SubTrouble

Life beyond BDSM, D/s, M/s and SM, life beyond the acronyms...

Note: these notes make sense read in the order they were written: please start with the oldest and work this way....

More than a few doms have told me that my profile describes me but doesn’t say what I want.  A sort of “Here I am, what are you going to do about it?” approach.  I thought my profile and writing admirably described what I wanted, but I’ve realised recently that perhaps it doesn’t.  It describes who I want rather than what I want.  For me, the who is the starting point, but I’m girl and you’re man and maybe you’re going to be happier with the what rather than the who.

But I’m still not going to list which techniques and practices I like: if you can’t work out by now roughly what will turn me on, you’d better hit Next...  Instead, I’ll flesh out the everyday side of things.  This exposé will NOT include the CollarMe favourites of Amusement Parks, Flea Markets and Beachcombing: what on earth is all that stuff about?

A little relevant history.  I left the north of England, my birthplace, because I wanted an enjoyable climate, because I was dismayed at the increasing greyness of  the English outlook, because I wanted a change of culture and because I was very annoyed at them closing down my enjoyable fetish businesses.  I headed south to the south of France where the sun uplifts my soul, where the bright skies light up my soul.  But here it’s unlikely I’ll find my man, and the French attitude to small businesses makes the place pretty much untenable.  I doubt very much I’ll be staying much longer.

I’m a very special sub, and I’m looking for a very special man, so my search has to be large, and has to be international.  I’m ready for this, although it is a bit scary when quite so much travel is involved to just say Hello, no, thanks, there’s no spark, next.  To help, I’m changing my business from a local professional role to writing, quality soft and kinky E-reader porn for women.  This will give me mobility.  So far, I’m a little shocked by how hard writing is! 

The things that will feed me, then, the things that will start ticking the boxes....  Sunshine, or an interesting climate.  Mountains, hills, water, sea (seen from land, I’m not a sailor).  People, social interaction, I don’t like isolation.  A club scene: many diss the scene as being for egoists, exhibitionists and attention-seekers, but the scene is the place where best practice is shared and developed.  BDSM is complex and dangerous stuff, and it needs a sharing of knowledge and experience.

Back onto the off-topic, I seek a sense of adventure with my dom, a business or ive we can both work on, a goal beyond the bedroom and dungeon, a goal beyond the housework.  Because I seek an older man, most of my target group are retired or retiring, but feet up in front of the telly and cut the grass once a week is not what I look for.  I'm a keen cyclist, preferring the hills and mountains, 50 to 100 miles, up to 6000 feet of climb.  Walking, hiking, promenading (beautiful people beautifully dressed promenading in the city or by the sea on a Sunday afternoon, is that just a French thing?).  Good food, good wine, the odd good chick flick (now called rom com, how awful!).  Driving, a good car in the mountains is heaven, picnics (but good food and good wine still applies!).  Practical hobbies, I'm learning dress making, I write, give me a workshop and I'll start making BDSM kit.... A little photography, I love to sing in a choir, I love home-made music although I cannot play, sadly.  I like to dance, but I'm not good in any way, sadly.  Shame, the tango is so damn hot!  

I love to dress well, I love him to dress well, I decry the current lack of imagination and expression in men's clothing, and love their fancy dress of times past: Edwardian, Victorian.  I like men in Steampunk and men in hats. I like elegance and chivalry.

So, I hope this illuminates and gives you a reference point for how to approach me.  It’s hard, the first approach and the first few interchanges, I never know what to say when I’m making the approach, and it is such a fragile situation.  I get many messages every day, mostly insulting to my intelligence and to the effort I’ve put in to this profile, such as ‘hello’ from someone with a blank profile, so my aim is to delete as many messages as quickly as I can in order to try to see the wood through the trees.  I’ve given you material here, help me spot you through the dross by using it well!

elle 

Please read my earlier notes first: best start with the oldest and work this way.

I’ve had some adverse reaction to my writings from various ‘doms’: it seems that they are offended by a woman or a sub who can actually think!  They tell me I’m a dreamer, that I live in my little online world, that I simply fantasize and send all my time writing these notes.  Sorry, guys, not one of these notes took more than thirty minutes to write, and I’ve probably had more real BDSM experience than a dozen of you put together!

So I shall indulge in this more personal note, regardless of their feelings.

