalent of painting a bull's eye target on myself.  "But, pushing limits is how people grow," is the argument against.  And, I disagree.  It is not the only way people grow.  It is not the only way people try new things.  And it is not the concrete, definite, be-all-end-all rule that every Dominant or Master must push a submissive to do things that are uncomfortable.  It's written nowhere that this is "the only way" a D/s relationship may successfully exist and thrive in the world.

"But, you will stagnate and grow bored," is the argument against.  And, again, I disagree.  As I meditate on the idea of rendering, I think about the ways in which pain is removed from me -- not inflicted upon me.  As I meditate upon the idea of the getting-to-know, the sharing of imagination, the conversation and processing of the world together, the ways in which Tasdron gets to know me and offers perspectives that I had not thought of, the ways in which I may speak candidly and freely with him and unburden the sealed vaults of festering secrets or unleash the anxious chirping doves that are eager to fly, all the different ways that he takes care to preserve my essence while carving away the excess noise and sludge...  this process of rendering that takes place time after time, day after day, weeks and months on end... this process of rendering (that he would have me believe is mutual, in fact) is a process that does not involve substituting one pain for another but, rather, involves letting the real person come out.

The real person emerges.  And frankly, that's enough of a challenge for me, because it's been a long time since that's been a reality, and I didn't even realize it before.  This process of rendering requires trust and time and closeness and intimacy and care so that mistakes do not happen, of course, just like pushing limits requires.  But instead of pushing limits of endurance, it's a process of removing unnecessary endurance to free the soul and let experience be that much more gratifying.  And, thank you.  The peace is delightful from where I recline.

No limits

After something intense and physical, a demonstration of the bond we share, something I was not expecting and something that awakened me to new levels of connection and new levels of understanding, he asks me, "I did not shock you, did I?"

No, of course not.  Yes, you totally shocked me. Both are perfectly true, and I love it.  But of course, they answer two separate questions.

The real, first question yesterday was whether I was alright, and so my answer is yes, I really am.  I am not shocked; I am alright.  The question that resonates now, though, in the aftermath, now that I'm thinking about it, now that I am awake and refreshed from a good sleep, now that I have eaten and worked and bathed and taken care of the home, that second question is much deeper: even though I am alright, am I affected?  Did I change?  A much different answer:  I am definitely affected.  It affects me.  Yesterday really affected me.  And I feel changed.  And that was the whole point of this journey:  and I want more.  

* * *
Since I began this journey at the beginning of the year, I have come to the following conclusions about limits:
1.  When you are with someone new, limits are your best friend.  Make them strong, and make them hard.  They will, in turn, serve you as they prove yourself and prove your intended.  Treasure those people who defend your boundaries and encourage your boundaries, for they are true friends.

2.  When you are with someone more intimate than "new," limits are your barometer.  You choose whether or not you wish to test those limits and grow out of them, depending on the nature of your intimacy and the depth of your respect for each other.  Your limits may still remain strong, even if one person is allowed to approach them more easily than others.  And perhaps, not just approach but also alter.  Perhaps.  If you decide.

3.  When you are with the right person, and you both know that you can rely upon each other as though you were directly responsible for the daily breathing of each heart and the daily feeding of each soul, there is no such thing as limits.  You both want the same thing, and there is nothing else to want for.  Where you end and where he begins, there is hardly even a boundary separating you.  Intimacy itself becomes a boundary that you both create, and everything else lives outside of it while you both live safe, together, inside.  Doing whatever you want.  Knowing that you both are safe.  Safe as hearts.  That is, at least, how I feel.  I love this feeling.

* * *
"At the bell tower" is the 100th post for One of Many Petals.  "No limits" begins the next hundred, and we begin it together, Tasdron and I, with all of my gratitude and love.  My exquisite submission, my great love, my perfect dreams and never-ending story.

