Collar Shopping

So back in July my Sir gave me a collar. It was designed to be a play collar since it came from Petco. It was leather and awesome! I am also highly allergic to it apparently. So much so that I went to work the next day with a red rash around my neck, that was rather icky. So we decided after some discussion of what it would mean or not mean, that he wanted me to have an everyday collar. In the past few months we have been looking for a collar with a ever-growing frequency and sense of frenzy.

Well, finding the perfect collar for everyday wear is proving to be a *very* difficult proposition. I guess I should not be surprised by this fact. We always hear that “things worth having are worth waiting for” and that thing are not always easy.

With my Sir and I, there is a very, very rocky history there. A lot of bad stuff and bad ju-ju. When I consider this, it is actually very fitting that the collar search has come about in this manner.

The first thing that seems fitting to how our relationship is unique is how long we have been together to get to this point. It has been over three years since we started on this journey. Three years. And this is not a collaring. It is just getting a collar to signify the relationship we have. There is going to be no change in our relationship, no referring to me as owned or property or slave. And no change in how he and I interact. That is fine with me- our relationship has a LOT of power exchange in it already and while more is always welcomed, it works out better for us if we both want the change and it comes about organically. We also slowly add new power issues. Again it seems to make things go smoother.

I know many people who are collared within days or weeks or even months. This in some ways always made me mad or envious. Mad because I didn’t see how things got that serious that quickly and envious because I wanted the same thing for myself. Another item I noticed in this is the age of the people involved. Where there are hasty collarings that end unsuccessfully (as many that I observed have) there are usually younger people involved with it. Now there are some exceptions to this and this is just personal observations. But it made me think a bit. When I started with my Sir, it was over three years ago and I was very immature and young for my age. I have had a great deal of time to learn and grow. I think that has been very good for us as well. I am not as naïve or blindly jumping into things I would have years ago.

I think that the sometimes frustrating search for this collar is rather fitting for us and how things have evolved between us. Having had this revelation is making me much calmer about the search and re-affirmed that things will happen when it is right. And having seen at this point hundreds of options for possible collars, we will be all the happier when we find the one that speaks to us.

Sir Plays Not With Me: Fears Faced & Explored

The questions came from the Fetlife Master/slave group. The answers are mine.

What are your fears in your partner playing with others?

This is a difficult question to answer. At one time, my Sir did play with others and moved to D/s interactions with them as well. This caused some huge problems. We had always said that the D/s was just for us, that outside that there would be no D/s play or relationships for either one of us. Everything else was fine as long as it did not include power exchange. So that created problems for us. And it has been hard to try to relearn to trust him. It has been a rocky road in that process, not always smooth but getting better slowly. It is like with all the bad stuff we are finally building towards a solid foundation.

So yes I do still get jumpy at the thoughts of him playing with other people and I do have some fears regarding him finding someone he thinks is a better fit for him or a better match or a better pain processer or better server. For me, it is easy to admit I have some insecurity about the openness of the life I have chosen. For many, it is their first reaction when they think of things along this line. And on my more logical days I am firmly comfortable with him playing with others, I know that the levels of what we do and the intensity of the level of “fucked-upness” is something that no one engages in casually. I am secure in knowing he won’t just get distracted…that he is firmly committed to me.

However, there are some deeper fears that can be harder to admit to. I worry about not that I will be replaced but that I will be compared in harsh light. I worry that my flaws will seem more realistic and tangible when compared to someone else. I feel like I cannot be as wonderful as partners make me out to be. That once they look closely and critically all these things about me will become obvious.

I also worry that he will find more stuff that I cannot give him. I know that one person cannot always be everything for their partner but I like the list of things I cannot give him to be less rather than more.

I would be more comfortable if this was an issue of orientation. I am heteroflexible so sometimes I just want to be with a female-bodied individual. My Sir cannot provide this for me no matter how badly he might want to since he is male-bodied. If it was a issue of Sir needing to play with men – I would be much more comfortable because I know I could never provide bio-cock for him. However, all these other things – such as more pain, better decorum, etc… I can convince myself that all of these things should be within my power to obtain if I worked harder.

What benefit do YOU get from your partner playing with others?

This is where I am supposed to have this wonderful poly mantra of I believe in compersion and I get happy because he is happy and that makes everything wonderful. However, I cannot stand here and honestly say that is a 100% my feelings. I do get happy at the thought of my partner deriving pleasure and happiness from his encounters with other people. However, I still also get jumpy and can be picky about what he is doing and why he is doing it.