You may imagine that my profile attracts a lot of attention: it does.  My inbox is swamped.  The vast majority are simply time-wasters, no-hopers, wannabees: even now, I’ll get a handful of ‘Hi, how are you today Elle?’ or ‘bonjour’ messages, and an enquiry about bestiality every day too (you get reported, guys).  So, I’m afraid that the genuine easily get lost in the dross.  I’m going to tell more of what I need, seek, desire and dream of here, to help you understand if you may be the one, and please, God, let him be there somewhere!  But if you are, please, work at reaching me. I know you shouldn’t have to, but the reality is that I cannot afford to be attentive, civil, open or trusting online.  The me that replies to you is not the real me, it is the most of me that I dare push forward in this terrible medium that we are stuck with.

I’ve had a life of some adventure, my CV reads something like: clinical researcher, clinical engineer, clinical manager, idealist-community drop out (it’s getting more fun), life coach (flirty but deep), pro-Domme (getting more fun again), pro-sub, with a partner: founder of a BDSM market, fetish club and kinky B+B (big-time fun), then serious again after getting stopped by locals and police: manager and professional in a very practical but sadly vanilla enterprise.

This is all very well, but I’m alone, very much alone, and the years are just flying by.  I’ve tried two D/s relationships and neither worked, and in hindsight, neither he nor I was ready for either of them.  Now I am, very much so, and the years of youthful vitality I have left are slipping by alarmingly fast.  I don’t want to waste them, really, I don’t want to waste them.

To make things work business-wise here in France now will take several years of slog.  I’ll have to do it alone, and when I’ve done it, I’ll be tied to the locality. So I see now as a turning point, the chance to slip out from under and fulfil my deeper dreams, while I’m still young enough to do it.  That will mean moving, to you, and that will mean coming to you without much real foundation.  I will need supporting for long enough to gather way again, and how far I can go down this route somewhat depends on what demands you make of me to fit in with your life and lifestyle.  Honestly, I’m so fed up with these doms who seek ‘ownership’, whatever they really mean by that, and yet can offer no support within it:  literally, you’ll be chained or caged, but you must be financially independent.  Come on, guys, think it through!!!  You are not going to find a delightful deeply submissive woman ready to drop everything to come to you with a million dollars stuffed down her bra!!  If you want your girl, you’ll have to take responsibility for her.

This, then, is where I am right now.  I am ready, I am committed, I would love the chance for a deep and meaningful D/s relationship, I would love the chance to fall in deep passionate love with my man and master, and I will give all if that chance presents itself.  But you are going to have to work at convincing me that you are offering this chance: take it seriously because I am very serious about this.

These four walls… 

Imagine a plane, infinite, the world, my life.  It’s too big, it’s too bleak, it has no features, it has no comfort.

Imagine four walls built on this plane, and in the space they enclose, a more comfortable and manageable space to live. These walls are the boundaries held by a dominant for his submissive.

To the south, a wall of glass, framing the views, enhancing them, letting the light in.  Big doors lead to a garden, where it is safe to play, for when it gets cold, or hard, it’s easy to go back inside.  This is the wall representing the love and care between the dominant and his submissive.

To the east, a wall of solid stone, with a window to catch the hope and promise of the sunrise each morning.  On this wall are shelves, cupboard, artwork.  It is the wall of trust and respect.  Solid, comforting, sustaining, nurturing. 

To the west, a wooden wall, with a large window to catch the glorious magnificent sunsets, flaming red.  It is the wall of passion, of sexual fulfilment, of closeness, of intimacy.

To the north, a wall of reinforced grey cold concrete, with no decoration, no windows.  The wall of fear, a hard boundary.  It would over-dominate the space, so it has beautiful and artful curtains of elegance in front of it.  For most of the time, the wall isn’t seen, but occasionally, the curtains have to be pulled back to reveal the hard truth if that forbidding wall.  The power of the dominant over his submissive, her submission to him, deep, unquestioning, total.

And in the space between, the furniture of life.  The trappings of vanilla life, the toys of BDSM, perhaps the carpet of playful D/s. 

At the moment, I’m sitting out there on the infinite and inhospitable flat land.  I’m searching for those walls.  The furniture can wait, can easily be changed.  It’s the walls I need.  And perhaps above them,  the ceiling of holding, of ownership, of dependence??

Passion: it’s everything

Everything I have ever done in my life, I have done with passion.  Every job, every interest: I am a passionate person, and I value that quality, it is who I am.

