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I have been sharing my ponderings on punishment and forgiveness, and some of the relevant history of what influenced those ponderings….. well, here is the final piece of my musings…. (in case you haven’t noticed, I usually ponder in sets of three, I don’t know why, it just seems to be the case grin)

Ready for the final piece? here goes....

Being able to accept and internalize forgiveness is NOT the same as being able to forgive someone…..and being able to forgive someone is a related but uniquely separate learning curve… because you are encountering several different facets and forces at work…. Let me explain, at least for myself… others may feel differently…

As a slave, and just as the human being I am, I come hard wired with certain traits… I am hardwired to want to nurture, to give, and to make someone I love life’s easier, more pleasurable, more beautiful and fulfilling….. however, from the way I was raised, I also have the ingrained tenet of paying for your mistakes…. And in M/s…. these different factions often do battle when my Master makes a mistake.

(OMG did she just say her Master makes mistakes? ut oh, no she didn’t…. damn girl, yes she did… omg omg omg, I hope she doesn’t get struck by lightning)

Yep, I said it, sometimes my Master makes mistakes. Sometimes they are real doozies!

So let’s talk about the dichotomy that exists in power exchange relationships…. Slaves mistakes are to be punished is the most prteacup) gets broken. So, you glue the teacup back together… and this happens over and over…. How long before your slave (teacup) no longer wants to be in that deep end of the pool with you? How long before she fears being broken, more than she trusts you to glue her back together? How long before the teacup shards get smaller and smaller and smaller and you are unable to glue them back?

What makes a slave stay at the deep end of that pool, until she is no longer a teacup but only fine grains of porcelain? Until she has been morphed back to her core essence? For me, what makes me stay is my Master’s ability to not just take ownership of his actions, but to take ownership of the emotional and psychological ramifications his actions may have caused. What makes me stay is his ability to honestly and sincerely apologize.

Did he always have this ability? Nope, it has been one that he has had to cultivate in our relationship. Specifically so, because of the way I am wired. Let’s return to that… to those opposing forces that are part of my nature….
I am wired to nurture, to want to put Master at ease… I am also wired that you have to pay the consequences for your mistakes… and yet I also believe in forgiveness… how do I get all these different orientations to come into alignment? Because this is something I and my Master struggled with for years in our relationship. It was a huge problem, a painful problem.

He worked hard on developing a better understanding of what it really entails to take ownership and responsibility of his mistakes, he worked hard on becoming transparent with that information, not hiding it, or dismissing it … and this was hard for him, it was embarrassing for him… it made him feel vulnerable, and he feared being perceived as a failure.

But, Ownership/responsibility is only one piece of an apology… and this too was something that Master and I struggled with… for some reason ownership was just not enough to satisfy me, to satisfy my fear of being hurt or broken again…. Ownership was not enough to make me unclench and go back to an open receptive state. So we worked on discovering what would… and we found that in addition to ownership, when Master openly and sincerely shared his understanding of the pain he had inflicted, his remorse for doing so, and his genuine sorrow for my hurt and discomfort… acknowledged it, didn’t try to minimize or marginalize my feelings, and promised to do his best not to repeat it…..when he opened up to me and showed me that my pain caused him pain… well, that was the key to forgiveness for me. Him exposing his vulnerability to me sends my need to nurture/protect/comfort/ease skyrocketing… and completely shuts down my conditioning for punishment…. It allows forgiveness to have full reign. It is what allows me to unclench, and to get up and stand ready and open at his side for the next step on our M/s journey.

So, I will answer my initial question… Does an apology have the ability to make or break your M/s dynamic? And my answer is yes, it does.

And if, as a Master, you find your slave continually clenched down into self-protect mode, or harboring anger or resentment and lacking the ability to just let go and move forward with you…. I would humbly suggest that you ponder the power of an apology, ponder the components of what makes up a sincere and satisfying apology… because what was necessary for me may not be what is necessary for your partner…. Because if you take the time to do so, I think you and your slave will benefit greatly.

