Domination & Submission: The BDSM Relationship Handbook (42 page)

I hope you are able to glean something from each of
these three case studies that will help you to either
avoid
making a
similar mistake or, at the very least,
recognize
when you or your
partner have started down a similar path.  It is easy to believe that this
sort of thing can’t happen to you, but it
can
and it probably
will
at
some point in your life.  If you’re
very
lucky,
once will be
enough.

So, let’s recap.
 
BDSM shouldn’t be
mistaken for sex.  Sure, BDSM is
sexy as hell
, but then so are a
nice pair of red stiletto pumps.  There are three possible scenarios when
it comes to your stilettos and sex:  (1) You could wear your stilettos without
having sex.  (2) You could have sex
without your stilettos on.
 And
(3) you could have sex with your stilettos on, preferably at my house, and
bring a camera.  BDSM is a lot like those stilettos.  You can have BDSM
without sex, sex without BDSM, or you can have both.  I recommend option
three.

Love shouldn’t be mistaken for BDSM.  Just
because you
love
someone doesn’t mean you will enjoy BDSM activities
with that person.  Love can encourage you to try new things and perhaps
even push the boundaries of what you’re willing to tolerate.  But love
isn’t going to change how you feel about pain, humiliation, or hard limits on
things that
squick you out.

BDSM isn’t D/s.  There are many who attempt to
weave D/s into even the acronym, but there
is
a difference, and the
difference serves a valuable purpose.  BDSM is what you
do.
 
D/s is what is in your
head and heart;
it is what governs your
relationship
dynamic.
  A Top
may not
be a Dominant.  A bottom
may
not
be a submissive.  

Knowing those simple truths can save you a
lot
of heartache.

I think D/s is sexy. 

Perhaps I find it sexy because it is how I
express
my love and how I want someone to express her love for me, in return.  Some
people express their love with kisses and caresses.  I express mine
through a D/s relationship dynamic; not that there’s anything wrong with kisses
and caresses, too.  For me, the gift of submission from my partner is the
purest expression of love that I can imagine. 
Loyalty
runs a very
close second.

Conversely and surprisingly to some, I don’t
particularly find
BDSM
to be
inherently sexy
.  Don’t get me
wrong; with the
right person
and in the
right circumstances,
BDSM
play can be
incredibly
sexy.  I’ve probably already beat this
analogy to death, but BDSM really is a lot like sex, and let’s face it -
sometimes,
even sex isn’t sexy.

Just to clarify:
 I
like s
ex. 
I like it a
lot.
 

My thoughts on
love
are a bit more
complicated and controversial. 

I believe
real love
should be
unconditional
. 
It simply doesn’t have to be as complicated as most people try to make
it.  Whenever you let
coulda, woulda, shoulda, and ought-to-be get
into
the act, you’re just mucking up something that, if left alone, is truly beautiful
in its simplicity and incredible capacity for creating a lot of joy in your
life and in the lives of others. 

If you think you love someone, but you’re hoping or
angling or trying to get something from that person in return, that isn’t
real
love.
 It’s just another form of self-gratification. At best, it is
emotional
masturbation
; at its worst, it is
emotional blackmail. 

Love is that condition where someone else’s
happiness matters more to you than your very own. 

If you’ve spent your entire life thinking that love
should be all about insecurity, jealousy or drama, chances are your search for
happiness is going to be longer and exponentially more difficult.  
Love shouldn’t be about saying
I love you
, therefore,
you should love
me back
, or prove to me how much you care, or you must start shaving your
back, or settling down to have babies, or riding unicorns into the
sunset. 

It shouldn’t be all about
what’s in it for you.
 

You either love the person standing in front of you,
or you don’t.  Loving the person that you
wish
he or she could be
is a terrible waste of time and emotional energy. 

Love the
person
, not the
fantasy
.

“The
more you love, the more you
can
love - and the more
intensely
you
love.  Nor is there any limit on how
many
you can love.  If a
person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and
just.”

- 
Robert A. Heinlein

Polyamory
is the practice of loving, or ability to love, more than one person at a
time.  The word is derived from the Latin
poly,
meaning
many,
and
amor,
meaning
love.
  Polyamory is about
multiple
loves
; not necessarily about multiple
sex partners
.  Perhaps it
would also be best if we establish a working definition of
love
before
we go much further on this subject.  For our purposes, we’ll use Robert A.
Heinlein’s definition of love, which is,
“that condition in which the
happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
 The elegance
of this definition allows us to sidestep the sometimes thorny problem of trying
to differentiate between
romantic
love,
familial
love,
sexual
love, or any
other
kind of love that can be imagined.

