September 15, 2004

I just finished watching a very thought-provoking movie. In this movie, two men are talking about a woman. One man is young and one is older. The young man asks the other, “do you love her?” and the older man replies, “yes...and she loves me.” The questioner looks at this man quizzically for a split second and then says to him, “but how do you know she loves you?” The older man looks at him steadily, compassionately, knowingly, and replies, “because she knows all my darkest secrets...and still she stays.”

I was stunned with that concept. It washed over me and filled me with a great sense of sudden understanding. A person’s darkest secrets. A person’s most private desires and weaknesses. How very true that statement is. To have another person lay before you their all, their deepest thoughts, their fantasies and foibles. To trust someone so much that you can open your heart and your mind and let loose the demons and the dreams that hide within.

That is the truth in the lifestyle of a Dominant and a submissive. That is the reality of the power exchange. Two people so loving, so linked, that their deepest, darkest secrets become as intertwined as their bodies when they make love. Freedom to release the images and needs that reside within each and every one of us. Freedom to experience these images and needs without defense. Submission is the relinquishing of judgements. Domination is acceptance of uninhibited love and need. For both people, it is the ability, based on trust, to relinquish the belief in set mores and accept the love and caress of each other’s mind in all ways.

I was wrong in my concepts on mind control or mental domination. True mind control is not about telling a girl what color panties to wear on a Thursday morning. It is not about the specificity of demanding she masturbate in a certain way in a certain place. Mind control is in knowing that as her Dominant, you could ask these things of her without rhyme or reason given. Mind control is knowing that you have the ability to slip into the mind of your submissive at any time and be welcomed. That you can relax there and drop all society-enforced pretense. That you can unleash your desires or your needs and they will be met with open arms and a loving embrace.

And at the other end of this symbiotic spectrum is the offering of one's mind as a submissive. It is knowing that you would do these things if he asked you to. It is feeling the intense pleasure that is derived from satisfying his fantasies or needs by behaving in a certain way, knowing that you alone are the one he is asking this of. It is the emotional freedom of doing things and thinking things without apology or excuse. A freedom he grants you when he slips into your mind and then requests you to do things that he has seen hiding in the secret compartments of your fantasies.

It is fun to play and important to keep the sparkle twinkling in the relationship. It is important for the Dominant to remind his submissive that he always has the power to tickle her mind with a request or the understood right to plant a suggestion. It is important for the submissive to rely on her Dominant and tell him of her needs. It is imperative that they both remind each other that there are no rules and no scripts in their love. And yet, there will be times that these desires are tested. Times when the images or needs of one or the other do not align at first. It is in these times that the initial love and need that created this union becomes tantamount. For it is this love and trust that each will fall back on and it is these emotions that will be used to break through the barriers of fear or ignorance that inevitably arise in the long, upward, spiraling journey that a Dominant and a submissive undertake.