Shaping A Meaningful 24/7 BDSM Relationship- Part 2

// July 30th, 2010 // BDSM Articles

A continuation of Wasteland‘s awesome article on how to shape a meaningful BDSM relationship with your partner, slave, Master or Mistress. Wasteland.com was one of the first online BDSM pay sites on the internet, they have years and years of experience and work only with well trained Masters and Mistresses, if you’re looking for intensely hardcore BDSM then they have exactly want you want!

Duties and Protocal

It is an endless discussion. Is there such a thing as a “good slave”. And if so, are there any criteria for that? Well – although personal preferences and standards may vary – yes there are criteria:

A good slave is obedient.
She is humble.
She radiates servitude.
And she is of course submissive.

To what degree?

All that is for her master/owner to decide.

Under Your Thumb

Humiliation, embarrassment, protocol, rituals, duties and sometimes even hard labour all are effective ways to not only keep her under your thumb, but also to test her end – probably most importantly – strengthen her character, test her limits, motivation and stamina and in general improve her personality. And maybe (if there is a need or desire for that) break her will.

The life a slave should revolve around the following:

• serving, obeying and worshipping her master in every way he desires.
• performing her slave duties.
• adhering to the protocol, set out for her.
• actively show her subdued position through politeness, humbleness, obedience.
• frequent testing of all that to keep her focused and improve her attitude and ability.

All that is extremely personal.

Options and Possibilities

You – master – have an enormous arsenal of options and possibilities. But not everything is for everyone. And the entire package needs to be fully personalized to her boundaries, needs, “problem areas” and – not in the least – your own requirements, wants and needs.

Humiliation – i.e. grinding in humbleness and servitude – is probably the most important set of tools techniques you have to condition your slave and mold her into what you want her to be. Time, repetition and most importantly strictness are the main factors here.

But ……. work like an artist. Like a sculptor. Go slow: carefully chip away what you don’t need, but do it one bit at a time.

This section deals with the toolbox and the many different tools, you can use. Pick and try what you like, leave behind what you do not fancy.

A slave of course has protocol to keep up and duties to attend to. While much of that is very personal, there are certain rules to go by and there is a lot to learn. That is what this section is all about.

Where ever we can we will use real life reports and interviews. Not only does this help the sketch the reality of BDSM, is is also much more fun.

One of the most important things to understand is that your protocol is probably not everyone’s.

So, please never impose your protocol rules on others, Chances are, you will only irritate people.

In this section we will introduce you to some of the more generally accepted forms of protocol in the BDSM world as well as provide you with some good ideas about protocol you can use in your personal life.

Protocol, at least in the more public sense of the word, is something that doms should also adhere to.

As far as slave duties are concerned: every slave has many and again much of these are very personal requirements, usually tailored to that specific relationship and the desires of her particular dominant. Nothing wrong with that. In fact protocol and rituals are fun and a major enhancement to your scenes and relationship. Duties especially make things “more realistic”.

One general piece of advise about duties first: if you are a dominant, keep it down on the number of duties and be realistic. It is much more effective to install one or two duties that can indeed be sustained to perfection, instead of coming up with a pages-thick rule book that is neither going to work, nor will you be able to check up on them all.

An un enforced rule is no rule and de facto only counter productive

Responsibilities, Tips & Tricks

Responsibility

Mental play, mental sadism and mental conditioning is serious business. It is about changing the psychology of the slave. It can have tremendous consequences.

And while this is true for all aspects of BDSM, the following is probably even more important when it comes to psychological techniques: make sure you are well aware of potential consequences and evaluate your own motivation!

There are risks, hence you should be risk-aware:

• As opposed to physical bruises, you cannot see mental bruises. They also may not manifest until a much later date, when it is probably impossible to pinpoint exactly caused the bruise.

• Mental conditioning is much like body modification. What you change will probably last (if not forever, at the very least for a very long time). And again, you can probably not see it on the outside.

• A mishap is usually not easy to restore. A mental bruise doesn’t have to be a disaster as long as you go slow, so it doesn’t become a major bruise.

Both partners (i.e. master as well as slave) have an equal responsibility for their own as well as their common safety and well being. This – especially to the slave – means she should think twice before entering into anything. For example, such things as breaking a will may have more consequences than you bargained for.

