Being Honest

It is a widely held tenet of the BDSM lifestyle that honesty and transparency are important.  Even foundational.  Necessary for this thing we do to work.

I've often heard it said that this person or that will absolutely not tolerate dishonesty.  Mistakes in judgement -- yes.  Carelessness -- OK.  Plain, downright stupidity -- sure... even that. But not ever, never, no way will we tolerate dishonesty.

It makes sense.  I guess.  But I wonder what we really mean when we say we demand honesty and transparency.  No.  I wonder what I mean by that.  Me.

Because here's the thing.  I have been kinky since I was old enough to masturbate, and that was just not that old.  Actually, I've been kinky since way before I was old enough to realize that being the way I am was not OK with the rest of the world.  I learned to pretend that I wasn't like this at a very young age.  By the time I reached the age of majority, I was a practiced liar.  Mostly, at that point, I lied to myself.  I was pretty naive, but I knew that if I were to live the "happily ever after" dream that was the background to every girlish imagining, I was going to have to play the part of a good girl / nice woman.  No dark fetish tinged longings were allowed in the planned for future of marriage and family and successful career.  So lying became the garment that I wore closest to my skin.

And the guy I married; he lied too.  First he lied when he promised to take care of me and my children.  That wasn't something he was prepared to do; able to do.  He tried to maintain the illusion, but it just wasn't in his makeup.  He was who he was -- good hearted, sweet, loving.  He was no bread winner.  Nor was he strong and protective by his nature.  He might have convinced the 19 year old I was then that he was my knight in shining armor, but he knew it wasn't true.  It was just that the lie was required if he was to have the life he wanted.

Somewhere along the line, I began to itch under the weight of the lie I was living.  I began to "come out" as the freakish, fetish driven, weirdo I really was.  Telling even some of that truth turned out to be no panacea.  Honesty is not always the best policy.  Standing in front of the man I'd married and telling him the truth about what I was and what I wanted created a whole new level of intimate dishonesty.  What, after all, was he to do with that information?  He wasn't any part of that dark world.  He neither understood it nor wanted it.  He only wanted his "comfortable, normal, socially acceptable" life to go on as it had been.  So, he lied again.  To meet my need, my demand, he tried to take on the guise of the dominant partner in my little personal movie.  His dishonesty was understandable, I guess.  My insistence on that dishonesty was unforgivable.

But the sad tale doesn't end there.  Needs denied are wicked things.  They whisper in the darkness.  The hunger is never sated, and the longings never stop.  It is a kind of madness swirling out of control.  Anyone who has ever passed through the attempt to shove a fetish into some kind of back corner, or box, or closet, knows the futility; knows how the squashed down, buried, hidden desires come roaring out, demanding their day in the sun.

I found my way to get that dark drive fulfilled.  I don't think it was conscious or planned.  I only knew that when the opportunity came to get spanked, flogged, and caned by Tom, I was not about to walk the other way.  Married?  Yeah.  I was.  He was. I was willing to toss those vows in the can; willing to move away from my children; willing to quit a good job; willing to sell the family home.  There was nothing I wasn't willing to do or give up in order to get what I wanted.  That simple.  I wanted, and that was all I knew.  Turned out that my commitment to being wife or mother was only sort of that.  Commitment? 'Til death do us part?  In sickness or in health?  For as long as you both shall live?  Once upon a time, long long ago, I said yes to all of that.  I lied.  So.

Probably, in the rush and excitement, I lied to myself.  I told myself that I could give up everything, give up my self, be nothing at all.  I think I tried to believe the fiction that I could lose myself and be fulfilled in that loss.  I'm sure that I wasn't honest with Tom.  I let him believe that I was that "perfectly" submissive who needed only him, and really, only as much of him as he was willing to give.  I let him believe that I could just join the stable of butts and it would all be fine with me.  "Whatever you want, whenever you want."  That is what I told him; what I told myself.

As it turned out, there was no way to talk myself into that story either.  I did try.  But we are who we are.  No matter the stories we tell ourselves.

I don't know the lies others tell.  Maybe, some never do.  Tell lies.  Maybe some are as open and honest and transparent as I've read for all these years.  Maybe there are those who do not carry around dark secrets and shameful hidden failings.  That must be so, because, to demand that level of truthfulness from another person, you would have to live up to that standard yourself.  Wouldn't you?  Wouldn't I?

I Wish...

Master is in the midst of His court-ordered rehab and "recovery" program.  Each week, He attends a continuing care group -- phase two of the intensive outpatient rehabilitation program that meets on Tuesday mornings.  He is required, as a condition of that program to attend two AA meetings each week -- one on Thursday evening and one on Saturday afternoon.  In addition, He chooses to meet with His therapist on a weekly schedule.

