Breaking the Shell, Part 3

I want to clean up what feel like a few loose ends from the previous two posts.

1. Breaking the shell does put the submissive in a very odd place, potentially. she will experience a rush of conflicting emotions, typcially, and not all of those will be positive. her feeling of vulnerability will often be so strong as to be overwhelming, and very frightening. In some cases the submissive may "snap back" very hard. The Dom/me has to be aware that this might happen; the self has a million ways to reinforce the crack in the shell. That most of these ways are subconscious/unconscious makes this a very difficult topic to discuss, since the submissive will in most cases not be able to articulate why she is feeling/doing the things she is feeling/doing.

2. Thus, the Dom/me has to be committed to a potentially long process . . . multiple iterations, continual gentle poking at the crack in the shell, are often necessary. Underpinning all this is the care and concern I spoke of previously; without those it will often feel cruel and unduly harsh to the submissive.

3. Thus, this is not something that can or should happen in anything other than a committed realtionship, however the parties define that for T/themselves. To Me, while there obviously is a physical danger in some forms of BDSM play (and "dangerous" scenarios can be very powerful and enthralling in that context), the real danger, assuming that neither party is insane or reckless and that the Dom/me has some minimum technical facility, is emotional. The repsonsible Dom/me must be committed to aftercare of the body but also "continuous care" of the most precious, fragile thing -- the submissive's emotional/spiritual self.

4. The "goal" as it were, of cracking the shell and what follows, is what I see as one of the essential paradoxes of D/s: The Liberation of the Self Through Submission. Many have experienced the freedom of giving up control. That freedom is a tiny inkling of a much larger, more encompassing freedom that is possible, once one moves from the basic stance of holding on and letting go here and there, to the stance of letting go, and holding on here and there.

And another kettle of fish . . . for another post.