And – needless to say we hope – partners should be sane! BDSM is not therapy and it will not cure your problems. If you have skeletons in the closet, get rid of them first through therapy, not through BDSM. Having a problem is no reason not to enter into BDSM-activity, as long as you are aware of that problem, deal with it and understand the possible limitations and risks, this may bring about.

Communicate! Talk and talk again before entering into anything, especially mental activity! Be self-critical! Evaluate options, risks, desires and possibilities. And most of all: make sure there is always the protection of a sound and solid relationship between the two (or more) of you.

Tips & Tricks

Many different roads all lead to Rome.

The essence of successful humiliation is in your point of departure.

The thing is this: what is embarrassing to one, may not be to the other. And what is a step too far for one, is two steps not taken to the other. In other words, it is a very personal thing, based on personal experience and personal indicators.

So, everything we explain here requires personal verification in your own situation.

The most important thing is to look at humiliation in the following way. Picture the two of you on the edge of a cliff. What you do is make her bend forward. She’ll soon think she will fall. Some just need the verbal hint, others actually need the experience to get the same knot in their stomach. What you’re looking for is the knot. How you get there is a very subtle, step-by-step discovery.

It is not about what you – the dominant – get to see, but what she sees and feels in her head

Invading Privacy

Invading privacy is one way to humiliate and the reason the toilet is so popular, is because that is something almost everybody is ashamed of. Women more than men. Since women are not used to sharing the toilet as most men are.

This in itself can take many shapes:
- Going to the toilet and being supervised;
- Being locked up in there for a while;
- Cleaning the toilet;
- Potty training;
- Uncommon toilet rituals;
- Being urinated upon or ….
- Actually being used as a toilet.

As you can see in this example, personal preferences, experiences and boundaries are everything, when it comes to humiliation. Even within just one technique.

Working with physical features is another good example. Changing her hair color may be a dramatic thing to many women.

Others can handle much more, such as being belittled about the size of their breasts or, as in the picture examples below, their overweight.

Testing

NOTE: Pushing the boundaries of your sub, should only be done if both parties agree to it and you have a long term 24/7 lifestyle relationship. Remember BDSM is Safe, Sane, Consensual and RACK (Risk Aware Consensual Kink). Play smart, be safe. These articles are for informational purposes only and are not condoned by Wasteland or its staff.

One bitching technique you can use – and one that actually may turn out to be very useful – is to test the sub whenever she uses a safe word or otherwise indicates something should be changed or stopped.

We won’t go into the discussion about the pros and cons of using safewords in a 24/7 relationship at this point. Some have, others don’t. Here we assume you have.

First off the dominant needs to be able to see the difference between a real emergency and one that can (or sometimes should) be tested. This will be a handy way to check if the submissive is really only using a safeword when appropriate.

The main idea is that you do not automatically respond to the safe word or signal, but instead ask her questions and make her explain WHY she uses a safeword and if she herself really thinks it is necessary or that she is actually trying to get out of an uncomfortable situation that – albeit maybe difficult or demanding – is not an immediate emergency but something that – if she puts her mind to it – she can bear (at least for a little longer).

This is cruel and yes, it is stretching her limits, but on the other hand, dominants will do well to regularly test the use of safewords and signals.

Some things just tend to become a habit and sometimes even an easy way out (submissives can be manipulative!). The safeword is actually used as a means to top from the bottom, in other words the sub can still control at least part of the action.

Besides, even in the simplest BDSM set ups it should be understood that nothing is taken for granted. As a result, safe word testing will not only drive that point home, but will dramatically intensify the interaction between the two of you.

Real Life Example

From Maggy: I am used to strict duties and severe punishments. Punishments will always be a combination of pretty intense humiliation, pain and discomfort. Not easy, but the idea is I should try and avoid punishments and I can assure you that technique works.

Among my regular duties are such things as making sure dinner is ready when Master comes home, the house is spic and span and I am beautiful and a pleasure for him to look at. I am just to deal with these duties, wether or not that sometimes may be difficult.

One day I had been on the phone with a friend way too long and as a result I was pretty short of time. So I hasted to do the final bits of cleaning, do the cooking but simply ran out of time to properly take care of my hair. In fact I was still busy doing just that – hoping Master would be delayed – when he walked in and caught me by surprise and in curlers.

I was given the chance to come up with an explanation, but of course there was nothing I could use as an excuse. This was entirely my own fault.

