April 27, 2009

What are the Ratios?

What is the ratio between male dominants and female submissives?

There is really only one truthful answer, no one not only knows but no one could even possibly know.

You see here is the problem with any statistic you see or coming up with numbers on your own from seeing some statistics on a cyber site or turnout at your local community, it is still only a sub set and how does one define a dominant or a submissive. Because when people try or what is really going on pretend to answer such a question they just naturally love to put the best spin on it. So you will see the word “real” inserted before the answer as in real dominants and not the wannabes. Submissives can also be guilty of a little self serving wanting few as possible to make one feel more special.

I do though want to take to task the two most common answers out there.

1) Women submissives are out numbered by male dominants two to one. This statistic is often cited from the online numbers. My biggest point to this is that men are much more prone to have a profile in cyber and to actively search out someone. Women traditionally are more social and more leery of online and much more likely to seek out their local community, make friends in it and stay active compared to men. My personal experience in local communities is that it is not even remotely close to the two to one ratio quoted.

2) Male dominants once you take out all the fake and dangerous are out numbered by female submissives ten to one. That is right ladies and gentlemen ten to one! In all candor if a man uses that statistic it is a red flag. If they use that statistic and can only talk about toys then it is a huge red flag. This is used to make one look special and if their private boys club talks this way enough some men are stupid and egocentric enough to buy it as fact.

You see why it is absolutely impossible to guess the ratio is to just think what you are and what do you want. For example how many are looking for bedroom submission only? How many are looking for M/s 24/7 TPE? How many are looking for a Take in hand relationship? How many are looking for casual or long term? This can go on and on. Basically anyone that thinks one can come up with an accurate guess it is usually to be self serving or a form of a pity party.

The problem with qualifiers that using them are always about putting ones preferences and opinions out there in lieu of any actual objective reality based knowledge our thoughts. For example here are my biases and negative judgments:

1) I think a high percentage (roughly 50%) of females calling themselves submissives or even slaves have zero interest in having any type of power exchange relationship but are really just looking for an alpha male with or without kinky sex in the bedroom.

2) I think a high percentage (roughly 50%) of males calling themselves dominant or master have zero interest or ability to be the dominant in a power exchange relationship and are really just looking for a woman that want a traditional role relationship with an open mind toward sex.

3) I think many claiming expertise regardless of role or gender in this life are clueless out of lack of experience or just not being into the power exchange aspects of people in a committed relationship. That their “expertise” is in the toys and scenes of top/bottom play in their local community. Those twenty years of teaching seminars and even writing a book on BDSM does not mean they know one thing about day to day power exchange.

But the fact is anyone of these people can in fact find their other in this life and call their relationship whatever the hell they like and more power to them. Just as they can with their personal preferences and opinions make a list of biases and negative judgments and come up with a guess at how many are what.

The hard truth is we do not really know because not all are on cyber let alone one site and certainly not all are involved in their local community. Plus every time one chooses to use qualifiers to weed out that is just a slippery slope that will always make one look foolish and conceded.

April 13, 2009

Young Dominants

Why do so many women avoid dominants that are significantly younger especially ones in their early twenties?

Now I often feel disclaimers are mere attempts to get out of trouble from writing things but I sincerely offer up this one. Many women can like much younger men and that can include power exchange women. But that is up to the individual woman.

Women are like men when it comes to relationships for the most part they will either look for something casual or something serious. But the fact is a much higher percentage of women are looking for something long term even when pretending often to just themselves they are just wanting casual.

Young dominant are often in a bind as they often have less experience to go along with not in the same life stage. So the simple fact is combine the wanting or fooling oneself into casual but really serious, common life stage things and experience for pure casual can be an important factor this can often make young dominants less attractive even in casual relationships.

Why not interested in long term?

One of the cruel tricks in how men and women are wired for the most part is an unfortunate opposite. Women tend to be attracted to men who are their age or older to a certain degree while men are attracted to women their age or younger for the most part. Look at any personal site and see 90%+ of the age preference for both will bear this out.

