What's Left Behind (Part 1)

New links: Vivienne's Sex Carnival . . . Spanking Blog . . . Cease Resistance: Spanking Ree

I've been a little remiss in adding links . . . sometimes the blog housekeeping, like any kind of housekeeping, falls behind. I think I'm caught up now.

There's a great scene towards the end of Annie Hall where Woody Allen is walking around the streets of Manhattan, musing about the end of his relationship with Annie, and on love and relationships in general. He relates an old joke in the process:

Patient: Doctor, I need help. My brother thinks he's a chicken!
Psychiatrist: How long has he thought this?
Patient: About 10 years.
Psychiatrist: And you're just coming to me now?
Patient: Well, we need the eggs.

Allen goes on to say how that joke sort of sums up relationships -- they're crazy and often painful but we keep at them becasue well, we "need the eggs."

It's lke that in D/s, too. And, as with seemingly everything else in this sphere, things are stronger, deeper, more intense. I have known a few (a very few) who've gone back to being vanilla after having been involved in D/s. From what I can tell, even for those who are "happy" in that arena, there is an esssential thing that's missing. And it's not a good sex life, or at least, not a sex life. The thing that's missing is the emotional/mental charge, the soul-filling thing that responding on a more or less constant basis to a need that is beyond sex, beyond emotion, beyond thought, creates in us. The thing that can't truly be explained to someone who doesn't feel similarly, even if rationally one can give another the flavor of it.

One can take a vacation from it. And for many that is often a necessary thing. One can . . . be "less" intense in it, from time to time. One can even leave it behind, and heaven knows there are times when that might seem appealing to many. But one can't leave it behind without leaving behind a part of one's self that, in the end, needs to be there.

"I wanted only to try to live my life in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?" -Hermann Hesse, "Damien"