Submissive Presence amysubmits:
As I kinda tried to get at in my post called Our Core, this stuff we’ve been going through lately has caused us to make adjustments in our D/s that we had never had to make before, but that mostly felt necessary to save time and emotional energy. Since then we’ve added my water rule back in but we aren’t back to normal. We’ve been working to find a new, temporary normal of sorts. We are trying to find a middle ground of maintaining enough D/s to keep us both feeling supported, for our relationship to feel close, and our D/s sustained without overloading or draining ourselves. We both recognize that things are tough and will remain so for a while. Neither of us are aiming for things to feel as good as they used to. We know we are going to be stressed and emotional and we are both making sacrifices. Yet we don’t want either of us to push that too far, to the point of not having our true needs met. We’ve had some difficult yet important discussions when that balance has been off. It’s helped us to see what the very most important, most crucial aspects of D/s are for us both. Something I’ve come to recognize through that process is that submissive presence is a thing. It wasn’t something we ever thought about or talked about before, but I’ve recently become conscious of it because I realized it’s something @cynicaldom really needs from me. We recognized the importance of dominant presence a couple of years ago, as was discussed in the comments on CD’s post titled attention. Because our D/s is mostly obedience based, my submissive presence isn’t quite the same as CD’s dominant presence as we discussed in that post. CD doesn’t need me to try to guess or assume his needs. He is fine with telling me what he wants from me or giving instructions when he wants something from me. However, I am kind of a turtle. If I feel that life is shaky, my instinct is to snap my limbs into my shell for protection, yet I don’t fully shut down, I manage to keep walking along. I’ve done this my entire life, as far as I can recall. I think I am quite good at functioning in a way that looks pretty normal to most other people. I can wear an invisible turtle shell of sorts while going about life. But CD knows me better than anyone, and he feels the shell even though it cannot be seen. I can do the same chores with an open heart or a guarded heart, but he can feel the difference. When I am open, my submission feeds his dominance in a big way. When I am guarded in my submission he still appreciates the obedience, but it’s not the same. Guarded submission is not as good at building him up as when I an emotionally naked, looking him in the eye and being emotionally present in the moment as I serve. Another part of submissive presence is being conscious in my submission to avoid resisting him. When I’m in my shell, it’s easy to look past or reject things that don’t particularly appeal to me. I become so focused on my own feelings, that I can lose touch with the fact that I am supposed to be open to what CD wants even if it’s not what I want. Part of what made me realize he needs my submissive presence was when I instinctively was resisting what he wanted and it caused some tension. It became clear through talking to him after the fact, that he was right. Per the D/s hierarchy, I shouldn’t have resisted him when it was a want because his wants come before mine. I had just acted instinctively because I was self-focused in my shell. In working through what happened, I asked him to tell me how he felt and among other things, he said ‘challenged’. That hit me in the chest and that word has stuck with me. I didn’t like what he wanted, so I resisted and that made him feel challenged. Knowing that I made him feel challenged was pretty heavy. It felt like failure. Struggling for power isn’t supposed to have a place in our relationship. So I got thinking about what I needed to do to avoid repeating that, and I thought the main answer was to be more conscious of what I’m choosing to do. I know that my wants come second so if I had thought ‘do I have good reason to resist this?” I would have realized no, and I wouldn’t have resisted. One of my new goals is to be more present by being more conscious in how I respond to him. If I instinctively want to resist, just asking myself if I need to based on moral, practical or consent reasons or whether I’m just not wanting to do something. I realized I had been walking around with my invisible shell and focusing only on my own emotions for quite a while. In part, I have a lot of big emotions and I need time and space to process them and I think that is extremely reasonable given the circumstances. I know CD finds it reasonable too. But I had been so stuck in my head and my own shell for a while that he stopped seeing really, truly seen by me. That is unacceptable to me because he is my person and I want to regularly remind him of how much he means to me, not just with words but in ways that he can really truly absorb it. I’ve learned that he needs me to be 100% emotionally and mentally present with him more often than I had been in order to absorb those feelings from me. So I’ve tried to dig deep and be more conscious in my interactions with CD. I have been working on intentionally ignoring any stray thoughts about other aspects of life when we are talking or cuddling or interacting in any way. I’ve tried not to linger at looking at any sort of screen if he starts speaking, I turn to look at him right away. If he and I are spending time together I try to think of nothing but what is happening in that moment. I’ve been trying to stop and question myself to make sure I have good reason when I find myself wanting to question him or resist his instructions. It seems to me that he’s back to being able to fully absorb the love, appreciation and admiration that I feel for him. I am focused only on him when we interact, so he absorbs more from me because my interactions with him show him that he is my only priority in that moment, as he should be. This dedicated attention refills him because it shows him admiration, love and respect in a very obvious way and he needs a lot of that from me as his girl. Like so many other elements of our D/s, it isn’t just a single layer benefit, either. It is often better for me when I shut out those other worries and intentionally stay present. Having that focus in the present moment gives me more room to breathe and makes me feel less stressed, and I can absorb more positive feelings from our interactions, too. When I behave in ways that allow him to absorb more admiration and respect, that refills him - and then he is able to give more back to me, and the exchange continues back and forth, benefiting us both in multiple ways.