Long term relationships are tough and when they blow up take time to heal from. Quite simply every failed relationship a woman has that there was significant time spent before during and after the relationship that adds to serious time. Older women often do not have the luxury of wasting time in relationships that may not go anywhere. I always use the analogy of a woman only having a gun with six bullets in it. We cannot just shoot it randomly and see where it goes because we quickly run out of bullets.

Older women have been through their younger years and been with men of that age. We do know life changes us and our priorities. It has really little to do with maturity as one big concept but maturity as a bunch of smaller ones. Quite simply what a person thinks and wants in their early twenties can change quite drastically. So no matter how mature a young man might think he is most women just do not feel they can afford to use a bullet on them.

Is it fair?

Life has nothing to do with being fair. Can a young man be a spectacular owner, heck yes! Can a young man be mature enough in many things, sure. But there is more to life then the specific M/s relationship stuff and the ability to have a career.

While it may not be “fair” for younger men compared to younger females who usually can have their pick of any age males this inequality swings the other way as we get older. Older men are able to attract women from many ages while older women our options become fewer and fewer.

Remember there is more to power exchange relationships then skill or experience level and that these are relationships. If not compatible in all the other many things the relationship is not going to work. It is wise for all of us any age to remember this and not just focus on the physical aspects and only the power exchange type things.

April 03, 2009

Message Boards?

Are they worthwhile to learn and overall impressions

I use to call myself a message board addict now I am more of a recovering addict as my path in life has drawn me from them. I though do think message boards of basically any topic and not just M/s, D/s, Top/bottom and kinky things can offer up really good information if one has the ability to not believe anything just on face value and has a mind that processes information well.

But to the specifics of power exchange message boards:

Good:

-Wide variety of opinions, experiences and types of things. Unlike plain web sites, books, seminars and blogs like mine you have the ability to read about things more then one person’s view and opinion.

-If you have a question about something the odds are someone(s) have had similar experiences or have the same interest in a particular kink as opposed to local communities that depending on the size, activity and how sheep like it is that often can be quite limited in breadth of specific experience and kinky interests.

-The privacy of cyber can let one be more open to sharing and asking about things that many will not do in private. No matter how cool one’s local community and friends are there will always be things that we do not share in a person to person interaction.

Bad:

-It is extremely difficult to sometimes know if you are getting an apples to apples comparison on things. A person calling themselves a TPE slave you never know if you saw them close up you would think was just a top/bottom relationship. Or when discussing some problem affecting a relationship the “I have been there” reply you will just never know what else was going on in that relationship at the time or if there is an other side to the story.

-Have to deal with the cyber only players. Please I do not mean to disrespect people in serious relationships that are cyber based but I am more of talking about bored people going to the web and in chat rooms and message boards proclaim themselves a role and start role playing the life. Knew a man once where in private emails was in a vanilla bad regular marriage that three months later when he became active on a message board was in a long term loving Gorean relationship.

-Regulars on messages boards are on there at least partially out of boredom, attention and validation. Most of this is minor but some of it permeates into everything they write. Many who spout one true way garbage and false gross generalizations.

-Cliques can develop and a board becomes about them and very unfriendly toward others. No information really being given and in some extreme cases there are far more posts with inside humor and flaming anyone who is not in their clique especially newbies.

Three views of popular boards:

Alt.com: For such a busy site I found the area where people share their views to be under used and not a lot of interactive communication. Now I have not been there in three years so things could of changed but when I was I found some awful good and interesting things to read which was somewhat shocking. But if one is looking for wide scope and active participation that is not on this one.

Collarme: Probably the oldest largest message board. It has a wide range of people contributing from long time people in the life to constant influx of newbies coming over from their personal section. Despite the many who complain newbies are often the life support of a message board. Most message boards go through waves where some regulars drop out and new people come in that can affect the atmosphere of a board greatly. Collarme has traditionally needed this because it tends to become a very toxic board because of cliques develop and know it alls think the board is about them. Surprisingly for a board that is so active and full of so many people it is an extremely politically correct safety obsessed female friendly board and during bad cycles not much information on a wide scope is put out. It is a shame that this board got overtaken by the chatroom cyber crowd and has yet to shake them. There are still some old timers there but they are there more to feel special because Collarme keeps track of the number of posts you have and they really get off on that.

