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?
