Thursday, May 31, 2012

Self-esteem and the Top/bottom relationship

Are you a Top or a bottom?

Somehow this question always seems to be in the subtext of any discussion of kink. A secret qualifier on anyone's opinion on technique or experience. I used to think I entered each subject as a top, now I am beginning to question that.

Kink and spanko thoughts developed almost as soon as I became sexually aware. When I was younger, I sort of assumed I was a top. It was pretty straight forward; I enjoyed the idea of spanking a girl and the idea of being controlled or spanked was not appealing to me. The spanking pictures (not even porn yet) that I liked were strictly m/f. F/m was more than unappealing it was simply ugly in any visual format (and not nearly as exciting to imagine as a girl's panties.) I was a pure spanko top.

Now I am beginning to wonder whether I am a switch or whether these recent masochistic fantasies are ephemeral and come from a self-destructive, self-hating side of me.

There are plenty of good healthy reasons for my sexual tastes to have evolved. Parts of the sub's perspective and role seem a lot more appealing to me now. In my late teens, I started participating in some RPs on a popular spanking site. Despite a preference and a tendency to top, I engaged in rps from both sides. Admittedly not a substitute for the real thing but I began to engage more with what the other side of the spectrum might be like. While at first my thoughts always drifted to the top's perspective, over time in some cases I began to enjoy my sub as the focus of the top's attentions and effort without any sadist's kick.

Another big shift in my thought was from spanko to sadist. The RPs gradually began to push me a little deeper into the bondage side of things from my strictly spanko roots. I began to enjoy the small little side dishes, corner time, tied up and light humiliation. Now I've grown to be a fairly big fan of a variety of rougher bits of kink in fantasy if not in reality. Accompanying this growth in interests has been a new found curiosity. Within the last few months, I have just felt a bit more bold and determined to explore and try new things out.

The last healthy factor that could explain a shift towards a more switch-like demeanor is that my fundamental day to day personality may not be very dominant. I began to seriously question my ability to be a top after my mother and sister sorta kindly labeled me as a beta. The label had a ring of truth to it. I usually don't have strong opinions about somewhat trivial decisions. I don't feel the need to win a lot of the time though that's as much indifference between the options as anything. When I offer to surrender choice of venues to eat at or things to do, that's as much trying to avoid a social gaffe or bore everyone with the wrong decision as much as anything. Still, at my core, at this time, I think that I am much more playful than out and out rawr follow my lead. I am no Christian Grey (I do regret knowing the connotation). There is also an aspect of me that enjoys making others happy in the general sense.

In bed, it is really important to me that my partner is satisfied as well. On that note, I do have some semi-sub tendencies in bed. Something I really enjoy both the idea of and in practice is playing with sensations. Being tickled or just a stray hand rubbing somewhere is quite nice. Teasing on both sides is fun. Even something completely non-sexual as the feel of a pen tip as someone writes on me is really enjoyable. Admittedly a lot more general experimentation with vanilla sex is necessary before I quite figure out what I like but I think I enjoy sensations and teasing.

So maybe I do have switch like tendencies at my core and I might like switching on the side. At the very least, I am a bit curious.

I guess my more specific interest at the moment is not whether I have switch interests but how deep and strong they are. In particular, personally there is an interesting correlation between subish moods and lower-self-esteem and tiredness. Generally when I am feeling a just generally a fair sense of meh or downess I have some light subby state with my girlfriend or I'll ask for the sub side if I did a chat rp. Lately though, my personal fantasies have gravitated to a bottomish tinge and a very masochistic bottom at that. These fantasies were strong enough to outline and start codifying in a rather hardcore F/M story. This stories is pretty rough and in a weird way mean unlike my M/f fantasies. The subject is just very roughly and completely controlled and used. The weirdist bit is that I am imagining and fantasizing this whole project from the subject's perspective.

Ok. Fantasy is very different from real desires. Maybe this is a weird mixture of my sadist side enjoying a touch of cruelty with a particularly curious masochistic side.