He goes to continuing care and to AA, and He really does work to participate fully and consciously in the goings on -- even though there remains a very great part of the whole business that is entirely contrary to His belief system and His intellectual understanding of the world and universe.  He has learned that He does not need to try to battle with others about their acceptance of all that AA religiosity and cliched mumbo jumbo, but He often feels oppressed and beleaguered by the pervasive "god" based responses He gets to whatever He expresses.  If He struggles, if He is sad or depressed, if He is confused or frustrated, if He is scared -- the forever and only answer seems to be to "pray and turn it all over to god."  He comes home from meetings and from group feeling worse than He was when He left home; and they make it clear to Him that His feeling that way is His fault because, in their view, He isn't "doing it right."

I want to be supportive and I want to help Him through these days and weeks and months, and I am frustrated that the resources which we are required to use to navigate all of this are so completely unresponsive to the FACT that their view of life doesn't work for Him, or for us.   He comes home and He seems so sad and so wounded and so hurt by it all, and I just want to grab them all and shake them.

Tonight, as I lay in bed with Him snuggled in beside me, reviewing the last couple of weeks and all of the times He's been disappointed and rejected by groups that are supposed to be "helping" Him, I found myself formulating a vision of what I wish could happen the very next time someone lays that "pray and turn it all over to god" voodoo on Him.  I wish it could all go something like this...

AA groupie -- All you have to do, for whatever obstacle or worry or pain you are experiencing, is pray everyday and turn it all over to god.

Master -- I don't pray.

AA groupie -- GASP!  What?!?!?  How can you say you don't pray?

Master -- I don't pray because I don't believe in your god.

AA groupie -- but you have to turn your life over to your higher power.

Master -- My higher power is the Great Blue Heron totem and the spirits of the Mohican people from whom I am descended at the very root of my being.  I have learned who I am, and I intend to learn to follow their ways.

AA groupie -- How can they help you learn to be a good old drunk?  How will they help you when you relapse?  I think you are just fooling yourself into believing you are something better than the rest of us -- but you will regret that thinking.  You are nothing but a drunk and that is all you will ever be.

Master -- No.  I am not a drunk.  I am sober.  I have chosen to be sober, and I intend to remain sober.  I am not a drunk.  I am a man, and I am in full possession of my faculties.  I am healthy and strong and good.  I made mistakes, but I have learned and I will live my life in keeping with the strength and majesty and wonder and beauty of the Native spirits who speak to me across the centuries and the powerful totem of the Great Blue Heron.  I do not begrudge any one of you the path that you have chosen, and I wish you well, but I will follow my path to my own life and the reclamation of my sanity and my power. 

I doubt that conversation will happen that way.  It probably isn't prudent for Him to do that with these narrow minded and sometimes vindictive and nasty folks.  He is in a position where He has to play their game for the next number of months.  Still, I wish I could hand Him that script -- or one very like it -- that would give Him back His voice and His vision and His life.  The words they are teaching Him are destructive and untrue.  I want to give Him back His best and truest self.  Sadly, I am only one woman.  Sadly, I am labeled as a "normal" by those AA groupies.  I don't talk the talk and I won't walk the walk, and they would declare that I am a codependent mess.  I've worked really hard to see the world the way they see it; to translate their weird religion into something I can use.  It doesn't work, and it is destroying the Man I  love and serve.  I am done.  I will tell Him the story that I believe from now on, and I will not echo their nonsense any longer.  If that is wrong in His view, then perhaps He will tell me that.  Until that happens, my voice will be heard around here.

swan

Change

This place is changing -- and I'm sure that is not news to anyone who has been following along.

We are different with each other, and learning to be different for ourselves.  The collar that I once wore so proudly hasn't been out of its basket on my night table in months.  In the beginning, that bothered me, but it has come to be just a fact -- and that feels OK.  I sometimes look at the impressions of the cutting that hang on our bedroom wall, and feel the ever present itch of those scars in my flesh -- and ponder what it might come to mean to wear His initials on my back if we are no longer Master and slave, or Owner and property, or whatever it was that the marks connoted when He first made them.  But for right now, I feel comfortable that He and I will always be SOMETHING  to each other.  I have no idea what the shape of our relationship will be as we learn and grow and change, but I am no longer terrified that we will come to be strangers.  We will be "us," and it feels like the labels and the protocols and the structures may not be so important.  Or maybe I am projecting too far out.  I just don't know.