And if after reading all of this, you think apologies are not really that important, I would ask you to ponder a few things as well… namely do you have a partner and a relationship that is happy, healthy and progressing? And if the answer to any of that is no…. well then you might want to rethink how important the ability to apologize really is.

Advice for a dom

I did not write this, but it is the best advice I have read for aspiring doms.

A note to Doms: the Women We Love.

If you are truly going to own and dominate a woman, you must understand her. Everyone, of course, is unique, but I’ve seen some of the same things over and over between the submissive women I have known:

They are motivated by a deep desire to please. When you ask a “vanilla” woman what to do, she will sometimes reply “whatever you want”, which is simply annoying. However, you must understand that phrase for what it is from a submissive. She wants more than anything to please you. Whatever plans or ideas she had on her schedule, if she can make you happy she will be more fulfilled than doing whatever she wanted to do for herself. You must understand that phrase for what it is.

Now, this can easily become abuse. Every submissive woman I have ever personally known has been through a number of abusive relationships. She gives and men take and take and it becomes abusive. Weak men with self-esteem issues are often drawn to these women, which compounds the problem. It takes enormous strength and experience to take from a woman like this (which is what she needs) without abusing her. Your job is to soak up all her love and affection and attention, help her find ways to please you, while supporting and strengthening her as a person. This takes wisdom, experience, and, I believe, some age. I cannot imagine a 20 year old guy being a successful “dom” in any real sense of the word.

When you find her, she will likely have things in her past she is not proud of, and you may not be either. That doesn’t matter. You must accept her exactly as she is, with all of her flaws, imperfections and mistakes and you must never hold them against her. If you are worthy of the task, she will be transformed by her relationship with you… practically an alchemical transformation… lead into gold was only a metaphor for transformation you know? It was always about transforming the common and the broken into the sublime. If you can’t accept her, you can’t have her.

She needs to understand and to come to trust that you are not like the people who have hurt her in her past. She has developed complex coping and self-protective mechanisms. If you would possess her, you must strip them away and this takes time, love and persistence. If you do not do that, then your relationship will be a sham because you don’t have her, you have the face she has prepared to protect herself from the outside world.

She will naturally subjugate her desires to yours. In my opinion, you have a sacred responsibility to build her up and to strengthen her as a person. Again, you better have the wisdom and experience to do this… if not, find your way together, but be honest with her that you cannot give her what she needs.
A continuation of the above point: not every submissive is a masochist… often they are, but not always. New and wanna-be Doms need to be told this because if she sees you want to beat her even if she doesn’t want it, she won’t say no. In my opinion, if you find a woman you really care about, you need to do a lot of work understanding what makes her tick, and that does take work. My girl, for instance, literally could not answer the question “what do you want?” when we started talking. Could not answer it. You do not realize how difficult that question can be for a natural submissive, but you need to teach her how to think about it and answer it sometimes.

Above all… above all other things… be honest with her. In a relationship like this, trust is the one thing that cannot be repaired. If you damage it, you’re done. You also need to be aware that most of these women (in my experience) have an uncanny sixth sense. They are actually or very nearly psychic and will read all of your communications on every level. Don’t lie to them. It’s not worth it and once they catch you in a single lie, you now go into the same pile of “men who hurt her” and you will never truly be trusted again.

There is no depression or sorrow that can compare to what happens when you hurt or disappoint one of these women. Make sure you understand the responsibility you are assuming when you begin a relationship. On the other hand, they are capable of loving on a level that you probably cannot even begin to comprehend.

Again let me say this clearly: you have tremendous, profound and sacred responsibility for and to this woman. Don’t fuck around with this lightly.
This post is not about sex. Done properly, neither is your relationship with her.
One last point… if you are ever fortunate enough to meet a natural submissive who is at a point in her life where she can give herself to you, and if you have within yourself what it takes to master her… well… there is no force in the universe like what you are about to experience. Be forewarned because you cannot possibly be prepared.