The thing is I think I'm pulling something different out of those fantasies than a normal, healthy sub. A lot of subs seem to have a things for aftercare and soothing and etc while I enjoy the idea of pain and sometimes humiliation and dread (in stories after a spanking). Something about the subject's resistance being systematically warn down and then being cared for in a somewhat cruel way tingles with me when I'm not feeling so happy.



Now that I've finished school and turned in my thesis, I am far more relaxed and happier. The masochistic fantasy and the sub feelings are significantly less and my topish preferences dominate my sexual fantasies more often these days. Still the masochistic fantasies are much stronger and persistent than they used to be and I still have the creative juices in me to finish the stories.

Hell even the desire to have a nice butt rather than the traditional desire for a six pack in its own way relates to this subside. I am still not quite sure of my own deal at the moment, but it doesn't need to be resolved anytime soon. Just as a general subject, the relationship between self-esteem or trauma and the power-exchange is a fascinating aspect of our kink.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Style update!

One of my goals is to become a little more stylish and be happy with the way I look. Took a small step towards that yesterday by going to Macy's to  take advantage of the memorial day sales to revamp a bit of my wardrobe.

My wardrobe had consisted of funny t-shirts, levis and a few short-sleeve button downs. I think the phrase my girlfriend used to described the short-sleeve shirts was pre-teen. Yeah. That one burned. Eitherway, I had started reading fashion advice from reddit and liquid during the thesis writing process, so I had an idea of the sort of semi-preppy, professional look I wanted. I ended up buying some backbone shirts for my dresser including a semi-formal white and stripped blue shirt.

I have some dingy looking boatshoes at the moment that I am hoping to upgrade from. Unfortunately, classy looking loafers are all so damn expensive. I am definitely going to buy myself a nice pair, but I am going to take my time with this purchase as I am going to have to like these shoes for a long time.

On the side, I have also been pondering a bit about my relationship and how sex urges influence my life. In particular, I have wrestling with how depression and self-esteem affects my toppish/subbish tendencies.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Short Update

Yar!

Ok the ideally I would have posted more in the past month. To my defense I was busy, albeit life is about being constantly busy and that's not a great excuse.

This blog has received more attention than I expected. Need to investigate/ I suppose thank the source.

Been tinkering with some kink ideas I have had over the past month. When I get home, I'll have a fair bit more in the way of ideas to hammer out regarding life, sex and how kink relates to the prior two.

Love to hear others input!

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Unconscious truth

It's been a very interesting few weeks dating Red. In particular, she's made clear in offhand discussion in the past that she doesn't much care for any bdsm shennanigans, but I've been unconsciously* slipping such little kink bits into our intimate time. Now I've think she's picked up on it and I think she's game... just not in the way that would flow more naturally with my kink.

When I get a bit tipsy, I'm more prone to throwing in the playful swat and groping her butt a bit. Actually threatened to give her a cute little hand on her butt (and gave her a few gentle swats :)) but she rolled off and tugged me to her so swatting her seems off the menu.

When she traded a swat though I didn't really squirm away from it. I just...*shrug*... sat there and thought a little bit about wiggling. Right now any interaction on either side of the spanko spectrum is pretty exciting , so I wasn't going to disuade her.

Fast forward, during a little hanky panky last night just teased with the idea of using something to tie my hands down to tease me.

Hmn.

These are interesting times.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Poses

I find being self-aware of new fancies quite entertaining. To fancy is distinctly different from liking something. Fancying something involves an almost frivolous arbitrariness to the liking.

When I started exploring my kink, it was a pretty clean spanking kink. The whole BDSM kind seemed much darker and different from what I was interested. Well I just liked the idea of spanking a cute girl. There really wasn't much further exploration of this idea.

As I grew older, I think other elements of my life might have pushed me towards the power exchange. Admittedly, I always had a little bit in me that was interested in this but it became a more important element. I still need to explore this and I do still think that I am more of a spanko or sadist than a dom or top but some elements of bondage have really begun to appeal to me.

