I stumbled across a forum post which the title alone made me cackle loud enough I'm sure the neighbors wondered what the old crazy man over there was doing. "You are my world... who are you again?"
However, not only did it make me laugh, it also made me think.
(We will now pause for the groans and expletives from people who have tried to actually read my previous blogs when I've turned to the keyboard with what passes for a brain in my head a twirl... or maybe that should be "tilt-a-whirl.")
Well, rather than hijacking a good forum thread with several good responses from intelligent and well meaning people, I figured it might be better to bring my own long winded (and probably less intelligent... or at least intelligible...) ramblings off to my blog so that it can be ignored by those with better sense than to let their busy schedule be further misaligned by someone who demonstrates if he has any wit or wisdom, it is only by a half.
The thing I think is most often overlooked is that BDSM dynamic relationship is, in it's hard kernel, first and foremost a relationship. And, thus, is subject to the pitfalls of any other relationship.
The forum thread in question was talking about how when life gets too busy, it can sometimes happen that her Person gets downgraded in priority, in effect whether that was the intention or not. First, her self-care, and then Him. And several other people have responded that they experience the same.
From kicking my tin can down the side of this graveled road for quite some time now, in addition to misspending some of my time, money, and energies in my checkered past actually studying the dynamics of relationships in college, I can sometimes find myself surprised when other people are surprised that the old bumper sticker from the '70s was right. "Shit happens." (And in this case, by "shit," I mean life.)
Alright, so backing up the crazy train for a minute...
When first boy meets girl (or boy meets boy... or girl meets girl... or any other rendition of the oldest dance) there is a response that is not only psychological, not only sociological, not only physiological. Instead, it is a whirling pool sucking us in and down as if a toilet were flushed...
Er... wait. Maybe I should pick a different analogy. Meh. Fuck it. You know what I mean. Often, we don't have a choice. Something about this someone (or Someone) captures our attention and then our heart and then our soul. Whether we want them to or not. Whether we thought we were open to any such thing or not.
And, all to often, the suction is strongest when it catches us by surprise as their hand twitches the silvery handle!
As it happens, yes I do know the names of the chemicals and endorphins released into the blood stream, the glands they come from, and more than a little about just what causes the bio-chemical stew to be released. But, I'm not looking to publish this in a psychological or sociological journal complete with abstract and sources cited. So, fuck it. If you are that curious, you can hit the library stacks just like I did...
And fuck, I feel old since it just dawned on me that there aren't really library stacks on college campuses anymore.
***sigh*** Oh, for the good old days when we could take a study break in the stacks, my hand pinning her wrists above her head, kissing her as I pressed her back against floor to ceiling bookshelves, surrounded by the musty odor of old printed books, my hand not trapping her wrists down her...
***cough*** Sorry. What was I talking about again?
Oh, yeah...
So, I'm not going to bore anyone with so much as a neuro-physiological quickie or, rather longer, psycho-social exploration. Anyone who has ever felt that first heady rush of what we term "love" knows enough to know the feeling exists.
And also that it fades.
I have argued, and continue to, that neither the people who argue that the human body is not intended to sustain the production of such bio-chemical processes for an extended time nor the people who argue that it is a question of titration as we grow used to the feeling as exclusively correct. Instead, I believe, and have sought to prove more than few times the question was raised, that it's a combination. Just as the people who argue one side or the other of the nature versus nurture argument are both equally correct and incorrect.
The sad part is that there are people who, as that first flush of infatuation fades begin to question whether what they felt was real. And, more than a few, just as a strung out crack addict, go running to chase their next high. The next person who can make them feel good. And, maybe, feel good about themselves.
But, we're not talking about them. At least I'm not.
No, I'm talking about the people who even when the butterflies in their guts quieten, even after it no longer feels like the top of their head pops off to let their consciousness expand into the aether, even after their mouth no longer feels dry and their palms wet and their vocabulary returns from wherever it went leaving them only to babble senselessly still feel intensely drawn to this person. Still identify the feeling they have as love. Are committed to making This One work.
These are the people, the relationships, that were on my mind when I read that forum post, and the responses, and once I stopped cackling started thinking. The people who have moved past the first blush of budding romance and have settled in for a committed haul with each other.
Something that was mentioned time and again there was "time management."
And I was reminded of a quote.
"The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot."
~ Michael Altshuler
At the risk of causing some people to roll their eyes (those that have the endurance to make it this far), I strongly feel that "time management" is a misnomer. We don't actually ever manage time. The best we can do is manage ourselves and how we choose to spend (or waste) the time that is given to each of us in the same measure each day.
Stop that. I can hear your eyes rolling from here. Hear out the rest of it. THEN you can laugh and roll your eyes.
