Conclusions: Independence and Dependence

When I first drew up the topics I wanted to write about in this series, I picked this title in lack of a better name. I am sure everyone has different definitions, so - yet again - let me provide mine before going into the detail.

Dependence is giving up my freedom of action and controlling what and when I do. It does not mean I depend on the person I submit to, but my actions depend on the instructions I am given. 


Independence is the level of freedom I have in how to execute these instructions. 


Let me give you the example of the massage. If my partner asks me to give her a massage, this is to me an order that I will follow. We will show where she wants to be massaged but It is my freedom, my independence to decide how I massage her. This independence is very important to me. It is the freedom of a submissive and it is what I wanted to test in the long precursor of the session I had when I saw a professional mistress.

Our scene started by text message instructions where I had to go and I was essentially asked to walk about 4 miles criss cross through the city. Each time I reached a location I was asked to wait further instructions. Both when walking and when waiting my mind was trying to be creative. I tried to walk a route that I was unfamiliar with, when arriving at the locations and waiting I was trying to sit or stand in a place where I would see this location in a way I had never seen it before. What I wanted to achieve is a slight feeling of control and dependence, a reminder that someone controlled me whilst trying to enjoy myself the best I could.

This is the critical bit for me. If I have any level of freedom, I want more. If I am constrained I will try to make most of it within the bounds that I have. It triggers thoughts that otherwise would not come to live, actions that I would not embark on. it makes me experiment with my mind.

Conclusions: Helplessness

I am a strong believer of what is called "Learned Helplessness". It is the theory in psychology that helplessness is the perceived absence of control over yourself. To link back to the CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and one of its key pillars the action-belief-consequence system, the belief in learned helplessness is a big support when you try to change your lifestyle.

I have in the past felt comfort in the excuse of being helpless to turn some behaviour off. Take comfort eating. You eat despite not being hungry and it is comfortable. If you feel you should lose weight, you seek comfort in perceiving the helplessness that you are unable to face the challenge. There is a vicious circle waiting to draw its fangs closer around you. If you are in such a circle and manage to break it, then you will realize that you will indeed give up a significant level of comfort that you have accepted and enjoyed over several years.

All around us there are behaviours that society and maybe some friends will try to convince us are not good for us. If we have engaged in these forms of behaviour, we have taken a comfort in them. If there is any doubt in that moment, then it helps to be helpless.

A professional mistress once described to me seeing a mistress as a 'hobby'. I felt devastated, felt I wanted to utterly disagree. If being submissive is a 'hobby', how does that relate to being gay or lesbian? The more I thought about this and reflected on the way I felt when I was truly helplessly bound, the more I realized that I'd agree.

Technically all we want to get in our life are desires. Each person has different hormonal levels and triggers for these desires and hence we are interested in different things. Some desires can be moulded and change over time (substitute tea with coffee) others are non-interchangeable and will persist throughout your life but you can refuse to act them out.

So being a submissive is a 'hobby' just as sailing is then. I might swap sailing for surfing because I learn that it triggers the same emotions, I might struggle finding a substitute for being submissive - but hey who knows.

Now society teaches me that there are many bad things about bdsm and if society fails me then there is my nervous system that might tell me pain is bad. So I am divided between the submission and all that comes with it and it being the right thing to do.

This is where helplessness comes in for me. If I wear shackles that keep me form walking more than a few inches with each step and my hands are behind my back, then I am much more helpless and much less likely to suddenly say, hang on is this really going to make things easier if I do this. That's the cycle I like about bondage and sensory deprivation. I love the emotions that it triggers, I love the feel of the leather, but I also like that if something wants to take over my mind and tell me that there is something not right here, then I cannot help it anyway.

Conclusions: Isolation

As per my previous post, I am starting this series with the topic of Isolation. I chose Isolation for a number of reasons: It is very close to my heart given my previous fantasies, it has recently featured in this post in a blog that I follow and I feel I can very much connect to that post. Last but not least, Isolation is something I have in one form or another experienced and very much enjoyed.

