Power Exchange In The New Year & Give and Take in a Power Exchange

Master and I did some talking about our relationship and where we would like it to go in the next year. He mentioned wanting some kind of ritual in place and more frequent play as he really misses it (so do I for that matter). He is still considering what rituals he would like to put in place. He has started sending me emails on a daily basis with a task or two that he wants me to do in the email. I enjoy getting those daily emails from him as I have missed having specific tasks to do. I know what he expects on a daily basis, how he wants things done around the house and all of that, but it is still nice to get a specific task ordered. Sending those emails can be considered a ritual of sorts and it seems to be something he likes to do as well.

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about how relationships change over time, even bdsm based relationships. She was telling me how in the early years of a relationship it is not unsual for the s-type to want to do all the household chores them selves, but as time goes on that may change. For me, I have wanted to do all the household chores myself because I do not work and master does, so I felt that taking care of the house is my job. Sadly due to my physical limitations, it is not always possible for me to do all the household chores. I'm not supposed to move furniture around for example, so when it is time to vacuum under the couch either master or someone else has to move the couch for me. Because of this I had to adjust my preferences to meet my reality early on. This was not easy for me to do and even now I have days where I feel that I am not pulling my weight. Those days always coincide with increased pain that results in decreased mobility. Master is very understanding of my feelings in this area (and most other areas as well).

Anyway as my friend and I were talking the idea of a family as a "team" came up. The point was made that even in a family where the parents have a power exchange based relationship, they are still a team and as such, each party can and should pitch in when needed. I have to agree with this statement. Service based s-type or not, master and I are married and we have children. We are also human. Because of those things there are times where we have to step up and pitch in regardless of the power disparity between us. I do not see this as detracting from my submission or his dominance. I see this as simply the day to day give and take that must occur in any long term relationship if it is to survive.

Separating out power, clarifying who is responsible for what duties, and setting limits on the relationship/behaviors/etc are all part and parcel of a bdsm relationship. But any relationship has to be fluid, there has to be give and take. This also applies in a bdsm relationship. Even with the clearly defined roles and responsibilities of a bdsm relationship, there has to be leeway for the very basic human nature of the people involved.

To me, who does the dishes after dinner does not reflect upon who has more power in the relationship. I think it reflects more upon how master and I care for and love each other that we are both willing to do things that are not typically part of our "role" for the benefit of our family and our relationship as a whole. I think this fluidness is often overlooked when people discuss bdsm parameters with a prospective partner, specially with novices. Many people seem to see the division of power as a way to clearly define who does what in the relationship and that those delineations should erase any need for compromise; so long as the s-type does their part and the d-type does their part then everything will be fine. Sadly no human relationship can be that easily defined all the time. Situations, emotions, needs, wants, desires and abilities all change over time. If the people involved are not willing to change when necessary to meet the needs of those changes when they occur, then I believe the relationship will have great difficulty.

I have decided to write my tasks down in my blog, hopefully on a daily basis. I miss writing in my journal so I am going to try to blog every day, though if something really personal arises that I do not feel comfortable putting on the internet it will go in my paper journal not online. I'm hoping that by doing this I will once again pick up my writing and start working on the many essays I have outlined in my notebooks. I am also hoping that this will help me start working again on my web site as I have fallen woefully behind on it.

Today's tasks:
Laundry
Grocery List
Balance Checkbook
Pay End of Month Bills/Budget
Clean Bedroom
Go to the doctor for follow up appointment
Shower and shave
Stitch for at least 1 hour
Work on writings

