Saturday, March 26, 2016

Email




A while back I got a email from a person I am calling xxxxxxxx and they weren't going batso trying to save Bobbie and me from ourselves. They were polite in their questions about DD and at first I wasn't going to answer the email but then thought it would be an interesting conversation to see where it would go.  

I am very interested in what would you have said if they sent it to you?



Bob

So, I have read all your blog, interesting reading for sure. 

I want to say, that you are of course free to choose whatever kind of relationship you want, as long as you both consented, but your pseudo-philosophical justifications of your lifestyle's superiority are just a mockery of reason. 

How can anyone claim that letting someone to make all decisions about myself does not mean i gave up my independence? It means exactly that, to claim otherwise is to claim contradiction in terms, you can't eat a cookie and have a cookie at the same time, you can't give up something and still have it, simple as that. 

How can you argue that giving someone all the power over myself does not mean sacrificing my own ambitions, desires, goals, needs or even personality? It means exactly that, when i am able to do only as much as he allows me, he can order me to do anything he wants, he can forbid me everything he feels right, so it means exactly that, sacrificing own ego, giving away all my will, with only a vague hope that he will not be too harsh with me, but even if he is, i still have no other choice but to submit.

If i want to do something you don't want me to do, and after all disscusion, at the end it is i who have to yield and resign, it means that my will was sacrificed on the altar of yours, defeated by your right to enforce rules on me, it's a mere fact, all your reasons does not matter, facts are not disputable. 

Also, it is hard not to laugh to read that a person described as "strong" needs someone to set her rules and to enforce them by using physical violence (something we are usually not doing even to kids anymore, really...), is it really a "strong" person which needs an overlord to take care of her life? Something around 99% of the population doesn't need? Is this some kind of dialectics? What does this "strong" means? Giving up control over your life, sacrificing your mind and free will and puting yourself completely at the mercy of someone has nothing to do with strength of any kind, in every definition or example i've heard of. 

I hope for an answer.

xxxxxxxxxxx


Hello xxxxxxxxx

First of all I want to say thank you for taking the time to read the whole blog. I am impressed that you did that plus you realize that this is our life the way we choose to live and because of that I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability. Let me try to explain to you how a DD relationship is and is not. 

A DD relationship is NOT about one person nor is it about lording over their partner to subjugate them to be lesser than what they are capable of being. They are not intimidated into silence by being afraid to speak their mind or to pursue their own desires in what makes them happy.

What a DD relationship actually entails is a loving caring environment between two people who agree to better their relationship in all that they do. They work as a TEAM so that they can enjoy each other and to also see that they reach their full potential in whatever they envision themselves to be.

This is the way Bobbie and I do our Domestic Discipline relationship. When we started DD many years ago we talked about how the dynamic might help and also hinder us in what we wanted to do. Once we agreed that the good outweighed the bad we wrote down what was important to us and what was not.

In our relationship, we decided that I would be the HOH (head of household) not because I am better than Bobbie but because I analyze and take my time in making a decision while Bobbie shoots from the hip when situations come up.

The next phase was to make up rules or goals that both of us would abide by. How did we do that? By writing down what was important to us at the time and passing the list to one another to critique if it should be added or not.

An example would be if Bobbie did not want a spanking for (insert rule here) then it would never happen because I respect her decision on how she wants it to be. This process took a long time it was not something we took lightly. So now that you know it was not for the kink or decided lightly to be one up on Bobbie I will try to give you a glimpse of how we operate.

Our rules are very few and we both have our chores to do like any other relationship, she cleans and cooks; I do the maintenance and yard work outside. I also help her clean and do the laundry when I am not doing my other chores. So you see I am not sitting on a throne cracking a whip telling Bobbie what to do.

I keep in touch with her by talking to her to see where she is on her emotion meter and if I see her stressing or is off on her chores I will pitch in to help her. If I don’t notice that she is to tell me that she needs help to get her back on track.

By doing this we have found that we have grown closer to one another because now neither one of us feels we are doing this alone. I want her to succeed in what she does. I don’t want to micromanage her. I married her because she is intelligent and can think on her own.

Bobbie can do most anything she wants. I will never hold her back. As for the money when it comes to purchases over x amount of dollars she is to tell me and we talk about it then make our decision accordingly and yes I am to follow the same rule. It is more common sense than anything else. 

