Way, way back on June 18, Rokken, when commenting about various postings in various threads, said:

>>> A little while back Rosie posted about how Donald was going to restrict her net access. Whether one would submit to this struck me as being a good litmus test, among the people reading here, of whether one is in a fairly absolute (how's that for an oxymoron?) relationship <<<

>>> Rosie, if you are reading this, I'd like to ask you a question. You are an excellent writer, you clearly love doing it, and I think you have a lot to offer to the folks reading your stuff. To draw a parallel, what if Michaelangelo had been a sub, and his dom said to him "Hey Mike, you've been spending way too much time with that Sistine Chapel stuff lately. Cut it down to half an hour per day." I think that would have been unfortunate. Not that I'm saying you have a *duty* to post, you understand . But it seems to be a fulfillment exercise for you (and the readers). <<<

>>>I see there isn't actually a question mark in the above paragraph, but hopefully you get my drift...I'm genuinely curious as to how you reconcile the plusses and minuses of a relationship like yours. <<<

Dear Rokken,

Sorry I took so long to reply, but my master had restricted my net access (g). Yes, I get your drift. There are many ways to answer this question, and they all apply equally (in other words, the matter ain't simple), so bear with me.

First of all, thanks for the compliments on my writing (big grin and blush)--the implied comparison to Michaelangelo made me puff up so much I gained five pounds and Donald was sure I had been sneaking food behind his back again!

1. First and foremost, I am a slave. I identify as a slave and slavery is the thing I have wanted to do (and now _do_ do) best. It is to me what painting may have been to Michaelangelo: my life's passion. (Though I can't say that with any certainty--painting may have just been another 9-5 job to ol' "Mike" for all I know--g). So anything else, (like my career, like writing for fun, even my spiritual interests) no matter how well I perform at them or love to do them, are secondary. I felt this way long before I met Donald, so this isn't something that I was forced into. In fact, because I made the decision to become a slave so late in life, I can say that the decision was relatively conscious and informed by experience. The obvious result of identifying as a slave, rather than as a painter or a writer, say, is that my primary lifework is obedience.

2. Within my specific relationship, having the things (besides slavery) that I love to do controlled and sometimes curtailed is a "minus" at the time it happens, but nineteen times out of twenty a "plus" over the long run, for a number of reasons. Let's use my net writing as an example. Sure, I love to write and it shows in my messages but the downside to that is that I have a marked tendency to go overboard with it: to want to spend upwards of six hours a day "Internetting," if given my druthers. Let's do the math: If you spend six or more hours daily writing email and messages, eight hours a day working, and seven hours a night asleep, that leaves three measly hours left in the day to perform everything else: showers, meals, housework, errands, not to mention all the extraneous duties and services required of a slave. Even if you aren't a slave, your real life goes downhill fast if you spend most of your time staring at a computer screen. I know this for a fact because I was once addicted to a computer system before I met Donald. All I did every night when I got home from work was get some dinner and log on, and I stayed logged on until long after I could get a decent night's sleep. I didn't pay my bills, I didn't socialize, I didn't do my laundry or any of the hundreds of maintenance chores we all have to attend to. I've never really broken this addiction to online communications, but Donald makes sure it remains controlled and within reasonable bounds. When it starts to get out of hand, as it was when I wrote that net access restriction message, he clamps down, often to the great benefit of both of our "real lives" .

In this particular case, my writing on the net was interfering with meeting a work deadline, which, since I'm a contractor with no stable position, could have ultimately affected our immediate future income (or lack thereof). Donald was right in prioritizing the income-producing activity over the non-income-producing hobby.

3. I've noticed that things often work in ways one doesn't expect them to. Sometimes an act that seems restrictive or harmful at the time turns out, much later, to have been very beneficial in quite a number of unexpected ways. I'm talking about things different from "habit control" as discussed above, which is actually very predictable if you know the person. Again, to use the writing restriction as an example, when I return to posting after such a restriction I am often fresher and the things I say are better thought-out and more interesting. In other words, if I had been Michaelangelo and had a dominant of Donald's caliber, an enforced half-hour of painting a day just might have inspired me to produce something that made the Sistine chapel look like a child's fingerpainting.

Although I am in an uncommon relationship and so the number of people who "absolutely" identify with my writings is relatively small, I sometimes think that if I am constantly saying all this stuff about lifestyle relationships, it doesn't leave much room for anyone else who has similar experiences or desires to speak up. They may read my lengthy and exhaustive messages and think, "Well, she's already said everything I was going to say on the subject so why bother speaking up?--I'll just look stupid or imitative." And when new people don't speak up, that's a big loss to the newsgroup, as far as I'm concerned. New posters add life to what otherwise would be quite a stagnant pond. When I shut up for a few months or a few weeks it gives others who may be more timid or may have been looking for the right opening the opportunity to speak up and express their unique perspectives without feeling that they are going to be overshadowed by or seen as repeating the messages of a blabbermouth poster.

Other unpredictable positive things have happened so often as a direct result of what first seemed like a negative restriction on my behavior by my master that these days, although I might initially chaff at the bit a little in response (especially if his curtailment affects one of my addictions--g), I try to remember the old but surprisingly accurate saying that whenever one door closes on you, a thousand more open up.

