Single in the Scene Part V: The Truth about Singlehood

This is kinda pithy, so please hang in there!

In this series thus far, I’ve done my absolute best to keep it positive. Maybe in some ways, I’ve managed to gloss over the ‘truth of singlehood’ of a slave, which in a way slightly misses the mark of my desire which is to help those slaves who aren’t owned navigate the waters of their singleness. In a previous post, A Slave’s Longing – Not Quite a Frenzy, I spoke of the longing and yearning a slave may feel while she is not owned, but not in the greatest of detail. At the time of writing that piece, I was in those throes of deep, deep, deep, deep, yearning, but yet, I wanted to maintain hope and positivity in the writing. Maybe that’s a bit of a disservice because it doesn’t give the full picture, just the tightly managed picture of the moment. And honestly, I think that sometimes the ‘managed picture’ can simply be the chosen façade that we put forth. Though I will still maintain that the time we’re not owned has a purpose that it would behoove us to strive to take advantage of, it is still very precious time.

So, just what is the truth about singlehood? There’s a downright ugly side to it, especially when the slave has been ‘alone’ for a long period of time. That has been my situation. Whew… Breathe with me, for I’m about to share some things that people either don’t think really happens or are afraid to admit to happening … ~ deep deeeeeep inhalation~

As of this summer, I will have been a part of the Lifestyle community for roughly 15 years. In all of these years, I’ve never been collared in any way whatsoever. No training collar, no collar of consideration, no collar of protection – just me and my bare neck. Now, initially, that wasn’t a problem. I didn’t identify as a slave, and couldn’t really grasp the concept of being a submissive because I wasn’t really ‘submissive’. I expressed myself as a bottom/masochist more than anything else. So, for many years, I was adrift, just having experiences (mostly not), not sure about D/s or M/s relationships, and I kept trying to be ‘normal’ and keep my mind open to vanilla relationships (totally a losing battle). This isn’t to say that I didn’t want to be partnered in some way, but I just didn’t know how that partnering would/should look for me, so I left myself open.

That didn’t really work for me. Because the deep yearning that had pretty much always been with me since I was really young would crop up, I wasn’t content in where I was. The yearning kept coming so much so that I couldn’t deny it any longer, thus began my official journey into power exchange relationships and eventually into my acceptance of my slave path.

Now, in all of these years, I’ve seen slaves that it took no time (relatively speaking) to find the right Master for them. I’ve seen slaves kiss a lot of frogs. I’ve seen slaves at any given point in their journey – just starting out or well into a wonderful TPE (total power exchange). What people don’t really talk about is that the longer the slave goes without ‘home’, there’s something that happens to her, to her heart and hope, and it’s not always pretty. Now, I have to speak mostly from my own experience, because like I said, people don’t really talk about the deep truth of what some slaves go through. So this is my exposé on the matter.

Over time and if she admits to the depth of her ‘need’, it’s probable that the slave will experience a few different emotions in regard singlehood. Emotions such as the following:

• Jealousy, envy, covetous thoughts/feelings/behavior
• Melancholy
• Loss of hope
• Bitterness
• Anger
• Disappear
• Loneliness
• Feeling neglected
• Feeling a lack of worth
• Feeling of brokenness

Now, some readers may say this is a really drastic list of emotions and it’s not possible that a person actually feels any or all of these things simply because a slave doesn’t have a Master. And I would wholeheartedly disagree. And here’s why, in A Slave’s Longing – Not Quite a Frenzy I say:

A slave is going to yearn to be covered by an Owner/Master. There’s no way around it. S/he will feel the deepest desire to surrender everything, to serve, to be molded, to worship, to adore, to live unfettered in the presence of an Owner that has yet to arrive. It’s not that the slave is not whole, or even ‘complete’ as is, even in their aloneness. It’s that without the Master, the slave doesn’t reach her fullest potential. It’s like a fruit that never ripens and becomes sweet enough to enjoy. Part of that yearning is for the ripening that being owned brings about. Without it, a slave may  feel incomplete. There’s no proclamation of, “You’re mine,” to take the slave’s development to a new level. It’s like seeing all of the roads ahead, all of this beautiful land to travel, yet there’s an invisible force-field that impedes further journeying .

