Blending My Sub Sides

Describe who you might submit to and how.  Are you exclusively submissive in marriage or just in the bedroom?  Are you submissive only in the context of a scene or in a role or throughout your daily life?  Are you submissive to play partners or only in the context of a relationship?

This is a hard one for me because I see my mental and emotional submission as separate from my sexual submission. Mentally and emotionally, I am submissive to my husband and partner, Musicman. I always have been, not because of some innate desire to be submissive, just because that was what felt right to me, to us as a couple. I've got the 24/7 day to day sub thing down pat, in fact he often says I make things too easy for him. Can't help him there, he will just have to live with it.

What is new is the sexual submission, we dabbled with it a bit at the beginning. I enjoyed it for the most part, but it wasn't a need, more just something different to try out on occasion. It was fun, but I could take it or leave it. We eventually ended up leaving it, it was something that just got left by the wayside. It wasn't something either one of us particularly missed or wanted back, until I did want it back.

I'm starting to accept that it is a natural progression for me, but it's also where a lot of my guilt originates. Guilt because I didn't particularly want it before. Guilt because having said no before I'm now almost begging for it. It's a complete about face for me, and I don't know that having asked him to tone it down before that it's now fair to ask him for the opposite.

He doesn't see this need in me as anything new, he sees it as a need to up the intensity of what we already had. To some extent I think that's true, at least from where he sits. For me, it seems new, the emotions evoked by D/s play certainly are new too me. The mental/emotional highs are higher then I've ever been. Conversely, the mental/emotional lows when things don't go well are lower then I've ever been. Those lows spark the questions and the doubts. Questions and doubts that I never had before and I find extremely hard to deal with, but it is getting easier.

So it seems I've done it a bit backwards and haphazardly. I was submissive within my relationship, outside the bedroom, and didn't even really realize it. . Now we are growing to include bedroom play within the scope also, and trying to blend the two is the challenge. It should be easier, but 2+ plus decades of habits, ways of interacting, can be tough to change.

A Sub By Any Other Name...

Does your submission – either what you practice or what you strive for – have a label? Do you view your submission as Taken in Hand, domestic discipline, top/bottom, dominant/submissive, master/slave, owner/pet, or some other description or combination? If you do not use a label, why?

I've never been one to embrace labels, but I do find them necessary for the purposes of education. It's a lot easier to find something, if you know what you are looking for.  I've always been a big believer in education, both formal and informal. I never want to stop learning and growing. I never want to get to a point in my life where I can't appreciate the wonders of a new experience.

Labels are useful in communication, but can easily be used against you. Leave you open to judgement and ridicule, place limits on you. Labels can define you and the perception of that definition can change in any given situation. A label I embrace as a positive thing, someone else may judge as detrimental.

I wasn't specifically looking for submission, I was looking for a part of myself that I had lost. A feeling, an emotion, an energy, a way of being, that I wanted back. I pursued many avenues of information, but most specifically, I pursued my sexual connection with Musicman. He had been my salvation before and I felt he was now too. I've always been a very sexual woman and know that great sex can create powerful energy.

In exploring the sexual aspect of D/s, I found my emotional and mental submission. I found what I had been looking for. It had been there all the time, just simmering in the background. It also had a different label on it. Which is probably why I didn't recognize it for what it is, it's really both.

The label I know my submission by is that of empath. That's a label I've worn for a long time, a label I've become comfortable with. I know how to define it in a way that works for me. It's also why I was initially confused by the label submissive, to me all the traits and demeanor of a submissive are those of an empath.

I'm sure that doesn't apply to all empaths or submissives, I'm not talking about anyone other then myself. The same qualities about me, that I now identify as submissive, are qualities I previously accepted and acknowledged as being an empath.

This is a definition of submissive: allowing others to have control over you; 2. willing to submit to the wishes of others.

Here are some of the recognizable empathic traits, many of which I have:

1) Heightened (stronger) emotions.
2) Comprehensive understanding over a broad scope of (if not ALL) emotions.
3) Capacity for want/need of self-sacrifice - giving, basically.
4) Excellent communicatory abilities.
5) "Dreaming."
6) Pre-cognition.
7) Emotion reception


So, in effect, being submissive isn't anything new for me, being aware that I am submissive is though. I just defined it a bit differently and gave it a different label. I still don't really think of myself as a sub very often, but I've yet to find the Dom/empath category.