Re: A question of property... :-)
Mon, 18 Apr, 1994

>>> I know some couples (top/bottom) live very happily with one member being beloved (:-)) property, and I wonder if this model works ok over long spans of time and the major drawbacks / advantages to such a relationship?? <<<

Hi Shawn,

Yes, a property relationship can work over long periods of time if the two people involved are right for it. Having been in one for over five years, I'm living proof of that. By being right for this sort of relationship I mean that it requires a certain dedication, intensity, and stick-with-itness in both parties that you're not likely to feel unless you really crave or need this sort of long-term experience.

Major Drawbacks:

Let's see...on the top/dom side, you're taking upon yourself an enormous responsibility for a long period of time, perhaps the rest of your life. If you take your responsibility seriously, you're not going to just walk away from this person or this relationship if either stop being good or fun for you anymore. Your responsibility as the dominant in absolute control of his or her property is to _make_ the relationship work, even if your partner is unwilling to help or is actively sabotaging it. You have to be the "grownup" all the time: the one who doesn't lose his temper (or at least not often), the one who doesn't play emotional manipulation games, the one who doesn't strike back in anger. If you consider this person to truly be your property then their failures become your failures, their inability to overcome their self-destructive habits become your problems because you have assumed ultimate responsibility for them. Sure, you may, as part of your responsibility, be teaching them to succeed or to solve their problems themselves, but doing this often takes years or decades, and in the meantime, you're the one who accepts the blame when they stumble. The blame comes from you usually, not from the other person. Someone who is able (note that I didn't say "willing"--g) to be the top in a relationship so extreme that the other person is considered property is not generally the type who assigns blame on others when things go wrong. Such a person usually enjoys control to an extreme extent, he or she likes it ALL the time. So when something goes wrong in the relationship, they blame themselves because they see themselves, correctly, as the one who holds the power, the one who is ultimately responsible and in control. It can feel awful when someone else under your control fails.

On the bottom/sub side, which I am much more familiar with, drawbacks include:

1. Initially, a period of resistance to being controlled which can last months to years (in my case, it lasted years). Resistance to the constant control present in a relationship where you are considered to be property is natural because no one is taught or trained when growing up how to be a slave. In most ways we're taught the opposite, and so learning to give in, to submit always to someone else's will and desires, is a slow learning process. You learn through trial and error. If the dominant is right for you, you eventually learn to trust his judgement as much as you do your own (if not more). You learn that there is no diminution of your spirit, of your initiative, of your natural firepower , just because you obey someone absolutely. You learn to control _your_ temper, and the random urgings of your will. People usually do not become aware of how undisciplined their wills are and how little self-control they actually have until they practice being a slave for a long period of time. It's like air, you're usually not aware of it at all until it's cut off or restricted. Unlike air, losing an unbridled will is not a life-threatening condition, in fact it may enhance your life considerably.

2. After a long period of time of being under a very strict rule you can actually become unconscious of it. Upon occasion I complain to my master that I don't feel controlled enough, I who must ask permission to go to the bathroom, to drink an alcoholic drink, to eat, to buy a dress or a magazine, to go out with friends, to take a job. I don't get to choose when I get up in the morning or when I go to bed at night or, when I am at home, what activities I will do and in what order I will do them. I have to ask permission, or beg, for anything out of the ordinary that I desire to do or consume. I call to "check in" with my master if I am away from the house and I need to do something unexpected or out of the ordinary. And if he says, "don't do it," I don't. And yet I don't feel controlled enough and complain about that to him on a regular basis. Perhaps this is because we aren't always doing extreme things all the time. He exerts his power over all the mundane routine activities of life, if he had me crawling on the floor every minute of the day or in bondage or doing other traditional SM activities, we'd never get anything done.

If he was independently wealthy and I didn't have to be a work slave, perhaps I'd spend more hours of each day as a pleasure slave, but there'd always be times when he wasn't doing anything explicitly sexual to me, and I'd probably be complaining then too . I think that my libido (particularly the frequency with which I desire S&M sex) is slightly higher than his. He knows this but prefers I match myself to his sexual pattern, and while such a demand might tear apart an equal-partners relationship, in our situation this denial just makes me more excited. Constant sexual frustration is a mixed bag, but I'd take that over an equal power relationship any day. This leads in nicely to my next drawback.

