Claiming (4/4): A Postscript on Power

This is a series I started a while ago, around October 2009, but never finished. It’s kind of stale now so I don’t want to continue it. I wrote this post as a planned ending, and I’m posting it now because I think it’s important for me to say it, though I didn’t actually write the rest of the planned posts. Also, it’s less awkward to post this now that I’m not seeing someone else.

Read part 1, part 2 and part 3, if you want.

[a scene from the movie Secretary]

I believe that if you have an interest in D/s, power probably has some sort meaning in your life.

Of course, power effects everyone in some shape or form. It underlies every area of life. But if you’re into D/s, it’s different.

Power means something special to you.

Well, at least, it means something special to me. I’m fascinated by it. I write about it, both in erotica and regular fiction. And sometimes I crave it. Crave to at least pretend that I have it, that I have power over something or someone else. Crave for it to be taken away from me and given to someone else.

Power says something about me – about my personality. About my background. About the experiences that formed the person I am today.

I’m not saying I’m some kind of rape or assault survivor. Nothing as severely damaging as that. Much less harmful. Some things, that I don’t even understand enough to talk about here, aren’t harmful at all.

But still. Doesn’t have to be big to be meaningful.

—

While I was doing those things for Sir, I felt familiar emotions come over me. Familiar, but not the same as I remember. You see, I’ve been in a number of emotionally abusive friendships in my lifetime, in the sense that I was too giving, and they were assholes who took advantage of it. At least three of my closest friends were people who also demanded a lot of me.

Best Friend #1 would criticize me for very small things, intensely and spitefully enough that it made me terribly upset. That’s when I started scratching myself. She got me to do things for her, like help her with her homework, keep her company, wait for her when she had things to do after school, but at a detriment to the things I had to/wanted to do for myself. And she would get really angry if I said I couldn’t do them. I was friends with this person for four years. I think it’s a large reason behind why I struggle so much with having low self-esteem now. We still actually keep in touch, although our friendship dynamic has changed: now she treats her boyfriends like shit, not me.

Best Friend #2 was very needy. He had a lot of issues to work through. For a while it was almost like I was his counselor/personal assistant. I’d wake him up and try and get him out of bed if he asked me to. I stayed up late with him when he wanted me to (I think the latest I stayed up with him was until 8am on a school night). I talked through his schoolwork with him when he was having trouble with it, and skipped social events I wanted to go to for him. This friendship was unlike the first: I really don’t believe that he purposefully set out to hurt me. I think he was just going through a very bad time and really needed someone to be there. And another difference: this time I tried to struggle. Sometimes I’d try to turn my back on him, but he made me feel so bad about it and guilt-tripped me so badly that I ended up giving in anyway.

The bottom line, though, is that a large part of me very much enjoys, and needs to, help the people I care about and do things for them. They were being selfish, but in a way I was being selfish too, because I needed to be needed. I like being needed. Often, I care more about the things I’m doing for other people than the things I’m doing for myself. (Which I know is not healthy – I need to care about myself too, just as much as anyone else I love, and I am getting better and better at doing that.) But I made it too easy for people like #1 and #2 to take advantage of me. I didn’t take care of myself enough. I let that be their responsibility instead of my own – and so they walked all over me.

I felt myself falling a little bit back into that mindset with Sir. Wanting intensely to do exactly what he wanted me to do, feeling anxious when I wouldn’t be able to. But it wasn’t exactly the same as before: it was better. It was so, so much better. Some people still mistakenly believe that BDSM is abuse – it’s really not. With Sir, I didn’t feel panicked or scared or sad. On the contrary, the experience made me feel happy and fulfilled. The few times that I started to panic about not being able to do something, Sir realized this and calmed me down. He took my feelings and my needs into consideration every step of the way. In many cases, it was more like Sir was doing things for me, giving me chances to indulge in the fantasies that I had, instead of the other way around.

Most importantly, I chose to submit to him. I wasn’t forced to. It wasn’t like he threatened to end our friendship if I didn’t do this with him.

Consent and consideration. A person who says s/he’s a “dominant” and ignores those two basic principles is a dick in dominant disguise, or else a really bad dominant.

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