I want to stand here and say that I do derive only pleasure from my Sir’s interactions with others. I am making progress in that every time we go out and he plays with someone else casually. I have been lucky that so far it hasn’t been sustained relationship or steady play partner play.

But when I think about that statement- I know it could always come up someday. I know this is a possibility so he playing with others so far gives me experiences. It gives me the experiences of supporting him, of being okay with what is going on, of being able to be vulnerable and strong at the same time. The vulnerability comes from facing these concerns and unease head-on, it comes from embracing the feelings of uncertainty and concern. The strength comes from mastering those feelings, from being able to say “I am a little concerned about this but I trust you and I trust all the work we have put into our relationship and I know this is not a threat to us”.

And after all, that is a lot of what drew me to submission in the first place. The interplay between strength and vulnerability. The strength that it takes to be that vulnerable and the tapping of those inner reserves of strength in trying and difficult times. The ability to have the strength to accept all that comes with vulnerability. But this is beginning to sound like a post for another day.

Why Do Labels Matter?

So my primary relationship is not listed on prominent kink website. This has always been upsetting to me. And I have thought quite a bit about why…because in reality- I shouldn’t need pixels on a screen to tell me what my relationship is right?

Now there is a lot of history between my Sir and I. It is not all good history either. I was originally not on his profile as a relationship because he did not want to upset his then girlfriend in case she saw the profile when he forgot to log out. Then he was cheating on her and she snooped so I couldn’t go up. Then things were “okay” and we got the go-ahead. Well then he started dating someone else. We had been together for two years, the two of them approximately four months. I go away on vacation with my family and log into this website and see an announcement that he is dating this girl. Well my world fell apart. Four hours away from home, stuck in an area with crappy cell phone reception and my annoying family who was not known for their support and who did not know about this relationship- so they would have been unhelpful. I called him- in a wicked mood- I wanted BLOOD. I actually almost dropped him right then and there. Well later that night, he listed me as his submissive on the website. Well then things went south again. Things got bad with him and his girlfriend and with me as well. He took all the relationships down. I was upset to see it go. I did not take him down from mine though. He said me leaving it up made his girlfriend mad and she wanted it down. I refused. Well later on they broke up for good. And he and I had a fight a bit later, and I took it down. I did it out of anger and frustration because I couldn’t stand to see me giving him this recognition and being AGAIN, his dirty little secret.

Now it has been months since his relationship ended, almost a year in her words. And still I am not there. And while everything else has been wonderful, this has been bothering me. A lot lately actually. When we were on a break I had told him if he still cared about me he would call me his sub in public. But that I could not call him Sir because of how messed up things were. Well he told me that it wasn’t fair to expect it from him and not give it to him. And that has been prominent in my head a bit lately. I have major issues with being the dirty secret. He has done a lot in vanilla life to show me I’m not the dirty secret. And yet, those pixels still don’t acknowledge me. It is all I can do to keep thoughts of why me? at bay.

In moments of weakness, I convince myself that there is something fundamentally wrong with me. That there is some unique factor of my being that means I don’t get this recognition. He gave it to his girlfriend the second she joined the site. He gave this recognition to someone who had been in his life for approximately 15% of the time I had been (if my late night estimates are right). So what is it about me that make it so hard to say it?

I didn’t push the issue because I wanted to give him time to process his breakup with long-term girlfriend. But she has had relationships up there since. And I know she is still hurt by things however, I am hurt by his prioritizing his feelings for wanting to protect her feelings over my feelings. Its putting emphasis on what was while ignoring what was always there for you. It can be hard to acknowledge what you have always had. What you never lost, even though you may have come close to it and not realized it.

So I have tried to examine why this matters to me- because in all honesty it shouldn’t matter this much to me. Everything is going well for us in every other aspect of our relationship- except for this one thing. These little pixels should not matter to me at all. And yet they just sit there infuriating me in their absence.

I have tried to figure out why they matter to me. And all that I can come up with is that the long struggle to get where we are now isn’t quite complete until this happens. That all the bad stuff from the past isn’t healed and put behind us until I see it up there. He has accused me many times of holding the past against him. And maybe I do at times. But I have learned and grown from the past. And if the past is to truly be put to bed- than maybe its times to do what never could be done in the past. Maybe it is time to say what never could be proudly proclaimed previously. Maybe then the past will really be able to fade more into the past.