Does it surprise you that you might not maintain the same level of D/s during the stressful times?
Do you think you know how you’ll handle your relationship when it does?
What ideas can you consider that might help you when this happens?
Having gone through a period of time where the D/s did fall onto a back burner, no, I’m not surprised by it. Disappointed, maybe, but looking back on it I try to be kind to myself and understand why things happened the way they happened. The D/s “slipping” had nothing to do with who we are as people but the situation that surprised us.
It was a big learning curve.
We both believe in the concept of leaning in to a dynamic when things are hard. That putting it aside isn’t honoring it in the way we want to. So we’ve spent time working on creating rituals and protocols that will be easy to maintain when things are hard. We’ve spent time strengthening that bond so we lean into each other and not away when life gets chaotic.
Moving into a 24/7 M/s power exchange dynamic has been a major factor in all of this. Simple rituals help, ones that connect us physically and mentally. Rituals that we can keep brief if need be or draw out into a long time of connecting and feeling that power exchange.
For us, I think it’s about letting life happen around us and having our dynamic be the shelter. It’s the place we can return to over and over again for a break, a sip of cool water. A moment with each other to gain our bearings.
It’s taken skill and time and practice and I have no doubt that it will continue to take those things. That we will run into situation after situation where it feels like it would be easier to just drop the dynamic but we won’t. We can’t. It’s not who we are.
