One of the more frustrating aspects of being an old-time, been around forever (or so it feels), SMer is that people coming out today are often as confused as I was when I first entered the Scene 25 years ago.
I've always hoped to see a radical shift in the way people thought about SM as our community grew and evolved. That's really what Different Loving was all about, at least for this author. Socially, I hoped to see a major shift in pop culture towards realizing that BDSM, fetishes, poly, swinging and all other kink-related type sexual desires are reasonably common expressions of human sexuality, and that the people who do BDSM are themselves pretty normal people. But more importantly, I hoped to see SMers themselves come to the realization that romance, commitment, partnership and SM can and do go together.
One of my myriad theories in working with the kinky people who make up about 80% of my therapy practice, is that we have all suffered from a lack of positive role models for how to lead a happy, fulfilling, self-aware SM life in the context of committed relationships. We have an abundance of role models -- from brilliantly delightful to hideously dysfunctional -- when it comes to vanilla relationships. But how many SM lifestyle couples do you know who have lasted 20 years? True, nowadays, even straight marriages crumble quickly, but I'm hardly the first person to note that people get in and out of "master/slave" relationships faster than you can say farfegnugen . (If you can say it at all.)
For all the wonderfulness of on-line SM -- offering people excitement and companionship -- there is a significant lack of real dialogue about relationships that work in reality, as opposed to relationships based on fantasy models. As I've written before, I believe some of this stems from the authority given to the opinions of professional dominatrices: they give us glamour and they've got the best clothes and toys; but when it comes to structuring the kind of relationships the rest of us are seeking, their advice is often counter-productive. It's fine for Mistress So-and-So to always be in role with her slaves; to expect them never to question and always to be abject and submissive to her. But I've never yet met anyone who can live 24/7 the way a prodomme can run a scene for an hour -- and that includes the prodommes themselves.
You wouldn't know it from the Net or the club scene, but there are lots of mainstream Americans who have balanced BDSM sex with marriage, children, work, or other obligations. They seldom speak publicly about it in part because quite often the most successful couples don't need to gush about private details on the Internet. More often than not, sadly, it's the people with something to prove (or the ones trolling for new meat) who offer the most candid and revealing confessions
So it occurred to me that it might be a very worthwhile project if I did a kind of "DifLove lite" on this blog. What if I asked some SM individuals who have been in long-term marriages or committed relationships, who have found their happiness and are fulfilled by their choices, to write autobiographical essays I could publish here? We don't just need new role models: we need GOOD role models. Whether or not we might choose to live the lives they lead, it's important for SMers to move past the play party, the social Scene, and the disillusion that comes when all the crap you read on-line about how SM is supposed to work doesn't work for you. Time to take an in-depth view at how intelligent, emotionally self-aware adults achieve the balance that allows them to have it all: hot sadomasochistic sex, and true love and happiness too.
My first choice for this series was Cleo Dubois, who is one of my many SM heroes. For over 20 years, Cleo and her famous husband, Fakir Musafar, have been working, playing, and loving together. Starting today, and running once a month for the rest of this year, I will be featuring a series of illustrated autobiographical reflections by Cleo on her life as thinking, caring, SMer.
Hope you'll not only enjoy, but learn from what Cleo has to say, and I also hope to feature other couples who've been together 20 years plus in the future. Stay tuned for Part I in the Cleo series, coming to this blog in a couple of hours.
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