Educating Others About BDSM

I went to a site yesterday because they had part of my essay on begging posted. It was a "discussion" forum based on Anna Nicole Smith and everything surrounding her and her death. A friend of mine had been posting there and one of the posters found out about her interest in bdsm. They went to her bdsm site and followed the links, which landed them on my site. They they took part of my begging article, which has nothing to do with the topic they were supposed to be discussing, and posted it with comments such as "These people are f'ed!" and similar comments (some worse). I politely requested that my essay be removed as it was used without my permission. This, of course, prompted them to hit back with "fair use". I went through the requirements of fair use to show how the way they used the essay did not meet those requirements and thus by taking it without permission it was copyright violation.
Well, they proceeded to directly attack me, my chosen lifestyle and relationship. What annoyed me was they deliberately asked questions that I knew they did not truly want the answers to. I was good and did not reply to any attacks, insults, threats or what have you. I posted solely to the topic of my essay and copyright, and in response to someone wishing me well and asking me a whether or not I was the same Raven that posts on a political site (which I am not.) One of the members then chose to do some research and posted my real name to the forum, making it quite clear that she has my information and veiled threats of using it. This does not scare me.
Part of me really wanted to answer the statements they made, but I knew better than to do it on their forum. So instead, I will list the questions that were asked and answer them here where they might do some real good.

Cold and Abrasive??

I read another slave’s blog today, mostly because we are basically engaged in a silent debate on the differences between showing realities of 24/7 live-in m/s and the flowery romanticized ideals used as expectations for a live in relationship. I say silent because that debate is occurring without much real input to each other, just in denied posts to a list and blog entries like the one I read.

