Confused Jumbled Chaotic Swirling Winds

Lately I feel that we are in transition with our Blog here, and within our lives. When we began TheHeronClan, and its predecessor TheSwansHeart, it was at my direction that swan began posting. She was becoming depressed and feeling isolated living as the "non-married" third partner and slave in a D/s triad intentional family, in a new place, and having to a great degree burned her bridges with her family to join us. I wanted her to have a way to connect with others, to feel a sense of community. I knew that her intellect and literacy would make her a "sensation" in the blogosphere. All those objectives were achieved through our experience here as was my prediction of how she would be received.

Too, as a result we have made some wonderful friends, some of them virtual, and some real time people with whom we have come to share our lives and theirs, our feelings, triumphs, struggles, good times and failures. That has been wonderful.

I think early on we wanted to meet with people with whom we shared our polyamorous and/or bDDsm sensual erotic orientation. We believed that sharing that orientation was enough of a common bond to be socially compatible with others. I think we thought that, because of the stigma, and social isolation of these alternative lifestyles we would find all (or most) others on here people we would want to spend time with. We have learned that was a fallacy. We don't want to spend time socializing with all BDSM-ers or all polys, anymore than we would want to spend time with all heterosexuals, or all monogamists, or all secular humanists, or whatever other broad based demographic commonality. Thank goodness we have found a few people with whom we can be who we are without pretense, who have become good friends (with whom we never seem to be able to spend the time and energy we'd like). We have others whom we have yet to meet, but who we may well get to meet in the weeks and months ahead as well. This has been an important learning and a valuable and life affirming connection to others.

We live in Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati is in general, as a community, one of the most backward, conservative, regressive, religiously obsessed major urban centers in North America. It makes finding friends with whom we share our orientation difficult. We have learned that we generally do not mix well with most other BDSM-ers and poly's in real time social situations, and the precious little time we have to spend with others we don't want to squander with people we don't enjoy.

We are less alone and isolated and this blog has been a vehicle to achieve that.

I am just as spanking obsessed as ever. I endlessly want to spank swan and wish there was more time for that and greater congruence in our mutual needs for spanking. That having been said, it is not likely that there could be a committed life long love between two people who share an orientation to adult consensual spanking, which is much more congruent.

When we were brand new together, I spanked her more often, and more severely than we do now. She was very fulfilled and excited by that. I was the happiest unrepentant sadist on earth. Over time and changes, and evolution of our relationship, and to a great extent aging, we do not continue that same spanking style. I know that I, as her Master, could well simply take her and beat her as much and as often as I choose to and could, not only ignore her trauma, but get off on it. The reality is I love her so deeply, and sadist that I am, I also care about how traumatized she is. I want there to be a healthy degree of symbiosis between us in our sadomasochistic intimacy. We struggle with a sort of sadomasochistic compersive compatibility paradox. If I am too high end in our play, she becomes emotionally traumatized and then feels she has failed and fears I will leave her for a "more worthy" partner, a complete fallacy, but it is her reality whether delusional or not. If on the other hand, I pull back too far in my spanking intensity, she has an intense need to be spanked that swells beyond control and makes her desperate for that closeness and intensity. I feel I perhaps am too concerned for her needs, and should simply pursue my own, but my need to see my love's fulfillment is just as much my reality as is her fear of being left for another. What a Knot!

