Back / On Apologizing

I. Wow, June 22 was the last time I posted . . . by My own standard that makes this a "dead blog." Obviously standards aren't what they used to be here in #EPB land.

The goal . . . is to post on a regular basis, honest. As with all goals, though, the striving is actually the important thing.

II. It's hard to be "Dominant" when you're apologizing. Sometimes.

In the normal course of life, there are the "trivial" type apologies -- "sorry I ran over your foot" . . . "sorry I washed your red shirt in the bleach load" . . . "sorry I ate the last Dorito." Sometimes we mean them, sometimes we don't, but on some level we understand that the social fabric relies on observance of various well-understood norms. All of us, Dominant, submissive, or neither, follow these norms to a greater or lesser degree, and the degree to which we follow them more or less assigns us our place on the continuum that stretches from "nice guy/girl" to "bastard/bitch." And presumably we're more or less happy with, or unaware of, our particular place.

Then there's the more involved apologies. Those that involve emotions, but not emotions of people we're romantically/sexually involved with. Apologizing to friends can be a sticky affair, but it depends more on the wronged party, really. If the person we're apologizing to wants to be difficult, and we're more on the "nice" side of the continuum, the apology can get fairly long, drawn out, and start to feel semi-humiliating after a while. If the person we're apologizing to is healthy and gracious, well, then, apologizing is a relative snap, because both parties realize that it's not about undoing the wrong -- it's about making the gesture that acknowledges what both parities already know about who was wrong and why.

Sex and love of course complicate the matter exponentially. It's often impossible to keep the current wrong straight from the laundry list of wrongs the wronged party is keeping, consciously or otherwise, in his or her head. And vice versa -- some people don't know what they're apologizing for at any given moment, or much care, in extreme cases.

Bring Dominance and submission into it and there's a very different cast to things. Does a Master/Mistress ever apologize to a slave? Said that way, the entire concept sounds ludicrous.

But this isn't Gor or the Planet of the Blondes . . . real people interacting in real ways can and do, despite their best efforts, give offense.

And I do at times find it difficult to apologize to My girls, even when I really feel as though I should.

Knowing it's difficult, though, helps Me a lot to actually go ahead and do it. I could be kidding Myself, but I don't think so. I think that having the ability to embrace sufficient humility to be able to apologize when it's called for . . . makes Me better, as a Domme and as a person.

If that's a delusion, it's one I totally embrace.