As I kinda tried to get at in my post called Our Core, this stuff we’ve been going through lately has caused us to make adjustments in our D/s that we had never had to make before, but that mostly felt necessary to save time and emotional energy. Since then we’ve added my water rule back in but we aren’t back to normal. We’ve been working to find a new, temporary normal of sorts. We are trying to find a middle ground of maintaining enough D/s to keep us both feeling supported, for our relationship to feel close, and our D/s sustained without overloading or draining ourselves. We both recognize that things are tough and will remain so for a while. Neither of us are aiming for things to feel as good as they used to. We know we are going to be stressed and emotional and we are both making sacrifices. Yet we don’t want either of us to push that too far, to the point of not having our true needs met. We’ve had some difficult yet important discussions when that balance has been off. It’s helped us to see what the very most important, most crucial aspects of D/s are for us both. Something I’ve come to recognize through that process is that submissive presence is a thing. It wasn’t something we ever thought about or talked about before, but I’ve recently become conscious of it because I realized it’s something @cynicaldom really needs from me. We recognized the importance of dominant presence a couple of years ago, as was discussed in the comments on CD’s post titled attention. Because our D/s is mostly obedience based, my submissive presence isn’t quite the same as CD’s dominant presence as we discussed in that post. CD doesn’t need me to try to guess or assume his needs. He is fine with telling me what he wants from me or giving instructions when he wants something from me. However, I am kind of a turtle. If I feel that life is shaky, my instinct is to snap my limbs into my shell for protection, yet I don’t fully shut down, I manage to keep walking along. I’ve done this my entire life, as far as I can recall. I think I am quite good at functioning in a way that looks pretty normal to most other people. I can wear an invisible turtle shell of sorts while going about life. But CD knows me better than anyone, and he feels the shell even though it cannot be seen. I can do the same chores with an open heart or a guarded heart, but he can feel the difference. When I am open, my submission feeds his dominance in a big way. When I am guarded in my submission he still appreciates the obedience, but it’s not the same. Guarded submission is not as good at building him up as when I an emotionally naked, looking him in the eye and being emotionally present in the moment as I serve. Another part of submissive presence is being conscious in my submission to avoid resisting him. When I’m in my shell, it’s easy to look past or reject things that don’t particularly appeal to me. I become so focused on my own feelings, that I can lose touch with the fact that I am supposed to be open to what CD wants even if it’s not what I want. Part of what made me realize he needs my submissive presence was when I instinctively was resisting what he wanted and it caused some tension. It became clear through talking to him after the fact, that he was right. Per the D/s hierarchy, I shouldn’t have resisted him when it was a want because his wants come before mine. I had just acted instinctively because I was self-focused in my shell. In working through what happened, I asked him to tell me how he felt and among other things, he said ‘challenged’. That hit me in the chest and that word has stuck with me. I didn’t like what he wanted, so I resisted and that made him feel challenged. Knowing that I made him feel challenged was pretty heavy. It felt like failure. Struggling for power isn’t supposed to have a place in our relationship. So I got thinking about what I needed to do to avoid repeating that, and I thought the main answer was to be more conscious of what I’m choosing to do. I know that my wants come second so if I had thought ‘do I have good reason to resist this?” I would have realized no, and I wouldn’t have resisted. One of my new goals is to be more present by being more conscious in how I respond to him. If I instinctively want to resist, just asking myself if I need to based on moral, practical or consent reasons or whether I’m just not wanting to do something. I realized I had been walking around with my invisible shell and focusing only on my own emotions for quite a while. In part, I have a lot of big emotions and I need time and space to process them and I think that is extremely reasonable given the circumstances. I know CD finds it reasonable too. But I had been so stuck in my head and my own shell for a while that he stopped seeing really, truly seen by me. That is unacceptable to me because he is my person and I want to regularly remind him of how much he means to me, not just with words but in ways that he can really truly absorb it. I’ve learned that he needs me to be 100% emotionally and mentally present with him more often than I had been in order to absorb those feelings from me. So I’ve tried to dig deep and be more conscious in my interactions with CD. I have been working on intentionally ignoring any stray thoughts about other aspects of life when we are talking or cuddling or interacting in any way. I’ve tried not to linger at looking at any sort of screen if he starts speaking, I turn to look at him right away. If he and I are spending time together I try to think of nothing but what is happening in that moment. I’ve been trying to stop and question myself to make sure I have good reason when I find myself wanting to question him or resist his instructions. It seems to me that he’s back to being able to fully absorb the love, appreciation and admiration that I feel for him. I am focused only on him when we interact, so he absorbs more from me because my interactions with him show him that he is my only priority in that moment, as he should be. This dedicated attention refills him because it shows him admiration, love and respect in a very obvious way and he needs a lot of that from me as his girl. Like so many other elements of our D/s, it isn’t just a single layer benefit, either. It is often better for me when I shut out those other worries and intentionally stay present. Having that focus in the present moment gives me more room to breathe and makes me feel less stressed, and I can absorb more positive feelings from our interactions, too. When I behave in ways that allow him to absorb more admiration and respect, that refills him - and then he is able to give more back to me, and the exchange continues back and forth, benefiting us both in multiple ways.