To me, submission is not 'giving up my will.' It is aligning my will with the will of my Dom. In other words, what He wants, I then want. What He needs, I then need to provide. I merge my will with his.


So wrote jeanne a couple of weeks ago in her usual perceptive way. When I read those words I was stunned to read a truth I immediately recognised but had never articulated so well.

This thread ties together a few recent posts and thoughts. Forgive me for rambling a bit but I've no idea how well they'll hang together.

You'd think submission would be easy, wouldn't you? I mean, it's what we want; we desire it, seek it, do it, love it. So why is it sometimes so hard to give yourself in submission?

I replied to a thread recently, as many did, entitled, 'When did you first know you were kinky'? I honestly considered stretching my truth a little just to fit in but I bit the bullet and admitted what was true for me - that I honestly didn't have any real knowledge or interest in submission until I was forty. Then I found the humiliation of even supposing I might be submissive a huge turn on and the rest is personal history. Couldn't I have bumped up my credentials just a bit and claimed interest in those Westerns of my childhood where the heroine gets tied to a tree and the white-hatted hero saves her? Yes, but whatever I knew about my submission I honestly didn't know until I was forty and I'm content to leave it at that.
I have a feeling, however, this makes me a 'lesser' submissive - my submissive credentials aren't as sound as young girls who played sweet self serving mummy to big strong daddy all those years ago. I don't personally think I am lesser, but sometimes submission seems to me like a competition to see who's never had a genuine vanilla moment in their lives. Was I always submissive for all those years and simply didn't know it? I don't know but if it fits the theory better, go ahead and think so. Is there anyone else like me?

And this brings me to other points frequently discussed on here. What is a submissive, how can you recognise one, what is 'true' submission? There is an orthodoxy here, I think, that easily categorises submissives as pleasing, giving, willing, (though never doormats - we can all agree about that. I pity the poor doormats - where on earth do they go?) Or, the opposite type - strong, feisty, challenging, just waiting for a Dom strong enough to tame them. Well, I don't see myself in either of those descriptions at all.

This is what I am - I wonder how many are like me?

I am competent, intelligent, friendly, nurturing, emotionally engaging, playful/serious, direct - in short, I am a modern woman. You will not find me casting my eyes coyly at the floor if I meet you. Not will I be glaring at you challengingly, daring you to tame me. I will smile at you, make a comment to put you at ease, chat, and take it from there. You might ask, well, how is a person like that submissive? Which brings me to jeanne's post.

My will is perfectly well intact and has had years of free and intelligent interaction in the modern world. So has my pride. But there is something within me that responds to the idea of submitting my will and pride to the desires of another. It's not a soft malleability in me or the fling of a gauntlet. It's an honest desire to 'align my will to the will of another'. It's not even primarily sexual any more, or more exactly, not primarily genital. At the beginning, you think that's what it must be all about really. But I, like many others I'm sure, am increasingly discovering how submission subsumes the whole person, and that increasingly sure knowledge/feeling is what convinces me I am a 'true' submissive and not just toying with my own desires.

And I hope you see from how I've described my situation, that I may desire to submit but it's not always easy to do. I can no sooner abandon my will than I can fly. My independent pride is soundly ingrained in me (do 'natural' born submissives have less of it??) So I must, as jeanne says, 'align' that will to that of my Master. I can do nothing else with it. And I can only offer him my pride to break down; and find new solace in the pride of being willing and obedient and submissive to him instead of being proud of the desires I have that actually block his access to them. It's a tremendous gift for me to give (I say that with 'pride') and for him to use as he wishes, and I want to give it.

One more thread reference - when I don't give my Master what he wants, when I don't or can't align myself to his wishes, it's not because I want some pleasure that he's deliberately withholding and I think I should have it. ('What makes a rubbish sub' - my own thread!) Yes, there are practices I prefer but I am learning it's up to my Master to bestow them or not. I am not the perfect sub though it's meaningless to say out of the context of a particular relationship. I know I would not suit many on here, or they me, but that's fine. When I am not aligning my will to his, I honestly believe it's because my independent pride has got in the way of telling him clearly and directly what's blocking me. To be fair, I don't always know myself why this happens exactly. I just feel the block and it sticks as little stabs of resentment or self pity. (Another thread, 'As a sub, how to say no respectfully'). Boy, I gave great advice in that one! Withholding as a form of disobedience, as Leo9 pointed out. Pride. Pride. Letting yourself go, letting him see your naked vulnerability - you know, the side of you you never let anyone see? How hard it is. Submission guarantees the desire but in no way the ability.

I know my Master understands me. He understands my difficulties. He loves the idea of having this confident 21st Cen. woman grovelling at his feet. I love and desire that too.

I just have to let him keep chipping away at that pride so I can 'merge my will with His.'

Thanks for understanding, as I know you do.

Pearlgem x x