The only exceptions to having done everything passionately were my two attempts in D/s relationships.  Passion didn’t grow in either.  The spark present at the outset just withered.  Both relationships limped along, but they became very hollow very quickly.

This was a crying shame, but it happened for all-too predictable reasons.  There’s such a focus on the techniques and practices of SM that a tendency develops to match lists of things you like.  He likes breath play, I like breath play….  On paper, we were good matches, both times.  I thought the shared interest in SM and D/s would lead to a flowering of passion, as we shared life and experiences.  It didn’t.

So now I don’t publish lists of what I’m interested in.  They’re not important.  I’m a submissive, seeking a dominant.  All I ask is that he’s a cruel, caring, twisted, imaginative, passionate, perverted alpha male, strong and confident, seeking a challenge, a handful of trouble.  If he is, our interests will overlap, become the same, be the same. 

As long as he’s so passionate about me that he can’t leave me alone, and I’m so passionate about him, I can’t leave him alone either.  I now know to accept nothing less.

Sadly, there’s no online test for passion between two people.  A photograph helps, the process begins visually.  But meeting is the only way, and that meeting has to light fires.  If it doesn’t, it’s a bust.  The wrong man is worse than no man, and no man is pretty damn bad!

So if you’re looking, and you’re looking at me, I will ask for photographs, and then I will ask for a meeting.  And if that meeting doesn’t need the fire brigade to be called out, if there’s even any hint of a question about whether or not we should meet again, it hasn’t worked.  It’s that simple.

Passion will be the test.

Serving: what does it mean?

In my search for my man and master, I get caught up so often on his profile which tells me I must wish to serve him.

I have to admit I bounce off this.  I don’t wish to serve him, I don’t know him, and even if I did, serving someone isn’t what turns me on.  Get a housekeeper, lazy sod! 

But there does seem to be a general assumption that a submissive or slave WOULD wish to serve, and certainly many slaves’ profiles major on it.  I tend to say I’m a submissive rather than a slave, to get around this, but the terminology is not well defined.

So, here’s where I am on the subject of serving, or not.  Other subs and slaves will have different positions, but give the wide range of tastes and needs in BDSM, it’s perhaps as well to expand like this, rather than simply be labeled as sub and then be subject to everyone’s assumptions about what it means.

I’m a selfish and hedonistic submissive.  This may sound shocking, but actually, it’s not, because we’re all driven by our own selfish desires.  Even the most servile slave is selfishly trying to fulfil her own desire to serve.  But my over-riding selfish desire is to be partner to a man I can respect, feel very passionate about and feel unable to keep my hands off.  Such a man I would wish to take control, because that’s what, in my Stone Age view of being human, men should do.  And I would want him to take me on adventures, sexual adventures, relationship adventures, fulfilling his own desires to have control of his sexy girl to have fun, to explore, to challenge, to be satisfied, to hold her when she’s spent, when she’s given him all she can. 

In the end, such a deep and meaningful relationship will inevitably lead to a desire in me to serve him, to care for him, to look after him, as well as to simply kneel at his feet.  But that comes after the relationship has begun, it does not drive it.

You are not my dominant and you do not get the reward of my service until after the relationship begins.  It’s a goal, not a pre-requisite.  Don’t ask to be served, instead, consider what you can offer me, and in return, what I may offer you.  If it includes anything about how you like your toast buttered, just move on!

Elle

Power, Control, Sex and Adventure

It is the age of the internet, and for a ‘special interest’ group like ours, it is a wonderful resource. But when it comes to dating, that crucial matching of Dom to sub, I’m not sure we’re doing it quite right.

BDSM is a broad church indeed. In general, it allows people with diverse needs to find a rationalised outlet for them. Sadists and masochists, the over-sexed and the under-sexed, the primal adventurers, the timid, the controlling.

The fetishists, too, of course. But look a little closer at the range of presentations of BDSM. Bondage, for instance. For some, it is a close-to-spiritual experience, following in the footsteps of a great honour system in the far east. For some, it is a way to get close to the desired gender without sex rearing its ugly head, maybe because the practitioner is a-sexual, afraid of sex or clinically impotent. For others, it’s just a warm-up for the best sex in the world, with the girl captive and presented just the way He likes it. Or the way a woman with hang-ups about sex gets to enjoy a near-rapine experience in which she is not in control, ‘cause she’s all tied up, and thus suddenly free to enjoy it: that terrible responsibility for not enjoying sex, or even life, has been taken away.

