It’s Not About You
Here is an essential truth about submission: it’s not about you. At all. It is about your partner—however you refer to them. Goddess. Master. Mistress. Sir. Ma’am. With the honorific is supposed to also come the deference. That is a surprising take for some.
The feedback that I got from my partner in sharing my post “There is Kink Over 50” was, “OKAY SO I LOVE THIS PIECE.” (All caps included). She went on to say, “ I really, really love and appreciate how freely you acknowledge and offer insight into your growth around ego.
Getting Ego Out Of The Way
For me, this is everything. Getting my ego out of the way was an essential step in my submissive journey, and one that arguably did not occur early enough. I suspect that this is true for many.
I am extremely confident that not having done so, I wouldn’t be enjoying the relationship that I have today. Me with ego needs is pretty insufferable. She would (very understandably) not have the time or the patience to deal with them. Nor—and this is an essential point—should she actually have to.
That shift, as she noted as our conversation continued, didn’t happen because of her. It pre-dates our explorations by some margin. It is arguably, though, the transition that makes us possible as “Us.”
When Ego Shows Its Stripes
I have been considering, reflecting on and fantasizing about submission for a very, very long time. This exploration did not (sadly) occur at the feet of confident, knowledgeable and firm women who saw in me some spark of malleable goo and took the initiative to mold me into their model of a submissive. That’s the fantasy, though, isn’t it? The one that fuels so many desperate and furtive nights, lying alone beneath the sheets, hoping and dreaming and wanting.
As with so very many others, my early explorations of submission were fuelled by that fabulous sexual organ between my ears. I read voraciously. I fantasized heavily. I dreamed such heady dreams. Yearnings of discipline and punishment and service and bondage and aching and denial. Yup. All of those. Shutting my eyes tight and conjuring dark and depraved worlds where I was subjugated and controlled and owned.
My ego was extraordinarily clear about what it wanted. Hoped for. Craved. And that, right there, was precisely the problem.
Fantasizing Experiences
Not unsurprisingly, fantasies of submission are very often framed as things being done to you. Experiences that you have. Sensations that are inflicted. Resistance and struggle that is felt. Helplessness and writhing and squirming. By the time anyone with a halfway-submissive bent manages the journey from nascent pubescent fantasy to the adult reality that something meaningful might happen to them, they have a long shopping list of experiences they want to try. Things they want done to them. Acts that their perfect dominant will demand of them.
This is arguably normal. It is completely understandable. But it so genuinely gets in the way, in so very many real and tangible and completely unproductive ways. Whatever you might think you want from a submissive experience, reality is going to be different. A lot different. In my view, those differences are also—when embraced—going to be so very, very much better.
Articulating Desires
The problem with all that fantasizing is that they are your fantasies. They are not your dominant’s. Not only do does your dominant not have a crystal ball with which to divine your wants and fervent obsessions, it isn’t their job to figure that out. Nor is it their job to give them to you (unless you’re paying by the hour).
This is why the lovely fantasy of being taken under the wing of that mysterious, confident, caring domme never occurred. I never asked. I wouldn’t have known who to ask, or how to ask, or how to with any degree of confidence express my desires and my hopes for a relationship.
I also would not have recognized that expressing my desires and hopes for a relationship was a tangibly different thing than listing out all the lewd and depraved things they should want to do to me. That is where ego gets utterly in the way. Ego makes it all about you and what you want, which is pretty much the opposite of submission.
Experiencing Reality
By the time I actually got to the point of negotiating a submissive relationship with a wonderful and amazing and caring woman, I was well down a path of recognizing the unhelpfulness of ego, especially in my own journey of submission. I was also reminded of this every time ego bubbled up in a particularly unhelpful and unproductive way.
To be clear, this was a negotiation, and one without a foregone conclusion. It was an initial exploration, where there was no guarantee or expectation that a relationship would emerge as a result. But there was a willingness to explore, that has evolved to where we are now.
It is also a relationship that started off as friendship, and progressed to love, and evolved to here. Those dimensions interplay to this day, which is what makes it awesome.
The negotiation of our dynamic, though, is one that firmly places my submission as a service to her, first and foremost. Learning her preferences, understanding her wants, anticipating her desires. In that, she is learning about me as well. She knows how to reward and indulge me. She has an abiding interest in doing so, which I adore her for. But this is not about pushing my buttons. It is not a reciprocal “I did this, so now I deserve three ‘Good Boys’ and a tummy-rub.”
Embracing Submission
My submission is ultimately about the joy and elation to be found in serving my Goddess. Being able to delight her, and please her, and surprise her. Being able to make her snort in laughter is a particular sub-goal. Offering service that makes her clench and gush and delight and squeal with glee (and other noises). It is the joy and pleasure of meeting her wants.
In doing so, my needs are also fulfilled, so very much. I am loved. I am cared for. I am treasured. I am owned. I feel the incredible connection and focus of serving someone I love, and I get to bask in that wondrous feeling of truly submitting to another. It’s an experience that is far greater, far more meaningful and far more pleasurable than anything on the list my ego fervently made in my youth. And we’re only getting started.