trust, obedience, & surrender: is that all there is?

Back in late July, when Joscelin and I went to Thunder, I was still trying to figure out how to think about our relationship.  I was enjoying it fine, and things were going well, but my mental models for what we were doing were, well, lacking.  In some ways they were obviously wrong, yet I had nothing to replace them with.

Jos went to a presentation there by Skip Chasey on the role of SM in master/slave relationships.  He brought me back a handout from it.  I read it eagerly.  It was all about using scenes to develop your slave through increasing their trust, obedience, and surrender, which, according to Chasey, have to occur in that order.  An ideal session would train all three, but in practice, most sessions might train one or maybe two.

I enjoyed the handout and it turned me on a bit to think about, but I knew right away that, on some big level, it wasn’t for me.  That whole model where the master develops the slave was…well, it seemed authoritative, like it was the “right” one, but I didn’t feel (as I framed it at the time) “up to the task” of really focusing on developing those habits in my own lovely slave.

These days, I just know that I utterly reject* that model.  I’m not here to “develop” Jos.  One thing wrong with that idea is what’s coming up in the comments to this post by Eileen – the whole “what’s in it for the top?” thing.  I’m not that selfless, or I should say…my primary satisfaction is not from fixing someone up (even fixing them up for my own use).

Anyway,  Jos is just fine as he is.  He’s here because he needs this, but only “needs” in the sense of “has internal drives to seek” not “needs because he sucks on his own.”  He doesn’t particularly “need” to be taken deeper into his submission for some kind of developmental reason.

What are we here for?  We’re here to have a mutually satisfying good time.  We’re here to play with things that we both enjoy (or don’t-enjoy-but-in-a-good-way).  One thing Jos enjoys is being trained and developed, so if there are ways I can make him more pleasurable to me, then I certainly will.  Trust, obedience, and surrender are fine things that can happen during a scene, or anytime, but they’re not the only fine things.

The menu is long.  That’s all I’m saying.

(*By “utterly reject”, let me be clear that I mean “for me.”  I have no problem with this being someone’s thing.  I can even see the appeal.)