This is why many or any one of these negative emotional expressions can and often times will bubble up in the slave not yet owned. And yes, I’ve experienced some of them myself!

That may come as a surprise to some of those close to me. But I’m just simply taking this opportunity, to be honest and open in hopes that it will help someone else. One of the major reasons I’m doing this is so that other slaves who experience any of this can see that they aren’t alone with these feelings. Secondly, I want these slaves to have hope and understand that these emotions – though they may threaten to undo them, will not. I’ve not been undone!! That’s something to smile about by the way.

Any of these feelings are present when in our minds we utter something like, “How in the hell did that chick get a Master, and I’m sitting here by my damn self?” Or when we refuse to be around our owned friends because…well…they’re owned and more than likely, there will be plenty of talk about “Master,” because hey, a happy slave will sing the praises of her Master incessantly. Those times that we decline to go to an event because our slave friends and associates will be there with their Masters, and there we are once again ‘the third wheel’, the ‘poor unowned slave girl’… Maybe that anger comes up when someone, in an effort to be positive, gives us advice about being patient in waiting for the right Master; or says how beautiful we are and if they were a Master (because slaves will say this in a heartbeat lol) they’d be proud to own us. Probably the worse of any of those emotions listed is that of feeling broken. I say that because when one feels broken, that seems to be the entry into just about any or all of the others listed. And heaven knows, it doesn’t feel good at all.

I can’t count the times when I’ve had to just zero out; the times I’ve shed tears because of the emotional space I’d been in while in the throes of longing. I can’t count the times that I thought and believed that maybe I was just too damaged and broken beyond repair to be owned. There have been times when I doubted my worth; no matter how much I’ve learned, no matter how much I’ve prepared myself, no matter the internal work that I’ve done – the fact remained (in my mind) that I had not been seen as ‘good enough’ to be owned because my neck remains unadorned.

So, what helps to bring me out of these mental/emotional spaces? An injection of rational thinking and honesty. Rational thinking leads me to be more objective. As valuable as our emotions are, we can get carried away with them if we aren’t careful, and honestly, most of us do. I don’t subscribe to the thought that we should give into our emotions, especially when they are negative expressions as listed above. Being objective allows us to disengage from the emotional rollercoaster, this is so very important. In separating ourselves just a bit, we’re able to gain a foothold and begin the process of grounding and centering.

Inserting some rationalism allows us to also see the fuller picture of our situations. If I’m honest with myself, I can see that I’ve not chosen well for previous relationships. I didn’t choose well because I believed things that weren’t true of me, primarily. Also, if I’m honest with myself, I’ll admit that I waffled because of fear of fully surrendering myself to a Master. You see, in fully surrendering to the right Master for me, there’s no part of me that I will be able to hide or retreat into. As wonderful as those who care for me are, most have no clue about some of my quirks, mental workings, and what I consider my shortcomings. Not to mention I have an uncanny ability to self-sabotage, over-do, and over-think my way out of peaceful opportunities in classic southern belle melodramatic fashion! These are the things I wouldn’t be able to hide from my Master. I couldn’t pick a comfort zone and stick to it. No, if he’s worth his weight in gold, he wouldn’t allow such. When I face my own singleness from this perspective, then I have something that I can actually work with and on. So you see if for no other reasons than these, this is why singlehood is precious time. It allows us the space and time needed to do some truly liberating internal work for those of us needing to lighten the load of our baggage. This isn’t to say any of us will be perfect when we’re graced with the presence of our Master. Nah, far from it! But it is to say that we are that much better equipped to begin the enslavement process because we’ve made more of our inner world available for the Master’s process. Win-win!!

Lots of love, blyss

This series is written from the perspective that being single in the Lifestyle affords one the opportunity to do some soul-searching, learning, and defining in order to be better equipped to transition into a suitable and desirable relationship in due time. Other parts of the series are as follows:

• Boundaries
• Service
• Slave Resume
• Petitioning