Welcome new contributor andyiccee!

My Master and I have been together for nearly three years, we have been through family crises, late studying nights, and more fights than I can count, but we always come out stronger on the other side. Integrating S&M into our sex life was a very simple transition, we communicated fantasies, purchased toys together, and were open to new ideas and experiences. The transition to 24/7 D/s turned out to be much more challenging for us.

While we were both open-minded about the idea of transitioning to full-time, Master was worried that we would need to sacrifice our cute cuddle time for the cold rigidity of some of the blogs that he had read online. I was gung-ho, wanting nothing more than to spend my time serving my Master, working to make Him as happy as I possibly could. When we sat down to draft our contract I was quick to agree to almost anything that Master suggested and to throw in extreme suggestions that I had read online. We signed the contract and everything went really well for a few weeks. I made mistakes, I was punished, but things appeared to be going well.

And then one morning things fell apart. You see, I am bipolar, something that I hadn't thought about throughout the entire beginning of the transition. I had been manic and quick to experience everything and threw myself into this new type of relationship with a fervor. Yet, when my mania started to fade into a depression, I was left opposed to so many of the rules I made. I was snappy when Master tried to enforce rules and simply stormed out of the house. Master offered to stop the transition entirely worried that it was making my depression worse, but I refused and we rode out a tumultuous month where I did my best to balance my own ideas of what D/s should look like based on a variety of blog posts and articles and my foul moods that made me want to scream every time I made a mistake.

I wanted to have the ‘perfect’ D/s relationship that I was reading about on the websites, and no matter how many times I read “D/s is what you make it” it never sank in. I wanted to be immediately as good, subservient, and adventurous as the blogs we were reading. Now Master was becoming increasingly worried that our relationship was falling apart. My depression and anger at my inability to fulfill my desire to be the perfect sub was destroying me and subsequently Him. Finally, he decided that enough was enough, I had no control over the chemical balance, or lack thereof, in my brain, but we could take a look at our relationship.

I refused at first because changing the rules, adjusting the contract would be solid proof that I was the worst sub in history. Eventually, He convinced me to talk to him and we sat down and talked about how unrealistic both of our expectations were. A transition from a ‘vanilla’ relationship where we spent the majority of our time cuddling, kissing, and laughing, to a D/s relationship where I had a punishment lined up for everything was just not realistic. Even though I had convinced myself that I wanted that kind of relationship, I realized that I needed so much more than that.

I needed to be held sometimes, I needed to be able to eat when I wasn't with Master, and he needed to be able to tickle me and kiss me when he wanted without worrying that made him too lenient of a Master. We reviewed limits that were not constructed on too many blogs and an overly heightened mental state. We realized that we could strike a balance where there were realistic rules and goals for our relationship, that we really could make D/s work for us. It was imperative that we considered what we both needed from the relationship, instead of holding ourselves to a standard that was unrealistic and didn't align with what we were seeking.

I learned many things through this emotionally trying facet of our relationship. The most important lesson being that as a sub, I NEED to communicate with my Master. Communication extends beyond calling a safe word or discussing my sexual limits; emotional limits are just as, if not slightly more important. Once we were both able to discuss our needs, we could better negotiate a stable contract that integrated both of our needs into our lifestyle. I also learned that there is no such thing as “The Universal Perfect Sub”. What is perfect to one Dominant may be very un-perfect to another. It was ridiculous to hold myself to a standard of what the perfect sub was to some blogger on the internet when my Master was sitting at home. I had to listen to his needs and wants too. Together we needed to establish a safe place because, without a feeling of security and balance, neither of us were enjoying the new-found components of our relationship.