Friday, November 4, 2011

D/s and love - like a horse and carriage?

With her latest post, called Love, sin has started another of those discussions she's so good at inspiring. The first few lines present the question:

Does D/s mean I love you?

It sounds like a simple question. No D/s doesn't necessarily mean love, though it can. 

As usual, my comment was much too long, so I decided to be efficient and reprint it here (slightly edited) as my own post. Maybe  a few of you will even comment in here? In any case, do follow the link to sin's place and add your voice to the discussion. Because of course I don't believe there is one right answer, and I am always interested in knowing how other people solve the equations of life and love.

Here's how it has played out for me and the sadist:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A rich topic, sin.

I don't think D/s HAS to mean love. But I'm not surprised that it so often ends up that way. It requires such nakedness, such intimacy - far deeper than the mere physical. For it to really work, so much has to be revealed on both sides.

Plus you're dealing with such basic needs. Acceptance. Approval. Again, on both sides. Because doesn't the sub's obedience imply a non-judgmental acceptance of the dom's darkest fantasies?

When the sadist first approached me, and for about the first month and a half, I never expected I would end up loving him. I was excited, I was enthralled, I was obsessed. But not in love. It was the connection beyond D/s that did it: literature, music, a general enjoyment of intelligence... I was almost outraged when I saw it happening. He just laughed. He said I'd been in love with him all along.

And the sadist? His feelings for me are deep and unnamed - except in the negative. Deep but not love. Was it inevitable? I'm not his only sub, and his relationships with the others are each very different. Sometimes I think that what happened with me caught him by surprise. I think it did to an extent, but only perhaps in its intensity. It seems he knew when he spotted me on Fetlife that this would be something else. From early on, he called me his complication.

But the sadist is very good at compartmentalizing. And maybe that's what a dom must be to hold back the love. That - and blessed with a talent for coldly regarding a sub as no more than a source of amusement.

I'm curious to hear from more doms on this.

4 comments:

Sue said...

I think that love is part of being human, and that D/s occurs between us when we are as uniquely, exquisitely human as most of us ever manage. I also think that it is hard to describe the sort of love that arises out of and alongside D/s because our culture is so attached to the fairy tale version of happily ever after treacle sweet imitation that the messy, difficult, rough and tumble of human animal emotion and attachment doesn't even have words most of the time... That is what you do such a good job of here most of the time -- words wrapped around the unnameable.

swan

Florida Dom said...

You explained the situation very well, but am curious how you are dealing with it. Is it difficult for you that he is holding back his love or do you accept that is the way it is?

FD

mamacrow said...

Hmmmm. A fascinating, interesting, difficult discussion. Difficult for me to comment on, because for me and Papacrow, love came first, and exploration of D/s (a lot) later, although you can see threads of it, early on, here and there, because the submissive parts of me are just that - part of me.

I do remember, OG, back when you first started seeing the sadist, you were very clear on how for you it was about it fullfilling your submissive needs; that it was a connection of convience; you were still very much activily mourning the Philospher and were adament that in no way was your heart going to get involved.

Then you mentioned how he required a lot of prolonged eye contact during your encounters, and I thought - and I believe I commented to you - uh-oh, watch out!

Because if you gaze into someones eyes for long enough - anyones eyes - you feel a connection and a rush of love (which is why there are such heavy social conventions as to the appropriate lengh of time for eye contact, I think).

And goodness, the amount of stories I've come across in the D/s blogging world where the relationship started out as being 'purely ownership' and ended up as being a love match!

I think D/s, particularly, when done well and/or for a lengh of time, requires such openess, trust and so on that love of some kind is maybe envitable? Either it develops because the situation is utterly right for it to do so, or maybe it springs up as a defense mechanism, almost to justify the amount of trust etc being given? (thinking out-loud here)

I do think people get unecessarily hung up over labling things to be love, or not love, or what kind of love - look at the ancient greeks, they had reams of words for all the different types of love they identified. And certainly some people are very... (hmmm, whats the word I want...) CLEAR that they don't feel love, or not in the same way as others, or what they feel is in no way love.

In the end, everything is about love. Every action, emotion, reaction, everything we do can be traced back to either love or fear.

mamacrow said...

oops, sorry, did not intent to write a novel!