To forgive, to absolve, to let go

I'm working on forgiveness.  Like "Jealousy" and like "Shame" it is a very large, very baggy and convoluted idea.  And of course, it involves many people's differing opinions and advice.  When I talk about forgiveness with people, we all seem to have different ideas about what the word really means.  Often people imagine "absolution" or "forgetting" or "letting go" or "re-inventing" or "erasing" when they imagine the process of how they forgive.  But what is it, actually "to forgive"?

The best way for me to look at it is through a Christian lens.  To forgive is to hear a confession of absolute responsibility; to understand without a doubt that the person feels responsible and feels remorse; and then to feel satisfied that the person's sense of responsibility and remorse will prevent any future and similar behaviour.  Forgiveness in that sense takes two people.  The one must confess in a real and meaningful way; and the other must understand that the confession is real.  Which is great if it happens like that.

What if one is required to forgive someone who does not believe he has done anything wrong?  I believe there is no forgiveness in that sense since forgiveness requires two people, but there is the solitary version of it: absolution.  Another Christian term, but applied without any religious fervour.  A person may choose to absolve another human being of any harm he has inflicted, if a person wishes to. That is what Christ does when he offers the other cheek for slapping.  When someone slaps your cheek, offer the other cheek too, he says; don't slap in revenge.  (I'm not really a Christian, thank heavens, so I can slap whoever I want.)

In either case, whether to forgive or to absolve is the tension, the end result is a "letting go," by all accounts.  It is peace.  It is a new level of serenity.  Or, at least, that is my mental picture.  Really, what it means is, if I forgive this person once, I have to keep forgiving this person every day of my life.  Doing it once means I'll definitely have to do it twice, and thrice, ad infinitum.  At least, that is my great fear.

On the other hand, I suppose that it is possible -- it is possible -- that the person in question already self-punishes and self-loathes as a result of past and recent behaviours.  It is possible.  I will never know for sure.  Therefore, it is possible that I do not necessarily need to "keep score" and keep the wound fresh and alive for the rest of my days as an act of "being true to me."  Absolution, private and without fanfare, may be the only solution.  Honestly, the whole situation is simply exhausting... Not like my pretty picture of a dock at sunset and calm water.  My happy, peaceful, forgiving place.  Sometimes I am amazed at how realistic Second Life photography can be.   My second life needs no absolution!  It is such a pretty place!

Limits

I read so often in D/s literature that a submissive without limits is not as attractive as a submissive with limits.  I like Connor's take on limits very much, actually.  In his post about limits, wherein he talks about hard limits, conditional limits, soft limits, every kind of limits... he talks about how it is an accepted perspective in our lifestyle that limits are supposed to be pushed, and that is how a person grows.  I usually object to statements like that, but what makes this one different is that he tempers the idea by saying that to continually push limits would have us all committing "crimes against humanity" eventually.  Why bother declaring a limit if a person is just going to ignore it?   I have fought about this with lots of folks along the way:  my limits are damned sacred and they are not for pushing.  My limits really do mean, "this far, and no farther."    But, I suppose, I do not use my limits for growth.  My limits are not a tool.  My limits mean, "There is nothing else past this line for you to see.  This means you."

House Sparta calls that a boundary, the idea of "this far, and no farther."  Fine with me.  I will call a boundary a boundary if it means "this far, and no farther."   In the spirit of tolerance and respect, I can understand that sometimes people set limits that, over time, they grow past (if they want to) with the right kind of incentive.   But I object to the idea of "growing past" a limit, as if a limit by default were some kind of defect that needed help or some kind of stunted growth.  I think that is a dangerous assumption to make.  Not all who wander are lost; not all who limit are broken.  Feeling a part of House Sparta, as I do now, I know that my personal limits are safe as if twenty gods stood guard for me.  And, accordingly, because I feel so safe with my limits, I make sure they do with theirs too.

