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.

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.

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!

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.

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.