Hello Cage friends,
Today is an important day for me. Not because of Halloween honestly this is one of my least favourite holidays.
I mean don't get me wrong sure dress up is awesome, but I'm not a scary guy. I was raised to hide away on Halloween. Sit in the basement watch a movie with my family. Turn off all the lights upstairs, hide the car. Make it seem like we aren't home. Even today my plan is put candy on my front door step and just let people come and go without having to interact with them.
The reason today is important is because I finally see some very important things about the lifestyle. I finally have a little more experience than I did a few months ago and I want to share my insights.
I have some very close friends. Some of which a clear defined we are just friends relationship (technically I am nothing more than just friends with all of them, but some I have the desire and hope that things will develop into something more).
So I have noticed a slight change in my behaviour in dealing with each of them but I want to begin with a situation that happened just a few days ago.
My friend explained to me that she made an error and that she felt she had ruined her shot at the one dynamic that had been even remotely half decent in the last year. Well she thought she had made an error. She expressed to me that the other night she had vented some pent up emotions, lost control and felt she had said some unfair things and that she had caused hurt to her Daddy. In her lamenting about the situation she told me "It is no one's job to be my support" and in my response I had to say well hold up. I disagree.
So here is where things get a little tricky. Dominants are not responsible for your happiness. Dominants are not responsible to manage your emotions. Dominants are not here to say just do "this and this and this". When she said that it was no one's job to support her I had to point out that in my belief I saw her view as incorrect. In fact it IS her Daddy's RESPONSIBILITY to SUPPORT her. I also mentioned while it may not be her friends job but that those who are friends within your life will want to offer their support and understanding.
The thing is we can't make you feel anything good or bad. BUT there are CONSEQUENCES to your actions. It just depends on the action and what the corresponding consequence may be.
The thing is though as a dominant it is our responsibility to be able to hold a safe space, to be there to listen, to be able to garner trust and help overcome hurdles. That may mean requiring you to face a demon you have, or to simply tell you how pretty you are today, or perhaps its about simply listening when you need to vent your emotions. That is all support, that is required to be there. In my mind a good dominant will ALWAYS support their s type. It's just how does that support look?
Life happens right? I have been able to witness a few close friends lives through their experiences. Within the last few days I have seen friends meet with impossibly hard situations. One friend flipped her car when she hydroplained on the road. One friend was robbed late at night. One friend felt she had ruined her dynamic. One friend found peace, and one friend was able to open up about a past trauma.
The thing is I am not any of their dominants but as their friend I want to support them. How do you support someone who has found peace VS someone who has been in an accident? Not only that, but you also have to consider the differences between listening and understanding past trauma that had nothing to do with you, and being able to listen to your s type express their emotion when YOU as their defender, protector and guide have been the one to cause harm.
I mean how do you respond and what is appropriate for each situation? Well each situation is different. Each situation has its own challenges or successes. I mean when you have someone who has found their peace and been able to move forward in life you get to celebrate and enjoy and savour that moment together. When someone is hurt you get to be there as best you can to alleviate pain and work through the emotional stress of going through a traumatic event. Even approaching the friend who had their things stolen, what is required? How do you respond, and would your response be different as a friend VS as a dominant. In many ways yes it would vary slightly but at the same time how you show support as a friend is how you would hope to show support as a dominant and it's a way for you as their friend looking to create a dynamic that you begin to build trust of "Let me show you how I care." Allow me the opportunity to tell you and then follow through with action how I will handle this situation while at the same time handling my own requirements of keeping myself safe and making sure that I am within my boundaries.
Because at the end of the day the trauma, struggles, hurts, problems and issues that are in your s types life cannot be resolved by you. You simply have to be there and hold a space for them in each unique circumstance. Of course how you hold space for someone also drastically changes when you live across the world from them and can only communicate through your phone. Sure you can come up with brilliantly creative solutions using technology in some cases, but how do you wrap your arms around someone virtually? How do you show the care and support of a friend? Because as a friend you want to share in their successes and failures. To help them through and be able to be there. But you're not there. All you can do sometimes is ask "Are you safe now, did you double check you locked your doors, have you showered and cleaned your wounds, have you attended to the cuts and bruises after working on a project, are you safe, comfortable, mentally thriving, emotionally thriving, and what can I do for you right now?" How you show up in the small things becomes part of who you are, and how you will attempt to show up in the big things.
Life happens. We make mistakes. People get emotional because an event happened. But how do you listen to someone who is emotional? I wrote down on my calendar when I was trying to define parts of myself I saw. Part of what I wrote down was "I will listen." the thing was that was an incomplete desire of mine and I quickly added "With patience". I want to listen patiently. I want to be able to hear the screams and the terror of their mind and help calm and quiet them.
But how do you do that? How you assuage their fears when all they have known is previously disappointment from EVERY SINGLE MAN that has shown up before? A good dominant isn't just battling the trauma, the pain, the terror. They are battling the fact that every person before them has let down their s type in some way, and they must find the patience to overcome the history that is embedded within that person. Everyone is unique. Everyone has past troubles. Everyone has a history that makes them think "Well I blasted and vented and exploded my emotion all over and made a mess and now he will ghost and leave and disappear and vanish from my existence." Because there is a history that every one before them let them down in some small or big way and they hold onto that. It comes up in conversations all the time if you listen carefully. My ex did this, said this or went here and.... The thing is how do you combat the previous lines that many women have heard after their person says something to hurt them, and then when they are upset because you said something to hurt them your response is "Oh well see you're being emotional and I should have never told you." NOOOOOO, MOTHER FUCKER you shouldn't have taken your course of action in the first place. OF COURSE if you do something to harm or hurt someone they will have a negative emotion and could very well react to that hurt, maybe it's even a trigger for them. The appropriate response is not "I shouldn't have told you" the appropriate response is "I need to tell you this thing I did that I knew would hurt you," and I need to sit here and allow you time, space and the place to work through the emotional damage I may very well just have caused. I need to take ownership of my mistakes and allow you the space to process what it was that I did. It's not your fault, I can guarentee you would prefer not to have been told you were let down in a major or minor way. But being able to sit and listen and hold a space for that person and allow them the chance to express themselves. HOWEVER that may look. You know what the best thing you can even do after listening to them pour out their heart to you is???? Say "Thank you for your honesty, thank you for expressing yourself. Thank you for still trusting me enough to allow me to listen to you".