The first thing she asked was is the fruit of slavery bitter or sweet. The realistic answer is that it is both. There will be many sweet things as a result of one’s slavery, and there will be some bitter things, some anger inducing things, some hurtful things…in short, there will be things that can be described by any emotional state that a person can name. There is joy, happiness, satisfaction, fear, anger, resentment, relief, love, caring, romance, hurt, depression, disappointment etc. Why? Because we are at base human beings. We are not, by virtue of our personalities as a dominant or submissive/slave somehow lifted above and better than other human beings. We are still prone to the same fallacies of every other human being, and our relationships are still prone to the same pitfalls, joys, and everything else a non-TPE relationship is prone to endure. So the answer, in my opinion, is slavery has a bit of both bitterness and sweetness and we will not always be able to choose which one occurs on any given day.
This blog went on to say that experienced slaves often speak "harshly", "abrasively" and with "rough edges", that we come across as cold, bitter and cruel. I think this can be accurate for some people, but in my experience this has never been the majority of experienced people. In my experience, the ones who make this accusation the most are the ones who are dead set on believing the ideals to be the reality and they will fight tooth and nail to keep anyone from injecting a bit of reality into their fantasy. Often these same people are the ones who have extremely high expectations of an m/s relationship because they have yet to actually live in one on a daily basis and in the same house as their owner. Instead they follow a set of guidelines/rules that govern their daily behavior, but still make most of their own decisions and their experience with live-in m/s occurs on an occasional basis. In my experience it has been very easy to maintain that wonderfully romantic "shining slave light" for a weekend, yet much more difficult to remain always joyful, at peace, content and enraptured of service on a daily basis.
This also made me wonder, how much of that harsh abrasiveness is being read into the words being read by the reader and not actually intended by the author? Mailing lists are text only formats and unless you are reading the words of someone you have spoken with many times in real life and know very well, what you read is heavily influenced by your current mood, your defenses, biases and what have you. If the topic at hand is one that somehow makes you feel vulnerable or threatened, then you will very easily infer an attack of some sort, sarcasm, or outright cruelty in the words even when the words do not support that view in any way. If you are one who prefers to focus solely on the perfect things in life, then anything that is not in keeping with that flowery way of writing or thinking will be seen as cold and abrasive, no matter how politely it is worded. In a text only environment, one has a great deal of leeway with how one interprets what they are reading. The best way I have found in my 10 years on mailing lists is to always infer a monotone to what I am reading, by doing so I reduce any knee jerk reactions on my part that may not be based on truth, but instead based on my own interpretation that is heavily influenced by my mood and biases. This is very hard to do, and I freely admit that I do not always succeed at it, but I try hard anyway.
The argument was made that being a slave has caused this person to grow in gentleness, yielding, understanding and other such commendable attributes. This growth has been attributed to the owner and the basic relationship of m/s; to being a slave. This personally I can agree with; that such growth is not only possible, but that many slaves can and will say similar things, with the ones who have done this the longest having the longest list of positive changes within their personalities, attitudes and behaviors. Part of the whole goal of any power exchange relationship (or any vanilla relationship for that matter) is the growth of the participants, both as individuals and as a couple. So such growth should and does occur.
The statement was made that the longer one is a slave the softer they become, that they desire to speak solely in gracious words that are nurturing to the soul, rather than combative and cold. This is a commendable goal. However, it all depends on what one defines as combative and cold. Stating "I do not agree with this ideal because…" is not combative, it is an attempt at explaining one’s opinion and the reasons for it. Interestingly enough, everytime someone uses that phrase they are accused of being combative or attacking another, of being cold. So what should really have been said is that this person prefers solely to focus on only the good and positive things and not the bad; to be an optimist and anyone who does not do this will be summarily dismissed as cold and embittered. That is fine by me, but it does not work for everyone and when one has placed onself in the position of teaching others about slavery, stating positive things as the truth for every minute of every day, sets the novice up to fail.
Honestly, I think that deciding that those who speak of realities are nothing more than embittered, resentful cold people is no more than an attempt to deny the harsher aspects of this lifestyle and relationship choice, in order to keep ones dreams alive. This is something I have seen time and time again in my years of talking with and spending time with others in the lifestyle. It is most common in those who have had rough times in the vanilla world and begin to see bdsm as a solution to all vanilla relationship issues. Time and time again I have watched, counseled, supported, comforted and all of that these same people when their relationship failed because of these very same unrealistic expectations and focus on romanticized ideals. It is my experiences doing this myself, and assisting others in dealing with the aftermath that has cemented my belief that one needs to talk about both sides of the coin when in a position of teaching a novice; meaning, speak of both the good and the bad. That one has to discuss the realities with any potential partner, not just the bdsm stuff, but in all aspects of life. This is not being cold, this is being realistic and time and time again I have seen that relationships based on realistic expectations last longer and are more satisfying to those involved than those based solely on fantasy.
The following questions were asked: "Do slaves who have been slaves and lived as slaves for many years begin to resent it?" the answer to this one, in my experience is that yes this does occur for some people. In my experiences, the vast majority of the ones who end up resenting it are the ones who went into it with rose colored glasses and found out the hard way that all is not romance, flowers and joy on a daily basis. The ones who do not resent their slavery, are most often the ones who learned their lesson about being too romanticized the hard way so went into their next relationship with more realistic expectations, thus they are better equipped to deal with the day to day realities and find true satisfaction for themselves. In such cases, resentment is not an end result, instead the end results are much more positive and uplifting.
The comment was made that maybe us embittered, cold, resentful long time slaves could learn to rekindle the joy in our slavery from witnessing the joy of another slave. I can buy this because everyone can learn from someone else, and everyone can have old feelings rekindled in unexpected ways and from unexpected sources or have something wake them to something they are taking for granted. However, I find it very difficult to swallow that I should have my poor cold embittered soul rekindled by the subbie fever joy of someone who has yet to truly live this lifestyle in the same house as their owner for more than an occasional weekend or evening event here and there.
Sure, I had the same wonderful ideals, stars in my eyes when my owner and I were long distance and only saw each other once in a while. Submitting joyfully was easy on those occasional weekends together, and this only made me believe that it would be that easy all the time when we finally lived together. I too did not want to listen to others who tried to warn me that this is not how the reality is. It was this very overly romanticized rose colored glasses view that assisted in getting myself into an extremely abusive relationship under the guise of master/slave with someone else.
I truly believed there would never be disagreements because all that was settled easily by the power structure. False. I truly believed that I would never feel any resentment, anger, lonliness or hurt..that I would feel nothing but joy in every service I did every single day. False. Reality slapped me and slapped me hard. I spent a long time believing that I was a complete failure as a slave because I could not maintain that wonderful "shining light of slavery" every single day, no matter what was thrown at me. It took me years to realize that I had not failed because I had done everything asked of me, no matter how impossible it was and in the process completely destroyed myself to try and make someone else happy. Why? To attain that ideal of the perfect, never conflicting, joyful shining slavery of the "real slaves" who constantly spouted all those wonderful tidbits of advice.." a real slave never" " a true slave always" and all that crap. I bought it, and I paid a high price for it and I am not alone. A lot of people fell for that stuff and paid a high price for it. It is the entire reason that people started writing about the phenomenon termed subbie fever and other similar terms. It is the desire to try and prevent a novice from making that same mistake, and possibly paying a huge price for that mistake, that prompts many of us long time slaves to speak on the realities over and over. This is far from cold and combative. In fact it seems to me that this stems solely from a compassion for others and a true desire to teach and help others. Cold and combative? Nope.
I will say that despite the many negative and hurtful outcomes of that one relationship, I learned my lesson. It made me more careful before submitting as a slave again. It made me keep one eye on the reality, and make sure that my expectations were attainable. I eventually regained my dreams and my ideals, my joy and all that, but it was finally tempered with experience and rooted in reality not fantasy. I believe that this very ability on both mine and my owner’s part to accept the realities of life and relationships that has made it possible for us to have the strong, loving, committed relationship we still have 7 years later.
Lastly a comment was made, paraphrased, which basically said that slavery is both good and bad, has its good points and bad points etc. This I can agree with wholeheartedly. My whole problem with this particular topic was not speaking of the ideals themselves, it was completely dismissing the realities as being of no value, combative, cold or embittered in order to focus only on the sweet, lovey dovey stuff instead. Both should be presented in order to provide a truly balanced view of slavery within a TPE relationship. To focus solely on one part or the other is to be unfair and unbalanced. One leads to unrealistic expectations, the other to indifference and despair. However, by focusing solely on the good stuff and negating or outright denying any of the bad, mundane, boring or whatever stuff, you force the experienced into a corner where all they can add to the conversation is the stuff that was left out. This basically manipulates them into looking cold and embittered, and thus easily dismissed in one’s rose-colored view. I wonder, is that why people do that? To set the experienced up to look bad and thus easier to ignore so one can continue to focus on the "slavery makes life perfect!!" ideal? Hmm..interesting and rather disturbing idea. I would not be surprised if that is exactly why some people insist on focusing solely on ideals that can not be attained, and romanticized versions of daily m/s life. That’s sad, but a fairly intelligent use of manipulation in order to maintain one’s denial mechanisms.

