Old School what is it to you?

[DowntownAmber]

I'll admit I initially read this with a chuckle and a good shake of my head. However, you've neither met J and me in "real life," nor does it seem you're familiar with our personalities through posts here at the Library; so I withdrew the chuckle, shook my head much less ardently and will respond to your concerns. (If J feels like there's anything he wants to add, I'm sure he'll chime in over my shoulder.)

[B][COLOR="Magenta"]I guess the reason I couldn't take your statement at face value is because I value friendship and bond of trust very highly...and it did sound as if you were going behind subs back (because you didn't trust her to mention it on her own) to inform or ask permission from her Dom if you can be friends with his sub.

If I speak with a Dom or a sub in chat and they send a note to J saying they met me and we had a great conversation, I would be flattered. Who doesn't like to be acknowledged?

Introductions to me aren't sinister or underhanded, so I have a really hard time looking at them as "going behind your friend's back." How does saying "hello" translate into tattling on someone?

An intro doesn't mean that my new friend and my Dom have to be best of buddies or even continue a correspondence either, it's simply nice that the person I met has recognized and acknowledged that I have a significant other that I care about and is an important part of my life. Frankly, I consider it respectful to me as well when someone I meet greets J of their own accord - that single action immediately shows they have no shady intentions or ulterior motives that they feel the need to cover up with me. It's as much about respect to me as it has anything to do with respect to my Dom.

[B][COLOR="Magenta"]Personally, I don't think that a couple has to share all of their friends, I don't think its possible or healthy. And I draw the line where he gets to pick or screen or veto my friends.

I'm again not sure how greeting a new friend's significant other translates into any of this. I don't consider it appropriate that friends are selected for me either, but I'm missing where someone popping off a note to J means he is suddenly sharing them or screening them? He simply has met them.

[B][COLOR="Magenta"]If you want to meet your friends partner, then you ask her to introduce you. Going off behind her back and you two sorting it out on the level of higher authority, it changes your dynamic with her. To me your duty of friendship goes to the person you are friends with first, and their partner second.

I think you may be warping common courtesy here because the folks involved are of a D/s persuasion, and applying some additional and unnecessary undertones to this as a result.

Let me break it down in vanilla speak:

Say you were to meet a new neighbor, and hit it off with them. You talk a few times over the fence, as you both seem to spend time in the backyard. You become friends, but have never seen their spouse as s/he tends to be at work and rarely in the yard. You know where the spouse works, however, so one day you drop in and say, "hi, I'm Amber. I've chatted a few times with your hubby over the fence and wanted to introduce myself. He's a really swell guy."

I'm missing how this is so shady?

[B][COLOR="Magenta"]I notice, you didn't say nothing about your sub getting a phone call from the other Dom in which he informs her of your friendship with his sub?

Two points to make here... First, J considers it polite to introduce himself. If the other Dom in question feels the same way and wants to contact me, they're certainly more than welcome but it's clearly not J's responsibility or business to ask him to approach me. Second, J tells me about women he meets and is friends with all on his own. (Men too, for that matter.) He has several close female friends that he talks to - some of them I am close with, some of them not so much, but I know when he sees and talks to them.

[B][COLOR="Magenta"]And what if your friend doesn't want you to be friends with her partner, because she thought she could confide in you without fear of things going back to him?

I thought partners didn't get to dictate who their significant other's friends were? If a couple of Doms become friends through one or the other's sub, then they become friends. *shrugs* Bigger tragedies have certainly occurred in the world...lol I don't mean to sound callous here, but if the sub then has to worry about sharing secrets with one over the other, well, that's up to the sub to deal with.

[B][COLOR="Magenta"]Because before she is a (insert title here) she is a (insert name here). Its a power exchange she shares with her partner, not anyone else...

People in a couple are individuals, yes. I'm nearly as Objectivist as they come so this is a concept not lost on me in the least. But none of that changes that they are also part of an entity, a relationship that they willingly choose to be a part of and identify themselves with, so why should they be insulted when other people also see them not only as an individual but as "so and so's partner?" That being the case, it is respectful to acknowledge them as themselves and also as a part of the entity they represent.

Yes, I am an individual. I identify myself on my own terms, as does my partner. However, I am also, by my own proclamation "my Dom's sub" and "my boyfriend's" partner. I chose this, I am proud of it, and if I get offended that someone recognizes me as that which I have chosen to be, I think I may need to re-evaluate what I genuinely feel about the relationship. There is a "me," there is a "him," but there is also an "us." I am very pleased when others see and respect the "us," and reach out to my partner.

Not to do that is also to disrespect me, because it shows a lack of respect for that which I as an individual have chosen.