Never enough

Never enough

babygirlieddlg​(sub female) • Nov 14, 2020

This seems to be a new trend that I don’t measure up to the line of being enough. I get that people have their own unique kinks and desires and that both sides should want to engage in similar things. But that’s not what I’m talking about here.

I’m talking about this perfect person that someone perceives and then it’s not really possible to live up to. I’m not small enough and I’m a chubby girl. I’m not flexible enough to do every position they want. I’m not hardcore enough for those who are heavily into kink and ironically I’m too kinky for the vanilla world.

Why is acceptance so hard? How do people find a person who is willing to see past the ways that a person isn’t perfect but instead focus on the ways they are?

subCourtlove​(sub female) • Nov 14, 2020

First, it is important to understand that no one is perfect, and if someone is searching for the perfect person, he or she will perpetually be disappointed. Second, I believe before a person can find acceptance with another person, acceptance of self is essential. When you are comfortable in your own skin and confident in your needs and desires, the right person will fall into line with what you are needing, and you will be enough and feel like you are enough. It is a trying journey to conquer self-acceptance, and it is an ongoing process, but it is truly freeing and rewarding to not value your own acceptance through the eyes of another person. Hang in there, and don’t let any one allow you to feel like you are not enough. You are a unique person, and that is enough

Re: Never enough

Miki • Nov 14, 2020

People who do this aren't worth your time. They expect this, that, and the other thing but often overlook what they might be lacking by way of making their partner happy and satisfied.
Sadly there are too many out there like that, but there are those who have a kinder outlook and see beyond immediate physical attributes or whether you can do "everything" they want or think they need. From what you describe, you look fine. And that you will do what you are able to do, well is enough for someone out there.

I'm sorry you are dealing with this but hold your head up and concentrate on you and your other activities in life, as in "don't look or try too hard". Eventually the right one will come along. I know it's cliché but they usually pop up when you're not deliberately looking. This is based in some fact in that when you're going about the day-to-day crap, you're completely yourself. It's the little things where the best starts happen, a certain natural smile, how you carry yourself and how you hold up a conversation should one of those crop up.

This probably wasn't entirely helpful, but all I wanna convey is "Chin up and be You!" (no one else can do that! They can only be who they are and no two people, including identical twins, are exactly the same.)

***Side note RE identical twins, I know, I used to have one.

AlexLeeSadist​(dom male) • Nov 14, 2020

BDSM relationships/interactions aren't that different from "normal" relationships in terms of chemistry, desire, need, etc. We all have things that we enjoy, want, need, and look for. If the people with whom you play or "date" aren't compatible or don't accept you and what you do/can do, keep looking. Or, make changes to be with them.

Best of luck to you.

NoOneofConsequence​(dom male){Taken} • Nov 15, 2020

I hear you, babygirlieddlg. I hear you loud and clear. Even as something on the capitalized side of the slash mark, I understand exactly where you are coming from.

While you were still playing with dolls I was already wrestling with losing "love" (or some reasonable facsimile) again and again and again. Two ex-fiances and countless "girlfriends" had left me because I wasn't enough. And I couldn't figure out just why!

Roughly about the time you were conceived I managed to get my hands on a copy of Vatsyayana's Kama Sutra (a translation obviously). Since it didn't have any pictures, they weren't quite as careful in that day and age as they might should have been. (Or else the full mustache fooled them into thinking I was older than a junior high snot-nosed punk.)

Now, a lot of people that haven't actually read the Kama Sutra think of it as a bunch of sex positions. And, in fairness, there are sixty-four described there in... uh... the third section, I think? But, before it gets to those, it spends a lot of space on what to do to be a good lover.

Whether fortunately or unfortunately I didn't understand that I was supposed to pick and choose from the offered list, but set out to conquer the whole list. And the hilarious part? My senior annual (five years later) where they listed our "accomplishments", my list was half again as long as the next longest. AND was almost exactly the list from the first section of the Kama Sutra detailing what a would-be lover should master before they thought of sensuality!

So, what the ever-loving fuck was wrong with me that, time and again, these girls would only stay with me for a short time before moving on and not "Happily Ever After?!"

And I switched my college major from the engineering key to "the softer sciences" to try to learn about relationships. Oh, partially because I'd always been "a helper" type and felt a call to human service. Partially because sitting in a room with a highlighter and going through reams of green and white lined paper to debug code (COBOL anyone? Fortran?) had, rather quickly, gotten boring as fuck. But, also because I was trying to figure out just how the Hell I kept failing at my own personal relationships when I was, supposedly, a Master of the art of seduction since I'd done the whole list (or near enough) set out by Vatsyayana.

Er... well, arguably I did alright with the seduction part. Not so much with keeping them seduced.