I did post a comment to the original blog that inspired this entry in my blog, in case it is deleted, I am including it in its’ entirety here.
---my comment----
Speaking about the realities of living an m/s relationship on a daily basis does not mean one is full of resentment or bitterness, it means one realizes that going into such a relationship with an unrealistic expectation that slavery is easy, that a slave must be joyful and happy at all times and other ideals, sets the slave up for some serious hurt and we try to prevent that from occuring by giving our experiences for review.
Bitterness would be saying "being a slave is the worst thing I ever did!" not saying "being a slave on a live-in basis is very hard day to day".
Is there joy in serving for many years? yes there is. Do many slaves find themselves becoming gentler as time goes on? yes they do. But that does not negate the truth of speaking from experience and reality vs. speaking solely in romantic ideals.
Though I suppose deciding that anyone who does not speak in such romantic ideals as being the one true way is a bitter resentful person, is a good way of not having to face the idea that maybe live in 24/7 m/s TPE is not as easy as it is for a weekend once in a while.
As for learning from each other, I know many people who are very open to learning from each other. I for one have no problem being reminded of the joy, pleasure and love in my relationship from someone else, or an unexpected source. However, being able to express that joy and love, does not negate the realities. It is my opinion that on mailing lists and such where the stated goal is to teach others and grow, ignoring the basic reality facts does not meet with that goal.
My Owner and I have a very close, loving relationship in which we are very aware of the joys of being together. However, we are also very aware of the realities of human interaction and it is that very reality base that has allowed our relationship to last the 7 years that it has, while many relationships of people we know that were based solely on those romantic ideals, failed miserably with great pain, self confusion, self-recrimination for the slave involved because they believed the ideal to be true every minute of every day, and when it wasn’t, they believed that by being human they failed and were not a "real slave" because they did have days where they were annoyed, they did occasionally question a rule or order, they did have thoughts of hesitation etc. I do not believe that hiding the fact of our very basic humanity under jargon does anyone a service or teaches them anything but good denial techniques.