If you are one of those people who has a difficult
time understanding how loving multiple partners can be accomplished without
jealousy, instability and strife, consider the love that a mother has for her
children.  With each new child that comes along, a mother seems to have an
infinite reservoir of love to share with each new addition to her family. 
She doesn’t love her first child any
less
just because a second child
has come along, nor does she love her
second
child any less when a
third
one is born.  Each child is loved for his or her unique and special
qualities, and while their mother may love each in a slightly different
way
,
it is rare for a mother to love one child significantly more or less than any
other.  Do siblings often vie for their mother’s attention, and sometimes
feel shortchanged or jealous?  Of
course
they do
.
  Yet,
for the most part, these feelings rarely lead to destructive behaviors, nor do
they undermine their love for their mother, or for that matter, for
each
other
.  All things considered, most people believe that a child who
grows up with siblings reaps many intangible benefits that an only child does
not.  So why are we, as a society, programmed to believe that polyamory,
which works so elegantly for parents and children, is next to impossible in
other
kinds of loving relationships?

In the D/s lifestyle, polyamory is typically far
more prevalent than in the general population for three simple reasons. First,
a Dominant usually has far more discretion to do as he pleases than the typical
non-Dominant outside of the D/s lifestyle.  Second, the D/s lifestyle
tends to attract people who are inherently willing to swim against the tide of
social conventions.  If this were not so, they wouldn’t be in the
lifestyle in the first place.  Third, many of the people in the D/s
lifestyle participate in group activities within their local BDSM
organizations, and sometimes develop close relationships with the
playmates
they meet there.  D/s folk are no more or less likely than anyone else to
be sexual
swingers,
however the cultivation of BDSM friendships with
common kinks makes polyamory a more likely scenario.  Let us not forget,
however, that just because polyamory is relatively
common
in the D/s
lifestyle doesn’t mean that people in the lifestyle are any
better
at it
than anyone else.  It is a profoundly difficult thing to be successfully
polyamorous in
any
relationship, D/s or otherwise.

Any discussion of what polyamory
is
would not
be complete without some attention to what it
isn’t.
  First and
foremost, polyamory isn’t
promiscuity
.  Just because someone loves
more
than one person
, does not mean they love
everyone
, nor does it mean
they are willing to
have sex
with just anyone.  To be clear,
promiscuity is defined as having indiscriminate sexual relations with multiple
partners on a
casual basis
.  A polyamorous person may have multiple
sex partners, but he can be just as faithful and loving and attentive to his
two
(or three or more)
partners as a monogamous person can be to his
one.
 This faithfulness to multiple partners is called
polyfidelity
,
and a polyamorous person who practices it is called
polyfidelous
. 
Promiscuity and similar conditions, such as love or sex addiction, occur about
as often in polyamorous individuals as they do in monogamous people.

Another thing that polyamory
isn’t
, is a
value
judgment
.  Polyamory isn’t objectively good or bad, right or wrong. It
is simply a description of how
some
people think, feel, and love. 
You are either polyamorous, or you are not.  It is virtually impossible to
turn a monogamist into a polyamorist, and vice versa.  Yes, there
are
things that a person can learn that can make polyamory
easier or more viable
for someone who has polyamorous feelings, but doesn’t yet possess the skills
and knowledge to make it
work
in their relationship, but you simply
cannot turn a monogamous brain into a poly one.  Polyamory
isn’t for everyone,
and anyone who believes and preaches the notion that polyamory should be
universally practiced is just as wrong-headed as those who are moral crusaders
for monogamy.

Even for the small minority of people whose brains
are
wired
for it, being poly in a predominantly monogamous world
isn’t
easy.  Since the great majority of people in western cultures equate
polyamory with
promiscuity
,
adultery
and
cheating
, the
result is a natural tendency to shun or condemn anyone associated with or
practicing polyamory.  It is rather common, even in these supposedly
“enlightened” times, to hear people toeing the politically correct line that
“the government shouldn’t try to tell us
whom we can and can’t love
;
people should be able to marry whomever they want.”  Yet, for many, those
very same principles don’t apply
when someone wants to marry more than one
person
. 