Definition

I feel Isolation is a poorly defined term and I also feel that thinking a bit deeper about what it can encompass is quite enlightening - particularly if your partner would not touch a padlock and leather shackle at the same time.

Isolation is often described as taking away senses. But some senses apparently can be taken away more easily then others. Just think about taking away the sense of taste. It appears difficult to take that away.

It is also frequently stated that taking one sense away makes other senses more -uhm sensitive. Again, this is somewhat superficial as I can limit a sense's sensitivity (for example by using headphones in the ears) so that the observations of that sense are just dumbed down, but they may be even more important or trigger the person's concentration on that sense. 

Let me try to approach this from an entirely different angle. Isolation is a psychological activity. The senses are not the key, it is altering the perception of the senses. Take the ABC model of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, you have the action which is registered by the senses, the belief and the consequence. The consequence is how a person reacts or perceives the action and this depends on the belief. 

Isolation is a medium to long chain of activities. It does not work in 10 seconds. So Isolation does not just affect a single action but a long chain of actions. An action can alter the belief. Now the poorer we understand an action, the more uncertainty is planted by the inputs to our belief system. 

Isolation is the continuous manipulation of a person's perception of their environment leading to an increasing loss of understanding of the environment and increased caution and distress when responding to interaction.

Just to be clear my definition is a contradiction to what;'s on Wikipedia and is purely personal. It also encompasses a wider spectrum. My definition would for example consider standing in the corner facing the wall as isolation. 

Fantasies

My fantasies on isolation have been long and deep. At a very early age, I was dreaming about being completely isolated from my environment, blacked out for long terms, not knowing or understanding anything that happened around me.

These ideas were usually connected to heavy bondage and mummification. I remember dreaming of a steel container that was perfectly matching the shape of my body for this type of scenario.

If it was only for the isolation, I also would have been very much drawn to the idea of a week in the OWK prison, asked to spend my days in a cell with no natural light and no other input to my thoughts other than having to stand during the day and be allowed to lie for 10 hours a night.

Experiences


Luckily, in real life, the world is much saner. I have learned that isolation works well for me for periods of a couple of hours as long as the setting is not painful or uncomfortable. I try to find something that I can focus on.

I have been tied in a quality body bag with a very restrictive hood for a few minutes (my estimate is 15 to 30). I was sure in that situation, that I could have easily done this for several hours. However having been tied into a cage that was too short for me to lie in was very uncomfortable and I would hope not having to endure this for any long periods. When in bondage (both in this scenario as well as when asked just to stand somewhere whilst not moving, I try to focus on maintaining an erection, having this focus point truely helps keeping my mind occupied.

I do however also consider a session where I had to walk guided by text messages isolation of some sort. It was deeply inappropriate to speak to anyone or interact with any person during this period. I was unsure what and when then next set of instructions would be sent to me. The situation was very inspiring for me. I focussed on a lot of thing I had never noticed in the same environment before. Having to identify things to occupy your mind will draw attention to small details in a way that my normal self is to preoccupied to do in every day life.

I absolutely enjoyed this and would love to experience this in a longer extended environment and maybe a more channelled way of directing my thinking.


Conclusions


As I am not planning to undertake any scenes with anyone other than my partner, I have been trying to think of suitable situations to further explore isolation. Based on my definition I am seeking situation where I have no control over the duration of the event and things that would happen around me. There should be an ongoing or better even increasing level of not understanding how the situation changes from moment to moment.

I can think of a number of ways how I can increase this helplessness in every day life. This will not change my environment moment by moment but the level of isolation will gradually increase as she is likely to claim more and more freedoms.

