a submissive's musings: January 2010

Some good news

In all the moaning about how rubbish this week has been, and actually trying to get through it, i forgot to blog about some good news which happened last weekend. As you might remember i usually have training with Ma'am on a Sunday, and last week's session was a kind of test to see if i was ready to be signed off by Her in the 3 areas Sir required: serving, submitting and pleasuring. i'm not allowed to post the details here of what the test entailed, at Ma'am's request, but i am allowed to say that i passed all 3 areas and therefore the training with Ma'am has finished and i can say that i have passed my 'play with Dommes in r/l' training! This one i am particularly pleased to have signed off because i found it really tough and it seems like i have been working on it for a long time. Now Sir says i am ready to submit to and serve any Domme friends He might invite round, which while it sounds like a daunting prospect, when i think about it i realise that i could serve them in a pleasing manner without getting too shy and inhibited, even though i wouldn't naturally choose to submit to a Woman. So i think i have done well in this training and made good progress :)

A scare

This week has been the most rubbish week i can remember having in a long time - i've been feeling pissy and moody and stressed and down anyway due to the preggie hormones, i've now got a cold, i've been having morning sickness to the point where i actually throw up pretty much every day, work has been difficult, and then to top it all off we started having problems with our gas.

It began on Wednesday when we realised there was something wrong with the gas meter because it had credit on it but wasn't giving us any gas, so Sir called the helpline number and after having to phone a couple of other numbers, press '1' for this option, '3' for the other, wait on hold for ages, etc, etc, eventually got through to someone who sent out a gas engineer to take a look for us. He fitted a new gas meter, and everything was going great until the time when he needed to check our gas appliances and found that our gas cooker was giving off carbon monoxide every time we turned the hobs on. This meant we would have been slowly poisoned by it, but we had no way of knowing how long it had been going on for, how much we had breathed in, etc. And on top of all that he had to disable the gas meter and issued us with a warning notice for having an 'immediately dangerous' appliance in the house. So still no gas, therefore no heating or cooker.....

Sir managed to get a gas safety engineer out to us on Friday (after having suffered for 2 freezing cold nights with no heating), and he disconnected the cooker and turned the meter back on for us. Great news, now all we had to do is order a new cooker and get it fitted, but hold on...... the gas safety engineer detects a gas leak coming from faulty pipes somewhere, so has to turn the meter off again. So, still no heating, plus we have carbon monoxide poisoning and have been breathing in gas fumes on top of that for who knows how long.

So Sir has been ringing round people since then trying to get someone to come out and fix the leak and replace the faulty gas pipes, but so far the earliest He can get someone is Tuesday. Which will mean we have been in a house with no heating or cooker for a week in freezing cold weather. Sir is going absolutely nuts about this, yelling at the gas company down the phone about how we have a 20 month old baby and a pregnant woman in the house, but it hasn't seemed to make any difference. So we have been spending as much time out of the house as possible during the day, and sitting in bed during the evenings, where Poppy has a portable electric heater in there and we have an electric blanket in our bed. It's still cold though and pretty miserable.

And Poppy and i had to go to the doctor to get checked out for carbon monoxide poisoning. The tests came back showing only low levels in both our blood, so it shouldn't have done us very much harm and my unborn baby should be ok too. It's given me quite a scare though, and i keep asking Sir if we can get an electric cooker instead now, but He prefers cooking on gas so we're going to get carbon monoxide detectors for the house so at least we'll know next time there's a leak.

So a rubbish week overall. Hopefully next week will be better....

Chatroom play

A reader left a comment on one of my other posts, asking about the chatroom and how it works to play or scene in it: "How does someone 'massage' your neck in a chat room? Or for that matter, cuddle, or frankly, DO anything? i've never been in any chatrooms, so i just plain don't know how it works." i think this is a really legitimate question and one a lot of people probably don't understand either, so i'm going to attempt to answer it here.

