So yesterday I suggested to someone that they shift their focus from the wants and needs that weren’t being met in their relationship to figuring themselves out, figuring out what submission is, what being a submissive means to them.
Those are the basics, right?
The things we should approach first when we are exposed to and become interested in this lifestyle, right?
We’re not going to get anywhere without knowing ourselves fairly well, right?

I’ve been doing this a long ass time. I stopped worrying about the basics a decade ago. Mostly my blogs focus on the intricacies and struggles of living those basics 24/7.

But I’m thinkin’…
Maybe it would be beneficial to someone, somewhere, for me to spend some time ruminating on those basics. Hell, maybe it’ll even help me in some of my struggling if I take it back to the basics, eh?

So I spent some time with the online dictionaries (cuz, wouldn’t ya know, I no longer own a hard copy of one?  Egads!) and came up with these as the literal definitions of submission:

• The act of submitting to the power of another
• The state of having submitted
• The state of being submissive or compliant
• The quality or state of willingly carrying out the wishes of others
• The act of yielding to power or authority
• Surrender of the person and power to the control of another
• Acknowledgment of inferiority or dependence
• Humble or suppliant behavior
• Subjecting to a condition or process
• Committing to the consideration or judgment of another
• Allowing oneself to be subjected to something
• To conform to the will or judgment of another, especially out of respect or courtesy

Simple enough, right?

One person yielding to another. One person carrying out the wishes of another. One person complying and conforming to the will of another.

It means more than that, though. Simple definitions will never come close to defining lifestyle, 24/7 submission.

To me, submission to someone else, being someone’s submissive, means that I strive to obey, please and serve that person to the best of my abilities.
It means I have surrendered my right to make demands, to put myself first, and to determine what I can and cannot have, can and cannot do.

As a submissive I have a job, a role; to be pleasing, to obey, to serve him, to yield to his control, his will, his judgment.

I chose him. (He chose me? We chose each other?)
I now have to trust him enough to make the right decisions for me, for us.
I have to trust him to determine what I get, when I get it, what I do, when I do it.

I serve. I obey. I submit.
He controls.

I do not feel being a submissive frees me of responsibilities and choices as you’ll hear many submissives claim.
I am fully responsible for my own behavior.
I am responsible for the tasks he gives me.
I am responsible for giving him enough information to make informed decisions. (This does not, however, mean I need to tell him every last thought and feeling I have. But that is fodder for another blog so we’ll leave it until then.)
I am responsible for upholding my end of the “deal”; for being what I say I am.
I am responsible for obeying the rules he has laid out for me.
I make choices every single day.
Get him that glass of apple juice or tell him to bugger off? Suck his dick or stomp off in a huff because that’s not what I want to do? Stop typing so he can tell me something about an alien motorcycle part or go on typing and muttering “uh huh. Yeah. I see” in an absent manner while he talks?
See…
I can make those choices in either direction.
He gives me room for that.
There isn’t a flogger attached to his arm that strikes out with every poor choice, failure of my responsibilities, disobedience or less than ideal surrender to his will.
In all honesty the man rarely punishes me at all. Once a year I may - may - find myself punished in some way for disobedience or non submissive behavior.
Mostly he just gives me a whole lot of rope to hang myself with.

Because, you see, too many of those failures, disobediences or unacceptable behaviors and he will simply leave.
If I cannot submit properly to his dominance he will not be my Dominant.
It’s that simple.
(Now you may ask…  where’s the dominance if he doesn’t punish you or force you or whatever? Probably fodder for yet another blog but, just to reassure you, it’s there. In every refusal to take my collar off even though it’s sticking to my sweaty neck and leaving me raw and bruised. In every time I stop typing so I can listen to him blather about motorcycle parts - because he knows I was typing and preoccupied but wants me to listen to him, wants me to do what he wants me to do instead of what I want to do. In every time he does just about anything he is showing me, proving to me, that he is the boss and the world - our world - will revolve around him, his will, his desires, his needs and my agreement to serve those needs, yield to those desires, bend to his will)

So I guess you could say, to me, submission is mostly service and obedience. In serving him and obeying him I am, doubtless, yielding to his power, subjecting myself to someone, conforming to the will of another - all of which are definitions of submission.

It’s not very erotic and exciting, is it? Not very sexy. I haven’t had my hair pulled or my ass paddled even once here, have I?
See that stuff isn’t submission. Oh, sure, there are elements of D/s in that stuff. Without D/s that stuff would be abuse or s/m play. For us, it is s/m play. We incorporate s/m into our D/s, our s/m is saturated in power exchange - but it’s not submission. It’s not dominance. It’s the icing on the D/s cake, the extra, the fun, the occasional ingredient we use to sweeten the daily porridge, the tool he sometimes uses to tighten the screws of my submission. But it’s not submission.

So we’ve established that, for me, submission is primarily about service and obedience. And that Taylor keeps me on a pretty long leash, with enough room to trip myself up if I don’t pay careful attention to what I’m supposed to be paying attention to. (That would be him) Now don’t get me wrong. I have rules and boundaries. I’m not allowed, for example, to take my own collar off or tell him to shut up. I’m not allowed to call him a bastard, although calling him a fucker is okay. I’m expected to set aside what I’m doing when he requests something without too many huffs and puffs and sighs about it. I’m not allowed to behave in a disrespectful manner when we’re in public - for any reason. I don’t get to tickle his feet or poke him in the belly button. I’m expected to run his bath and wash him if he requests it. His word is law and final when it comes to my son. (Though after six years Taylor is more a father figure than his own father so it’s fairly natural. But, believe me, it wasn’t always easy to accept that rule!) Blah blah blah. There are enough little rules, expectations and boundaries to keep me from forgetting (as if that’s really possible) who the submissive is and who gets to be in control.

Neither the rules nor the enforcing of them make me a submissive though.
Obeying them makes me a submissive.
Disobeying them makes me a piss poor submissive.

Now you may be asking…
What about you? What about your needs? What about the stuff you want?

For me, submission isn’t about that.
Sure, I have them - needs and things I want.
Sure, I sometimes struggle with not getting what I want and need when I want and need it.
Perfectly natural, as a human being and a woman.
But I chose a man to be the axis of my world and I chose to surrender my wants and needs to him.
Starved, I waste away to a skeleton of what I have in me to be. No one can run on empty for ever. Bits of who and what they are are chipped away until they are unrecognizable.
I know. I’ve been there.
Well fed, I thrive and grow and provide far more than is possible when one is functioning on not enough fuel.
I know. I’ve been there too.

But it is not up to me to decide whether my life is a feast or famine.
I chose him.
And now he chooses for me.
I am fortunate to have chosen well and wisely, to have chosen a man who feeds my needs and even my wants - although in his own time, at his own bidding, not mine.

That’s submission.

I serve. I obey. I submit.
He controls.
And I am fulfilled - even when I’m miserable.

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”  -Rabindranath Tagore

“Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.”  ~Robertson Davies

Powered by ScribeFire.