Interview: So your girlfriend has read 50 Shades; now how do you start with BDSM?

[tacit]

A short time ago, I received an email from a writer for Men's Health magazine who'd found me online and wanted to interview me about BDSM. Specifically, the interview was about how someone who's read the book 50 Shades of Grey and found the ideas in it interesting might take the next steo and start exploring BDSM in a relationship

Comments

[sweh]

I thought that, with communication, was the most important part of the response.

In the first year of joining the scene, I entered a relationship with this lady (I'm still with her, 11 years later). I had taken her collar, and was calling her Mistress. But when I came to describe myself as slave... I couldn't. I had a mental block, and ended up describing myself as her humble servant. This required some serious thinking on my behalf, and I eventually realised I had the block because I didn't consider myself worthy; the few people I've met who consider themselves slaves were so much better and deserving than me that I felt it demeaned them to include myself in that category. I learnt, though, that each person means a different thing when they use words. Further, I realised that I was a slave to Mistress in all but word.

What it boiled down to was that this was a relationship of individuals; I might not be a "slave" the way other people think of it, but I was a slave in my relationship. Tori might not be a "owner" the way other people think of it, but she's _my_ owner.

We are all individuals; communicating with that individual and learning their desires, boundaries, kinks, turn-offs is, IMHO, key to the relationship. It's very easy to forget that or (as with myself, in my early days) to miss that and think of both (all) participants in terms of their role, and not as a people.

In my mind it's good that this message gets repeated and pushed.