I was struck by a quote I came across recently…… I have been thinking about the separation between love and lust, affection and sex mainly because I think I have discovered that submissives have difficulty is distinguishing between the two…..the need to belong and the need to be owned feels the same to me. A real problem arises out of the inability to differentiate between belonging – affection and the desire to share one’s life – and being owned – sexual satisfaction in return for giving pleasure according to someone else’s direction.
Written like this the difference seems obvious, but it is the result of 20:20 hindsight – my reflection on the mistakes I have made in relationships… or rather trying to work out why those relationships didn’t work……the key factor was neediness…. I wanted those men to control me and they saw it as me being clingy….
Of course I never realised that it was a sexual neediness……that arose out of a high sex drive and I suspect that if they had recognised it then those relationships might have turned out very differently.
I was asked recently how many men I had given blow jobs to; my answer was to all of them…… and then I was asked about whether those men had enjoyed the experience and my immediate answer was….. “what’s not to enjoy having a sexual experience that is completely focused on oneself being pleasured”…. This apparently is a typically submissive response…
But back to the quotation….
The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual place, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognised feeling.
Recognising the power of the erotic in our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world.
Of course, women so empowered are dangerous.
So we are taught to separate the erotic from the most vital areas of our lives other than sex.
Audre Lorde
This might seem to contradict my previous comments…. But I don’t think it does. At first sight submissives would appear to be powerless, but actually I don’t think they are….
It is our choice to give pleasure to another person…. in return for our own satisfaction, that is true…. But as I understand it, a dominant’s sexual satisfaction depends on and arises out of the effective control of the submissive’s orgasm. This isn’t a licence to deprive or withhold pleasure, it is in fact, just the opposite….. if I don’t have the orgasm then it shows the dominant doesn’t control or drive my arousal.
So how does this suggest that women are empowered, by the power of the erotic? Easy…. We control the knowledge about what turns us on….
We can share that with people who want to know it…… but people who aren’t interested in the knowing won’t ‘hear’ and so won’t control us….they will be unable to cause orgasms.
So where does that leave me now?
I’m actively seeking experiences that will push my envelope; I’m so much clearer now about what will work with me, so I don’t respond to “Hey, Sheila, do you fuck…..suck on this….” messages or adverts asking for “Slaves, Fucktoys or Sluts”. If someone gets nasty or abusive and bullying or is just plain selfish then I pull the plug.
It means that the experiences tend to be tantalisingly few….. but I rationalise that ….. mediocre sex is worse than no sex..