Polygamy
is illegal in all fifty states of the United States, yet no one has ever made a
logically compelling case for why it should be so.  Even as more and more
states move to make
same-sex marriage
legal on the grounds that the
benefits of marriage should be extended to any individuals, regardless of their
gender, who wish to get married, the unspoken fine print seems to be,
“as
long as they are gay, and there are only two of them.”
  It’s truly
ironic that some of society’s most enthusiastic advocates for
social justice
,
and
tolerance of
alternate lifestyles
also happen to be the least
likely to support changes in the law that would legalize
polyamorous marriages,
or polygamy
.

Polygamy is simply
polyamory
applied to the
institution of
marriage
.  There are three types of polygamy: 
Polygyny, polyandry, and group or plural marriages. 
Polygyny
is
defined as a man having multiple wives. 
Polyandry
describes a
woman with multiple husbands. 
Group or plural marriages
are
umbrella terms used to describe any marriages or relationships resembling
marriages that have more than two partners.

Plural marriages have been around, in one form or
another, throughout human history.  About half of the over 1200 societies
listed in the
Ethnographic Atlas Codebook
have a significant incidence
of plural marriages occurring in them.  In most of those cultures, plural
marriages are relatively rare, even when accepted and legal.  In modern
times, polygamous marriages have been practiced and legally recognized in
Tibet, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, and 21 of the 22 countries that are members
of the Arab League, with Tunisia being the lone hold-out.  In Senegal, 47%
of all marriages are polygamous, while in highly-westernized South Africa, it
is not only practiced and legal, but President Jacob Zuma has four wives and
twenty-nine children.

In the United States, polygamous marriages were
practiced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the
Mormon Church) from 1832 until 1890, when it was officially renounced by the
church’s leadership and made an excommunicable offense.  Since that time,
splinter groups in the latter-day saints movement, most notably the
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have continued to
practice polygamy in isolated communities in the western United States and in
Canada.

Another experiment in polyamorous living was founded
in 1848 in New York by a group called “Christian Perfectionism” which was led
by John Humphrey Noyes.  The members of this community, called the Oneida
community, practiced a form of group marriage wherein all of the males in the
community were married to all of the females, and vice-versa -  a doctrine
which they called “
complex marriage.”
 The community thrived for
thirty-three years and, at one point, boasted over 300 members before being
disbanded in 1881.

In addition to the Mormon and Oneida experiences,
there have been other, more modern, institutional attempts at polyamorous
living in the United States.  One of those experiments was the Kerista
Commune, which existed in the San Francisco area from 1971 until 1991. 
The Kerista Commune pioneered many of the concepts and practices that are now
considered doctrinal in the polyamory lifestyle.  One of the terms coined
there was
polyfidelity,
which we defined earlier in this chapter.

Another concept developed there was the notion of
compersion
. 
A simple way to define
compersion
would be to describe it as the
opposite
of jealousy
.   Compersion is a
positive emotional reaction to
your partner’s involvement from another romantic or sexual relationship
. 
The Kerista Commune pioneered the practice of modern group marriages; however
some of their practices were controversial, even among their members, such as
assigning sleeping partners to commune members on a rotating schedule, and
discriminating against homosexuals.  After twenty years of operation, the Kerista
Commune shuttered its doors due to internal strife and legal troubles.

Today, there is still a growing polyamory movement
in the United States, and it is nowhere more robust than in the D/s
lifestyle.  The reasons for this are relatively straightforward. 
First, the sort of person who is attracted to a
lifestyle
that is
outside of the mainstream has a higher probability of having attitudes and
beliefs about
loving relationships
that are outside of the mainstream,
as well. 

Second, the D/s lifestyle is
structured to allow
polyamorous relationships to occur more easily, and with greater
frequency.  Specifically, Dominants are far more likely
to be allowed
to have multiple partners, and submissives are far less likely to forbid it,
than their vanilla counterparts in general society.  Third and finally,
the BDSM culture encourages experimentation, group activities, and casual
fetish play (which may or may not be sexual in nature) that create
opportunities for polyamorous relationships to develop.

There are, of course, many
potential
advantages
and disadvantages that come with any polyamorous relationship.  They can
be more or less applicable to any
particular
relationship, depending
upon the nature of the relationship, the number of people involved, whether or not
children are a part of the relationship, living arrangements, financial
arrangements, sexual relations, and other factors.