There are some power poses that come naturally with anything with a latent touch of sadism. For a spanko, the simplest one has to be corner time. The spankee is being sent off somewhere to concentrate either on the prospect of being spanked or to "enjoy" the effects of being spanked. Then there are a subset of positions in corner time i.e. No rubbing, hands on one's head, hands on the wall, etc.

I really like poses with the subs hands locked behind their head. It's a massive turn on.

Physically, the positioning of hands behind ones head leaves the sub completely vulnerable. Every other part of the body is open for access and especially with women it has the effect of flaunting a lovely chest. It also has the added benefit of appearing a touch penitent. The other nice aspect about it is that it's a piece of voluntary submission. A few months ago I had my first real sm confrontation with a nice (and much more uh educated) than myself. I had blushingly confessed my sadistic tendencies and she in attempt to pull me into bed threw her self into obviously submissive poses (like throwing her hands onto the wall and sticking her butt out). The simple voluntary gesture of a sub placing her hands behind her head makes a top feel as if they are the big bad wolf, cowing and controlling the situation.

I'll admit much of this fancy is driven by two particular porn videos I viewed. My favorite one is a simple spanking video with Kailee and Gwen. I tried to find a picture of the moment where she lifts her hair up and turns away from Gwen as the top toys with her pink and pantied butt. Unlike a bondage scenario, in the spanking scenario it seems to turn the whole event a touch juvenile and that light bit of potential humiliation makes it all the better.

The other video was the red vs blue competition by uuhh can't remember the name right now. I typically avoid the heavier bondage bits because generally that sort of deal did not appeal to me, but at the beginning of each of the advanced videos the top would teach the subs several poses to master. My favorite of course had the girls on their knees, legs spread out with their hands behind their head. The top then proceeded to demonstrate why it was such a lovely pose, manipulating the girls from behind them in all sorts of ways.

Right now whenever I'm trolling threw xhamster or some site I just have the hankering to find a video with a girl in this pose. There's something about it that has caught my imagination at the moment.

What I want in the next few years

The past few weeks have been particularly tough with terrible girl emotional drama, writing and job hunting. The emotional roller coaster I have been on over the past two weeks has been especially jarring considering that I was in hog heaven just a month ago.

I don't know whether I have been droning over the issue because I am actually that distraught or maybe it's a reaction to large school deadlines coming up. Either way, I've been very down and feeling some tinges of uselessness and general morbidity.

A few weeks ago, a prominent celebrity posted a link to a ted talk on the importance of happiness.


My emotions and general moods about my life and its path have varied greatly in the past weeks. From general moderate optimism and mehness to distinct pessimism about how my life has already ended and nothing of worth or value will ever happen.

This past weekend I went splunking about the woods. It put the girl issue into some context as I came to realization that in part I was living my life for or as a part of someone else's narrative rather than appreciating what I liked for the very sake that I liked it and IT was a part of MY experience. For the first time in a long time, there are things that I know I want to achieve and desire them. Sure, I always wanted something vaguely approaching the "good" life. As economics lost some of its luster or rather as social needs began to dominate other wants, these vague goals were too illusory to strive for and I had very little desire for the immediate components that would allow me to become this "good" person.

That's changed. Appreciating my life for its own sake has changed my paradigm. Actually this dramatic change in how I view goal behavior is in response to a common tv trope. I have never been much of a music person, yet nearly every other person my age seems to have very well defined and deep music tastes. I have had past attempts to "fix" myself by just immersing myself in music and hoping I would be able to bullshit about it. Those efforts typically died off pretty fast as well it wasn't very much fun at the time to go tropsing about. Actually, I think my pseudo scientific method of systematically listening to every band burned to my itunes library or going through genres probably had negative effect on my desire to learn more about music.