After a few more failed "relationships" (including the one and only relationship that I have ever ended, my third engagement), I was fortunate enough to embark on a "Happily Ever After" with Love, so nicknamed because she taught me what love was and how to.

Happily Ever After though ends. For at least one in every relationship. The one left behind. (Unless you are one of those fortunate couples who get to go together in some fiery explosion.)

And my submissive who had committed to Happily Ever After with me shuffled off this plane of existence after only two and a half decades. (Without my permission, damn it!)

And I figured I was done.

I mean, you only get one Happily Ever After, right? And mine was too short. And over. All that was left was to hold out and hold on to do what I had to until I could move on to see where my babygirl had gotten to without me to watch over her.

Probably not long enough later, a young lady (only a couple of months older than me) managed to catch my attention somehow. How, I'm still not sure. Maybe some residual desperate need on my part to still feel useful?

I'm disabled and virtually housebound. I was given a life expectancy of five years (a decade ago). I haven't been able to work. Friends and family had drifted away, caught up in the rapid flow of time we refer to as "living." For years I'd quite literally done nothing other than the little I was able to for my wife/submissive/slave/babygirl/best friend/et al since she was virtually bedridden. Occasionally writing a little bit, but it was getting harder and harder as my intellectus was eaten away by Lewy bodies and alpha-synuclein, gradually turning a once "brilliant" mind that qualified for MENSA to tapioca in my skull.

Perhaps sensing the end was coming (her life expectancy wasn't much better than the one they'd given me), Love wanted to have the conversation that goes "when I'm gone, I don't want you to be alone."

Setting aside for a moment the part that went, "you need someone to take care of you" which was downright offensive to every one of my D-type sensibilities as I damn sure don't need someone to take care of me... I, rather strongly, felt that I had nothing left to offer anyone who might come after. Hell, I'd been playing above my league when I'd snared her! And I told her so.

But, this gal was... going through some stuff. (I didn't know until months later that in addition to everything she actually told me about, she'd also been set aside by the Master that she wanted when he found another plaything.)

I wasn't looking for anything. Not a damn thing. I'd chased off several people who were just trying to be friends. Primarily because I didn't see where I had anything to offer them, but also because I didn't trust anything they were offering me.

Yet, somehow this one person managed to worm her way through the maze of bramble to find the remaining shards of my shattered heart.

As a friend.

At first.

A couple of weeks later, she point-blank asked me to be her Daddy. And caught me off-guard since I hadn't really thought of this possibility.

I didn't say yes.

I didn't say no.

I told her I had to think about it. That I would give her the answer in twenty-four hours.

The Dynamick is not anywhere I tread lightly. I can pick up a girl and fuck her for fun. I can do some Topping. But, anything more... No. It has an implied promise for me, a duty and responsibility that goes far, far beyond play. I never make a promise I haven't thought all the way through because once I do nothing short of death will keep from fulfilling my word. I can't let it. To do so would be to betray myself, my late wife, my deceased parents... my past, my present, and my future.

***shrug*** I understand (now) that a lot of people don't see The Dynamick that way. I understand (now) that for many the labels, even Daddy, are just a game to while away the boredom until something more interesting comes along. I don't know what to say. I don't think less of people who feel that way about it. Everyone deserves to pursue happiness any way they can (so long as it doesn't violate consent). It's just not me.

After twenty-four hours of fasting and meditation, a full vigil, I made my decision.

And said, "yes."

And completely missed that she'd been drunk and didn't remember exactly what she'd asked, what I was saying "yes" to.

For months, we rolled along. She was, quite literally, the only person on the planet other than my father (mourning his wife who died twenty-two days after mine) I was speaking to. And, other than the fact that sex was a bit on the sparse side for my tastes (as in "never"), I thought we were doing really well. Many, many nights I read her to sleep over the phone when she couldn't and then sat quietly, listening to her snore, for her to find me still there when she woke to wish her a good morning.

She was "married" (not really, but that was what she said), but separated. I talked her down many, many times when she would call, upset about something her "husband" did or said.

When her birthday rolled around, I made a big deal about it. Not only sending her several gifts but making it a point to send her a birthday message every fifteen minutes. Some humorous. Some... eh... sappy. Some just sentimental.

I could go on for several more paragraphs about what I did, trying to be the best Daddy I could in this, my first ever attempt at LDR. Giving her... parts of me that only Love had been able to access prior.

Six months later, after I called her down about a hurtful post that she'd made lamenting that she didn't have a Daddy, she pointedly told me that I wasn't. And went on to tell me that she belonged to (had been playing with) a Master from before we'd even met.

Not sure, really, just how we got past that.

In some ways, I don't suppose we did.

