You are not the boss of me!

One of the myths I dispelled immediately among my friends was that being a masochist means that ALL pain is delectable.

And that being submissive meant that I’d be doing their dishes.

I still hate gong to the dentist, and apart from the supercalifragilisticexpialimasochist dude in Little Shop of Horrors, I know few people who fetishized, say, dental pain.

And I loathe dish-washing.

Context is everything.

This morning I overheard a (non-kink-identified) co-worker mulling whether or not he should “make” his girlfriend wear her hair a certain way for the Holiday Party.

I bristled fiendishly.

“Who the fuck does he think he is?!?” I thought.

The dichotomy never ceases to amuse me. That which is horrible abuse when performed without informed consent is hotly erotic with consent.

Context.

I love to be ordered to comply with the will of a partner for whom it is hot to give those orders.

I hate to be bossed around.

Go fucking figure.

Control is a turn-on for me, yet only within certain degrees. And ONLY with particular people.  Even a moue of presumptuous bossiness can get my hackles up, the claws out and my spikiness activated. This nonsense of “total control / no limit” submission is foolishness. If my partner, to whom I have sworn my fealty, goes Postal-Nutso-Twinkie on me, I sure as fuck am out of there.

I am quite uncertain precisely how the few who have managed to avert the major emotional battle-trenches, slip over my internal spiritual moat, under the armed guard of my NY-bred psychological defenses and grab the neck of my submissive self have managed to do so.

Perhaps it was their attention to detail?  The fact that my bravado didn’t fool them, and that I reacted genuinely to their dominance rather than their having to take on a domineering tone.

Chemistry plays a part. People to whom I have felt submissive have never GROWN on me as dominants. It has always been a given. Not that it couldn’t develop that way. It simply has not, thus far. And those relationships that were greyer in scope did not work out to be long-term d/s relationships.

Communication. Whether verbal or pheremonal. Something is communicated when you submit to another person. Something beyond blatant obsequiousness. There is a real sense that their wish simply is your command. No fighting, no struggling, it just is.

All of that, to me, is missing in a controlling / domineering relationship. Where one partner uses threats, coercion and bulling tactics to control the other. Context. Communication. Chemistry. Control.

Delicious.

Bossiness?

Fail.