I had some correspondence with an old Dom friend recently, which is always a pleasure. After a few pleasantries, he said:

I suppose you would still be pissed at me if I said again you are too competent for your s self?  

Those words – about being too competent – usually he says too competent “for my own good” – used to send me into a deep state of despair.  They would trigger some old emotional injuries, and i would suffer for a while, just feeling hopeless.

However, this time, it kind of made me smile.  Nope, not pissed.  Actually, unfazed.

I realized from a couple of other things he said that he really does view submissives as beneath Dominants, not in a kinky way but in a “less than” way.  For him, it’s apparently like people who think if you’re a smart woman, or ambitious, or make too much money, men won’t date you – that old 1950’s bullshit.  “Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.”  Because wearing glasses meant you were a bookworm and men don’t want intelligent women.

Those ideas make me feel like i am essentially wrong and unloveable, and my Dom friend’s version of the same nonsense, that i’m too competent to be acceptable as a submissive, used to make me feel the same way.   It would particularly sting coming from him because i knew he liked me and enjoyed my company and we had once spent a weekend of delightful playtime together.

But something has shifted inside me and those words don’t sting like they used to.  It’s not a flaw in me.  Being smart and competent and all of that is a feature, not a bug.  It looks like i won’t have the D/s relationship i once dreamed of, but that’s ok.  It’s not because there’s something wrong with me.

And I told that man on fetlife that I’d have coffee with him.  Why not?