When I started this blog, it was my intention to do a combination of writing about spanking, DD and D/s topics. I touch on the latter two every now and then, but they are rarely the primary focus on a post. I’m going to start trying to include a Submission Topic every week if I can. I always have a lot to say about it anyway. 🙂
So, here it goes!
For the entire time that I’ve been in my primary relationship, I’ve had submissive feelings and limited actual submissive behavior towards people besides my partner and Dominant. This has never been any kind of a problem. I’m mostly poly in all situations and Malignus is nearly perfectly poly. There are times when he’s more comfortable with the idea of me exploring things with other people than I am. Because it was always natural and accepted for me to explore and talk about submission with other people, it seemed to follow that I eventually would enter into a second D/s dynamic. At present, Malignus has five submissives, and he manages that with few problems. So when scotchgrove and I realized that we worked quite well together in terms of D/s, we began to take the steps towards making that happen.
A lot of people were very surprised by this. Apparently having a lot of submissives is fairly normal, but a submissive having multiple Dominants is not. Thinking about this brought up a few interesting points.
The most obvious reason why having multiple Dominants might not work out smoothly is that there might be conflicting rules or instructions. The question that my friends have asked me the most when finding out how things are working for me now is “What do you do when they want you to do different things?” So far, this situation has come up rarely, almost never. There’s usually a clear level of importance between two tasks: things with real world time limits have to come first, as do grossly more significant things. Unless something of those natures comes up, I take care of the things that I committed to first before committing to something else. If everything is equal, I tend to err on the side of Malignus’ wishes because he invests more in me. He’s there with me on the day to day and he’s been giving me time, energy, love, affection, violence, care, education and more for over a year now.
This is system is really no different than the way that we balance social commitments in any other situation and is mostly based on common sense: if I’m working on research for Malignus and scothgrove wants to chat, I finish my work first. That’s no different than what a responsible person would do if they were doing research for school and a friend from outside of a power exchange dynamic wanted to talk. If I’m hanging out with Malignus and scotchgrove needs to speak to me regarding something of importance, I talk to scotchgrove. The only difference is that I don’t just do these things: I seek permission to do these things. That’s also pretty easy and mostly just a way to be respectful. Because both Dominants are aware of these arrangements, they tend to be fine with things.
scotchgrove doesn’t usually make rules for me because he’s aware that those needs are already being met by my dynamic with Malignus. If he does, it’s for things that I don’t have rules about already. If both of them were to make a rule about the same thing, I’d talk to both of them to come up with something that worked for everyone involved. Basically, if everyone is on the same page, it works out really well.
There is, however, a reason why the idea of having multiple submissives makes more sense than the idea of having multiple Dominants does: that’s the flow of power. This is a concept that has been kind of hard for me to articulate, but which I’ve been bouncing around in my head for a while. I made the following really shitty diagram in Paint:
As you can see, in the Top paradigm, each relationship flows away from the shared partner. This represents the fact that while time and energy are invested, the end result doesn’t accumulate. In the bottom paradigm, all the energy is flowing onto the shared submissive. This represents the fact that the submissive is receiving things: instructions, assignments, rules, punishments, structure et cetera, from two different sources. Where it is very possible for a Dominant to become overwhelmed by GIVING too much, there’s a very different mindset required to be open to RECEIVING an overwhelming amount of new information, material, concepts and other things. I think that this has a subconscious influence on how people view multiple partner relationships in terms of D/s.
I know this is one of my less articulate posts. I’ve been mixing my energy to a lot of places recently: preparing for my trip to Los Angeles, settling some emotional issues, getting parts of my home life that needed to be in order all squared away and planning some exciting new developments to my spanking life. I hope it made SOME sense to you none the less. What is your opinion on the difference between a submissive having two Dominants and a Dominant having two submissives? Did my graphic make ANY sense, or was I just screwing around in paint aimlessly? Post your thoughts in the comments section. 🙂
12 Responses to Submission Topic: Polyamory and Submission
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Oh, Hai!
Alex
Los Angeles, California, United States
First and foremost, I’m a girl who loves being spanked. It’s at the very center of my being. I’m also a professional spanking model, which means I get to do what I love for my job. I’m twenty six years old, and currently located in Los Angeles when I’m not traveling around on my adventures. My vanilla interests include poetry, film history, academia, Pokemon, indie music, baby animals, baking and cooking, collecting vintage clothes and lots of cuddling.
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Your graphic makes sense! But I’m not sure that dom=giver and sub=receiver necessarily. For most of the last seven years I’ve had two doms, and in both relationships giving/receiving has flowed in both directions. In my polycule it’s more likely to be me serving both of them dinner on different nights than both of them giving me orders. Which, yes, can be more of an energy drain than only having one relationship, but it’s also more of an energy boost when it’s working well. And none of that is more than a non-power-exchange relationship, in my opinion.