So I was ordered to undress, serve dinner, bring ropes and duct tape. As soon as the dinner was on the table Master quickly tied me up – my wrists to my ankles so I was forced to stay on my knees. Next the “three ball gag” was used. This is particular humiliation Master uses whenever I’ve behaved really badly. Two small rubber balls are placed in my mouth and a third, somehwat larger, one is placed in the middle. Next my jaws and lips are securely taped, which leaves me looking like a chipmunk. In this case, my eyes were taped too. But all this was only the introduction to the real punishment. I had cooked spaghetti and since I had taken insufficient care of my personal care duties, Master thought it an appropriate punishment to work quite a bit of the hot spaghetti sauce through my hair and over my face. Next weighted clamps were placed on my labia and nipples and I was ordered to crawl to the nearest corner and wait there for further instructions.

Soon this became more than I could bear and I started to make funny noises, humming our usual distress signal, making it clear this was too much for me. Master told me to crawl the painful route back to him (which was no fun, neither for my kneecaps, nor for my tortured labia and nipples) and explained I needed a punishment like this. However, he gave me the option to try and indicate which of three parts I wanted relief from: either the tape covering my eyes, the clamps or the gag. Everything else would stay in place, he told me.

At first I was shocked about the fact that my distress signal was largely ignored. Then I realized that I simply had to try and come up with something so I started humming fiercely, indicating I wanted to get rid of the gag, thinking that would give me an option for proper communication and that I could try and persuade him to relief me of the rest of all this as well. But ….. of course that didn’t work. The gag was removed and I almost immediately started to explain that especially the spaghetti sauce all over my head was a humiliation I could not handle. Master told me that was my bad luck and something I should have thought about during the hours, I spent on the phone and ordered me to crawl back to my corner and silently await further orders.

Of course, deep inside I knew he was right. Plus, it seemed like a good idea not to provoke any further punishments so, biting my tongue, I did as I was told.

I had to stay there until Master had finshed his dinner. Then he told me to crawl to him once more and the clamps were removed ….. for only a short while and then placed back again. I screamed and begged, but all that was ignored. Instead, he proceeded to feed me the now cold spaghetti, without the sauce of course since – as he put it – I had already been allowed to enjoy the sauce. Only when he had finished feeding me the punishment was considered to be over and I was released and allowed to wash myself.

In all honesty, when it happened I thought he was out of line and took things way too far. However, after a few days and some soulsearching I had to admit the punishment had been both effective and appropriate, since it had provided me with a very good reason to try even harder and avoid punishments, something that actualy is relatively easy as long as I do the things I am supposed to do.

There are many ways in which you can test and it doesn’t have go as far as the example above. Even a few seconds of just testing the use of a safeword can be enough and quite effective, especially if testing is something that hasn’t been done before.

Penalty System

Another way to test the use of a safe word is through implementing a penalty system. Again, this can only be done in a solid relationship where there is sufficient trust and where the sub – even though she knows she must pay a price for the right to use the safe word(s) - will use it when needed

This is another example from slave Tori:

My safe word regime requires me to pay for my right to use a safe word. The logic behind it is twofold. I myself have always found the safe word thing slightly conflicting with the concept of slavery. To me it somehow doesn’t really make sense to be a slave and still have the right to get out of every situation, just by the use of a simple word. It sort of takes the magic away for me. The other reason is a very simple one. My owner says that since I need bread and water to stay alive and I am ready to pay for that, there is no reason why I shouldn’t “pay” for the right to use a safeword.

Actually the system is very easy. I have a special “punishment suit”. It is actually an adapted swim suit that, with a few attachments, neither allows me to take it off myself (since it has a couple of chains that can be padlocked attached to it) and that I cannot cover with normal clothes either, since two metal spikes have been studded to it: one one my belly and one on my back. The latter also prevents me from sitting on a comfortable chair or couch, but forces me to use a stool instead with only limted comfort. The word WHORE is – rather prominently – embroidered on both the front (over my breasts) and on the back (over my butt).

What happens is this. In the event I use a safeword or otherwise beg for relief for good reasons the price I pay is a relatively mild one: wearing the suit for four hours and my owner will usually allow me to do that at a conveniant time, like during the evening.

However, if he feels I didn’t really have a good reason to use the safe word and could have completed the scene without using it, the time I have to wear the suit will be increased with several hours, depending on how good or flimsy my excuse was. The maximum penalty is 48 hours non-stop in the event I deliberately misuse the safeword (which so far has never happened).

….to be continued!