TES<\/a> had done, and discussing how hard they can be in the community]<\/em><\/p>\nI agree entirely. Dealing with, and accepting, when someone has decided to move on without you is one of the most challenging problems humans deal with.<\/p>\n
Honestly? I think it is one of the FEW things that might legitimately be harder in some BDSM structures than in most vanilla ones. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I’m not saying we HURT more – just that maybe the feeling of betrayal is stronger.<\/p>\n
If you’re a submissive, especially in a relationship that tends to “absolute” styles then imagine the rejection – you’re willing to possibly LITERALLY die for this person – and that isn’t good enough to keep them. That bites.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re a dominant… especially if your concept of a collar includes and implies “ownership” then you have presumably spent some time living in a relationship where your control over this person – and there devotion to you – was very strong. This is a person who would let you cut them, control there actions and maybe engage in edge play that may result in their injury or death.<\/p>\n
How much does it SUCK when someone who once would let you hold their life in your hand is now looking at you from across the room and you have NO POWER at all. To go, figuratively, from godhood to village idiot.<\/p>\n
I’ll tell you from my own experience. It sucks bowling balls through a hamster.<\/p>\n
If you’re not very controlled, if your not completely willing to accept that this failing and failure was probably your own doing then you will get very angry… and then you will get vengeful… and then you tend to get stupid. If you’ve already got impulse control problems then you tend to go from stupid to threatening and potentially violent.<\/p>\n
Of course, that isn\u2019t impressive… your lack of control and anger makes you seem even LESS like someone worth serving – and now your one time worshiper looks at you like they can’t figure out why they EVER thought kneeling at your feet made sense. <\/p>\n
Repeat as necessary till you’re an idiot and they hate you.<\/p>\n
I have dealt with this at times myself. I had control. I had power. I lost my grip, failing to be what I should be and what I can be, in so doing I lost much of my power. Always the right way to handle it is something to consider. I could be a dick about it. I could get all bent about it. I could blame everything and everyone on earth except myself. I could wrack my brain for offenses and try and come up with something so I had some righteous venting for my anger and a vehicle for my revenge. I did none of those things. The reason? Because the slip in my control indicated a genuine failure on my part. >I< fucked up. >I< was not strong enough, inspiring enough and powerful enough to keep what I had won. I am always working to improve. Instead of railing against the heavens screaming “why me” or pointing fingers at the crowd. I looked into the mirror at myself and said “are you all you can be?” and the answer is no. So I am fixing myself. In other circumstances I might >not< fix it. For instance, if someone who I owned felt they could no longer serve me because they were now in a place where their service was inspired by say a gay bodybuilder, I would bid them farewell and go on with my life. I have no interest in becoming what they desired. <\/p>\n
[talking to friends]<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n
This is always a good idea \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
[don’t let hurt run your actions]<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n
Also fine advice. Yet, so often in break ups this is not compatible with #1. We live in a society that is in love with the cult of victimization. No one ever “leaves” you – these days they betray you. They never change, they must have been lying all along. And sometimes, good friends will try and help you by supporting you in your anger – even if that anger is a delusion. I am lucky, my friends are brutally honest with me. If I were to turn to someone and say “he\/she never meant what they said to me” they would look at me and go “you know better than that”.<\/p>\n
[no Fatal Attraction action]<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n
*sigh* Yet so often we see exactly this. Again, our culture is in love with the romance of how hurt people can be. Relationship pain drives people to therapy, robs them of personal responsibility and is a excuse years later for all manner of perceived failings – breaks ups are assumed to leave buried “land mines” that will later erupt.<\/p>\n
How often do we see people, especially in the smaller fringe communities (like BDSM) try and wedge personal relationship anger into some sort of community problem? Threatening people with the ruin of their job by exposure, or attempting to blacklist them inside the group. <\/p>\n
Think of the BDSM break ups you know of – how many of them have ended with someone accusing the other of “abuse”? How often has the aftermath included whispers of who is or isn’t a good partner or who is or isn\u2019t safe, or sane. Our small community relies to a degree on trust and reputation… this makes us vulnerable to the sort of incestuous hatred and blackballing that breaks ups so commonly lead to – the injured party has so many weapons. <\/p>\n
In the vanilla world of course it’s almost always money. Money is the big weapon in a place that is not really susceptible to an “SSC” attack. I have seen wounded ex lovers do the most appalling, hate driven acts of vengeance in the name of recovering money – either legitimately owed or imagined. <\/p>\n
I have seen people stalked, harassed, threatened and assaulted physically because they owed some ex lover some trivial sum. I have seen the collection of that sum taken to degrees of absurdity. <\/p>\n
Obviously if someone owes you money you have a right to it – but I think the RIGHT venue for that if you have a legitimate problem is small claims court… not a parking lot or a series of harassing phone calls or petty vandalism. <\/p>\n
But of course that will NEVER be the popular method of dealing with this. Because you see the MONEY is not the point, and it never was. The POINT is to try and FORCE them to “deal with you” or “talk to you” or “meet with you”. If you can find a way to press for the collection of a debt you can in your own mind use social (and literal) force if necessary to get what many ex lovers so desperately want… <\/p>\n
One more chance to make their case, state their points, force an apology or maybe just cast their last stones. <\/p>\n
They won’t get that in court. So they don\u2019t go to court. Who wants the money when you can use the debt to make endless phone calls to someone at work? Imagine all the opportunities to confront them face to face about this “issue” at social events or in parking lots! <\/p>\n
For many, money arguments are the last lever they will ever have – and they will use it to strike deep. Think about it, when you handle it “correctly” then you don\u2019t get to force social interaction… something the break up means you no longer have the right to demand. <\/p>\n
This manipulation is easily recognized. The pattern is common. A break up, some number is named as a debt (real or imagined) and often for the sake of escape agreed to. Now, if this was the business transaction it is claimed to be, a schedule of payment would be arranged and then no further contact is needed unless there is a breech – at which time small claims court beckons. <\/p>\n
But >NO<. That won\u2019t do! Where is the drama in that? Much better to demand payment “right now!” or “next paycheck” or something similar. No arrangements are made – simply a string of ever more shrill demands… usually impossible to meet. And when they are NOT met (and they could not be) then the phone calls and confrontations can start immediately. Offers of eliminating the debt can be made in exchange for a chance to “work it out” or threats of increasing the harassment can be made if they don’t “try and co-operate”. <\/p>\n
Ah, the pathetically predictable drama of it all. <\/p>\n
[seek closure]<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n
I don’t always by this. Or rather, closure is something that comes from inside. You don\u2019t get to force a last meeting or confrontation so YOU can feel like you had “closure”.<\/p>\n
[handle loose ends ASAP]<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n
This too I agree with. The operative concept is “as soon as >possible<“. When I divorced my wife we BOTH could have made each others lives a living hell of demands (she was using several computers of ‘mine’ and I had a car that was in her name). Rather, we made our agreement asap, but the settlement of the properties themselves took a fairly long time.<\/p>\n
It is NOT an excuse to stalk someone, harass them and bang on their door at 2:00am simply so you can get your prized copy of “Dark Side of the Moon” back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently on a mailing list the topic of bad endings to BDSM relationships came up. I am particularly aware of this issue because of some of the things happening with Flagg these days, so I responded to the topic. Since I can’t reproduce text that isn’t mine, I’ll only be able to put part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":53180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[278],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51016"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}