Fetlife: The new darling and a lot to like. Unfortunately it became popular fast and therefore got inundated with the dominant and submissive for an hour and have learned or played only in cyber and chatrooms type already. What is great though about Fetlife is they have groups of pretty much anything that have Fetlife members that moderate them. Interested in dressing like a clown during sex there is probably a group. There are some great moderators that keep flames, “true” people and safety police morons from interfering with there groups. The downside is the smaller more specific groups do not have a lot of active participation like in new topics and answers per topic. The larger groups have become a lot like Collarme’s where it is newbies with the life span of days and maybe only days left asking lame questions and the usual self drama of over thinking everything in their life. Also some moderators in these groups are in way over their head and tend to be so inconsistent in what they delete and who they punish many good posters leave the group.

March 20, 2009

Can Trust be Rebuilt?

It is unfortunate that many people in the power exchange life and especially we submissives tend to abuse the word trust to where it can lose all meaning. People in power exchange relationships are regular people and does not make us perfect. Not every thing that goes wrong or a do me wrong thing by our other is a trust destroying thing.

The short answer of can trust be rebuilt is to ask yourself in previous relationships and not just romantic ones but friendships and co-worker stuff if trust was broken did you learn to trust the other person again. This life is not special from that and we will not be different. Some of us can sometimes trust again and some of us never trust again when it gets broken.

But if you are looking for more of a gray answer to me to think about trusting again if broken comes down to me as what was behind the event in terms of the person. To me there are two possibilities.

Character defect: If the trust was broken because the person has shown to be consistently defective in the area that is was broken in then the chances are slim to nil that trust can ever return. People do not change! They can bring out things that have been hidden or work at reducing or enhancing something that pretty much is about it when you get with an adult.

For example if a person lied to you and it caused some huge problem. If the person has a history of lying to get something they are just not going to stop that behavior.

Mistake or misunderstanding: If trust was broken because two people were not on the same page, something went wrong with no one really at thought or expectations of doing something were not met, these are the things that I often stumble across in this life. Someone doing something that caused you problems and even big problems does not mean they are at fault for breaking trust.

Now if you cannot trust you cannot trust. It is a feeling and not some judgment. But if you have a history of trusting again and forgiving there no reason that with some time and communication that things like this cannot be overcome.

People are not perfect and not agreeing with you is not a trust breaking crime. A few missed phone calls should not be a trust breaker if they have always been reliable in the past. A scene that went too far can just be a scene that went too far if it is not either first time and especially if you have been together for awhile. If it means starting over in going slower to trust then that should be considered.

In general if trust is broken out tracing back the source as a character defect of the other or just two people that are not compatible then it will be close to impossible to trust again. People do not change just because they want something to work out. But if it is just some isolated incident then one must think first if they are able to trust again and then what can be done for it to happen if they want to.

March 06, 2009

Seek out an Asian Bride?

If I truly want a more traditional and/or submissive wife should I seek out an Asian bride?

Anytime I have ever mentioned on a message board or even my time in local communities that I was born, spent great amount of time in and pretty much raised in Eastern culture I always get this question asked privately of course.

My basic answer is I do not think it is worth it or the best way to use your valuable resources of time, money and aging. First and foremost the reason every Google search will have, I am sure is you might never know if the person truly loves and wants to be with you or just wants citizenship or to soak you for money. I think someone with a level head can probably bend the odds heavy in their favor the woman will not be but you just would not know for certain in most cases.

Things I though would point out:

1) The typical Asian women is no more typical then the typical American women. So when you read Asian women embrace traditional roles that is of course a lie. It means a great higher percentage of Asian women embrace traditional roles. Think of it this way for an Asian to have good English skills and be open to wanting to move across the world might not have the highest percentage of Asian women that embrace a traditional role marriage, let alone has a submissive personality. Something like that takes great courage and rebellious traits.

2) Traditional role is a two way street. One of the biggest problems when people dream of a power exchange relationship is they tend to only think of what the other will be like in terms of the benefit of their role. People often fail miserably in thinking about, accepting and doing what will be expected of them. This is especially true for men seeking out traditional wives. The odds are you really are not a traditional husband and until you accept that and study up what that truly is then the odds are long.