About every two weeks someone from the Internet contacts me wanting to explore partnering with me around disciplinary spanking. I tell them honestly how that would work with me. That generally ends the exploration:) They want to be spanked, but not painfully, or not actually in ways that would make change in their lives to achieve behavioral objectives inevitable (despite that that is overtly what they express a desire to achieve). They generally want to be enmeshed in a co-dependant gavotte with a spanker who will pretend to "discipline" them, so they will experience spankings they will secretly "get off" on, as they melodramatize their angst at being disciplined (i. e., the functional description of most of what passes for DD). I am decades past the need to tell them what they want to hear to get them over my knee, or to not confront them for duplicitousness with themselves and me about what they want. Besides that, if I am going to expend any of the precious time and energy I need for swan, t, my Dad, t's Mom, my agency, friends, etc. on someone else, they will relate on my terms. I get so tired of people who want you to Dominate them, and who want to be Dominated just the way "they say." BULLSHIT! Surprise, surprise those relationships never come to fruition even as disciplinary mentorships (which is all they were ever intended to be.) Additionally, even the existence of these correspondences makes swan wildly insecure, and fearful she will somehow be jettisoned (which belies a complete lack of understanding of me, of what I feel for her, or my devotion, and leaves me feeling not only frustrated at my inability to have a disciplinary mentoring relationships, but feeling terrifically misunderstood and negatively judged.) There are times I find myself wondering about spanking other men. I have no homo-erotic orientation, but wonder if that could permit me to practice a purely sadistic spanking practice, without there being any (perceived or real) potential for romantic or sexual entanglement as a result. If I ever begin to move that way though, such major approach/avoidance develops that it quickly dissembles.

My grieving over the loss of t's and my sadomasochistic relationship for nine years now, is long past. I am proud we have found it possible for us to continue our love and marriage with her as service submissive and sister to my swan.

There are times when I wonder at my complete loss of my ever exploring or playing with the bottom end of the power exchange as I once did. I hear swan's longing for that and wonder if that would provide an outlet for t and i to reconnect to a degree sadomasochistically, but then too, I have no such inclination, and experience approach/avoidance (unbalanced in the direction of "avoidance") when I try to wrap my head around that alternative.

I keep having spanking technique themed essays that bounce about in my head and never seem to come to composition. My now decades long practice of adult consensual spanking has evolved, both in my techniques and desires. I am way more interested in intensely stinging spanking with lighter and whippier implements, that excruciate partners and minimize the damage and "thuddy trauma" that results. I have recently realized that the style of switches I most desire to use (switching still being my favorite flagellation technique) is actually a style of birch called a Manx Birch named after a community is Wales (Manx) where they began using these style switch rods as judicial and domestic disciplinary birches in the 19th and 20th centuries in the UK. There are times when my never ending obsessive fantasizing of administering these switchings makes me question if this is some sort of collective unconscious archetypal memory or past life echo.

I would like to have the time, space and partnership to further my practice of single tail flogging. I have wonderful whips and haven't really had the time or opportunity to develop my skill with them beyond a mere average. I am never satisfied with average excellence in any aspect of my life, and certainly not in this most seminal aspect of my identity.

I am seeing an evolution in the blogosphere. So many Blogs we've valued have discontinued recently. So much of what is written now is different than what was common five years ago. To have success, defined as building readership stats, it seems one must write superficially about spanking as a humorous and erotic device, or preach a lifestyle orthodoxy, to have insecure new explorers of this aspect of their lives emulate your life not find their own way, to their own truth and love.

When we began here our purpose was to express ourselves truthfully, and to connect with others who could resonate with that reality. It was not to achieve volumes of Internet linkages but to achieve as many quality relationships as we could. Recently my (and therefore our:) prioritization of that value is reaffirmed. I have every desire for us to describe the reality of our lives. I have no desire for others to change their realities based upon our choices. If some do feel there is resonance that is supportive of them in their lives, what wonderful serendipity, but that is purely an "extra." We will continue to decry lifestyle gurus with their helplines when that occasion occurs even if they continue to threaten to out us to our employers and ruin our professional lives for daring to confront their co-dependent exploitation of those who are insecure enough to succumb to guru worship.

If there is any theme to this post I have no idea what it might be, other than discontinuous chaos.

I have felt a need to get these thoughts out of me for some time and as embarrassed I am about the lack of quality composition in this post, I hope that "getting it out of me" will free me to move on in my future writing. If you have had the misfortune to wade through this, my gratitude and condolences.

All the best,

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.