Thoughts on the Submissive’s Pleasure

This essay by Shun­y­ata is used on the Old Tom Archive with permission.

Thoughts on the submissive’s plea­sure in sex­ual servitude

by Shun­y­ata

There was a news­group dis­cus­sion about sex­ual servi­tude, and where the submissive’s plea­sure comes from. One per­son stated that the sole source of plea­sure should come from the knowl­edge that his or her Master/Mistress’s plea­sur­ing has been accom­plished, and that they have per­formed their duty well.

I agree with Shunyata’s response, repro­duced below.

I would say that it gives me my great­est plea­sure, my deep­est plea­sure, per­haps the one plea­sure that is most impor­tant to me spir­i­tu­ally and emo­tion­ally; but it is by no means my sole source of plea­sure. I’m a very tra­di­tional man in a lot of ways, with a lot of self-​​esteem, and I’m a roman­tic. I need lots of old-​​fashioned give-​​and-​​take in a rela­tion­ship. I need to be able to argue (respect­fully, of course), I need to be able to be force­ful, and I need to get my way some­times. I need to be told I’m spe­cial some­times, and asked for my opin­ion or my pref­er­ence (I don’t nec­es­sar­ily need my pref­er­ence to be hon­ored, but I do need to know that my owner cares enough to con­sider it some­times). I’m human, not some machine or char­ac­ter in a story.

And, quite frankly, I need to know that my owner respects me and val­ues me highly enough that she is mak­ing her own efforts to please me. O.K., granted, per­haps the most cru­cial way she can do that is by being strict with me and demand­ing that I please her, and mak­ing it clear that I’ll be pun­ished should I not do so, but still… I need to know that she is try­ing as hard as she can to be as good a mis­tress for me as I’m try­ing to be a good slave for her. That sort of cir­cu­lar­ity is how real rela­tion­ships gen­er­ally work best, be they D/​s or otherwise.

I shift a lit­tle in my chair when I read about such one-​​sided philoso­phies. That may well work for some peo­ple, but in my expe­ri­ence, it cre­ates a dan­ger­ously unbal­anced struc­ture, erected upon a flawed foun­da­tion of unre­al­is­tic assump­tions and poorly-​​considered expec­ta­tions. Slaves are peo­ple too, with human needs and human moti­va­tions. You can deny that for awhile, but the longer you do, the more you’re gonna get crushed when it finally catches up with you.

Be well, everyone

Shun­y­ata

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