• I encourage and accept that my partner does not inform me of her plans for the day in many occasions. If she goes out, I may know where she is and that I am expected to pick her up or be at home, but I do not request to know how long she will be out for. If I eat at home and my partner has not eaten, I tend to get scolded.
• When watching TV I am not involved in the choice of programme. My partner loves to watch Korean and other Asian dramas where subtitles are required to follow. As I am often asked to massage her whilst she watches these programs I have no means of understanding the programmes but I have asked her that even after she is happy with the massage, She should expect me to wait on her, and not just leave the room.  
• As she is planning the day, I am wherever possible not asking for her plans. I will follow her when requested to and otherwise ensure that I can serve her and have anticipated any needs that she may have. 

Whilst I have started on the above and these are in some way already a reality, I would like to go deeper with these experiences. I am currently thinking about ways that she would arrange more proactively:

During our long distance relationship, she has often asked me not to see her on weekends where she wanted her piece and quiet. I was explicitly uninvited on such weekends for example to allow her to read the new Harry Potter. 

As we will be living together, I would love her to engineer such weekends in the future. My partner is willing to go to some length to establish her freedom and I can see her preparing a program for me for a day or weekend so she can have the house for herself. If for example I was to arrive at home on a Friday night and be asked to surrender all money and cards and then be sent to take a picture of some random - non important item some 25 miles away, having to walk there and back, I think this would be a very sensual idea. 

I also wonder if it could be possible to try something similar to a self experiment that I have tried in the past. my partner has lost a lot of love letters that I have sent her when we first dated. They were stories she loved and that I find hard to get the inspiration to rewrite anywhere near as nice. I could imagine that being isolated from her could help with this inspiration.

I can see several ways how this could work. Being tied to a chair and desk with only a pen and some paper or a laptop to write these stories would be one option. I have often dreamed in the last few months that she could send me to walk to a pub a few miles away, buy a dram and start writing a love story for her, bring it back and repeat the exercise until one day I have written one that would pass her review. 

All this centres around the insecurity of what happens next the loss of control and surrendering power. I am not so much interested in the sensory deprivation. Not because I do not like it - I do - but because unless this is what she desires, this form of isolation would not put me into a mood that I am doing this for her. 

I am not sure if I will ever find a way of convincing her of the last few ideas. They are far to drawn out to really still be interesting but if she ever get to understand me well enough to come up with similar ideas, then I think I have truely arrived at the point where I can stop thinking about these desires and let her fantasy and creativity rule my life completely. 

Conclusions: Introduction

I read the wonderful post Isolation and Confinement by Lady Anna's slave d earlier today.  I was not at all surprised about the way that fantasy turned reality was not quite as congruent as one might expect. I can follow d's thoughts very well. I doubt I have experienced the level of Isolation he described, I had similar experiences and would not expect Isolation to be as pleasurable as my old fantasy world may have assumed. (I have been at a point where I wanted to be submitted to the OWK prison and trust me if there had been an non punishment version with purely isolation and confinement I would have been there)

Whilst driving down South I had 5 hours to ponder about this blog and have decided to share some of the experiences that led me to my current way of thinking and approach to D/s and my relationship. These write ups  will be combination of conclusions from experiences with my partner, a lot or reading on and offline. Until recently though a lot of this reading had created more questions that answers. In many areas I had little if any idea what real life would be like. Three months ago I had the privilege to be allowed to session with an excellent Mistress, for essentially one day (on reflection I am glad it was not any longer).

I had long thought about such a session and probably wanted to learn more from it than I could have realistically learned in a whole month of 24/7 relationship. However I can only say that the more I think about it the expertise put into this session was tremendous and the wealth of conclusions I can draw from it has astonished me ever since.

I am planning to use all these sources for this series of write ups which I shall call "Conclusions". At the moment I think there will be about 10 segments with below topics, but the topics and order may change as I go along.

• Isolation
• Helplessness
• Independence and Dependence
• Service
• Submission and Love
• Pain
• Sexual Arousal
• Punishment
• Comfort and Discomfort
• Out of Session and in Session

I also hope that I will have the dedication to keep this blog alive long enough to comment at some point on the ways my thinking has changed over time.