If there is a big decision to be made that will affect us in a big way, we will talk about it. Voicing both sides as we see them and if she is still not in agreement with me I will sit back and think about what she has said and we will talk and research the problem together. Again this is something that I take very seriously. If she is that adamantly against it then I best listen to make sure I did not miss anything.

Now to the part of disciplining her I do nothing without her approval before hand. These are rules that she feels she needs help with. It is not to subjugate her to bend her knee to me but to make her feel better and that she can conquer anything she wants in life. It just so happens that spanking is not used. We tried it and it didn’t work for us. When one of her rules is broken, I usually take a personal thing away like no reading her book for the night.

Look at it this way when you’re on a trip with your husband their can only be one driver both of you can’t drive so that means either you or him can drive but it can’t be both. Although the driver has control of the wheel and knows that he needs to get from point A to point B he can’t do it alone. He needs a navigator. Someone who can tell him of all the possible routes to get there.

The navigator tells the driver of all the road blocks and hazards along the way because they are constantly communicating to one another. This does not mean there will not be bumps or detours along the way but that there will be fewer of them.

I can only vouch for Bobbie and I how we do things talk to someone else and you will get something different. I hope this answers your questions on why and how we do DD.


Hi

You see, i have read a lot of DD (for me, these letters were always abreviation from "Dungeons and Dragons") blogs recently, i have found that subculture (don't know if it's a right word, but it was the first that came to my mind) just by an accident, and i was kind of disturbed by what i have read.  

Well, it's your life, i don't have a right to tell you what to do, it's simply not up to me to decide. Also, i don't want to discuss about feelings, feelings are completely subjective, the same thing that makes you joyful, can make me angry, so no common ground here. I just hope you understand that you may feel well in such kind of relationship, and it may bring good results to you, but it does not mean that anyone else would feel the same, and that anyone else would want that. I also hope you understand that things such as creating loving enviroment, communicating, growing close to and enjoying each other are by no means exclusive to your lifestyle. 

As for the rest, you claim that it's not about subjugating or lording over your partner, but i see it's evidently that way. You may value her opinion very much, and it may be very important for you to hear it, but as long as you have a final authority over everything, and you are the one making final decisions, it has to actually mean that at the end, after all discussion you can act against her judgement, you can force her to do something she doesn't want to, and you can forbid her something, otherwise it would mean you don't have a full authority and there are decisions you can't make. So if you are not enforcing something on her, it's only because of your goodwill, but it still means (at least theoretical) that you can do it and she can't resist. If you were never going to use that power, there would be no point in even having it. Imagine yourself a despotic monarch, like egyptian pharaoh, there are no boundaries to his power, there is not a thing he can't do, he may be all nice, carring and merciful, but it's only his choise no to use his unlimited power, and all his subjects are at his mercy all the time.  

About disciplining her, well, if she feels she needs it to feel better and to help her achieve her goals, i am not going to judge. But taking away my personal things is something my parents were doing when i was a little girl, i find it really difficult to understand that a grown, intelligent woman may need something like that, for me it looks like some kind of fetish only. It is also kind of strange that only one of you need to be constantly disciplined for breaking the rules both of you previously agreed to establish, were they especially created for her to follow, not for both of you?  

You analogy about car driving is not convincing. When you are driving a car, there is only one obvious goal, to drive from point a to point b, and only one way to achieve that. In a relationship, you can't say something like that. Of course we may say that, for example, loving each other, or making our lives better are such obvious goals, well, absolutely, but those mean nothing without context, probably they don't have the same meaning for us, and we wouldn't agree on a way to achieve them.  

But at the end, i dissagree with your lifestyle, but i can respect your choice, as long as you do accept mine (by the way, some other DD bloger i have written to were arguing that i should submit even if i don't want to, and even if it doesn't make me happy, because it's "natural", really, do people never get tired of this appeal to nature fallacy?).  

Best regards 


Hello xxxxxxx 

Thank you for writing back I was wondering what you thought about my observation on DD lol and it was what I thought it would be.  

Just to let you know when I answered your first email it was not my intent to try to convince you in any way to join our little lifestyle because as you know and have indicated that this life style is not for everyone.