3. Are you reading the Nurse Jones re-runs courtesy of the "Ol' Sarge" network? These posts describe some very intense experiences crammed into a very short amount of time (one month). No one can keep up that sort of intensity over a long period of time (years). When things start to slow down, to lose that fervid edge, when you are not multiple orgasming every day, or even every other day, you begin to think that the relationship is on the rocks, that it isn't working anymore. This can be a dom or a sub thing, and it's where most inexperienced people have trouble with long-term bdsm relationships. This often seems to hit relationships around the time of their third year, for some reason. People think that there must be something wrong with their partner or themselves or both or that they've suddenly discovered that this person is the wrong one for them after all.

One way to avoid that feeling of "we've done everything there is to do and we're so bored with each other" burnout is to take it very slow right from the start. Pace it--you've got the rest of your life to experience and experiment, so why rush it it all into the first couple of years? My master's been threatening to give me an enema since our first week of knowing each other, and it still hasn't happened. It will, but whether it will be 5 days from now or 5 years from now I have no way of knowing, but I shiver in fear and anticipation of its inevitibility.

Another way to time things out so that they work over the long run is to let your activities come and go in cycles. Do caning for a few months and then don't do it again for nine or ten months. Do certain forms of bondage for awhile and then put them away. Set toys or activities aside and then bring them back. If you're really into pain, lighten up for four or five months until your sub is soft and sensitive again, and then get hard. Cycling activities and taking it slow are not things that appeal in an age of instant gratification and five-second attention spans. They require a certain preserverence and intelligence to implement in a way which works but the payback is that you're seldom bored.

Finally, if I complain too much about being bored with my master's current crop of activities, I am given the opportunity to discover (call it a learning experience--g) how a little sexual deprivation does wonders to shrink one's enuni.

A drawback that both partners face is the possibility that their personalities might not be compatible with each other over the long run. I'm talking about something deeper than the burnout syndrome described above. I'm talking about a basic incompatibility between two people which doesn't show up until the blinkers of lust and romance begin to slip off. As you don't want to make such an absolute commitment to a person unless you're pretty well certain they are going to be "right" for you for a very long time, it is a good idea to not take ownership (or conversely, not give oneself away) until the first heady (and possibly misleading) rush of romanticism has passed away from the relationship. When the passion quiets down a little, people either start to get ticked off at each other, annoyed at certain personality traits, or they start to grow more deeply in love. At any rate, there is a change that comes after the honeymoon phase and you need to wait for that change and see which way it will blow before you make a permanent commitment.

When my master and I first met, we had a romantic phase at the beginning of our relationship, but it was not the sort of blind obsessive "let's do it all as quick as we can" thing I had been used to experiencing with previous partners. There was a kind of calm measured pace to it from the very beginning that was entirely Donald's contribution. He'd had lots of slaves before, and so he understood the timing of these things really well. He knew exactly how fast he wanted to proceed with me, and he imposed that pattern on the development of the relationship. I never felt deprived or ignored, but there was a pattern, a rhythm to the relationship that he, as the dominant, set: he'd tell me each day when I was to call him, when I was to write him, what I was to write about, what I would do when not in contact with him, etc. Without being the least bit rigid or systematic, he imposed this sort of slow stately order to our relationship that managed to give me everything I needed but kept me ever wanting more. And that has continued to this day.

Advantages:

1. If this sort of relationship (being human property/owning human property) is what you've been looking for all of your life, it can be profoundly fulfilling. While having the full complement of human problems, hassles, difficulties and personal demons, I feel complete and at peace in a way that I would venture that very few people ever do. At rock bottom, at the core, I'm extremely secure, and the very bad stuff that goes on outside me or even inside me seems to only ripple the surface--it does not touch the core. In addition to the peace aspect, part of the fulfillment is also how intensely exciting and perverted it is to be living out your life at one extreme end of the power spectrum. There is a non-stop low level undercurrent of sexuality that is always there between you during the most mundane experiences (the only thing in my experience that drives it away is severe external stress, and even then, it's only temporarily driven away). My master orders his property to do something and we both feel that pleasurable thrill: me because I must obey, him because he must and will be obeyed.

2. A minor but most important advantage of a relationship where the power roles are extreme and clear cut is that you have none of those nasty power struggles, fighting, manipulation, and nastiness so endemic to vanilla relationships (or to SM relationships which are vanilla in terms of power). All that ugly stuff is just not there, it makes no sense, there is no room for it. It's not that my master and I are excessively polite with each other or that I never shout or scream at him , it's that the context is completely different. I eventually learned and he knew from the start that when I argue with him I cannot expect to "win" anything. I argue because it allows me to vent my feelings and thoughts. After I vent, he decides what is to be done about the issue in question, just as he always does. My attempts at manipulation don't work with him. There is no subtle deadly threat I can hang over his head (he'd just laugh at me if I tried), no way I can make his behavior conform to my desires and expectations, none of my manipulations sinks in or takes. He has no fear of me or of anything I could do. And I, once I realized that manipulation wasn't going to work with him, eventually gave it up, as it made me feel bad (unsubmissive) and rather foolish.