There is a basic difference in strategy and tactics. Strategy is what you mark in your planner last night before you slept, or last week, or last month. Tactics is what you try to think of when you are running to the bathroom to splash water in your face after realizing that the alarm that was supposed to wake you didn't go off and you are already two hours behind in the planned schedule. Emergencies (or Crises) in most people's lexicons are those things that cause us to have to shift from a strategy to a tactic.
And at this point, I'm going to reach for the acrylic shield to keep the eggs and rotten vegetables from reaching me...
A lot of people, and especially submissives who are self-identified "people pleasers" strategize too much, fill their time with everything that they feel a need to do in order to... Sometimes not even please the people around them, but to avoid disappointing anyone, letting anyone down. Their day is so incredibly full with all the things they are doing for all their tribe that there is absolutely no give in it when something out of the ordinary occurs.
And why shouldn't they plan it all out? Why shouldn't they care about all these people? Why shouldn't they try to do so much on a normal basis? After all, we say it that they ordinarily can do it all because it's rare that something untoward and unforeseen happens that keeps them from being able to do it all!
But,...
But, as I say, shit happens. LIFE happens. In fact, "life is what happens to us while we are making other plans." (Allen Saunders, Readers Digest, Jan. 1957)
Just because it is out of the ordinary, just because it rarely happens, doesn't mean that it never will. In fact, it's a sure thing that it will happen, eventually. The question is, do you allow wiggle room in your strategy for a situation that most likely will not occur THIS time?
I say, yes. You do. If you don't, then you end up robbing Peter to pay Paul.
And, those self same people pleasing submissives will rob whom first to pay out the time management debt? Themselves. Their self care goes first. Not just their wants, but their needs are ignored in favor of giving their time and energy elsewhere. Not even necessarily to please someone, but to avoid disappointing anyone else.
This won't work. The problem is that it seems to work in the short term. And it even seems to work in the medium term. But, in the long term? No. It won't work. If you don't take care of yourself, tend to yourself, you will start to break down and will gradually have a harder and harder time doing the things you are wanting to do for other people as the basic physiological, psychological, and emotive debt comes due. If you want to be there for someone else, then your first responsibility is to make sure that you are able to be there for them when needed.
Which almost seems counterintuitive to some miserable little people pleasing subbies. They feel selfish if it isn't done for someone else. Well, look at it logically. If you don't eat, you can't do for someone else. (And a double handful of popcorn does NOT fucking count!) If you don't sleep enough, you can't do for someone else. Duh! If you are less than your best because you are tired, hungry, or otherwise physiologically, emotionally, or psychologically distressed, then your best does not currently exist to offer up to someone else!
Then, there is our person (or our Person), the one who is supposed to be our priority, whom we have committed ourselves to.
It doesn't really matter if we are talking about a BDSM dynamic relationship or what is referred to (sometimes disparagingly) as "vanilla" relationship, there is a pitfall hiding amongst the bramble. Because we trust this person, because we rely on them, because they have proven that we can rely them and trust them to be there for us, we come to take for granted, to some extent, that we will be able to trust them and rely on them. That whatever else is happening, they will be there.
They become, to an extent, almost viewed as something of an extension of ourselves, subconsciously.
Pause before your head explodes.
What I'm saying is that the person who will shove aside their own wants, desires, and even needs to tend to everyone else before themselves, when that isn't enough to get done everything they feel needs to be done, will then set aside this person that they trust to be there, that they can rely on, because they count on them to continue to be there when the dust settles.
Is that the way it should be? No. But, tell me that it isn't what happens, and for that very reason.
They always are there, so we come to believe, on some level, that they always will be. So, a little people pleasing submissive will take care of all the other shit life throws us, then they will take care of PYL, then take care of themselves when shit (aka Life) gets too overwhelming.
Oh, but hold up if you are reading this and are on the capitalized side of the slash. Don't go getting cocky and rubbing your knuckles on your leather vest. Stop and think for a minute. Are you absolutely certain that you are never guilty of the same damn thing? I readily admit that I have been from time to time. I'm aware of the danger, I develop strategems to make as certain as I can be that it doesn't happen, and, yet, I still stumble in that pitfall from time to time. If you don't, then good on you. (No, I don't really believe you. But, we'll move on as if I do.)
So, how do we do this? How do we "seek the balance" as it was phrased back over in that forum thread (that I'm certain you can see by now just why I didn't contaminate with my long winded, half-conceived, diatribe).
First, self. Minimal, non-negotiable needs. Sleep. Food. Hydration. Exercise. Breath. Each of these will take time. Allow for it. Disallow anything impinging on it.
Second, the person who is our priority (or at least we claim is). Kisses. Hugs. Touch. If physically possible, these should never be neglected. Physical intimacy should never be neglected entirely. Maybe you don't have the time for the entire eight hours of foreplay, filthy debauchery, and aftercare I would prefer to visit on your body, heart, mind, and soul... But, that is no reason that we can't share a twenty second kiss, a sixty second hug, or even just a ten second lingering touch of our fingers trailing the forearm and hand of the other.
