Trust and Honesty

Trust and what it means… Trust is something that is often discussed in traditional/vanilla relationships, but it’s even more important when you’re talking about a BDSM relationship. Trust is what BDSM is based on. Without trust, a relationship can quickly fall apart and in a not pretty way, it can be destructive. Regardless of whether you’re a Dominant or a submissive, you need to make sure that you are working on trust issues before you ever even step into a club/dungeon/private party. A play area is not where you want to be trying to figure out whether or not you trust someone with your body. 

Trust is not something that is simply given or earned right away. And if you’ve had previous relationships that have ended badly, you might have troubles giving trust to just anyone. This is actually a good thing! You need to make sure that you know the person before you allow them to play with you, to work on you, to Dominate you. As with any relationship, start out slowly, get to know each other outside of the dungeon first. This all goes back to one of my first posts, communication! You see how this is all starting to tie into each other?! A good way to start out is to email or instant message chat and then meet in person. After a few weeks you should be able to tell if you’re a good fit and then you can take it from there! 

Just like any other relationship, trust can be broken in a BDSM relationship. This may be difficult to overcome. You need to discuss the ‘breach’ and then work on ways to avoid this in the future. It’s a difficult thing when both parties feel that the other has broken trust. A possible solution is to set a time period in which the trust will need to be earned back. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. When it becomes apparent that it won’t work, it’s definitely time to move on, cut your losses and try again.

I don’t care what kind of a relationship you are in, trust is extremely important. However, since bodily harm and mental health are at stake in some BDSM relationships, trust isn’t just something to discuss, it is something that you would hold near and dear to your heart and it’s taken extremely seriously!

Honesty…..is one of the most important things in BDSM. To some, honesty is mostly about not lying, which is true! But honesty also starts with you. You have to be honest towards/with yourself. Probably one of the most frequently asked questions since I joined the lifestyle is: Why? Why did I join? The answer to that is part of being honest with yourself. You have to look at yourself and critically do an inventory of your thoughts and from there you’ll be able to judge in which direction you’re going. Be honest…what exactly do you want. Once you’ve figured out what it is that you want, then you can be honest with you Dom as to those wants. 

If you know where you’re coming from, then you’re on solid ground as to why you want to be in the lifestyle and that will make you more reliable towards people you might want to play with. And as stated above….then comes the trust. See….tying it all together! 

So in part, me doing this blog is an inventory of my thoughts and feelings. Trying to be honest about how I think and how I feel. I’ve had to learn the hard way about expressing how I feel and not being completely honest with the Dom that was working on me. I needed to let him know that I was in a bad place and instead I kept it too myself until things got really bad. It’s not that I didn’t trust him, cause I did. It was more along the lines of I didn’t want to bother him. Yeah, I heard about that from him that night! Bad sub! <grins>

A few good question to keep in mind:

1.      Do I like what I’m doing? Because if I don’t, then why am I doing it?

2.      Why do I want to be in the lifestyle?

3.      Can I handle it?

4.      What are my feelings revolving around at the moment?

5.      Am I being honest with myself

Simple questions but if you’re honest with yourself and with your Dom, it makes things easier and the trust can grow between you. Honesty isn’t easy. It is sometimes difficult and draining, but it is necessary not only in relationships in the lifestyle but in real life as well. You can’t be honest with others if you can’t be honest with yourself. 

Everything that I’ve said is all well and good, but like I said, once trust is broken it’s extremely hard to get back. And even though a lot of the honesty is with yourself and with your Dom, it also extends to other members in your group. You expect them to be honest with you. You expect them to act like grownups and not talk about each other behind your back. So trust isn’t just with your Dom it is with the other members of your group as well. That is an even more daunting thing to overcome once that trust has been broken.