Thank goodness for good friends! I’ve been struggling a bit the last day or so and managed to nearly make a bad mistake, but a good friend set me straight and I think I’m making progress. At least I see a path I can follow. This posting is going to be one of those ones that I both hope Wednesdai reads and pray she does not.

So, what have I been struggling with? Ultimately I guess, I’ve been struggling with the meanings of submission, ownership, etc. In a way, struggling with what my role is in our relationship. Don’t get me wrong, I love wearing her collar, it thrills me beyond words when she snaps the leash to it and says “Come with me, Corvan”. Where I struggle is sort of with who takes care of who in the relationship? Is it my role to look after her? Well, sort of. Is it her role to look after me? Also, yes. Who’s job is it to pay the rent? Certainly we know that she is there to protect me, to guide me, to correct me when I’m bad.

This has come up for me in a couple of different ways recently. The first is around how careful Miss is to make sure that I’m happy. On several occasions she’s asked me what I want to do, or if I want to do a particular thing. In every case I’ve said that I would like to do whatever it was she was suggesting, the fact that it was true was an advantage. What it was sounding to me, though, was like she was asking my permission, or asking me to decide, or something like that and I was having trouble with that. It seems to me that it’s her call, if she wants to go shopping, and wants my company a simple “Corvan, we’re going shopping” feels more authoritative than “Do you want to come shopping with me, Corvan?”. I sometimes want to say to her “Please Miss, just tell me what You have decided we will do. I’ll tell you one way or another if I really have a problem with it, but it’s your call”

The other topic is money. Ah gelt. Filthy lucre. Root of all evil. Let’s just lay it out first. I have a professional career, my income, while not enormous, is very comfortable. There’s a lot of things in SL that I can just buy without considering or even necessarily noticing the cost. That’s not the case for Miss. She has such dreams, a large parcel of land with a castle (she’s already got the castle), dungeon, storefront (not sure what she wishes to sell, but she said something about selling things to help meet costs). I can see how much it bothers her that she cannot just snap her fingers and it is done. It touches me, and it hurts me a little that she frets about it.

I want Miss to be happy. Happy with me, happy with life, just plain happy. It is easy for me to make this dream come true, I almost did today. I found a parcel that is exactly what she was looking for. It’s in a nice region, it’s sized to what she was considering and in a moment of ADHD I bid on it. I took her to see it this morning and she seemed to like it.

From what Walter tells me the last thing I should do though is to actually purchase it. It appears I’m getting my roles reversed, and in some ways this is my biggest struggle. Miss Wednesdai is precious to me, I want to take care of her. The problem is that taking care of her in this way is most definitely not my role, it’s hers. She’s the Owner, I’m the pet. It’s her job to put a roof over our heads, not mine. That sounds kind of cold in a way, but what I’ve come to understand is that I would be undermining her, not letting her perform her duty as the Domme and that’s something I simply cannot do.

Oh, I’m still going to buy a chunk of land, Premium members get free tier on 512m and I may as well take advantage, but I’m going to wind way the hell back on the “taking care of Wednesdai” bit. It is my job to take care of her, just not that way. A way that I can go is to show her that from my point of view the house she has now is perfectly fine, and the offer Walter made to allow her to use his land to set up her dungeon is also perfect. There’s no rush on any of this.

I realise that a lot of what I’m struggling with is inside me, not really anything to do with Miss Wed. There’s a drama professor I used to know very well named Keith Johnstone. He developed TheatreSports, “competitive” improvisation. I put competitive in quotes because in reality, the more competition, the poorer the improvisation. One of the techniques he taught is called Status. Status is how you relate to other people. It has nothing to do with money, nothing to do with social position, you can have a high status janitor or a low status CEO. It’s all how you relate to others and how they relate to you. A character carries a particular status for two reasons. First it informs how they relate to others and second it informs how others relate to them. This is referred to as endowing the character with a status. Take the CEO. I endow him with low status in the way I speak with him, the offers I make and the way I take offers from him. He cannot be low status if I do not also endow him with that status.

What I’m coming to realise is that on a number of levels D/S is the same thing. Wednesdai absolutely needs to carry herself as the Dominant. I also need to endow her with that. I need to always defer to her, be nervous about whether or not I’m fulfilling her needs, I need to anticipate her needs, and I need to not second guess her decisions. If I am truly endowing her with that Authority then that informs everything I should be doing. It gives me a direction to follow as we learn each other and as my own submission becomes second nature.

There are things already that I’m getting right. I can bring a smile to her face simply by dropping to my knees any time we’re just standing around. I’m not doing that because I’m trying to manipulate her feelings or because I know it’s a thing that subs do. I’m doing it because in those moments when we’re standing around I find that I’m feeling a tension and that tension is relieved when I kneel down. It feels like the right thing to do and I go with it.

Last night I was with Miss as she was showing a RL friend of hers around SL. At one point she was called away and needed to leave for a while. At that point I had a choice. I could stay at home waiting for her to return or I could go off to the rest of SL (most likely StoneHaven) and watch for her to come back online. Miss had not given me any instructions. My gut told me to curl up in my cage and wait for her, and that’s what I did. In an email I wrote Walter while I was there I told him that I wasn’t curled up in my cage for any particular reason, that it felt like the thing to do. His response was essentially that there was a particular reason: I’m a sub, wanting to make her happy. He further said that when something feels like the right thing to do that’s when I’m being submissive. It really struck me. It was quite a bit later that I ventured out to visit the properties that I’d found, and as I’m writing this entry I realise that my instincts were also telling me not to bid on that land. It didn’t feel quite right.

To close then, I’ve done some learning. First, I’ve learned that my instincts in general seem to be good and I need to trust them more. Second, I’ve learned that when my instincts are failing me I need to remember Status and endow Miss with being a Domme. If my instincts won’t guide me, that will. Finally, I know I’m going to screw up and I need to be a whole lot less scared of doing so. If I hurt Wednesdai’s feelings I will beat myself up far more than she ever could and that’s as it should be.

Oh, and it’s been precisely one week since she collared me. What the hell am I getting worked up over? We’re still getting to know each other, we’re both still learning how to do this, we’re still in the very beginning stages of this relationship. Relax a little, Corvan!

Related posts:

1. On Toxic People and other random thoughts
2. Thoughts on labels
3. Some thoughts after re-reading my entire blog
4. Some thoughts on submission and communication
5. Time to start the deep thoughts again…