But, what about when physical distance makes touch (or taste or smell) impossible? Communication! The gift of the sight of you is still possible via pictures. The gift of the sound of you is still possible via recordings and phone calls.
And words! Words are most important of all!
Some people like to say that they have trouble communicating. That they fumble words and don't express themselves very well. Really? "I love you" is that hard? "I adore you?" "I worship you?" "I value you?" "You are important to me?" "You matter?" "I miss you when you aren't with me only slightly less than I miss air when I can't breathe?" "I wouldn't give a flying fart from a finger flinging ferret on a ferris wheel about the rest of this fucked up miserable ball of rock floating through lonely, empty space if you weren't riding it with me?"
Actually,... You know what? "I love you" does seem hard for some people. Which I don't really understand. Does it save THAT much time to drop the "I?" "Love you" just doesn't... feel the same to me. Much less, "love ya!"
But, that may just be a personal foible and irrelevant since we aren't each other's prioritized person.
I just think that pausing to even send a text or Skype or email or whatever telling someone "I (insert word of choice) you!" can go a long way towards making them feel not ignored while you are busy flinging your awesomeness around at some other shit going on in your life.
Does it really take all that much time to pause and take a picture of the meal you SHOULD BE stopping to eat and send it? Goofy as it may sound to some, it can be something special, something that makes your person feel included. As if you are sitting down together to share a meal. Seeing what they would see if they were at the table with you.
And, yes. I feel goofy as fuck even saying that! I mean, I'm one of the people just doesn't get the point of taking twenty-seven pictures of your Thanksgiving Spread and posting them all over your facebook, instagram, or whatever. But,... Well, this is different. It's more... I hesitate to say "intimate," but it is. Or at least it feels that way to me.
But, alright. That, and other such things, are dependent on you, your person (or Person) and your dynamic (or Dynamic) as much as, or even more than, the time it would take away from what you are trying to accomplish that has dragged you away from them and you are just taking a moment to make sure they don't feel completely ignored.
HOWEVER...
However,... And this is a really big deal. Any such thing that you do, if you then stop doing it, it will be noticed, even if it's not openly acknowledged. If, as in the example I gave, you habitually send a picture of your meal so that the two "share the experience," but then you stop doing it... Well, one day, okay. A week... something might be happening. A couple or three weeks? Something has shifted. Something has changed. You aren't what you were and they aren't what they were.
It doesn't have to be that. It could be anything, whatever it is that you do with your person (or Person). Just be aware that subconsciously the change in what might seem a small thing may cause a shift rather than being an effect of one. Sometimes,... most of the time, really... the biggest, most meaningful gifts are the seemingly small things. And when that "small" gift is taken away, it can cause more pain.
Any road, as I say, just what these "small" things, these little rituals and gifts are is wholly dependent on you, your person of interest, and the relationship you share.
And then, there are words. Yes, I know what I said about "I love you" and such earlier. I'm talking about other words now. Specifically acknowledgements of what they give to you. Did they send you a picture of some sort? A sound file? A text file? Say, "thank you!" Let them know that you a) received it and b) appreciate the gesture.
Words... That's a little harder. They sent you a message. You want to let them know you got the message, you read it, and it's important to you that they shared their words to you. How in the everloving fuck do you do that?! A lot, again, depends on you, on them (or Them), and your relationship with each other. They say, "Just finished eating." I would say something like, "Hey! Good. Thank you for taking care of you."
But, again, that's pretty tricky. And is wholly dependent on the person you are, the person your priority person is, and just what the relationship between you is. And, naturally, just how crushed and pressed for time you feel. But, you don't have to write a novel. Just something to let them know you see what they said, read it, and appreciate them taking the time to make you a part of their life. 'Cause when you get right down to it, they don't have to, you know.
Any road, my point is that there are myriad ways that you can keep the person from feeling marginalized and unimportant while you are busy with other things. The important question is, are they important enough for you to come up with something, anything, to let them know they are? (And, conversely, do they for you?)
Third... every fucking thing else you abso-fucking-lutely just can't not get involved with because someone might be disappointed! Heaven forfend that you don't make to your yoga/reiki instructor's second cousin's third best friend's combination wake for their goldfish and wine tasting!
Here, the thing I've always thought was important was leaving some space. Roughly about an hour to an hour and a half where there was just nothing. Nothing that I had to do. Nothing that I planned to do. Some leisure reading would be acceptable. Maybe watch a movie. But, nothing planned. Nothing I had to do. Nothing involving anyone else. It doesn't have to be at the same time. It doesn't even have to be all together at the same time. Maybe thirty minutes in the morning, thirty in the afternoon, and thirty in the evening. The important thing is that it gave me a cushion for when (not if) shit went sideways.
***sigh***
I don't know. I don't know what else to say.
I just think the important thing is to take time to make time, make time to be there.