My father had followed our wives on Father's Day, leaving her the only person I would communicate with at all for days, even weeks at a time until the next time I had to go to the store.

After her revelation, that I wasn't, I didn't see any point in keeping her as the only one. (Although I still, stupidly, maintained my promise to keep her my priority. Ending calls and chats to take hers. When she had time.)

A few months after that, a mutual friend forwarded a series of emails that made it abundantly clear that I was less than nothing.

There were others. Each of them meant something to me. Just what, varied.

I'm strange, I guess.

Very, very few managed to earn the right to my Daddy. Including my late wife, I can count them on one hand. And those... remain with me, even today. The scars they left on my heart will still be etched there when it stops beating.

Almost as rarely did any earn the right to access Master from me. If they had not also earned access to "Daddy," then they were forgotten once they threw my collar (tantamount to a wedding band in my view) in the mud.

Submissives... It's hard to say, really. So many presented themselves as submissive that I would have considered a bottom, their submission ending when sexual play did. Others that I would have considered a mentee, their submission not extending to sexual play. Of any sort.

But, I have no right to determine whether someone is "a submissive" or not. And I don't. Whether they are mine, sure. But, one at all, no. It was just a source of confusion for me in... more than a few cases when their actions didn't seem to align with the words they were using (as I understood them).

Bottoms... sexual submissives that we were just using each other to get off and then log off... I never bothered to keep a tally as, so far as I was concerned, our relationship ended after the aftercare was done (twenty-four hours after "play" ended).

But, here's what all of them had in common...

Are you ready?

Are you sure you're ready?

Each of them left me to move on to something else with someone else.

But, wait. Wait for the punchline.

So far it's somewhere around 83% that have then popped up lamenting how THEY aren't enough.

Hold your laughter, damn it. That's not the punchline. It's still coming.

And then they go on to list out what they want, what they are looking for, what would make them happy...

THE SAME DAMN THING I GAVE THEM! And gave them. And gave them. And gave them. Long after the point of diminishing returns when they were giving me nothing back!

***shrug***

I don't hold their leaving against them. Not any of them. Not even when they post about how they are the happiest they have ever been. I'm fine with that. Oh, I do see the irony, since they had been telling me the exact same thing. And someone else before me the exact same. But, I'm fine with them finding happiness as they bounce through their life looking for something to complete them. For as long as it lasts, since true happiness only ever comes from being complete in and of yourself and THEN finding someone to share your journey with.

I was done, you see.

I was done before they ever even crossed my horizon. I just saw something in them that made me want to try to give a little more of myself this one last time.

And then, they'd decided what I gave wasn't enough.

Never enough.

They needed something more.

Or maybe not "more" since they were looking for the exact things I'd given them, but something "else."

And then one miserable little submissive came crawling back (after having left me for someone else).

And I allowed her to, with one proviso. That she put her pretty little ass in my bed.

I was done, you see. I was more than done.

I was done giving the gift of my Dominance to those who didn't accept, respect, and appreciate it. I was done being there for those who couldn't be bothered to be there for me. I was done with the games and machinations and thrill-seeking. I was done compromising who and what I am from balls to bone.

More than that, I was *ready* to be done. (And this time, I really, really meant it!)

I'd been proven right. When I'd told my late wife that no one was going to want me once she was gone, I'd been right.

Only...

Much to my surprise, this one did want me. Wanted me enough to pack a cooler of food, a bag of sex toys and lingerie, and a bag with a few changes of clothes, and made the six-hour trek to my open arms... and waiting bed.

Wanted me enough to keep coming back for more of what I can do, what I give.

Will it last?

Well, it has for eighteen months.

But, no. One day, it will end. And if that is three decades from now, with the death of one or the other of us again, it will be too soon.

And that is alright. It really is. So long as she is happy, I am.

Am I good enough?

I don't think so. I look at myself and see the bare shadow of what I once was when the earth trembled beneath my stride. I see the six-pack turned into a keg. I see a broken old man who has, more than once, forgotten where I was, standing in the middle of a store I'd been shopping at for years. I see me limiting what she experiences, not willing to do what I can't trust myself to keep her safe. (Blades and suspension rigging, being two examples that I don't trust myself with anymore.) I see time and infirmity sapping my vigors, unable to maintain a full seventy-two-hour training session, but punking out at forty-seven.

She disagrees. She admits that she has never been taken and claimed by a sex god, but she thinks I'll do until the real thing comes along. Which is really nice of her to say. And I guess I'm doing something right, since she keeps coming back... Even now on her last leg returning to where she currently lives from her most recent visit.

Hell, she even thinks I'm worth having to step around the scars and triggers left behind by those I wasn't enough for.