I do know that continuing to hope to be able to come here and write about power exchange and D/s the way I once did is a frustrating and fruitless wishing for what was, and that doing that keeps me from looking fully at what is.  We were like that, and it was meaningful and real and powerful WHEN it was the right thing for us.  It isn't that anymore.  We are making something new and it is, as yet, too new and unformed to even be able to name it.  We will have to simply watch and wait.

I have, on more than one occasion, wondered if I should take this blog down and just go off to live my quiet, simple, plain life.  I can't imagine that I'll ever be or feel "vanilla" in my bones, but maybe it is just a matter of waiting long enough.  Maybe after 6 months or 7 months or a year, all of that kinky stuff will just fade off into warm, fuzzy, glowing memories of my youth.  I can say that and, as I watch myself react to it, I am amazed at how calm I feel about it.  It isn't that scary.

So, here sits the blog that has chronicled every move and every step and every emotion and every shift.  I feel like something happens for me when I can write here.  One of my "anonymous" fans accuses me of being possessed of a towering ego (well, that's what the anonymous would write if he/she had that much literary capacity), and probably that is accurate.  This blog has been about me, mostly.  Because of this place, I've "met" people from around the country and around the globe, and they have come to feel like friends and confidants.  I have not always been a good friend, but I do value those relationships and I want them to continue -- at least I'd like that to happen.  Who knows what those on the other end of the "relationship" might come to feel about it, especially if this becomes the "World's Most Boring Blog."  That too, will perhaps become clear in time.  I only know that I want this outlet to remain for the days when I may need to still pour out words.  In the beginning, there was hardly anyone to read the words I wrote -- and it was alright.  If things would go back to that, I think I'd be more ok with that than having no outlet at all for the words.

Nothing earth-shaking in all of that.  It is just the truth about my thinking tonight.  I guess part of me wants to "let people off the hook."  Telling the truth about the state of our relationship seems the kindest and fairest thing I can do at this moment.

swan

Heretic Rant

I've always been intrigued by Blog rants. I don't believe I've ever written one, so this is a first. This Blog and the body of work that we've (admittedly mostly swan) created here and on our predecessor Blog has just been hugely and totally misrepresented by a commenter on another Blog in our circle of correspondence, and I want to correct those entirely false statements about what we write here.

It was stated that we are "proponents of polygamy and M/s." This is an utter falsehood. Firstly polygamy is a serious federal felony in the United States. Were we to practice polygamy we would be subject to decades of imprisonment. Considering the dominance of our government by Christianity, other mainline religions, and general conservative intolerance that is so prevalent in our country in recent years, freedom of speech aside, were one to be proponent of polygamy, that would likely gain you legal sanction. We have never described ourselves as polygamous, nor are we polygamous, and we most certainly are not proponents of polygamy. The person who stated this, who has seemed to read here for some time, apparently has no understanding of what she has read.

We are polyamorous, but we are absolutely not proponents of polyamory. We believe very strongly that everyone should be able to lead self-determined lives and develop whatever family structures they choose (obviously within the purview of civil law). We do not promote our lifestyle as superior, sacred, holy, right, or in anyway superior to being single, monogamous, gay, straight, bi or any other permutation of adults coming together in committed relationship. We do not either set ourselves up as guru's or solicit people to ask us for advice about their love lives.

As for our being "proponents of M/s." This also is entirely false. It is true that two of the three of us (swan and I) are involved in a consensual M/s power exchange. We in no way suggest anyone else should engage in M/s, nor have we.

I would like to challenge someone to cite examples of our promoting either polygamy or M/s here ,or even for that matter, polyamory.

We share our experiences, we share our feelings about many aspects of our lives, we are not proponents nor will we be, as long as I have control of this family.

The implication too was communicated by inference, that we in some fashion denigrate domestic discipline (DD) as a lifestyle, or that we somehow argue that D/s or M/s is superior to DD. I have routinely on this Blog, and in many other Internet fora, described our lifestyle as bDDsm, connoting the practice of domestic discipline within the context of a BDSM lifestyle. While I recognize that this may be a unique take on DD, compared to the way many define it (imagine that -- this family being unique), I feel no compulsion to define my life and that of my family by anyone else's lexicon. For us to in someway say that DD is inferior would be for us to denigrate our own lifestyle. We are not self-effacing.