I have been meditating on and exploring the idea of limits.  I hadn't declared any limits because I still considered myself a student and not really a practitioner.  I didn't really need them.  I realize, though, that it is a good idea to declare them.  To think carefully, to understand what it is that we declare when we say "this far, and no farther."   "This far, and no farther," reflects a person's personality.  Some people say "anything goes" and those are the people (according to the literature) whose expectations are difficult to meet and who often do not know the meaning of "anything."  Defining limits demonstrates personality.  So I have been thinking, and I have been coming to some helpful (to myself) conclusions about where and when I say, "This far, and no further."   I do not have many limits, and I do not have many boundaries, but they are real and they are hard.  And I like being able to enforce that.  My limits and my boundaries protect someone else, actually, so that means they are especially unbreakable.  And I like that I do not need to change them if I do not feel like it, and I can be right about it.

Jealousy, Part Four

Jealousy is complicated not only by confusing feelings but also by the impetus to behave in ways unnatural to our own core, golden, untouchable self.  Jealousy (the feeling) is complicated by jealousy (the behaviour).  Often, people do not even examine or admit their jealousy (feeling) but, rather, demonstrate jealousy (behaviour) that they believe to be perfectly natural behaviour such as baking a cake (a little too angrily) or shutting a door (so loudly that the windows shatter).  The jealous man who becomes a little more violent towards the woman he cares for (because it's easy to take out his anger on her; she loves him and she won't fight back) is a classic example, one that was taken for granted back in the North American 20th Century.  (In fact, watching any movies from the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s will demonstrate how women slap men's faces in petulance just as often as men slap women down to the floor in a jealous rage... And there was a time when a man's slap on the face of another man signalled a duel to the death.  Obviously, people solve problems by hitting when the maturation process is stalled).

But what about the jealous woman who does not hit the man she loves?  She feels her jealousy rising: she knows that a woman from his past has resurfaced.  She knows that, in their former relationship, that other woman had no limits to her experimentation process.  She knows that the woman's no-limit ideas about experimentation really turned him on, at the time.  She knows that, being an open-minded man that he is, he might entertain the idea of dining with that woman while she's in town, just to catch up.  She doesn't like that possible scenario, and so she feels like bringing his attention back home.  She puts herself into unfamiliar situations in order to traverse the landscape of the human heart over to where he exists.  She puts herself into unrealistic situations in order to prove that she, too, can experiment.  She puts herself at risk, therefore, straying far from her normal boundaries and behaviour.  She puts herself at risk for his sake, for the sake of keeping him away from the adventurous woman.  It is jealous behaviour.  It is behaviour that arises out of the anxiety over losing him (a fictional worry, of course, since in this case he has no intention of leaving).  It is jealous behaviour arising from jealous motivation.  And it puts herself at risk.

If this woman believes that the Dom she courts still has feelings for an ex-lover, she might find herself involved in a (self-positioned) contest with this invisible ideal -- an ideal that she feels she needs to exceed in order to win his full attention.  "To be as good as, or better than, the other woman," goes the contest.  It's flattering to the Dom to have a girl who tries so hard, obviously.  More to the point, if the Dom can put his ego to one side, it's dangerous if the girl's motivation is not clear.  And, if her motivation isn't clear, and if she's doing something to compromise her safety, then that means her sanity is in question.  She's not behaving like a submissive; she's behaving like a reactionary jealous woman.   And if she's not behaving like a submissive but, rather, a reactionary jealous woman, then can her Dom fully believe in her submission at all?  Or can she, herself?   The reverse also: can a jealous Dom be trusted in his domination if he makes decisions based on jealousy?  Can either Dom or sub conduct a sane relationship without talking about this?

* * *   * * *    * * * 

In other news, I want to call attention to a blog I have just discovered.  Conor's Corner is the name of it, and it is such a pleasure to read.  I enjoy it frequently, the common-sense approach and the great care with explaining ideas that, often, people just take for granted.  This will be another standard entry in my reading list.