First, a bit of history. i was initially sent to 2 specific chatrooms on the Bondage.com site as part of my training with Sir. The idea was that i would get to chat with other subs, be able to share experiences and ask them questions and use them as a support base because at that point i didn't know any subs in real-life and was feeling a bit isolated. The other main reason i was sent there was to gain experience of different Doms, find out the range of viewpoints and approaches that they had, practice meeting their needs and 'serving' them in the manner that they required, and thus widen my experience and knowledge ready for when Sir would introduce me to some of his Dom friends and acquaintances in real-life, so i had more of a clue what to do. And i think there was a third reason - to give me more confidence in myself, because back then i had this notion that i wasn't a 'proper' submissive, that i didn't do things in the right way, that everyone else in the lifestyle was better than me and would probably laugh at me if they saw what i was doing, so Sir made me go in there and 'scene' in front of others to get their reactions (which were all positive, btw, and really did give me a lot of confidence). So that's why i ended up in a 'scening' room rather than just a normal chatroom - there's both kinds on Bondage.com, plus a range of rooms in between, but the one i've stuck with (#Pain&Humiliation) actively encourages scening in channel. Otherwise, had it been my own choice, i probably would have gone with a more conventional BDSM chatroom and stayed well away from the scening rooms, or maybe only visited those where i would be allowed to watch and not expected to join in. (Some more info for you: being a sub in #P&H automatically gets you 'voiced' which implies that you are ready and willing to serve any Dom who calls upon you. The only reasons you are allowed to 'devoice' and thus mark yourself unavailable to serve are that you are already being used by a Dom, or that you are afk. But in reality it is possible to put restrictions on your service, especially if you are owned because then many Doms specifiy non-sexual use of their subs only, and it is also possible to refuse a scene with someone - gracefully!).

When i first went into the scening channels i was a bit like "how does this work then?" too. It just seemed weird to me that all these people were sitting at their computers, unable to even see each other let alone touch, but yet they were pretending to do all of these actions with and to each other, including being flogged, clamped, fucked, etc. Even kneeling next to someone's feet or cuddling up with a fellow sub seemed odd to me at first because they were just words on the screen and not reflected in reality. But what i have come to realise is that playing and scening in a chatroom does work for me - it's nowhere near as good as real-life play with my Master of course, but when done properly with a Dom who knows what He is doing many of the emotions and feelings are the same. i think it's because D/s is such a mental thing that it's possible to tap into that side of it even when the person isn't actually there with you, and it does entail a form of submission to agree to serve someone online, and submit yourself to whatever they wish to do to you. Of course, it would also be possible to just sit there typing out whatever the other person seemed to require of you and not enter into the emotions or spirit of the scene at all, but i think those types of scenes are easy to distinguish from the ones where the Dom and sub both properly enter into their roles and live the scene. i can tell the difference anyway, and i know there have been occasions in the past where i haven't been in the mood for it so just done the automatic typing thing and it's shown through in me doing a rubbish scene.

i'm not sure any of this will make sense to someone who hasn't spent time in a scening chatroom, and i know there have been people who have come into the room, sat there watching for a while and then basically said "what the hell are you idiots doing?" and left. i guess it just doesn't work for everyone, but that's fair enough and the fact that it does work for some is enough of a basis to respect and allow it to continue i feel. Also, there is a kind of comfort in going into the chatroom when you've had a bad day and receiving a hug from a friend in there, who takes the time to try to comfort you in actions as well as words. Even though you can't actually feel the hug or the neck massage or the hair brushing or whatever, you can imagine it and that really does help to relax you. And it's the simple fact of someone taking time for you, demonstrating their care and concern for you, that makes you feel better. Not sure that will make sense either, but i guess it also comes down to an attention thing - most subs i think crave attention, we lap it up, even if we are shy. And it's so much easier to get attention online because you are safe there - nobody can really see you, so you feel more comfortable cuddling naked with a fellow sub than you would in real-life. Of course real-life attention from my Sir, or a real-life cuddle etc. is so much more satisfying than an online one, but the online ones do matter and do make a difference just the same. Again, hard to explain if you haven't been there, and again it probably wouldn't work for everyone, but that's my experience and i think the experience of many of the regulars in the chatroom who keep coming back for more.

So there you have it - my answer to domesticdaisy's question. Please feel free to ask if anyone wants to know more!

libby

xxxx

processing humiliation

Last weekend Sir had organised a 'special' training session for me and cancelled Ma'am's visit, but i wasn't allowed to know what it was ahead of time, so of course i was really nervous. It turns out that 2 of Sir David's Dom friends were staying with Him and Sir had invited all 3 of them round to our house for a special poker session with a difference.

Sir only told me about an hour before their arrival what the session would be about - He instructed me to shower and shave and get myself looking all nice but not to put any clothes on. Then when i came downstairs He put a small ring gag in my mouth, attached to the head harness and fastened it all up. This immediately put me in a very submissive mode because of the fact it reminds me of being an animal, i cannot talk or close my mouth and it makes me drool which i find embarrassing. Sir also put my nipple charms on me and my clitty butterfly vibrator and had me kneel ready in the hallway. When the 3 Doms arrived together (i have been told to call Sir David's friends 'L' and 'P' here) i was told to 'present' myself to them. They had very different reactions to me, which turned out to be how they would react to me for the rest of the morning - L basically looked at me but did not talk to me, referring all His comments and questions about me to Sir to answer. He didn't even say "hello" to me, which made me think He was either a bit cold or thought Himself so far above me that i didn't deserve to be spoken to. Or maybe that was part of the training agreed beforehand? P spoke to me, but more in the manner that you would normally speak to a little child or a cute puppy, and He actually patted me on the head when He first came in the door, and kept making remarks about my body which made me blush. i was feeling even more conscious of my nudity than i normally would in a situation like that, due to being pregnant and having a little belly pooch which makes me just look fat and huge dark brown nipples which stick out loads.