Merging Written Journal With Online One

I have decided that this bog would better show the realities of my life as a slave on a day to day basis if I started posting the entries I make in my written journal as well. Sometimes due to my pain level it is too uncomfortable to sit here and type things in. Other times I do not have access to a computer because Master or one of the children are using them. Other times I just enjoy the physical action of writing. Other times I am stuck in bed and can't sit at the computer. During those times I use my written journal rather than this blog, which is partly why there are days or whole weeks without an entry in the blog. I do not always write every single day, but I do tend to write more manually than I do in here. So my next few entries in here will have dates written at the top beacuse they are from my written journal. I will of course change some content for privacy, or leave some things out all together for my protection or that of my children.

Rough Day

Today ended up being a rather rough day. I read a Xanga entry (blog entry) from my step son that really hurt my feelings. He seems bound and determined to see everything I do, don't do, say or don't say as negative and against him, no matter what it actualy was. And I know that any explanation I give him won't matter, he continues to see things in whatever way he has decided is "right" in his mind. Usually that means whatever makes him look most innocent. Still though, it really hurt my feelings to see him turn around what actually happened when he showed up unannounced and unexpected the other day so that it looks like I purposely snubbed him because I hated him. I don't hate him. I don't like everything he does, but I don't hate him.

I got punished last night, for not doing laundry. I did some laundry today, there isn't much to do though, only a few small loads left, which is kind of nice. So I had my guilt with me today. I always feel guilty when I screw up enough to actually be punished because I know Master does not punish easily.

Then to make matters worse someone decided it would be a good idea to tell me I am not a slave, nor a sub, because I do not immediately agree with everything Master says or does and that I am more than willing to tell him if I think he is wrong. After that blog of my step-son's this crap did not help at all. This guy scares me because he puts himself out there as a wise knowledgeable person about BDSM, and he tells people he has online only experience. I've done both, online and real life, and there is a major difference between the two. It is alot easier to type in "kneels before so and so" in real life when you are angry, not feeling well, cranky or what not than it is to actually do it in r/l. THere are fears and such that crop up in real life, that don't crop up online because in r/l its all real. The dominant is really going to tie you up, or really expect you to do all the housework or whatever is in your relationship. Online, typing in that you wash the dishes is alot more fun than actually washing dishes in real life. I've done both as I said before so I speak, from my experiences, to both. But I try to be very reality based when it comes to teaching newbies. In my opinion it is wrong and downright dangerous to teach a bunch of newbies that they should never ever question their dominant and that if they do they are a bad submissive or slave. In reality subs and slaves question their dominants (and themselves) quite often. The longer the relationship goes on, the less questioning is done because the people involved know each other better, but there are still times where questions are raised.

How each individual relationship handles these questions is one thing, and it does vary. Some require that the slave ask permission to speek freely before they can tell the dominant their feelings or thoughts. Some do not require that. Some require a combination of that. But every master/slave relationship I know of has some kind of arrangement made in which the slave can (and is expected to) question their dominant, or give their opinion and evidence if they think the dominant is wrong. To be told that this is not allowed is a fantasy and a dangerous one. I've been in a relationship where questioning the dominant was not allowed at all and obedience was expected even when I knew the dom was flat out wrong. It was very damaging to me because I was the one who had to deal directly with the mistakes he made. I was the one who got hurt physically or emotionally because the dom was too insecure to let me give my opinion.

We talk about communication a great deal in bdsm. We say how important it is to keep a relationship healthy and happy. Being able to give one's opinion is part of the communication in any relationship. To deny one participant the ability to do that, is to effectively cut them off from communicating at all. Without the communication trust suffers, resentment builds and the relationship eventually dies and at worse it can become quite abusive.

If being able to speak my mind, at my owner's insistence, makes me not a slave or sub in someone else's eyes, then they need glasses and a reality check. I know what I am and I know who is in charge and has final say in all things, and it is not me.