Love and M/s

He and I are deeply, passionately in love. That reality continues to be the core of our relatedness, even now, just over seven years after our first encounters with one another. We part with great reluctance each morning to go off to our jobs in the "real world," and we come back together with huge joy each evening. Whatever the stresses and strains and challenges that life throws at us, and however exhausted we find ourselves, we take simple, honest delight in the daily gift of being able to wrap up in the security and physical comfort of one another, knowing that we are blessed to have come together in this lifetime. He is my strength, my best friend, my safety, my partner, the one who makes me smile, the all of my world. I don't know what I would do without Him. I am the luckiest of women.

There are those who believe that love and BDSM, and particularly total power exchange lifestyles, are imcompatible. I don't want to dispute the validity of that experience. I only know that it has not been ours. We love and we live as Master and slave -- at least by our lights.

Of course, we don't let the world tell us how to do that. Never have. So perhaps that is part of what saves us.

We didn't begin by defining our relationship in terms of the power exchange. We called one another "friend." And, I asked if He would teach me, or guide me into the lifestyle because I was so new and so inexperienced and so uncertain what it was that I wanted -- or even who I was in the beginning. So, we started with very little in the way of expectation from one another, and a very great deal of openess to the process of sharing information. We never saw the train coming that knocked us both flat.

In the beginning, I struggled mightily with the labels, that today, I wear with relative ease, and sometimes even pride. I had terrible trouble coming to terms with the knowledge that I was masochistic. The reality of my submissive nature was not much easier to deal with. He shared information, and shared His story. Mostly He shared who He was. Too, I was married, and I was a prickly and defended upright and uptight bit of a firebrand who set absolutely inviolate limits -- DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE!!! And He respected the lines I drew. Entirely too much of a gentleman for His own good. And mine.

It took us months and months to get to the point where we admitted the truth of our love for one another. What a cataclysm that was. For us. For T. For our world. Things changed radically and forever on that day. We began in that moment to redefine who we were to each other and to reshape our view of our lives and our path and our future. Nothing was ever the same from that moment forward.

We still hadn't spoken about anything that resembled a formal power exchange at that point. We knew some of the outlines, but that part, for us, was still in the future. There were clear indications beginning to show though... It was only a matter of a few months when He and I were in an IM conversation, discussing the timing of the necessary move from Denver to Cincinnati. I was hemming and hawing about the logistics of such a venture -- opining that it would probably require something on the order of a year and a half or two years. Suddenly across my IM screen came the oh so serious exclamation: "Do you think we will live forever? Get here next summer!" There was clearly no room for argument, and even though that was March, my entire house and household was in place in Cincinnati in June.

Still, we resisted calling ourselves Master and slave. We talked about Dominance and submission. He cut His initials into my flesh, and still we called what we did D/s. We played and we talked and we lived and we loved and we simply could not bring ourselves to define ourselves by what felt to be the "overheated" language of M/s. Until, one day it seemed to fit. And then it did and we did. It wasn't that we'd changed radically, or that we did things so drastically differently. We had simply arrived at a point of solidity and stability and maturity with our relationship and our dynamic that it felt appropriate I think. We knew it to be true for us. We didn't really mark it at all. It was just the truth.

I doubt even now that there is much that anyone looking in from the outside would notice about us that would tell them who or what we are with one another. Certainly, we do not fit the stereotypical image that I once had of a Master and slave -- or that I can still get if I read very far online these days: I still work out in the world in a career that requires me to take significant responsibility each and every day, and I earn a good salary that goes into "my" bank account. I still operate as the household "checkbook Nazi," paying our household's bills and managing our accounts. I still get up everyday and pick out "my own" clothes and drive "my own" car. Sometimes I call Him Sir, and sometimes not -- although ALWAYS in session. I sit on the furniture and I order my own food when we dine out. In many, many ways, I manage my life, and it would most likely appear that there is much more power in my hands than is appropriate for a "slave" to have. He likes it that way. He has no interest in micro-managing my life. It isn't His style, and He gets no "charge" out of those kinds of interactions. The expectation is that I will handle myself within those arenas as He would expect, and as is appropriate to the situation and my station. End of discussion.

Perhaps it is that He is so sure of His power that He is willing to give me such range. He is like the Archer. He sends me with sure hands out into the world, knowing that I will go exactly as He intends. He is not afraid to pull the string taught, but neither is He afraid to release it. I can lie easy in His hands. He will not break me, although it lies within His power to do so. We are calm with each other. Confident. Our trust carries us past the need to continually up the ante, peer around us at what the world tells us we "ought" to be doing. Ours is a path that is determined by His will and His skill.

We've learned. Together. There is a deep darkness into which we understand that we can travel together. We know about it. We know that together, we are strong enough to travel those pathways and come out on the other side with wisdom that neither of us can obtain alone. We also know the risks of going there. We understand things about protecting what is fragile and valuable and irreplaceable. Some pain can be transmuted into pleasure. Some rage can be harnessed for healing. Some grief can be nurtured into acceptance and even joy. Anything is possible when you love faithfully and well.

swan