We do not put our lifestyle forward as superior to anyone else's. We are not seeking to become gurus or proselytize. Were we to be treated as such by someone we would end that co-dependent relationship immediately. We are not so insecure as to need to offer an advice line for co-dependent folks to turn to with their life questions, in order to feel superior to others or OK about ourselves. We do not tell others how to lead their lives. We do not purport that our choices and opinions are somehow sacred or are in anyway representative of "facts." We are most certinly not attempting to have people turn to us for advice in how to live their lives, AND WE MOST CERTAINLY ARE NOT AND NEVER HAVE BEEN PROPONENTS OF POLYGAMY AND M/s! Describing us as being like those who are prostelitizing their lifestyle and setting themselves up as experts (based upon laughably short experience with their lifestyle besides) is insulting.

Tom

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

Lies

Unless you've been living under the proverbial rock for the last week or so, you've gotten wind of the "dust up" here in our little blogging neighborhood over LIES put out by some, and the varying reactions to that reality across the community.

I don't personally know how this particular blowup came to be, I just know that there are people that we thought we knew something about who turned out to be not quite as advertised. So these folks can be added to the list which already includes such luminaries as Vickie Blue, Robin Whittle (of Fondly and Firmly), and Patty (of Creative Spanked Wench/Wife). Likely there have been others over the years who misled and deceived -- and pehaps just vanished without most of us ever being any the wiser. Surely, our family got suckered by one such on a very personal level once upon a time. It hurts.

But let's face it -- people lie. They do. We do. In big and small ways, and for a thousand different reasons, the human animal practices deception. People lie to get ahead, to avoid consequences, to seem more "whatever" to their fellows, to protect themselves, to gain power and control, to create the potential for relationship, to maintain ongoing relationship, and on and on and on. We lie by omission and by commission. We don't like it when we are duped by a liar, and I imagine most of us want to be thought of has people of honesty and integrity, but if we are truthful with ourselves, we can almost all point to times when we have been less than open, honest, and straightforward with others.

I don't like being lied to. It feels icky. It makes me question all sorts of things that I want to have be bedrock solid. And, I know that there are places, even with the ones I love best, where the truth gets "bent" or "shaded" or simply is withheld. I do it, and I know they do it too. If I want to climb up on my soap box and hold forth about how dishonesty is a cancer on our relationship and destroys trust and makes it impossible to really BELIEVE in anything, then I'd probably better be real sure that I am without blame (NOT), and I'd better be sure that what I'll gain by standing on principle on this is worth more than what I'll throw away by being an unbending prig.

So. I don't know all the nuances of this latest firestorm of lies and recriminations. I'm surely disappointed. I am not however ready to condemn anyone to the outer darkness. It's a reminder of the realities of our lives together. Not a nice one. Still, understanding that we are all human and all capable of falling short, I can go on.

swan

Not an Angel

One of the annual events of my year is the Christmas program that happens at school each year. Even though I've long since outlived the point in life where I have any children of my own participating in Christmas programs or Christmas pageants, the very fact of my teaching means that once each year, "my kids" take part in the ritual of song and performance that is the re-enactment of the traditional Christian story of the birth of the historical Jesus... I never see the nativity story re-told that I am not transported in memory back to a winter long ago when my own daughter was small, and she was dragooned into a church pageant to play the part of one of the "Heavenly Host."

She was, at the time about a month shy of her second birthday -- really just a baby. However, because she was quite verbal, and tall for her age, those who were in charge of the festivities viewed her as older than she really was. They were quite sure that she'd make a wonderful angel. I tried and tried to convince them that she wasn't old enough for a role in the play yet, but there was no swaying the mavens of the church. They were determined, and so it was that my wild child was set to make her acting debut in the role of Christmas angel.

The appointed night arrived and all was in readiness. Wings and halo and shining white robe were donned and my darling looked somewhat angelic, but she was not a happy camper. I tried my best to soothe her, but she was having none of it... I feared the worst, but hoped things would go alright, after all, angels really only had to parade onto the stage and flutter a bit -- I was willing to hope that her natural instinct for the lime-light might see us through.

Well, onto the stage filed the Multitude. They made it all the way to the center and the lights came up. My precious one got right to the middle. Stopped dead center. Put her little baby fists on her baby hips, stared out into the crowd, stomped her baby foot and declared in a full stage voice -- "I AM NOT AN ANGEL -- NOT AN ANGEL!" She ripped her halo off. Tossed it to the floor and marched directly down the aisle and plopped into my lap. So much for that. That's my girl -- then and now... Not an angel, but a teller of truths.

I eventually learned that there was no pushing the child where she wouldn't go. Still isn't. She taught me about telling your own truth.

Anyway. As the holidays approach and you listen in your own way for those heavenly strains, I hope you maybe hear, above all the cacophony of the season, the voices of all the little ones who declare in honest baby voices the truth of their lives -- "NOT AN ANGEL!"

swan