And, at the end of the day, I guess that's all that is really important. Those that didn't think I was enough got the Hell out of the way to clear the way for someone who does.

And for all YOU know, there is someone even now making their way to you, looking for you, that you WILL be enough for. Sifting through those that are ultimately unworthy of their gift of Dominance that will be perfect for your gift of submission. When you find each other. If you are both open to each other. And honest with each other.

Until then, they are depending on you to take care of yourself and make yourself into the best YOU that you can be for them. To steward their property carefully until they arrive to claim Ownership.

Have faith, babygirlieddlg. Not blindly, but because I've just shown you that it could... that it DID happen for me. And there is absolutely no reason for me to believe that it isn't much more likely to happen for you.

May the sun be out of your eyes and the wind at your back for a brighter tomorrow than yesterday.

Bunnie • Nov 15, 2020

The hardest person to get past is yourself. Once you begin to get a glimpse of doing that, you’ll notice that most people are too busy just struggling to do the same thing, to be focused on picking you apart as much as your demons may lead you to believe.

Naturenurture​(sub female) • Nov 15, 2020

On point Bunnie. It's so true.
We are our own worst enemies trying to measure up to ideals that we feel society has made us think we need to be.
It's always important to make ourselves feel better, I do things that I know make me feel better about things I could actually change. Once I found I felt ok, not perfect or wonderful, in my skin, I rejected those disingenuous characters easier.

LongerJohnny​(dom male) • Dec 8, 2020

Geez, this ended up being a bit longer than I planned...
Let me be the first to say that I do not - nor could I - speak of any relationship other than my own, and I wont be doing so here.
Everything in this post is theoretical and general, and there will be a whole lot of devil's advocate hidden between the lines. So don't hate me.

As has been suggested we must never compare ourselves to other's opinions of us. We must learn to love ourselves, or try be happy with ourselves, or at least accept ourselves, irrespective of another person's ideals.

When I read or hear conversations like this one I always think that, yes, some people would sooner treat you like shit and tear you down rather than just be decent people. Those assholes are everywhere. We all agree that perfection as a concept is delightful but that in reality it simply doesn't exist, and that beauty is too subjective to be used as a measure of anything.

But there is an important difference between these things, and preference or compatibility.

(Now, don't everyone jump up my ass for what I'm about to ask. Parts of this will unpopular. Devil's advocate and so forth. But read it then I'll explain.)

Why should any of us stop looking and accept anyone who is short of who we are looking for. In fact - do any of us? Really?
Do we not all look for exactly what we prefer?
In our profiles aren't we doing just that? Specifically searching for no one less that who we want?

How many profiles here have we seen that say things like "I'm only looking for someone 30-50" or "must be over 6" or "no tattoos or piercing's" or "not unless you are this religious affiliation or that political persuasion" or "you may not enjoy my body unless you first engage my mind" or whatever. I have even seen very unsavory comments like "I only date (specific ethnicity)!" or "I don't date outside my own race!" or these types of things.

Let me repeat - We must never compare ourselves to other's opinions of us. We must learn to love ourselves, or try be happy with ourselves, or at least accept ourselves, irrespective of another person's ideal.

So perhaps the questions should be:
Do I think that now, due to this person's opinion, I suddenly and absolutely fall short of some otherworldly notion of beauty or perfection? - No.
Do I care if this person is saying to me personally "You suck you are ugly and imperfect and bad and smelly and you aren't good enough for me and fuck off." - No.
Do I recognize that "Ok. We have very different preferences. We are clearly not compatible. Moving on." - Yes.

If that person said to me "Dude, (nasty, horrible things)!" she would be an asshole for attacking me personally. That doesn't change me, and I do not now think that I am somehow less than (or more than) just because she and I are incompatible.

You may never be who person A wants. You might be partly, even mostly, who persons B or C prefer.
But you might be exactly who person D is looking for, who he finds himself compatible with, who he thinks is beautiful - and maybe even perfect.

All of us must allow all of us to be assholes or not if we choose to be.
But You be the person who You accept.
You be the person who is preferable to You.
You be that unique person, the only You that there will ever be.
You let yourself be good enough for You!

Go ahead and don't accept anyone less that who you want. Or do.
But in the mean time the rest of the world can fuck off.

DixyesPls • Dec 8, 2020

Once you feel like you’re never enough it’s hard to get out of the mindset, I understand and relate to this a little too much. Recently, I have noticed that I have stopped doing the things I used to do for my dom because I feel as though I am not what he wants anymore. My dom is a collector so he as multiple girls and as he shows everyone the affection and attention that I do crave I find myself distancing from everything that I once liked. I find myself hiding how I feel to make him happy, and show that I am a team player.

- A confused sub