This weekend though while I was wandering about the wilderness, I had been listening to music the whole time. Some bands that I had listened to once or twice or a few other random bands were actually fantastic. If (this is silly bear with me) I just listened to the whole song, rather than letting the first few seconds decide my mood, my mood with move with the music rather than the other way around. Yesterday when I was just having a terribly down and needy day, I just started listening to Avril Lavinge. The G had sent me the video jokingly and I figured what the hell [actually the song I was sent], I didn't mind sk8terboi that much either so why not listen to it.

I watched all of Avril Lavigne's music videos. I can't yet say what is "good" or "bad" in music but I did enjoy naturally exploring all of Avril's work and then moving on to No Doubt and touching on some Nirvana I hadn't heard in ages. The whole process was just a ton of fun and so interesting.

I think I am ready to want some things. I think I have the raw ability and opportunity to accomplish these things. Money while significant will not be the limiting factor in achieving these basic goals (for me).

I am going to be an active participant in my life. My life can be awesome and will be awesome.

The TED talk I linked discusses how success seems to follow from happiness rather than the popular perception that the causality flows the other way. Hell, people tend to like positive people more often. The best dynamic I had with said girl was that I was confident enough to be dark and self-deprecating in an upbeat and sarcastic manner. I am going to make a conscious effort to be more positive.

I want to be a confident, strong, well-read semi-fashionable guy. Strong enough that I can have the confidence to try playing the field a little over the next few years and hell for the joy of feeling healthy in its own right. I want to pick up a martial art so that I am able to defend myself, stay in shape, compete in a healthy way and understand human physiology better. These two are what I want to prioritize over the next year. I've also begun to appreciate well being more aesthetically pleasing and I am going to make a studied attempt to modify my wardrobe going forward. Lastly, I want to be more "cultured." I always took a studied disinterest in popculture and relating back to my discovery of music, there's a value to just being more "cultured" in the popular sense.

Goals:
(1) Fitness
I want a nice butt. Not a 6pack, a nice butt would totally make my day (for obvious reason).
I want the general endurance to run 2 miles at a respectable speed. I also want to increase my general flexibility.

(2) Be more positive without ignoring my sarcastic core tendencies.

(3) Pick up a martial art, likely Akido.
Competence to be generally able to defend myself and also to develop a decent understanding of physiology

(4) Dramatically increase the amount of music I have listened to
This time start with the familiar and what I like. Eventually I do want to have listened to all of the prominent classics. Modern music for now but maybe some classical music when I go home.

(5) Develop a plan of media that I should watch/consume namely movies etc.

(6) Hit masters level in SC [I would just enjoy this achievement]

(7) Make a booklist of fiction I want to read. Nothing too serious but enough that I spend more time reading than on reddit.

(8) Substitute away from forums to media like books

(9) Develop my liquor mixing abilities. [Delay until Job]
- Deep understanding of both general knowledge on where certain types of liquors come from as well as eventually the ability to have an intuition on what will mix well.

(10) Become more capable of writing well on demand
-Augment this by trying to post atleast twice a month

(11) Strong econometric skills
-Make a plan to actively improve my understanding of statistics and econometric tools. It doesn't need to make me a PhD but competent understanding would be awesome.

So that's the game plan. I'll detail specifics on why each one is still important to me an a medium term (6month) game plan on how I am going to achieve each goal in future postings.

Edit: A few late additions
(12) Style
-Actively but slowly start upgrading my wardrobe to match my career path and budget. A nice pair of loafers and a peacoat definitely high on the list. I look a little too young/nerd at the moment with the funny shirts and unlayered set up and a refinement within reason would be pretty cool.

(13) Soccer
-I've come to realization that it's worthwhile to have hobbies because depth beats breadth in terms of both the externalities generated as well as simply enjoying the actual good. I used to watch a fair bit of a soccer and even though I'm not as attached anymore I know enough about the EPL and other leagues to participate in a good discussion. I definitely want to nurture this interest and develop my knowledge of Manchester United.

(14) Seek adventure