Likewise, he has no need to play manipulative little head games with me. He owns me and can do anything he likes with me, so why should he need to stamp his foot and say "I'm going to walk out on you/get mad at you/reject you if you don't do as I say"? The person who has to say that is not a dominant no matter how they might style themselves: he or she is a scared and spoiled little bully. If I don't do what my master says, he punishes me in a way that motivates me not to disobey again. End of story. No complex manipulative messiness is needed when the power is so polarized. I did vanilla relationships for 16 years before I met my master. I know what hell those power struggles can be (it's a petty, mean sort of hell) and it's an enormous relief not to have to deal with that shit anymore. A large part of your emotional reserves become freed when you don't have to expend them "defending your turf" from your partner.

3. The sub in these sorts of relationships gets a tremendous sense of security when or if they discover they can really trust their owner's judgement and maturity. You realize that you don't have to be watching your back constantly like you do in many a vanilla relationship, waiting for the stab of betrayal or, if your partner is self-destructive and ignorant, the major fuckup. You can relax and stretch out and bask in your dominant's care and protection, and that's a wonderful feeling. I think too that the dominant feels his own sense of security, assuming his sub is the strong and trustworthy sort. You own this person absolutely, they aren't going anywhere or doing anything without your permission, they'll always be there loving and serving you and trying to be more and more of what you want because they've committed themselves to being your property. I don't think that dominants who view subs as weak-willed dishrags can ever relax and feel the enormous sense of security that the dominant who has a strong sub and knows it feels. The dishrag theorists have always got to fear that the sub is going to turn to jello one day and either leave them or lose all initiative and spark of humanity due to their "weakness". If all subs are dishrags, then being a dominant becomes an onerous and dreaded task.

4. There are many more advantages, but I'll mention only one more. It's kind of a side effect of the relationship, but it's a nice one nonetheless. Under my master's directing and guiding hand, I've been able to do things (succeed in my career, overcome vices, bad habits, and personality flaws, change major life attitudes) that I formerly considered impossible. My personal term for this sort of "doing the impossible," is miracle working. While not technically miracles, these are the sorts of things that I did not have the knowledge, the will/preserverence, or the confidence to accomplish on my own. They were as out of my reach as flying to another star. Really, I have become another person. There isn't always a transformative aspect to power relationships, but I think it tends to be more common in ones where the power exchange is extreme and where there has been lots of time for the changes to take place.

This next one isn't an advantage or drawback; it's just something that "is" for master/slave owner/owned relationships and if you're considering such a relationship for yourself, you need to take it into account. Due in part I think to the intense intimacy that these relationships engender, honesty in communication plays a much larger role in them than it does in the average vanilla relationship. In fact, a lack of communication will have much more serious and swifter repercussions on this type of relationship than on the more egalitarian type--you might even say this is the relationship's Achilles' heel. I've known many a vanilla relationship (hell, I was in one for 12 years!) that can roll on smoothly for many a month or year on the grease of white lies, deceptions, half-truths, and partners hiding their true feelings from each other. You can ignore or overlook your own or your partner's lack of absolute honesty without bringing the whole house of cards down on you. Not so in a property arrangement. If the trust is broken--on either side--it can be devastating for the relationship and very difficult to pick up the pieces later on. I feel immune to most of the problems that break up other relationships, but I am very conscious of the fact that if I were to lie to my master (or he to me, about something important) it could tear us apart. I trust him absolutely not to lie to be about anything important (he tells me that he keeps information from me that is not important to me but is important to the privacy or safety of others, and of course I trust him about that) and I watch myself vigilantly for any tendencies to lie, mislead, or hide things from him. I tell him everything; and while I don't always tell him instantly (that's something I'm working on--g), I keep nothing from him (you folks who send me unsolicited email of a certain sort ought to consider the consequences of that last statement--g) and I never cover anything up, no matter how much I might think that it would "help" him if I did. It would be so easy to break that trust...and so difficult to regain it.

Previous Message Next Message

RETURN TO...

SUBMISSIVE WOMEN SPEAK

THE ROSIE ARCHIVES

contact the authors at:
jacobs@crl.com

copyright 1996 Jon E. Jacobs and Polly Peachum
jacobs@crl.com

design by:
Masterpiece Media
72074.1104@compuserve.com