4. I don't think that just anyone can be happy as a slave. Patience and unselfishness are often cited as virtues of potential slaves, and although I have both of these in moderation, I'm certainly no paragon of either. I think a far more important quality for someone who wants to become a slave is a lack of outer ambition. If you have goals in your life, things you have to do or things you think you were destined to do, these goals could get in the way of your enjoying being a slave: there's always going to be an inner conflict there for you: I want to be a slave BUT... Often lack of ambition comes later in life because a person needs time and experiences to discover whether not pursuing X or Y as one's lifework is going to kill you inside.

You hit on that point very well when you talked about how someone's net contributions being curtailed could be seen as a litmus test between absolute-oriented people and non-absolutes. I've never really thought of myself as an unambitious person before, like any normal person I have all kinds of plans for what I'd like to accomplish in life and contribute to the world, but I must say, (and here's where it comes down to the litmus test), if my master didn't want me to do any of those things, ever, I'd willingly forget them all, and, I am certain (as I know myself very well in this area), I'd not feel any significant regret, _at any time_ for doing so: not eight years from now, not 48 years from now. I guess another way of putting this is that my priorities lie in other directions, and all else pales to invisibility beside that which I consider to be really important.

5. My first point above touched on obedience and it's importance in my life, but it's also important to mention the role trust plays in all this. I lucked out, Rokken. I managed to come into the service of an excellent master who knows how to juggle all the disparate aspects of my life and get significant competent service from me without any major disasters or problems occurring. In plain English, with Donald, everything always works out for the best. Do you know how difficult this balancing act is to do for your submissive and how rare it is to find a dominant who can do it well? From talking to fellow subs, especially those who are looking for what I have, or thought they had what I have only to sadly discover they didn't, I have a good idea of how difficult and rare it is to find this specific talent in a dominant. Before I offend anyone, let me hasten to add that you can be a perfectly fine dominant without being a skilled life-juggler, and I know many doms with no desires or inclinations in that area. But if what you want most in life is to control someone absolutely (there's that pesky little word again--more on it later--g) then you've got to realize it doesn't come easily or naturally for most people: it requires talent, experience, skill, intelligence, forethought, strength of character, and an ability to control and deny oneself just as deftly as one controls and denies one's slave.

We're talking here about totally controlling the life of another person with all of the complexity of their needs, wants, desires, both for good things and bad things, competing for attention, and you have to prioritize them, sort them all out, forbid some, allow others in plenty, allow some in moderation and do so in a way that encourages the person's development, health, and happiness. Now of course, since we're talking real slavery here, one's owner doesn't have to do any of the above, but many do, because they've discovered that when their slave is happy and growing, they benefit from it immensely. Donald manages to do all of that, and while during the first few years of our relationship I was highly suspicious of his abilities (having dealt with incompetents all of my life), I eventually learned from constant repetitive experiences that if I just trust and obeyed him in all matters everything works out for the best. Sure, one can always create "what-if" scenarios in one's mind: "If Donald hadn't curtailed my net writing during this particular week, I would have been discovered by big famous publishing house A and offered a million dollar contract." Right. I can build castles in the air as well as anyone. But once they are built, I giggle and topple them with a sweep of the arm. What I know, for a fact, is that my life was very miserable and limited and unhappy before I met Donald. Since becoming his slave, I have become immensely happy, and, for the first time in my life, at peace with myself. I'm smart enough to see a direct causal factor when one is bashing me in the nose , and I have consciously decided that I will not trade my current happiness for all the shiny promise and potential of a theoretical situation. I had it bad. I now have it good. And I am living happily every after. End of story.

Dire Straits, in this wonderful love song they do, has a few lines that describe the human tendency everywhere to think the grass is always greener wherever they are not:

"You can fall for chains of silver
You can fall for chains of gold
You can fall for pretty strangers
And the promises they hold."

The promises of pretty strangers don't attract me anymore, not only because I experience that rare state of mind know as "satisfaction" but because I know how incapable most are of followup and delivery. It takes a long time and usually a lot of hardship to learn this lesson, and many people never learn it. I consider myself extremely lucky that I had "got the point" before I entered my third decade, and that, having got it, I was able to meet someone like Donald. Others, who are not so lucky, fulfill the next verse in the song, over and over and over:

"You promised me everything
You promised me thick and thin
And now you say, 'Oh, Romeo, yeah you know
I used to have a scene with him.'"

So, to sum up: you're right, in the short term service is often not fun (although, if you're someone like me, that certain little sexual kick is _always_ present--g). Obeying someone to the best of your ability, especially when it conflicts with your own desires at the time, can be immensely frustrating and sometimes frightening, especially at the beginning of a relationship when you don't fully trust your "tour guide" to know where he's going. But over the long term, the benefits--for me--have more than outweighed the immediate hassle or inconvenience or worry, so much so that when I look back on the last six years of my life (the period spent with Donald) I don't see a single lost opportunity or option closed off. And he has certainly done some things, which to the world outside of slavery, would probably seem to be horrendous violations of my basic human rights, but to the world within slavery seem like a perfectly natural and helpful thing for an owner to do to improve his property. And what I see when I look back are a series of minor inconveniences which turned out to be greatly to my benefit in the long run.

Thanks for asking me those questions and providing me with the opportunity to explain the way I experience slavery (it's peculiar--ain't it?--g). Although I've used the word "absolute" a lot in this message, I hesitate to call my relationship absolute because I have the typical nit-picker's attitude that nothing is perfect or complete, there is always room for improvement. However, I do think the brand of D&S I do is pretty far out there on the S&M behavioral bellcurve, and it's certainly more than good enough for me.