I would like to apologize for the person(s) that said that you must submit anyways because people like that are users they have no concept. on what a DD relationship is. As I have stated in my previous letter this is a two way street both parties must want it for it to work. But you have peaked my curiosity why since you think this life style is demeaning to woman why are you reading DD blogs? The reason I ask this question is because the only people that read such blogs are either researching the life style, has a kink about it or is on a mission on changing everyone's mind that this is bad and I have ruled out the latter that your not on a mission to save me lol. 

If I don't hear from you again you have a blessed life with your partner and I hope you are extremely happy in yours.


Bob   





 So what did I get out of this? This is really the first time I tried to explain what DD does for us and why we do it. At first I was happy with what I said but now the more I read it I think I could have explained it a bit better  but like all things in life this was a learning exercise in communicating what we do and why.

Hope you enjoyed it.

Bob



6 comments:

  1. I like your explanations. You can't convince everyone, you can only live the life that makes you happy. I'm curious too why this person has chosen to read blogs on something that makes no sense to them. To learn perhaps or maybe to undermine someone else's beliefs to feel better about their own.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Renee

      I thought the same thing as you have and I am going with the belief that s/he was looking for an answer to what DD is because s/he wasn't mean in what they wrote

      Bob

      Delete
  2. Well Bob, maybe as this is a woman writing to you, Bobbie should have taken a stab at it? LOL. I mean after all YOU may have brought it to your relationship, but she more than flourished within it. To be honest, your version of Dd seems much 'tamer' than many. I will say that the fact you pointed out that if Bobbie disagreed with a punishment it wouldn't happen, should have been enough of a reason for this woman to understand it isn't 'Lording' over in your particular relationship.

    As for what Erika said, I respectfully disagree with the 'undermining' someone else's belief part. This woman seems to initially be asking,( mind you one begs the question why keep reading more than ONE Dd blog if it doesn't peek some sort of interest to you) to understand. At least the first time out. And who the heck did she contact the first time? Good grief!!

    All I can say as the submissive who brought this to her husband, I couldn't tell you why it works for me. I can't tell you exactly how I do feel MORE myself, and because of that feel much MUCH more stronger in some ways than I ever have in my entire life. I wish to God I could explain why, but I can't.

    Do you know some people get runner's high? SERIOUSLY ... from RUNNING! What the heck? I have tried to run, and exercise for weeks on end to become 'addicted' it never worked for me. EVER!!!! But I can't deny that the woman who lives next door doesn't 'get it'. We are just different.

    I am going to use a face book meme here, and adapt it to our lives. Answering questions about Dd to someone who doesn't have the need is the same as trying to answer " what does the number 9 smell like to you"


    willie

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am tame??? I hope that Bobbie never reads this because I have her thinking I am the meanest and badest HOH in town. I did ask Bobbie if she wanted to write a reply to her but she declined

      Delete
  3. Bob - I think you did an excellent job. I have to laugh because the majority of people who bring DD to their partner and into their relationship are those who wish to be the subordinate partner not the dominant one. Why would any one ask to be subjugated? Well I don't think we TiHs are, I know I didn't ask to be subjugated and oppressed, and that is the last thing my husband would ever want to do to me. I asked for DD because I saw it as a helpful tool. Dave can help motivate me with agreed upon consequences. Like you and Bobbe we discuss decisions in order to come to an agreement or equitable compromise. If we still disagree then Dave has final say because we agreed that wold prevent a stalemate. If he make the wrong decision then he accepts the blame. Being HoH helps Dave to set a better example - if he hopes for me to be healthier then being HoH helps to motivate him to set the example of exercising and eating better; we do it together. I really feel that we are both more vested in each other, worrying less about ourselves and more about our relationship and each other. And for our DD to work we have to communicate even more than we did before. These are all things I love about our DD relationship.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You did a wonderful job - I would have gotten frustrated and not have been as nice.

    I get they don't believe they were trying to change your mind, or you theirs... but why the continued commentary then? What was their endgoal - what were they hoping to achieve at the end of the communication? Why keep reading DD blogs if they're not interested, aren't DD, or aren't hoping to change those that enjoy it.

    Awesome job keeping your cool and truly trying to communicate with this person.

    ReplyDelete