(Pasted from another website posted during a discussion on psychological D/s)
After my last post, I continued to think about this thread. And some things I left out.
I know, I know.
"What? The kitchen sink?!"
I was thinking about moveable goals. And mutable rewards.
When I was still knee-high to a grasshopper, there were... issues that kept me from exploring the kinesthetic developments my cohort were. Issues? My issues had issues! Hell, I had volumes! I owned a running subscription! However, eventually, I grew out of it all, thanks to a couple of inquisition's worth of medical treatments and that best medicine of all: time.
As I was able to get outside more and do the things that everyone else had been able to do almost since they slid feet first into this plane of existence, I was... perhaps a little spoiled as relieved parents (and extended family) gifted me with all sorts of sporting paraphernalia. (As opposed to the books that had been the constant up until that point.)
Amongst that paraphernalia was a basketball goal.
Now, it so happens that I suck at basketball. Oh, at one point I could rip the net at will from the opposite baseline if I chose. Not that I had a chance that often since I also didn't often let an opponent drive that far. Unless I fouled. Which I did. Not a lot. Just five times per game. Coach probably didn't help much since he pretty much gave up on teaching me any finesse and just said "you have five fouls and they have five starters. Make 'em count."
But, this was about that moveable goal. Or, to be more exact, the expandable goal post.
When they first installed it, they did so at the lowest point. Which was pretty cool. Even my runty little ass could slam dunk just like the guys on TV. And I did, too.
Then, they raised it a notch. Okay. No problem. I could still slam the ball like a touchdown spike. (Er... wait. Touchdown? There may have been more than one reason I didn't do so hot at basketball...) Notch after notch, they would raise it. First, until I couldn't reach it just standing on my toes. And then, until I couldn't reach it jumping. Until finally, it was the regulation height and I had to actually work to learn to throw it up there.
"What in the fuck is your long-winded point, you old gasbag?"
Well, up until now, my point has been that having the ability to shift a goal can be a good thing. So long as the goal is shifted prior to the outset of the game so that everyone can clearly see where it is.
All right, so let me back up and take another swing from the batter's box.
(Batter's box? Yup. Told ya I sucked at basketball.)
Even before I was healthy enough to start running and playing like normal children my age, or even being outside much, my genius mother got me involved with animals, and especially dogs, for reasons that I've gone into ad nauseum elsewhere for those masochistic enough to want to know.
And something I picked up from training my dogs was that if you promise a treat in exchange for a specific trick, if they do it you give it.
Or else, they will not exhibit the desired behaviors consistently. Why would they? They don't know if they are going to get the treat or not since you always promise it, but don't always give it? They don't even know if they are exhibiting the desired behavior or not if you don't set the goal for the given task!
However, there are some behaviors that you don't want to become dependent on treats but be adopted into their overall behavior without turning them into a little beach ball. For these, there is a way to gradually remove the treat as the reinforcement for the behavior (although praise should never be removed). And the key to that is the word gradually. The same way my parents raised the pole on that damn basketball goal.
Also, there are tasks that are... too complex to break to a puppy all at once. So, you break it down into smaller, more accomplishable goals. For these, also, there is a way to gradually increase the expectation, the goal, until they are exhibiting the entirety of the desired behavior.
As another example, while I was first transitioning from a scrawny, runty, nerdy little bookworm with health issues to "jock," in the spring (around here back then anyway), if you were in athletics, you ran track. Period. That was the only option for school Athletics. Fall was football, winter was basketball, and spring was track and field. Oh, there were other options available, and even some through the school. But, if you were in the class designated Athletics, those three were what you did.
And Coach, in his infinite wisdom, decided to put the shortest motherfucker on the team (yours truly) to running fucking hurdles! Dumbass! Not him. Me for actually putting up with it for almost two years before my other testicle dropped and I told him in no circumstances was I ever running hurdles again. Or high jump either. And if he even looked at me with that stupid pole for pole-vaulting in his hand, I was gonna shove it up his ass. Sideways. (For the record, I was "punished" by being put on the distance team. And not only loved it, but excelled.)
But, while he was trying to make me run hurdles, he did the same thing as my parents did with that basketball goal. Starting me at their lowest height. Then, gradually, raising them notch by notch until they were regulation height. I was also growing (although not as much as most), so my gait was changing. "Wait, was that seven steps or si-... fuck!" **crash** So, there too, the goal was shifting as I had to constantly relearn the gait and then the leap. (And, yes, I had to fuckin' leap them. None of that Olympics style gliding over jack shit goin' on here.)
But, my point (as much as I ever have one) wasn't solely about athletic goals, but goals in general.