Then all the Doms went through to the lounge and i was told to follow. Sir had set up a poker table and i was to be their croupier. But when i saw the chair i was to sit on i got very very nervous and embarrassed because Sir had attached a dildo sticking up in the middle of it (hence the clitty vibe i guess to get me ready for it). Sir just said "sit" and they all stood and watched while i lowered myself onto the dildo and tried to sit comfortably and pretend it wasn't inside me and they hadn't all just watched that. Then they basically played poker while i dealt the cards out and moved the chips to the right places, but it was weird not being able to talk because normally when i have acted as a croupier before i have announced the cards and the bets and whose turn it is, etc, but i couldn't this time due to the gag. i'm not sure how long the game went on for but my jaw was beginning to ache by the end of it.

Next Sir invited them all to sit on the sofas while He fetched some beer for them and He told me i would need to be the table as He had set up the other one as a poker table. So i had to kneel on all fours in front of the Doms on the sofa. When Sir came back with the beers they all rested them on my back or bottom in between drinking, and it was really hard to keep still and balanced so i didn't spill them. Actually i think the main reason i managed it was because i kept thinking how hard it would be to get the stains out of the carpet! i was hoping that once they had drunk the beers they would be going, but all of a sudden Sir walked out of the room and returned with a package which ended up containing a brand new buttplug and also the wartenberg wheel. i was absolutely shrivelling up inside at that point and really really wanting the whole thing to be over because i really wasn't sure i could stand the embarrassment of having the buttplug inserted in front of all those other Doms but Sir went right ahead and did it anyway, lubing me up first and then pushing the plug inside, telling me to 'let it in' and such like. It was made of glass and had kind of spiral/swirls in it so it felt very different from what i am used to, but once it was inside there was just that familiar sensation of being full and i tried to block out from my mind the fact that i was kneeling there on all fours, naked with a butt plug in infront of strangers.

Then they took it in turns to use the wartenberg wheel on me, and i remember squealing a bit and having to try hard to keep still, but to be honest by that point i had kind of disassociated from myself and it was more like i was witnessing it happening to another person. i think by then i had stopped feeling embarrassed and all that kept going through my head was the thought 'just get through this and then they will go' and suddenly it was finished and they were collecting their coats and leaving. Sir had a long snuggle and chat with me after, and i know He told me i had done well and He was proud of me but i don't really remember what else He said. Since then i have tried to block the memories out of my mind of what happened because it makes me cringe too much to think about it, but Sir said i had to post my thoughts on it here, so today i have been analysing it and my reactions to it. i think it is the first real prolonged experience of humiliation i have had in front of others in real life and while most of me hopes never to go through something like it again, and i know i would hate the actual experience just as much next time, afterwards there is a sense of pride in me for having done it and pleased Sir. i don't think it turned me on though, either during it or thinking about it afterwards, but maybe other kinds of humiliation would do that better, i'm not sure.

Hmm this post seems to be a little jumbled, but it's the best i can do at the moment. i would be interested to hear other people's experiences and thoughts on humiliation as it is still such a new area for me. Thanks :)

A surprise achievement

Sir says i have passed another area of my training last night, and can move it to the 'completed' section on my blog, and i didn't even realise i had done it! It's the 'play with Dommes online' area of training, so now i just need to work on this a bit more with Ma'am in real-life and then Sir says i will have fulfilled my requirements in that area too and He'll pass me on that as well! Apparently i need to be signed off by Ma'am as competent in 'serving', 'submitting' and 'pleasuring' Her to pass, so i'm going to try reallllly hard every week now in these areas.

Oh, what happened last night for me to pass the online element of this training was that i was restless in the chatroom, and complaining about my cricked neck, and angling for someone to massage it for me. Except none of the other subs there i knew particularly well, so i mentionned it to one of the Dommes instead who is normally there as a sub i get on with really good (she's a switch which usually i find confusing and difficult). And the neck massage led onto other things and She kept telling me to just trust Her, which i did, and before i knew it i was begging her to cum and cumming real-life too, and then i think i must have fallen asleep because the next thing i remember is waking up a while later with my laptop already turned off by Sir!

