Serving

Serving

One of the most overlooked aspects of a long-term D/s full-time relationship is the orientation of the partners within the relationship toward each other. D/s relationships tend to be very intimately involved and often present unique and complex issues. The majority of a couple's relationship exists outside of the 'play arena' or 'scening'. Living within the structure of D/s outside of the scene is quite often much more difficult than anything else in BDSM.

It is relatively easy to 'be' Dominant or submissive in short spells where the focus tends to be toward pleasure, scening, and brief weekends of 'role playing' the relationship. It is much harder to extend those roles into every aspect of your daily life. Rules of conduct that seem so necessary in short-term affairs can quickly become non-functional when the necessity of 'altering' or shifting roles occurs within a full-time relationship. The simple fact is that rules limit. You may see some real 'apparent' benefits to having these limitations, at least in the beginning. It looks and 'feels' like a D/s relationship. Everything nicely compartmentalized. One person on top is responsible for ALL the decisions, and one person on the bottom is responsible for accepting all the decisions. Only...unless you are with someone 24 hours out of every day and unless your submissive has no opinions about their life, wants, and needs at all...then, this simply doesn't work. Relationships do not exist in a vacuum. Life is in constant change, can and often does require spontaneous decisions, and demands a level of flexibility to move through the chaos with some level of dignity and hopefully happiness.

Rules created to foster rituals of respect or limit the mental freedom of another person usually end up constraining the creator of them. What is less obvious is that each of those rules takes maintenance. Should a rule exist that is 'temporarily' suspended for some ongoing real-life issue or problem, then that rule is demonstrating a failure or rigidity. If life changes (as it always does), requiring partners to share their responsibilities differently, then enforcing these rules can become not only impossible but totally impractical. Rules that are present but not enforced are meaningless; sporadic enforcement will elicit feelings of contempt, frustration, and disrespect. In general, the fewer the rules, the better. Utilizing the full potential of your partner's abilities without feeling challenged or personally threatened by their personal power is essential. If you control out of fear of strength, then at some point you will choke off a majority of the 'good things' that exist between you.

We talk a lot about trust relating to scening; however, trusting the 'choices' of your partner is even more critical. Respect moves both ways within a D/s relationship. Fear of allowing your partner to make choices can cause your partner to lose respect for you, or they may become ego-damaged with heightened sensitivity to failure. In either case, your partner will not perform to their capacity; a part of their energy will be eaten up in maintaining the knowledge that you fundamentally distrust them, which is another form of disrespect.

With a healthy relationship, each partner will have an awareness of the other; they will essentially be oriented toward aiding, assisting, lifting, propelling, or otherwise making life better for their partner. There is a fundamental truth that by making your partner stronger, you make the relationship stronger. You are actively demonstrating both trust and respect, which builds that strength. The delegation of power is a demonstration of strength. Expressing respect through trust is enormously important!

Many people appear to believe that strength encourages conflict, and through that belief, develop a concept that 'strength' should be broken; the reverse is actually true. If both people believe that they are working with and for each other, then the need to be 'visible' by argument, challenge, or otherwise confronting their partner will diminish. Conflict generally occurs when one person feels devalued, not adequately trusted or respected, or simply ignored! It can also occur when either partner feels 'threatened'.

Control through intimidation or fear leads only to misery, abuse, feelings of extreme negativity, and eventually brings devastation to whatever relationship continues to exist. We can be 'afraid' of many things: afraid our partner will cheat on us, afraid they will make bad decisions, afraid they will hurt us, afraid they will leave us. All of these types of fear can create great personal insecurity, which can be expressed outward by manifestations of 'lack of trust'. Often, issues, events, or problems are 'created' through expressions of fear. People literally create the very thing they are afraid of. You have to set aside fear.

Control is the voluntary cooperation of two people within a relationship. Increasing or enhancing the desire to voluntarily cooperate is at the heart of building a long-term 24/7 relationship. We encourage this cooperation by honoring, respecting, trusting, desiring, and caring for our partners. By 'expressing' positives, encouragement, approval, and general agreement, our energy is directed toward building or creating.

If either partner is focused on 'their personal needs' or is overly attentive to the play or scening aspects of BDSM, then working through the often mundane challenges of daily life will be done with a strong lack of enthusiasm, which their partner will inevitably sense. This lack of commitment to the core of D/s (which is serving the needs of someone else) almost always results in fractured relationships. Many such people will create situations of conflict to escape the mundanities and force their partner into inappropriate scening; again, their interest is in filling their own need, not in fostering a unified, long-term, mutually pleasurable relationship.

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Archivist Note: Email links (steeibtrfl@aol.com, steelbfl@sonic.net) are no longer valid and have been omitted from this archive. The bookstore link was for a heritage site that is no longer active and has been omitted from this archive. OP's works were not found on the successor live site. Also, the discussion group on Yahoo Groups is no longer available and was not found on archive.org.

To purchase books by the OP, please search your preferred bookseller by title or by the OP's noms de plume: "Mistress Steel" and "F.R.R. Mallory".

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Also found May 2026 https://web.archive.org/web/20010418140439/http://www.steel-door.com/serving.htm.