On the psychological front, when I was.... mmm... high school-aged for certain, although it may have started earlier, "Psych" became a thing. I don't mean Psychology. That's been around for a long, long time and I'm not quite that old to have changed Jung and Freud's nappies. Nor do I mean the television show Psych with the hidden pineapple in every episode as a slacker with better than the best attention for details convinces everyone he is psychic. No, I mean this (in my opinion, idiotic) game where people would try to get people to believe something was true that actually wasn't and then yell, "Psych" and laugh if one was gullible enough to believe it.
I despised that game. And, yeah. Probably partially because at the time I was stunted enough in my interpersonal intelligence that I was usually an easy mark. But, more because it just seemed like a way to make lying socially acceptable to me. (Come to think of it, that is probably where I learned to associate lying [one of my three hard limits] with disrespecting me and my intelligence...)
One of my best friends absolutely loved that game. And I seemed to be a ready target for him to sling bullshit at and see how much I would swallow. Until I stopped listening to him altogether. One day, when he asked me about it, what had happened that we didn't hang out anymore, I told him point-blank "it was because I couldn't believe anything that came out of your mouth. So, what was the point in listening to you at all when I had better things to do with my time?" Getting back to sports for just a moment, Lucy kept moving the damn football after conning me into trying to kick it.
In college, during those counseling classes that I mentioned in my earlier post, we discussed a lot about interpersonal authenticity and trust. However, we were also in training to be counselors. And as such, there were, of necessity, boundaries in place about how much we would reveal of ourselves to our ephemeral future clients. In a nutshell, we had to learn to reveal very little about ourselves, while making certain that everything we did choose to reveal about ourselves was one hundred percent verifiably accurate. Or, more accurately, could not be verifiably disproven. We had to be trustworthy.
We also learned rather a lot about lying. We learned that our ephemeral future clients would lie to us. Sometimes because they were embarrassed about the truth. Sometimes because they were telling only part of the truth and omitting salient details that would have changed the narrative. Sometimes because even they had no idea they were lying as they presented what they thought was the whole truth, from their perception.
In effect, I learned to beat that stupid "Psych!" game. Rather, I started learning there, in those college courses. But, once I left my original intent to be an MFT/ST and swung off into the detention units, I necessarily honed that skill to an edge sharper than Occam.
What? You don't think inmates lie? Perhaps especially to the people holding the keys and trying to keep them from acting out in their behaviors learned up to that point and frowned on by larger society? Puh-leeeze. The overwhelming majority of them would have lied to me about the weather if they thought they could get something out of it.
Here's the thing. When someone lies all the time, and everyone around them lies all the time, their perception is going to be that everyone lies and therefore you must be a liar too.
So, the first step in what I mentioned in my earlier post when I began to get into their heads, was that I had to present myself one-hundred percent factually and honestly, with absolutely nothing presented that they could then disprove. Because they would try. They would look for the place where I lied, even a "small, little white lie." Their ego needed to find it. Because if I didn't lie, then not everyone lied, and therefore their own lies were a choice that they made whether through lack of courage or an attempt at manipulation.
Does this mean that I told them everything about me? Fuck, no! Get real!
I had my life threatened on an almost daily basis. Which I didn't really sweat too much. Hell, I habitually gave an address and a weekly time frame when I would be there, waiting for them. The ones that showed up found me there, right during the time frame that I had said I would be... making a little extra cash demonstrating just how much I was holding back at work during (strictly speaking "illegal"... don't look at me like that) back-alley...ah... ***cough*** sporting events. Something akin to modern MMA. Distantly kin.
However, I had also had my family threatened as a matter of course, periodically. And that, I did sweat. Very much. Everyone knew I was married. And happily so. But, no one, not even co-workers, knew so much as her name or what she looked like (no pictures, even in my wallet) or what kind of work she did, much less where she worked or where we lived. (As it happened, she worked in banking. And one night when I was followed from work... or attempted... by what turned out to be local Treasury as just a matter of course fact-finding... Gosh, were all of our faces red.)
If it didn't pertain directly to the job at hand and my relationship to them, then they not only didn't need to know it, but they weren't allowed to know it.
And, yet... everything they were allowed to know was factual and thus undisprovable.
More than that, when I said I would do something if certain conditions were met, I did that thing when those conditions were met. Without fail. Or, in the rare events where I did fail, early on, I learned to watch what I said I would do, and make certain I could do the thing I wanted to say I would if the conditions I set were met. If I wasn't sure I could, then I didn't say I would.
