This is a guest post by Dolly.
My wanderings into BDSM and Dom/subspace started a few years ago with my partner, initially as a within-bedroom-limits play. In a whirlwind of exploration, delicious pain, laughter and the most deviant of confessions, we now find ourselves in a 24/7 Dom/sub relationship. As rewarding, grounding and indulgent as this is, there are responsibilities and balances that need to be kept in check for our ownership to be properly fulfilled. One of these challenges is navigating the clashes between expressing ownership, play and kink, and the ins and outs of daily life.
However committed and passionate you may be about your Dom/sub relationship, making time for your kink among the cold, harsh realities of daily living is a continuous and often difficult balance. Trying to include a spanking in the midst of doing the laundry and that pile of washing up you've been putting off, for example, can be a struggle; even for the most creative sexual deviants. The further downside of this can be that play, when aware of its neglect, can begin to feel like another chore; that other thing you will get round to along with paying the credit card bill and taking the dog for a walk (just don’t mix up your pet and Pet leashes!)
Mistress and I recently worked our way through a restless conversation about our neglect of kink as the anti-fetish walls of real life have gradually been closing in around us. Between work commitments, keeping the house at least partially clean, watching the bank balance and finding the privacy to play as fully as we’d like whilst living with friends (that’s a whole different story), it’s been a long few weeks of stressful days and exhausted nights. My submission to Mistress remains in its beautiful small gestures – obediently knelt at Her feet with a cup of tea first thing in the morning, knowing my place at the end of the bed – but at times where we’re both stretched too thin, my need for dominance and deference is stronger, whilst Her understandable exhaustion takes precedent, and we both end up agitated, wanting and lacking our treasured kink.
I do not doubt how exhausting it must be sometimes to be Dominant, and whilst it has its challenges I willfully admit submission is, on the whole, a much simpler landscape to navigate. So, a few nights ago, I embarked on discussing our way out of this restlessness with Mistress. Exasperated with how few hours there were in our day, we talked ourselves round and round, venting about our various stresses and ultimately debating why we couldn’t just parade in full latex and lace in the living room? I mean, really, the rest of the house wouldn’t mind, would they? God dammit, we just want space to fulfill our wonderfully kinky, certainly eyebrow-raising fetish lifestyle, why is that so hard for our housemates to accept!? Yes, yes, now it must be their fault.
...After, frankly, a lot of whining, we came to a conclusion: if we were adult enough to shimmy into fluorescent pink latex strap-ons that we spent many hours trawling the streets of Amsterdam for, we were adult enough to instill more order to our lives. Yesterday morning, I knelt for Mistress with Her first cup of tea of the day and received sweet kisses and pets from Her. However, we then loaded up the last episode of American Horror Story and watched it, sleepily, in pajamas – for there to be room and quality time for our kink, we have to accept that our exhausted selves need time to recuperate. That afternoon, as I had finally sat down to work on some articles, Mistress had been working through the mass piles of laundry we’ve accumulated (it really is a shameful amount) and planning Her own schedule for the day.
After a long day of hitting many nails on the head, clearing all those little bits and pieces and having a decent schedule for all the other stresses we have coming up, we were able to enjoy a beautiful, uninterrupted night of kink together. A night of lashes and leading that has led to some beautiful lasting welts.
Ultimately, balancing kink and the comparative monotony of daily life is about compromise and, as we found, order. Whilst we all may be liable to neglecting our kink in the wake of other, more pressing matters, the simplest of actions can be beautifully grounding and nourishing to the D/s side of your relationship. For instance, if we’re exhausted, or simply do not have enough hours in the day, well we can squeeze in a light spanking, or a few moments of knelt devotion whilst Mistress bustles away with emails. By ordering the monotonous side and pushing ourselves a little harder to get those chores done, we not only get that bit more on top of our stress but also allow our kink to be as spontaneous, beautiful and easy as we want it to be.
Maintaining the basics of ownership is essential to a successful 24/7 D/s relationship. By ensuring there is time for those little moments; to kneel, to spank, to bow, to dress, Mistress can feel dominant and empowered even on the most difficult of days, whilst I feel constantly owned and cherished. This also keeps us in those Dom and subspaces amongst daily practicalities, making more indulgent play sessions that much more intense, that much more perfect.
As I write this, having just finished the washing up, I know I have work appointments scheduled for later in the day and friends to see this evening. I also know, from kissing Her feet this morning to the panties She picked out just for me and the fresh bruises across my buttocks, that I belong to Mistress and will always kneel at Her feet.
Dolly co-owns a D/s lifestyle blog with her Mistress at www.dollyinlatex.tumblr.com, and can also be contacted at dollyinlatex@hotmail.co.uk. She also enjoys zombies and a good cup of tea
