Toy writes of an issue I know well. Enjoying titles and yet being so darned aware of the artificiality.
I know these particular titles are diluted and clichéd. They’re so commonly used by the shallow faux-submissives that they feel stigmatized by this misuse, like they’re emblematic more of playing at D/s than of actual D/s. They’re overused. A lot of people are uncomfortable with them, including my wife, who has never been willing to let me use them. Even I am uncomfortable with being called “master” during my times of dominance.
But despite all that, for some reason I cannot explain, they have a great power for me.
However, knowing how much other people are put off by them, and in particular, with my wife and her dislike of them, I find the very idea of titles at all gets changed from a powerful turn-on into a source of great awkwardness. I feel extremely shy and self-conscious about using any title, even an “approved” one (my wife likes “m’lady”), and I find myself avoiding using them at all because, I think, there’s a taint from how the one that my heart is actually thinking is inappropriate.
Perhaps that’s related to how I get too self-conscious to even speak. (That’s not the same as when I’m so deep into it that I forget how to speak; it’s when I know how, but the idea of actually saying anything makes me so consumed with shyness I can’t blurt out any words, and the attempt pulls me out of what’s going on, far worse than a ringing phone or something external.) I don’t know if my shyness about speaking is caused by, or causes, my awkwardness with using titles.
Originally posted 2006-06-22 16:44:11. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
