06/23, 2006
Crop Circles
Meretrix of New York City writes of an aspect of professional domination of which I’d never thought:
I had to break up with a client this week. I’ve been seeing him for nearly two years. He says I was the “emotional center” of his life, which I neither asked for nor encouraged. I told him we had to stop sessioning because I didn’t enjoy playing with him any more. Every time he’d ask for an appointment, I dreaded seeing him. He didn’t DO anything wrong…he was just a black hole that sucked all the joy out of me. Dunno why. I got to where I couldn’t stand to touch him. Couldn’t even look him in the face. I started hooding him all the time.
I’ve been trying to cut him loose for the past six months. He knew it, felt it, too. He’s kinda geeky. One of those socially awkward, painfully shy, big brain types. A beautiful writer but couldn’t speak a sentence out loud without stammering. And it was misery to sit across from him during a meal. Serious “see food” issue. At least twice during a meal, I’d have to yell at him to use his fucking napkin.
But he’s also intensely thoughtful and generous. He’d send me articles that I loved reading, buy me all kinds of books. Practically checked every item off my Amazon wishlist himself. He’d do anything for me. I knew it. And it’s so rare for me to feel that — from a client or from anyone in my life. I was awed by his devotion. I just couldn’t keep seeing him.
Since ending it with him, I’ve been all melancholy, thinking about the other clients I have who are dear to me now…but whom I’ll have to break with eventually. Or they’ll break with me.
June 26th, 2006 at 11:58 am
It’s a situation, I am all too familiar with. How many times have I found myself somewhat surprised be the overwhelming feelings welling up in my eyes, squeezing my chest, and churning my tummy… fighting for their own validation. Seeking permission to emote.
It’s REALLY nice to hear from another PROFESSIONAL, that they too can sometimes find themselves experiencing this sort of emotional turmoil. It makes me feel not so alone, not so strange.
It never ceases to amaze me how many times I have gotten the impression that there are certain camps out there that think of this sort of dynamic between Mistress and bottom/sub/slave, as a weakness in her. That because she forms something resembling a human relational bond with one of her boys, she some how diminishes her control? Like Domme’s are suppose to be the embodiment of feminine power, short of any human vulnerability?
I find that ludicrous… I think that if folks would set down their expectations and stereotypical anticipatory visions of what BDSM should/should not be, they would soon agree that emotional bonds only strengthen those of rope, leather, and chain.
MWK
November 14th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
I second both Meretrix’s and MWK’s emotions. I hate having to tell a sub that it’s no good, I’m just not feeling it any more, and because I believe in what I do as a Domme, I have to end it, because I can’t keep faking it. But equally I hate it (as happened recently to me) when a long-time pet comes in and says that he has fallen in love with a wonderful Dominant woman and she with him, and, well, he guesses this is goodbye. And even more I hate it when the sub just dumps me cold–because he has decided he wants to go vanilla, or he has found another Domme he likes better, or he just up and vanishes–doesn’t return calls or messages. It was actually MWK whom I went to crying and asking for counsel the first time I got ditched by a sub I had grown very attached to, and she told me that yeah, it happens, and if you’re a serious Domme you will get attached and when they leave it’s like losing a big patch of skin. I’ve lost and regrown a lot of skin since MWK kindly warned me, but scars remain. Sometimes I wonder how long I’ll be able to go on being a Pro, and I even envy the women who can just put the game face on, figure the boy out, and deliver crisply and professionally what he needs, even when they could not care less if they ever see him again.
Because that’s the point. I have found that a deep intimacy develops between Me and My longtime, inner-circle subs, and despite having the power within the terms of the relationship, I am intensely vulnerable to each of them nonetheless. I don’t know any other way to do the work. I need to get as far inside his head and also into his heart. That means I develop empathy for him. What’s more, I can’t work with him for long if I don’t like him. I mean, I can do a few sessions with someone I don’t much care for at an emotional level if the kink is right, but as with any other personal relationship, liking becomes increasingly important as we go on. It seems absurd that I find it much easier to get really sadistic with a boy I like, whom I’m fond of even, than a boy I don’t. I can be truly savage a few times with some guy whom I find creepy, but in the end it just makes me feel creepy too. Consensual sadism is a form of erotic intimacy, at least to me, and I don’t want to enter that intimacy with someone for whom I feel no emotional affinity outside of kink.
The up side is exactly what MWK says: the emotional bond strengthens the D/s bond. My emotional openness allows My sub to open up also, to bond with Me at a level deeper than our roles but inextricable from them–like the root system of a tree, mostly invisible but essential all the same. And that makes for hot play and deep submission. We should be proud as Dominant women that we are able to be hurtin our strength–because women’s strength has never, unlike some versions of male strength, been dependent on some myth of invulnerability. Our strength is not only that of will and passion and intuition but also of endurance. I never guessed when I started on this road how much of it I would need. But the blaze of glory that is D/s at its most intense makes the pain worth it.