Love and Power Exchange

Sin started a conversation about the conjunction between love and D/s, and Oatmeal Girl picked up the thread here.  It is one of those discussions that comes up periodically in our BDSM community, and I’m certain we’ll never agree on this one one – does participation in a power exchange relationship mean there is also a “love” relationship?  Will one lead to the other?  Can the two things exist independently or each other? Like so much of what we do, the commingling of love and power exchange is uniquely expressed in each relationship.  We all do it differently, and we’re ferocious in the tenacity with which we cling to “our” way of doing “our” relatedness.  Which is exactly as it should be.

Brain scientists are learning more and more about what makes us "tick." According to an ever expanding body of research, we feel the emotions associated with being "in love" because of a stew of hormones and neural chemicals acting on the pleasure centers and memory circuits in our brains.  Sex stimulates the release of vasopressin and oxytocin.  Dopamine, serontonin, and endogenous opioids play seemingly critical roles in romantic love and long-term pair-bonding.  The systems overlap and interact in order to enable mating, pair-bonding and parenting.  Of course, cultural and social factors, and learning, play big roles, too. If we are successful in love, it comes down to knowing the range of factors that lead from arousal to the rewards of sex, love and attachment. 

It really seems that, at some level, when it comes to love, we all dance to a tune of which we are hardly even aware.  It might not be so surprising then, that we have conflicting reactions to the intricate patterns of love and sex and power that rise up in our unique and intense kinds of relatedness. 

Within the BDSM realm, we already understand that there are parts of what we do that stir up the chemical cocktail that includes the whole list of pleasure related hormones and endogenous opioids that are also, intimately, connected to the experiences of lust, romance, and long-term attachment.  It is definitely possible to play with all of that, and not land in the lap of love and romance, but it is a risky business.  If we don't mingle SM play with sex, maybe it is easier to not find ourselves "caught" in the web.  If we don't mix D/s with sex or with SM, probably things are going to be less tangled.  If we don't pair up in long term partnerships, but stay with a more footloose play style, the odds of staying unattached are likely going to improve.  


I can't speak in generalities.  I won't even try to classify or explain the ways that other people do this thing we do.  I may be able to say one or two things about how love and power exchange have co-existed inside the relationship that Tom and I share.  It isn't intended to be prescriptive.  My path isn't one that anyone else ought to follow.  Consider this to be just me rambling -- maybe even just reminiscing.


First -- We met.  Online.  We shared a common interest in "spanking," and in the beginning, that was contained within the context of Domestic Discipline (DD).  We had some common interests, and we were "emotionally" compatible -- we liked each other.  I know that all seems pretty self-evident, but the truth is that, especially within the context of BDSM, the necessary first step of finding each other is critical.  It may be easier today than it was just a decade or so ago, but we are still in the minority, and still persecuted to a large degree.  Making connections is a challenge that has to be surmounted if anything else is going to happen.


Then -- We talked.  A lot.  Online, and on the phone, and in person.  We came to know one another as friends.  We discovered that we didn't have big deal-breaker differences.  We had congruence around our world views, our political views, our life paths to that point.  We saw things in similar ways.  We might have done better at that.  Might have talked about the things that have proved to be huge roadblocks for us, and maybe if we'd done that, we'd have saved ourselves some pain...  Or maybe we would have chosen not to walk this path together.  I don't know.  We did what we did.


And -- We began to play together, and talk about playing together... obsessively.  We were crazy for each other.  It might have been love.  It was surely lust.  Across 1200 miles we longed and yearned and pined for one another.  We couldn't wait to be together, and we couldn't bear to be apart.  We made decisions that changed all of our lives, and we did that in the heat of passion.  Would we have been more cautious without all that fire?  If we'd managed to evaluate all of it in the cold, calculating calm of a business transaction...?  


In Time -- We came together to live and love and learn and grow.  It was, in the beginning, glorious.  There was so much delayed gratification.  We felt as if we were a perfect match.  We loved and played and talked and laughed and explored.  We were completely wrapped up in each other, and there weren't enough hours in a day for us to BE together.  We looked out into a future and I thought we were looking at a long, lovely, happy path that would carry us through to the end of our days.  


But -- Of course, life happens.  Over time, we dealt with every kind of challenge -- surgeries, and illness, and death, and financial trouble, and divorce, and all the myriad everyday disappointments that fall on top of everyone's life.  I just kept saying to myself... someday it will all settle down and we'll go on to live happily ever after.  My parents didn't name me Pollyanna, but they probably should have.  I was in love.  I felt loved.  I believed we could overcome anything.  ANYTHING!  


And Then -- The earth opened up and swallowed us whole.  The things we never really talked about caught up with us.  My childhood abuse history.  His Childhood abuse history.  The things that grew out of that -- issues with abandonment and a demand for safety from my side; addiction and disengagement on His part.  We were a disaster careening toward an ugly crash.  And, people tried to warn us.  We ignored them all.  We were in love after all -- star-crossed and meant to be.  We broke the rules and made our own way.  We were big on "going confidently in the direction of our dreams -- living the life we imagined."  We had our battles, but we always recovered.  We didn't live easily with the places where we were at odds, but we never addressed them either.  We pretended we could just avoid  looking at the monsters lurking around the edge of our beautiful world.  We were wrong.  

Now -- We are living in the rubble of what was.  We are each miserable, angry, confused, bitter, frightened. We cling to loving each other.  And we still tend to fall into patterns that have been established between us over the last decade.  We don't trust each other.  We don't believe in each other.  We don't talk, and we don't listen.  We fight... continual battles of recrimination and blame and accusation.  We are a mess.  There's no power exchange anymore.  He insists He has no power.  I assert that He has all the power.  We go round and round and round.  Long days and hours pass where we don't speak.  At all.  We love anyway.  


I guess there's no answer to the question I started off.  Seems there is no way for me to not bring everything back to me.  I apologize.  It is all I can do.


sue