On the “but don’t they give conflicting orders?” question, my habitual response is: they’re dominants, not assholes.
The potential clash which I’d say has been more of a risk in my experience is topping/domming style. Both my partners have almost opposite in-scene styles – one very courteous, careful, polite, formal, ceremonial; the other spontaneous, playful, unpredictable, informal and physically rough. Normally I’m quite good at being plural in my modes of interaction, but there have been times when a really mindblowing scene with one of them has put me in a playful/rough/formal/whatever headspace, and that’s made me less able to appreciate or enjoy playing in a different style with the other one.
Mostly, though, I like variety, so it’s all good 🙂
Your answer is much shorter and works really well! I miiiiight be stealing that one!
I really appreciate the fact that my two Dominants have different styles. Because scotchgrove isn’t a spanko purist, he brings a much less domestic attitude towards things than I’m used to, which has sort of expanded my horizons a bit. And variety is an awesome thing- it’s one of the best parts of poly for me.
I like this topic, and I think there’s a lot of ways to look at it. I think the bottom line is that whatever works for someone, works for them. Everyone in TTWD is sooo different and everyones situations differ. I think there’s a lot of focus on labels and all that stuff, but really it boils down to the fact that if it works for you, all the more power to ya! So keep doing what you’re doing, it’s nice to read about 🙂
Thanks for commenting! It’s true: we are all SO different and TTWD is so personal.
I have no experience with this topic whatsoever, but it was very interesting to read. Hope you figure out a way to make things work that keeps everyone happy.
So far, it has worked out really well. It’s quite the adventure though!
I like your graphs. 🙂 I have two Dominants, but like you said, they are both on the same page so there haven’t been any problems. Plus, as Pandora said above: they are Doms, not assholes–Exactly! Also, I really do see a flow back and forth, because my serving both of them creates a flow from me to them, and they work well together in Domming me, so there doesn’t feel like an overload of info coming from them. Good topic!
It’s important that the flow works out. I didn’t explain what I meant that well, I discovered, because I don’t mean that submission isn’t refreshing to me. It’s just that it can take a lot of time to be dedicated and fulfilling the obligations that come with submission to multiple people. It absolutely gives me a lot of positives though!
I have an interesting dynamic going on myself…I might steal this topic from you for my blog since it’s really made me think a bit. I have a Dom who lives 5 hours away from me. It’s a lot of time and money to get to see him, so it doesn’t happen that often.
I have a set of mentors who live very locally to me. One, he identifies as a Top, and his wife identifies as a Domme. They have been soooo good for me these past 2 months or so helping keep me in line and on track of things I need to do. They do talk with my Dom occasionally, but it is working out very nicely that I have these two areas of influence…one a 20 minute drive away and the other a 5 hour bus ride.Everything I have needed these past few months has been met in one of them.
Please steal away! I love your writing and your life is very interesting 😀
i’ve just started exploring poly, and not in a D/s context, so bear with me here…
i would respectfully like to address the point of a slave serving two Masters and relate it to the sub serving two Doms. What’s important here is what i see as the differentiation between D/s and M/s. At its most basic D/s means the Dom defines the relationship where as in M/s the Master defines the person.
To me it would seem that a DD/s relationship may be simpler to navigate than an MM/s unless the Masters worked very closely with one another.
Functional D/s relationships operate with the understanding that there are priorities that supersede certain orders; and that’s something that is possible to work out between the Dom and the sub. When applied to poly it would seem the same principle applies; just there are more inputs to prioritize.
i would seem more difficulty arising, however, when one Master declares the slave should pursue a PhD in Pharmacy when the other Master declares the slave should pursue a career in journalism. Although these are not necessarily mutually exclusive there would be some level of compromise that would need to be reached; setting one directive above the other. Resulting in the slave being designed in the image preferred by one Master rather than the other.
Keep in mind this is based on generalizations and my personal experience, so i can’t really say if it’s correct or not. Just curious what you think 🙂
I do agree with you, B! Sorry it took me so long to get back to your comment. -_-
I think that due to the way that M/s usually manifests, it would be easiest for a slave to have two Masters if the two of them were able to communicate about their desires for the slave and figure things out between them. If one Master wanted a slave who was always naked when in his home and another wanted one who wore elegant, feminine clothing around him, that wouldn’t be a problem. If one wanted the slave to have long hair and the other wanted short, however, the slave is unable to be shaped in the way that both Masters prefer, putting her in a difficult and uncomfortable situation. Your examples are also excellent. I think that the key would either be compromise or communication, but probably both.
PS- I MISS YOU.