So thanks Dissy for helping me to pass some of my training, this means i only need 3 more areas passed to be able to cross off number 65. of my 101 list!

Implications of a 'no matter what' clause

A little while ago i wrote a post saying that me and Sir have a 'no matter what' clause in our BDSM relationship, which means we would stay together no matter what happens. Whilst this gives me confidence and stability as His slave because i know He would stand by me even if i failed Him or strayed off the path, it also has some more negative implications which i have been thinking about since then. For example:

~ a 'no matter what' clause means that i should stay with Sir even if His personality changed and He became abusive, violent, dangerous, etc. Say for instance He developed a pyschiatric disorder or something. That would be very difficult, especially if He started giving me orders which were unsafe or carrying out dangerous scenes with me or something. i think in that case i would have to refuse His orders, thus temporarily releasing myself as His slave (because He would not be in a fit mind to do so), but stand by Him in the hope that He recovered and regained His former self as my Master. Tricky situation though.

~ a 'no matter what' clause also means that theoretically we should stay with each other even if one of us cheats and has an affair with someone else. That would make it very difficult to maintain the Master/slave relationship because surely the resentment and jealousy would eat away at the foundation of trust, honesty and loyalty we have spent years building up. And it would be difficult to trust each other again, because in the back of the mind would be the thought that the other person could easily stray again in the future. Our family life as husband/wife would be severely damaged too, so i see this situation as being very difficult again.

~ a 'no matter what' clause also means that we should stay by each other even if one of us suffered ill health which prevented us from fulfilling our role of Master/slave. i actually think this one would be the easiest to deal with of the three, because presumably our personalities would remain intact, so we could fulfill our role emotionally and mentally even if not physically. i would be happy to remain with Sir even if He couldn't 'perform' as a Master physically for health reasons, and i think He would say the same of me.

So some things to think about when contemplating a 'no matter what' clause, though i am hopeful that mine and Sir's relationship never has to test out any of these scenarios.

Is this place for real?

i came across this blog as a result of someone who posted here. Surely this isn't a real place? They say they believe in the basic principle that the women is always, everywhere and in everything superior to the male creature, and that they have their own laws and regulations, currency, passport, police force, courts, flag and hymn as they are recognised as an independent nation. Surely that can't be true, can it?

1950s household

Recently, dissy wrote about this on her blog and i've been meaning for a while now to write a post of my own in response. Then today i received an email from a new sub i am mentoring (yes, i now mentor 2!) saying how she struggles sometimes with the thought that she's not acting 'how a woman should', and i explained to her my views on this. Which tie in nicely with dissy's post, so i'm lumping the two in together. Hope it makes sense to people!

Basically the way i have come to see society's views are just that - one viewpoint. The fact that they represent the majority viewpoint is what makes it so tricky to break free from without feeling 'bad' or 'guilty' or 'wrong', but as everyone is an individual and therefore different, it makes more sense to me that people will choose to live different lifestyles, rather than being expected to all conform to one way of living just because we happen to be women or whatever. And i think it's important to remember that in different parts of the world the majority/society view on how people 'should' live will be very different. Also at different times in history, the majority/society view was very different. So when i see the majority/society view in this way it becomes much easier for me to choose a different path without feeling bad or guilty about it. my chosen lifestyle isn't hurting anyone, both me and Sir have consented willingly to it and gain a lot from it, and it makes our relationship much stronger. So where's the 'wrong'ness?

i kind of see BDSM at the moment as being similar to how being gay must have been like in the past. When it was difficult and even dangerous for people to admit to being gay because society was against them and thought it was 'wrong' and immoral and 'bad', and by coming out of the closet people ran the risk of losing their friends and family and possibly even their jobs. And look how far most of society has come in accepting the gay lifestyle as a perfectly valid choice. Not everyone of course, but i think it's getting better all the time. And i hope that one day BDSM can be like that, and we won't have to be so secretive about what we do behind closed doors.

Anyway, the society view that i most identify with is the 1950s' one, where women were expected to stay at home and look after the house while their husbands went out to work. The idea was that since the husband made all the money and had all the stress and pressure of a job to deal with, in return the wife would do all the housework, look after the children, and take good care of the husband by serving him when he was at home. Things like cooking and cleaning for him, taking his shoes off, getting him a drink, running him a bath, etc, etc. - all the little services which subs provide for their Doms now. i really like the idea of a happy little housewife, taking pride in her role and feeling contented when she sees her husband being well taken care of. If i didn't have a job i think this is the role i would like to take on full-time, but as it is some of the housework is done by Sir and some by a cleaner, though i try to make sure i do all the traditional women's jobs (like laundry and cleaning) as i think this is right for me as a slave.

i reckon that in the future, the society/majority view will change again, and the way most people live now will come to be seen as quaint and out-dated. And i wonder what society will think of as 'normal' then? It's really interesting to contemplate.....

