460. Thoughts on Communication Struggles and Submissive Guilt

The blogosphere is littered with accounts of subs talking about struggling to communicate their needs and desires.  This is especially true when they hit a state of frenzy, and it is often the reason that they reached frenzy in the first place.

There are various reasons why people do not communicate what they need.  A couple of the most common reasons tend to repeat themselves again and again.  One reason is that the sub is embarrassed to admit that they want what they want and voicing it directly is too difficult.  This type is particularly difficult because it puts a strain on the dominant to be a mind-reader.  It can also lead to some passive-aggressive resistance in the sub, causing them to mildly act out when what they need isn’t happening.  If this persists for long enough, the relationship can blow up, frequently ending the D/s dynamic.  In other cases, open communication is fostered by the dominant until the sub gets better at communicating.

Another reason that stands out is when subs do not feel like they deserve to ask for their needs to be met.  This is habitual and in many cases, instinctual.  A common theme when subs feel this way is half a lifetime of their needs being treated as unimportant or secondary and the encouraged behavior to squash their own desires and go with the flow.  While this often breeds vanilla personalities with submissive characteristics, it can also alienate people, feeling like they only matter in their own secret little private world.  In some cases this builds up and causes a meltdown, where the sub feels lost and confused about who they really are, what they really want, etc.  That finding of their true self and giving that self a voice is often the means of healing these situations.

Lately I find myself struggling and slowly sliding towards frenzy.  At this rate it is still a month or two away, but lately I have not been accessing my submissive persona, so I am unable to steer myself off of this path.  When I am feeling more whole, I am able to get my submissive fix by triggering and lingering within my sub mental space.  This isn’t happening right now.  When I catch a glimpse of it, I do not linger within it.  When I talk with people about D/s, I am not naturally finding my submission.

I can trace this to a number of factors.  I am detaching when I talk about D/s.  I am looking it like a historian, scholar, or scientist, evaluating it objectively in its cold, hard facts.  I’m feeling a bit rejected lately as my personal connections begin to fade away.  While I feel like I have remained the same person through it all, I have to wonder if I’m being boring or less interesting.  This puts me a bit on the defensive in a cycle of doubt.  The biggest factor that is haunting me is that I have been unable to voice these to the one that I normally show this part of myself to.  I feel my soul screaming inside, wanting to shout about everything that I am missing and everything that I need but do not have, but when we talk, that voice doesn’t reach the surface.

Why?  If the answer was obviously staring me in the face, I would have already fixed it by now.  This forces me to dig for answers.

It is not because I am embarrassed about my needs.  Don’t get me wrong, I am very embarrassed about my needs and desires.  However, I have shared those publicly on this blog for the world to see.  I will talk about them intimately with the people who have gotten close to me.  Being embarrassed by them is one of my submissive triggers, so I feel safe that this isn’t the problem.

It’s not because I feel that I don’t deserve to have my needs met.  Don’t get me wrong, I actually do not feel like I deserve to have my needs met, but it depends upon what needs.  Being denied certain needs triggers my submission, but the need to feel submissive is an integral part of D/s.

The most likely scenario I can come up with is that I feel guilty for asking to have my needs met.  I have this ideal of submission that I want so badly to reach.  Within that ideal is to be need very little beyond the privilege of submission.  I feel guilty asking for more than that.  I feel that if I need more than that, I become lesser as a submissive.

There are a lot of aspects of submission that make rational sense as to why a dominant would desire it.  In my mind, for it to be objectively rational, I believe that it has to appeal to women in general, and not just dominants.  They are things where anyone would look at them and be able to say, “I understand why someone would want that.”  I wish that those things are all that I need, but I have other parts.  There are parts of my submission that violate my definition of rational sense and as such I feel like I am placing too much of a burden on the dominant to need them.  Cue the guilt.

A lot of this view is shaped by the fact that so many dominants want so many different types of dynamics.  What is desirable to one person is disgusting to another.  I believe I have tried to shape my ideals into a “fits all” package.  I want them to be in such a way that everyone can understand and share those ideals.  The problem is that I need more than this.

I believe the solution to this falls into understanding the rational attraction of it to sadists.  “They want it because it turns them on and gets them off,” is a perfectly rational idea.  I guess in some ways I have to stop viewing ideal submission in such a generic way and start viewing it in light of the demographic which is a fit for me.  This may be the only way for me to stop feeling guilty about having needs.

• Femdom