Don't get me wrong listening to someone when this is a past hurt, or some other separate issue is much much easier than listening to your girl when YOU fucked up. But it doesn't matter really, in either situation you need to learn patience and be able to sit and hold a safe space for them. You need to allow them time and a place to vent what they feel and how it affects them and why it bothers them. You need to pay attention and listen intently and focus on moving forward not making those same mistakes that previous exs have or the previous mistakes you have. Or the mistakes of all the deep terrible shit that can come from this world.
There are sick and twisted people and not in a good way. There are those people who take advantage, rob, rape, steal, lie, harm, disregard, gas light, love bomb, and that are just downright terrible people. They exist and they choose their actions.
I remember years ago I had a conversation with a friend and she said to me "Jon, you have no idea what it's like being a woman. When we go out we get approached, objectified, and used. We need to be wary when a man comes up from the bar with a drink already in hand because what if he drugged it? We have to watch the bottle being opened and take it immediately and make sure we are always aware that someone may have slipped something into my drink. You don't understand what it's like to be a woman." She is correct, and I never will ever understand. But I can do my part not to be one of those people, I can choose to create a safe place within my life, to show care, love, and appreciation for those that trust me. I can be an example of what it means to seriously commit to the lifestyle. I can be a beacon of what and how I choose to live my life in accordance with my values and beliefs and hold strong to them in the face of adversity. I can be something more than another bit of baggage added to your life, that's just a part trigger point for you to get over. Although the absolute honest truth is that I have been that baggage and that past trauma that needs to be dealt with in the future. But I refuse to allow my mistakes to define who I am and who I am going to be. My mistakes help keep me set in the right path knowing I never want to return to how I used to act. Knowing I never want to cause harm again. Knowing I want to be a trusted, safe space for those around me to learn.
I am growing, moving forward. I am meeting amazing people who see me, see my goals and agree with them. They resonate with my core values and the funny part is I am beginning to change my perspective on things. I used to think that a dominant should cow down to the likes and wishes and wants of their s types. The thing is you should always take their preferences into consideration but true submission is in the hard, unwilling and unwanted tasks. The simple thing is too, your s type wants to fulfill your desire but they also want to do so in a way that is important to you and as YOU see it. I am finally beginning to understand it is being able to tell someone I want this, and have them present what they think you meant. Its then your job to congratulate them and say "Yes, you got it exactly right!!! Good job" or you get to say "Okay, so by my description you hit every note of what I said. But how I meant it, what I really wanted was actually this" and then give them the reference. Because they are looking to fulfill your desire just as you do for them, but it's within a different scope. If your mental image doesn't line up with what they are bringing forward it is your JOB to set them straight. Does that require some words, some actions, some discipline? How do you show them what you mean and create understanding within them?
But part of all of this needs to occur naturally. When I reached out to Master Arach, he told me that the way to understand whether you are going the right direction is to listen, learn, test, and evaluate the outcome. Then repeat with minor or major adjustments depending on the reaction and outcomes that you experience.
Part of this is the listening and learning. Gaining knowledge of who you are spending time with, how do your values line up, what is important to both of you and are those the same goals? Are you heading in the same direction and is that beneficial for both of you? You learn and that takes time. It takes being observant and internalizing the lessons that previous men have caused in your person's life and going nowhere near those some critical mistakes. Because if the person you are speaking with is currently single they are single because the previous men failed in some very important way that caused the ruin of that dynamic. Of course there could be many reasons, and most of them are intricately complicated because life is damn complicated. But you have an opportunity to do better than every man before you, you have the chance to prove that you are unlike anyone else they have ever witnessed.
Take for instance my desire and appreciation for protocol. I enjoy positions and yet I also don't care what anyone else says about the position "Attention". What is commonly referred to as that position may look exceptionally different to me and even depending on the person I am speaking with there might be different versions of the same pose for different people. It's what and where and how I see in my eye what I want. How it's supposed to look to me. Fuck the rules, I make my rules. My rules that I will adhere to. Don't get me wrong there are guidelines, and things that you need to respect and follow out of respect for those who live this lifestyle. You do so to show deference and respect to those who have earned it. But when it comes down to how I want things to be within my life, I set the tone, I set the protocol, I set the life I want to see. I choose to do things differently because I hate being inside a box, and "there is only one way to do things". I can be creative, I can become ingenuitive. I will forge my path forward and those who desire to follow will, but not all are right for me. Not all will be able to meet my standards. Not all will align with my beliefs, and that's okay too. But I will still show them that there is a general standard and they deserve to be treated with respect, with honour, to be cherished and appreciated for the tantrums as well as the peaceful moments. They deserve nothing less than the absolute best for them, and while I would like to be able to do that for many different individuals I am not right for everyone. But I can still show them what a good dominant looks like. What they should strive to find within the dynamic that fulfills them completely. Even if that isn't me, they will be able to go forward searching the right relationship for them.
I hope you find my words helpful to you today. I thank you for taking the time to read my words and to all those who enjoy it. Happy Halloween.