Resolutions

Yet another reflective post, this one about how well i kept last years' resolutions and setting new ones for this year. But i think it's the time of year to be reflective and thoughtful isn't it? And i know i always do much better when i have some goals to strive towards, so i think this is an important process for me. Oh, Happy New Year everyone! i prolly should have said that at the beginning, but my mind is kind of everywhere at the moment. Anyway, here goes...

My resolutions for last year were:

#1. to blog frequently, aiming for at least 25 posts per month.

#2. to spend more quality time with flame.

#3. to beat the pnd thing, get rid of it completely and move on.

but #1. then got changed to:

to maintain a healthy balance between my 'slave', 'mummy', 'wife' and 'nursery nurse' roles.

Of the 3 amended resolutions i feel that i have kept #1 and #3 really well. i was signed off by my therapist and doctor as recovered from the post-natal depression back in February, and since then there have been no signs of relapses or anything like that. If anything, i have continued to grow in happiness and contentment since then, apart from the usual bad days which everyone gets. When i look back on it now it's almost like it was someone else who battled through the pnd, not me, because it's hard for me to imagine feeling like that when i have such a wonderful family to love and support me. i'm just hoping that it doesn't return after the birth of our next baby.

As part of beating the pnd, and a continuation of last year, i also feel that i have done really well in balancing out and fulfilling all the many different roles and responsibilities that i have. i think i am a good mummy to Poppy and manage to devote enough time to her for her to be happy, healthy, thriving and ahead with her development. i think i have also settled into my new role of 'wife' pretty good, although to be honest there hasn't been a big change from what i was doing before. i have coped well with going back to work part-time, and have been able to give my full focus to the children whilst i am there (i was a bit worried that i would be too distracted wondering if Poppy was ok, but that hasn't been the case as i know she is just down the corridor and in good hands), and i have been finding time at weekends to plan and prepare for sessions. And i feel that i have developed further as Sir's slave this year, completed some parts of my training (particularly in the humiliation and play with Dommes categories) even if i didn't actually get any signed off as 'passed'. It's been difficult to find the time for training this year, hence the slow progress, and i guess next year will be the same, but i do hope to get at least some aspects 'passed' in 2010. We'll see...

The resolution i didn't do so well on this year was spending more time with flame. We had a couple of patches this year where we seemed to be lacking the usual connection between us, where we drifted apart for a while, but each time we have sat down and chatted about it and mended things between us. There's plenty of reasons why we haven't been able to spend as much time together as i would have hoped for - including illness and health problems on flame's part, me being too focused on working on my training in the chatrooms rather than talking to her, flame getting collared by a new online Master and needing to spend time with Him, preparations for the wedding and returning to work being on my mind and distracting me too much, etc, etc. But all of those are really excuses, and i want to make a better effort this year to deepen my relationship with flame. Online is the only method of contact we have, so i need to really try hard to spend quality time with her when we're both in the chatroom together. Otherwise i run the risk of losing her, and that's definitely something i don't want.

OK, onto resolutions for this year:

#1. to deepen my relationship with flame by spending more quality time with her whenever possible. As part of this i will try to ensure that she gets first dibs on me when we are both in channel, that i make the effort to sit with her and chat with her and flirt and scene with her, and also that i try out other methods of keeping in touch such as sending cards and letters.

#2. to extend my use of this blog to help me deepen in my slavery. i want to comment more on other blogs, use more questions and surveys and quizzes, put up polls and analyse the results, reflect more on things i've read or other people's posts, take part in discussions, etc. i feel like sometimes this year my blog has got a bit stale and boring, and when i read back through it it wasn't as useful to me in documenting my thoughts and feelings and progress as it has been in other years, so i need to get back to that.

#3. to be more proactive in my slave training and seek out ways in which i can develop myself. i intend to spend more time working on the areas that Sir has set me, even when it's not an official training time, and i want to think of ways in which i can develop myself as His slave - by researching and reading, by practicing things, by learning new skills, by thinking of new ways to serve Him. i realise that this year i have put too much emphasis on Sir training me, when really i should be using His guidance to help train myself, so that's what i want to do next year.

So there they are, my new resolutions. As part of these, especially 2 and 3 i would really appreciate questions, discussion topics, ideas, etc. so please feel free to leave these in comments. And good luck to everyone else who makes resolutions!