Likewise, when I segued from detention work to teaching, I kept to the drill. My students didn't need to know the overwhelming majority of things about me and my life outside of the classroom (no matter how bad they wanted to know). But, what they were allowed to know had to be one hundred percent verifiable if they went to check.
And, if I said I was going to be somewhere or do something, then I had to be there, doing that thing. If I was limping on a re-broken fibula with three broken ribs, so long as I was conscious and moving under my own power, I had to be there. Because I had said I would. No lies. No half-truths. No excuses.
In my personal life, and particularly the facets where the D/s spectrum of BDSM came into play...
I wasn't always completely open, depending on the relationship I had with my submissive. I didn't bother her with every little niggling detail that I would pay attention to for her fun and enjoyment, for example, if she didn't need to know it and the knowledge would have spoiled her enjoyment. But, everything she was allowed to know, everything I revealed to her... about me, about us, about what I was doing to her, with her, and for her...had to be completely verifiable. (Notwithstanding purposeful illusions such as blade play where I spun the illusion that might be the edge of the blade she couldn't see but felt against her vulnerable skin rather than the blunt spine or back.)
Moveable goals have been optimal. Giving me the opportunity to set the bar just a very little higher to stimulate the growth of the submissive having given herself into my care and tutelage at the time. Setting the bar at its maximum height from the get-go can be discouraging for certain personalities and be perceived as setting them up for failure. Instead, I like to begin with easily achievable goals, then gradually transition through goals they have to stretch themselves to obtain until we reach the maximum capacity. I think by doing this, it stimulates growth. Absent growth, we tend to stagnate and then decay. (Whichever side of the slash we are on, and even "fence humpers" or those for which there is no slash.)
Mutable rewards have also been optimal. Giving me the opportunity to keep things fresh and interesting rather than allowing the "reward" to become so mundane as to be considered not worth the effort expended in reaching the goal.
However, it's been my experiences that within the D/s framework, those moveable goals and mutable rewards should be clarified, particularly if the goal and reward are changeable, to the mutual understanding of all parties before the current iteration of the task begins, else the perception can be that a lie was told, excuses given, and trust can be damaged.
If I don't tell her what the specific reward will be before she begins other than one of my choosing, then it's one thing and within the parameters of trust-building for me to determine a reward that I believe suits the accomplishment.
If she requests a specific reward, without me telling her she is allowed to, then it is with the parameters of further establishing the mental Dominance and submission for me to point out that is not her choice, and that I will reward her performance as I accord it worthy.
However, if I told her the reward would be something specific, even that she got to choose her reward, then failing to follow through on the expectation that I purposefully set once the task is accomplished... That just feels too much like that abhorred "Psych" game.
Similarly, if I tell her what the goal is, even pushing her to set the goal herself, then I should stick to that set condition (and make her) for that iteration of the task. Whereas if I purposefully leave the end goal open (i.e., "until I decide enough") then I get to choose a little more just when we will stop (in lieu of her safeword, obviously).
I think to do anything else puts both sides in a position where the psychological underpinnings of a successful, trusting D/s relationship can be too easily damaged.
If I know her like I should understand her in order to present as her Dominant, then it might be acceptable to offer to exchange the reward for one that I know she prefers. However, even then, I think (for me) I would have to make that her choice if she was willing to "trade up" or stick to the originally promised reward. Which, I also think, would undermine the Dominant/submissive mindset we were trying for. Ergo, I think (for me) I would have to forego this "upping the reward" as well to maintain the balance of "you are mine to do with as I please" and "you can trust me."
I don't know. I readily admit that I'm probably overly simplistic about some things. (A great many, I'm sure.) But, I think that there is a way to engage in mind-fuckery where trust isn't damaged and still press the boundaries of our psychological Dominance and submission in order to strengthen it and deepen it.
And a way that will snap back like an overstretched rubber band.
At least in my studies and experiences.
And the foundation lies, I think, in finding ways to shore up the cornerstone of trust that the mindfuckery doesn't incorporate lies and misdirection. Which, in my misspent checkered past is typically that the goal and the reward are established before the game is afoot. However those goals and rewards are established, whatever mental tricks are employed prior, once the game begins, it is what was said would be. Anything else is "Bait and Switch." To me.
But, hey. At the end of the day, I have no say if I wasn't invited to play. And if it works for you and yours (or Yours), then more power to ya. So as long as everybody involved gives informed consent and is able to walk off the field under their own power when the game is done, play on, you kinky as fuck ducks. This world needs a lot more fuckin' and a lot less fuckin' over.
Any road, may the sun be out of your eyes and the wind at your back for a brighter tomorrow than yesterday.
