Fake-out

Well it's been quite a while since I added to this blog. Figured it's past time for an update, and there have been some interesting ideas swimming in my head recently, sort of picking up from my glorious k's talk about cliches last week.

It's become fairly obvious to me over the past couple of months that when I first started out in D/s, I was pretty much just a faker. It didn't feel exactly like that at the time, but in retrospect I can see that I was merely playing at the whole thing.

And yeah playing was a lot of fun - I don't regret it or anything, not by a long shot. I learned so much, and it did wake up my inner "Domminess." Even back in the early days when I was experimenting online, it was more than just this kinky fun way to cyber, but yeah it was that more than anything else. I did get to witness folks who were in the lifestyle or who had long-term online relationships, and it was interesting, but I never thought such a thing would be for me. It was only much later, when I began to self-analyze a little bit and think about why I found the D/s scenes so much more intense and satisfying than the vanilla ones, that I considered the idea that I might actually have Dom tendencies, and what that implied.

In those halcyon chatroom days, folks in the lifestyle or who took their D/s as a "higher calling" used to bug the heck out of me, for the most part. Always casting judgement, pronouncing certain people as fakers, others as the real thing. Lighten up people! I still say that if you can't have a sense of humor about the whole D/s enterprise, then you need to think twice about it. I mean, the whole idea is just pretty funny. But looking back from this vantage point, I can see that those imperious judges did sorta have a point (though of course one better expressed in a gracious respectful manner, with a spirit of inclusion). I was using the D/s mileu and its trappings to get what I wanted at the time - hot cybersex. But along the way I also made a lot of friends, and learned volumes about various viewpoints on D/s relationships.

And all that was the beginning of my journey, though I didn't know it at the time.

I can't possibly overemphasize that the discovery of my dominance is all to do with my amazing k. Though I know that it's a part of me, and in fact is a much more intrinsic part of my being than I could have previously imagined, my dominance is what it is only because of her.

It's a truism that love is powerful and changes you. Well among all the myriad kaleidoscopic transcendent wonders that our shared love has brought forth, one was a sense of comfort, stability, warmth, and trust in k, which I think I needed as a foundation, or maybe as a "safety net," so I could eventually let my dominance emerge and explore. That doesn't sound very Dommish does it? And maybe not everyone needs that, and I'm sure there are other paths that can get you to this point, but it was something I needed. k's love and trust were a prerequisite for me to be more than a "weekend Dom."

One of the things I've discovered in this journey (and I can feel that it's still far from over) is that there's quite a difference between dominating and being a Dom. Seems kind of obvious, I guess. But if you'd asked me a year or so ago what the difference was, I'd have mumbled some philosophical claptrap, and it certainly wouldn't have been based on first-hand experience. I truly understand what being a Dom means now, and notice that I don't say being "the" Dom. I am only "a" Dom, specifically k's. (In large part, her submission gives shape to my dominance, or at least the two dance and learn in perpetuity.)

When I collared k, the forefront of my mind said that we would continue to be great friends, that we would only scene with each other, and that maybe I could find out if my love for her were returned. And that all did come to pass and it's wonderful, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. For a long while I was dominating her exclusively in sexual scenes in chatrooms or in IM, then once in a while extending that into more r/l situations. Then at some unarticulated point, I slipped from merely dominating, into being a Dom. Owning my sweet k and loving her is the foundation of who I am and how I live. I've been looking back through some of the older blog posts here, and there's no single crucial moment - it happened in quiet stages and the realization of what it all means is still too much to wrap my head around sometimes. And I've come to wonder if this was in the back of my mind the whole time, unarticulated. A powerful vision of how things could be.

This has been one life-altering journey. I am more "me" because of my stunning k, and I become a better man every day since she's been mine.