Respect
The Three Corner Stones of a BDSM Relationship
I have come to the conclusion that relationships in our lifestyle are built on three main points. They are honor, respect, and trust. Without all three the relationship they, like a tripod stool, become unstable and can crash.
Honor is what You show of Yourself to others. It is what you are. By word and deed you establish how others see You and treat You. It is something that takes a long time to establish with careful inner searching into what You are inside Yourself. It can take many years and hard work to build up one’s honor….to have one’s word taken as gospel. The slightest smirk will damage One’s honor and precious time must be taken to rebuild it,if it is even possible to do so. For a sub to cause dishonor to her Dom is a great sin and should be avoided at all costs. Hence the need for a sub to always be aware how Others regard her actions and deeds for they show not only what she is but also shows what her Dom is like. He is the one that taught her and she acts according to His teachings. Bad behavior could be construed to poor teaching and loss of honor.
Honor is being good to our word, accepting and living high moral standards, knowing the easy road is rarely the best, never taking advantage of anyone else,and much more. We make our own honor codes to live by. How honorable a person is defines how safe others feel around them. You can not buy honor, bribe for honor, exchange gifts for it…it is earned and earned the hard way.When all is said and done, honor is all we have left. Destroy it and it rarely returns.
Respect is what you give others. How you treat them in a day to day fashion. It is one of the main stays of our lifestyle, creating the elegant way of life we have chosen. Great care must be given taken so we show no disrespect to others in word or deed. We show respect to others we meet as course. They then either increase the respect we feel toward them or they destroy it by what they say, do, how they treat others, and a multitude of other actions.
This is where i fell way short. i did not take the time to consider what i was doing and how Others would see my antics. I meant no disrespect, but that is not how Others would see it. What i meant and what They saw are two completely different things. And in the long run it is what they saw that will win out, not what i meant. It is how Others view my actions if whether i am being respectful or not. This means i have to take greater care to ensure that my actions, words, and deeds are never to such an extreme that Others can view it as being disrespectful.
Trust is the last leg of the tripod of relationships. It is knowing that a person acts according to Your wishes when even not near You. It means the faith a sub places in her Dom every time she is under His hand, feels the lash, is tied up, blindfolded, and much more. Truth is also woven in here. The truth about why did something and what we did. Not only to my Doms, but also to myself. There is a never ending soul searching that all subs and most Doms do all T/their lives. To keep learning about themselves, and understanding why we do what we do. When we stop learning and searching, we stop being good Doms and subs. Only by looking at ourselves without colored glasses will we ever be able to find any inner peace.
There are many more elements that make up a BDSM relationship but those three are for me the main parts. They are inter-related to each other and cannot be completely separated. Honor, respect, and trust make the main stays of a relationship. i have expanded on them some since i originally wrote this essay. but i find it hard to expand, to write more, to say what i see as obvious elements. Maybe by just touching on the edge you will start thinking and understanding. Maybe that is the true purpose of this writing.