Quote Originally Posted by slavelucy
No, but i didn't 'practice' marriage either! (snip)
...to be trained by someone else does not make them your dominant; a trainer, maybe, but not dominant.
I very much admire that last phrase, but I'd add the word 'necessarily' between 'not' and 'make'. Much of the BDSM fiction that I read off-line is based on that very concept (ie. someone who trains subs for others without becoming their Dom themself), so I relate to this as a logical and desirable phenomenon.

As for the first statement above, here in the U.S. we have an institution that sociologists are coming to call the 'starter' marriage, wherein one or both of the participants goes into it expecting it to be more of a learning experience than a 'forever' thing, hoping that they'll be able to get it right the second time. As I noted in an e-mail, this institution is a pretty thorough-going failure, since second marriages are MUCH more likely to fail than first ones are.