Yeah, yeah, I know…who let that scumbag in here with his “reality check” garbage. Well, boys and girls, it’s a nasty job, but someone has to do it, and since I’ve recently discovered the “sadist” in me, and sadists luuuvvvvvv “nasty”, I volunteered. So sit down, compose yourselves, and pay attention.

A BDSM (Dominant submissive) relationship is, in my view, a “vanilla” relationship…with chocolate sauce, whipped cream, crushed nuts (for those of you into CBT), and cherries. The “extras”, of course, are the BDSM part. Now…you basically have 2 people, be it a lesbian, gay, or hetero couple.  Each of the partners has an agenda, each has an ego, each has a psychological makeup, and each has BAGGAGE. The trick is to take these two totally foreign entities and weld them into a couple that together, becomes stronger than each was individually. Sounds simple, huh? Me big Dom, me tell you what to do…me little subbie, me do what you tell me to do. Yeah right, and the check is in the mail, Virginia.

There will be a period of time when everything will be totally wonderful in BDSM land. A “honeymoon” period, as it were…and then…………REALITY! That same old garbage of “everyday” life enters and the relationship becomes something just a bit less than a “honeymoon”. The rent, the car payments, the laundry, the cooking, the kids (if there are any), the job, the grind, grind, grind of daily life intrudes and the “honeymoon” goes south quicker than you can say “grits”.

And it doesn’t have to be any of those…there are a myriad of things that can create tension between the partners, a lot of them BDSM or Dominant submissive related, and a lot of them just the ordinary “friction” that occurs between two people living together. The old Boy Scout motto, “Be Prepared”, is particularly appropriate here…expect it, plan for it because it WILL happen. And how this “reality” is handled in a Dominant submissive relationship, as well as a “vanilla” relationship, determines whether the couple will survive as a couple, or go their separate ways…no big discovery in that statement.

Now, as the Dominant in our relationship, I drive the train and if the damn thing jumps the tracks, well I have only myself to blame…maybe. There are times when the expectations on the part of one or the other, the Dom or sub, are so unrealistic that SuperDom or supersub could not meet them. As a Dom, I cannot be “on” 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days in the year, and my sub/slave is no different. Dammit, life can be a bitch, and being SuperDom or supersub just ain’t in the cards on some days. Deal with it!!! As SuperDom, when supersub comes back with a remark that contains only barely disguised venom or contempt, I try to lay back, look around, see what has been happening, and consider the things that could be causing this most unsub-like behavior. Sometimes I’ll just flat ignore it, eat the hurt that it might have caused, and go on…and sometimes I won’t. Sometimes a gentle “want to talk about it?” is what is required, sometimes a calling of her name in a pointed way is what is needed, and at others, I’ll just remove myself from her presence, letting her try to deal with what is bothering her, on her own. There are times, however, when avoiding the issue is impossible, and it leads to an argument, or worse. Hey…remember I said you both had agendas, egos, psyches, and baggage…here is where it mostly all comes to the forefront. Expect it!!!

REMEMBER, as the Dominant in the relationship, CONTROL is the ISSUE. Going off half-cocked, with a hasty retort, or a cutting remark, will only prove to your subbie that you cannot CONTROL yourself, and thusly, probably aren’t worthy of being in CONTROL of her/him. CONTROL the argument, CONTROL your responses, and NEVER, NEVER lose that control. Damn tough sometimes, when you have just gotten a figurative knife in the gut and are bleeding all over the floor, but you MUST. You OWE it to yourself, and you OWE it to your subbie. YOU volunteered for the job, YOU took on the responsibility, and it’s time to pay the piper. Remember, there are ISSUES here, some of them totally imaginary and some as “real” as a plane crash. They MUST be explored, as distasteful as that can be at times, and there MUST be some kind of resolution.

Now, I said RESOLUTION, not solution. Sometimes, there is no easy solution to the issue on the table. Sometimes the issue is as “knotty” as the proverbial “Gordian Knot”, and there is no quick solution. Here is where RESOLUTION comes in. There are some problems that only time will solve. Money problems, for example, can require a period of “sacrifice” to reach the final goal. If the two parties recognize the problem and resolve to work TOGETHER to solve the problem, it is not “solved”, but a RESOLUTION to the problem has been reached, and both parties are agreed on how to proceed. This, at once, brings the couple together on a path that is leading to a final solution, and they can begin, once again, to pull the wagon of their lives together, instead of separately, each going in a different direction. There is now FOCUS and BALANCE in their relationship, and everything is “ducky” in BDSM land…for a while, anyway. Once the resolution is made, it is absolutely mandatory that BOTH of you stick to the agreement. Failure here will turn the resolution into another separate issue which will then need a solution…and on and on and on.

I never told you that this would be easy. Remember, Y/your relationship hinges on what you BOTH do at this time. BOTH might be required to make some sacrifices, some of them not so pleasant, some of them, perhaps, even embarrassing, but any relationship, BDSM or vanilla, requires work, sometimes hard unpleasant work, but if the relationship is “worth it”, and I’ll cover determining that in another essay, then that work will just have to be performed. We’re grown-ups here, and the REALITY is that we have grown-up problems that require grown-up solutions.