These converses and obverses are present in all BDSM practices, but what does every profile discuss, and every interminable and utterly boring ‘BDSM checklist / questionnaire’ go through in agonising detail? Bondage with white rope or bondage with black rope? Bit gag or ball gag? Scores of 1 to 10 please. Slave or sub? Masochist or sadist? So the woman who wants a wild time with all her inhibitions nicely dealt with under yards of beautiful hemp rope suddenly finds herself not being raped after all, but being photographed as a work of art by a guy who couldn’t get it up in a million years....

What’s important is not the actual practice: who cares if it’s rope or chain, who cares if it’s Shibari or an old leather belt? What’s important is the driving force behind it. Is he a dom because he must control the environment around him otherwise he loses his confidence, or is he a dom because it’s great fun to be in charge, to be able to poke here, prod there, do this, do that and see what happens? The first needs an obedient little slave who seeks a controlling element in her life, the second needs a feisty bratty heap of trouble who has to be fought down every step of the way and who has a thirst for adventure. Get them the wrong way around, and the relationship’s going nowhere.

So please, when writing your profile, don’t detail all the techniques you like, the particular practices which turn you on, the toys you have. Look deeper, look into your soul, and tell everyone what you REALLY want. Your driving forces, your deep down strangenesses, your deep down power or vulnerability. Your sense of adventure or lack of it. Your degree of confidence and self-esteem. Your views of sex and the sexes. Your take on life.

And could some psychologists please write some searching meaningful questionnaires that pull this from the less-than-articulate and the ones who cannot think through their own psyches? Please, pretty please? Because then we may have a chance of making that so-difficult match online.

Elle

Of Sub-Space Voyagers and Endorphin Junkies

A friend of mine has a great fear of flying, which means it is hard for him to visit me in France. This made me contemplate the fear of flying.

I'm a little nervous of flying, but I'm more concerned about being burned to death in a blazing car. That fear is strong enough that I never drive a petrol car, only diesel, which reduces this chance.

The difference is that falling out of the sky, or spending a length of time after things have gone wrong contemplating falling out of the sky, gives me a fair chance of achieving a state of equanimity and tranquility, and meeting my end gracefully. Which states I do not see I could achieve in a burning car.

Even so, most people, faced with falling out of a stricken airliner would not believe that they could approach this calmly. I wonder, is it because I am a submissive that I can believe this to be true for me? I am well used to finding a peaceful space amid challenges and pain.

Or, is is not because I am submissive that I can find such peace, but because I can find such peace that I am submissive????

This is a new angle. The implication is that submission, my kind anyway, is not primarily about submitting to a dominant, or exchanging power, but all to do with seeking that peaceful space in the midst of challenge? It is a real buzz to be there. The voyager of sub-space... 

But being an endorphin junkie, which is what this means, also needs a dominant to provide the external environment. Inevitably, because he is the right person in the right place at the right time, he is going to provide succour on the aftermath, when the submissive needs it and will drink of it, which will create a deeper relationship than simply provider and user of endorphin rushes.

The junkie depends on her supplier, comes to love and need her supplier. Is the basis of D/s relationship?

I'd like to think so, because it is all based on healthy old-fashioned hedonism. I'm fed up with the almost-universal assumption that a sub needs her dom because she is weak, has no strength, no self-esteem, needs direction and guidance.  Or worse, that she wants to serve.

I am an endorpin junkie, a traveller of sub-space, I adore D/s relationship, but I am not weak or unconfident and woe betide the man who tries to direct my life unless he can do it better than I can!!

It's not quite as simple as that, though,I do also deeply crave a man I can respect, in a world where there are many that I cannot.

Elle

Are you a dom because life is so rich and exciting that vanilla sex and vanilla relationships can never be enough? You need more and you want to make it happen?

Or are you a dom because you are uncomfortable if life around you isn’t under your control? It feels unsafe if you can’t keep everything and everyone close to you in their boxes?

Are you a dom because you feel supremely able and confident and, like a cave man, know that your women would benefit from your protection and strength, and will respect you for it?

Or are you a dom because if you didn’t start off by telling everyone how dominant you are, they might not respect you?

Are you a dom because you can nurture your girl and make her stronger too? And that when she is stronger, you will relish the bigger challenge and enjoy keeping her respect?

Or are you a dom because you seek a weaker woman, who has perhaps been hurt and presents no threat? And that you will do all you can to keep her in her place, as no threat, so that you can continue to enjoy being top dog?