3) Culture has differences in values including what is traditional. What you think is traditional and what an Asian woman thinks is traditional is not necessarily a perfect match. Study up and accept how she will be attracted and judge you and can you live up to that.

4) Do not buy into the fairytale. I doubt except for very wealthy and very social couples in Asian society are the women the fairytale always beautiful, concerned about being beautiful and always dressing in an attractive feminine manner. Asian women work and often work quite hard and long hours. They may very well be more willing to dress up for their man in many more occasions then Western women on the average but not 24/7365.

5) Old dogs will learn new tricks. Spend enough time totally in a different culture you will adapt a lot of that culture. My Dad at this point would rather eat at an American restaurant in Taipei then eat a traditional one with our relatives over there. Your traditional Asian bride will adopt Western culture in some ways and certainly some of those will not be what you are hoping for.

6) Are you prepared to host relatives for extended stays and contribute money back to her family? Even if they are absolutely not with you for money that does not mean if her family is in dire need that you will not be looked upon to help out. Asian families are fiercely loyal and supportive of each other. They take care of their own is not just talk, it is zealotry backed up. Also your home is their home. If your bride has a relative wanting to spend time in America or go to school and decides your city is the place for whatever reason forget getting them an apartment, it will be your spare bedroom. My Master was quite alarmed when we were back in Taipei for the wedding and a cousin’s son was peppering all of the family members living in America about which would be the best place to go to school.

Do I think there is a much higher percentage of Asian women who embrace/live a traditional role marriage, sure. But what you see as one and what they see as one can be completely different and the percentage of ones willing to move far away from home will be less then that percentage. An unhappy wife and relationship in any role or culture is not a happy one!

March 03, 2009

Why is there so much focus on the kink and sex when this life is talked about?

Three reasons!

1) The largest practitioners in this life are of the strict top/bottom variety. Therefore all they are interested in would be these aspects. Even many claiming deeper roots can be viewed through objective observation to be basically just traditional role type relationships with top/bottom fun stuff. Pretty much the no rules and rituals, no punishments and none of them wanting “micromanagement” so pretty much only leaves sex and kink.

2) These relationships are far more similar to regular relationships then different. “That is my point Lin. Are you that stupid because regular couples are not this sex obsessed?” My point being is our lives really do not differentiate greatly in a lot of those things. So when we get together to talk about these things you will either get writings of inspirations that come off as love letters to our others and other internalized feelings or you will get what one did that interest them enough and others who they are communicating with.

Domestic chores are not interesting to anyone for the most part and my Master, like most, does not really engage in active domination when it comes to the domestic stuff outside of what he would like to eat. Work is not power based and despite my Master’s ongoing and unsuccessful attempt to understand why I love with passion being a nurse while still coming home often from a shift in some combination of exhausted, frustrated, sad or pissed. Nothing power based there and my fellow nurses get those stories.

Does a person want to write or read about all the common reminders my Master and I gave each other before he left for his business trip or would we rather read about the savage throat fucking and cum facial I got as his goodbye? I tend to think the latter dominates ones thoughts and interests.

3) What part of giving power over to a man so he can indulge in his desires do you not get?

As I wrote in number two a lot of this is life as usual for most things. What power exchange often affects the most by far is private “we” time. No matter how much enjoyment cooking, cleaning and serving in the blander things in life can do for us in a good way most of us are doing these things regardless of power exchange and just not much to write about. For example for maybe most women with a man that has a healthy sexual appetite, which would be harder to get his approval? Buying a new vacuum cleaner because the commercial for the one that moves on a ball looks so much cooler then the one you have now or telling him you found some nice things you would like to wear for him out of the Victoria’s Secret Catalog?

When dealing in theory topics can be discussed in a broad form easily. When talking in details about what goes on in our lives the redundancy of life tends to be boring but the different and stuff we cannot share with others is why many communicate with others in this life in the first place. For many that will be not only sexual and kinky acts but the amp up sexualization of their relationship.