Rituals - let the games commence !

When I thought about the sensual side of a scene in my last post, the idea came up to write a follow-up on it. It is about how I prepare for scening. What are my rituals?  Why do we prepare at all? Master has got rituals too, of course, though the idea behind those is always the same, both of us want to please the other one. Just like Master does that for me, I do it for him.

This is about the preparation and anticipation that comes along if you prepare for a full-fledged kind of D/s rendez-vous. Whips and beating included, of course.

Physical rituals and anticipation

So, usually, days are busy here for us. Hubby will be away for most of the day, whereas I do my chores at home. Usually, chores are finished when hubby comes back, so that I find time to see that I can prepare everything for an upcoming scene that he might have planned. I want to get  my head free of daily routine thoughts, want to relax, I want to smell in a way that he loves to breathe me all in. I love it when he does that. I want to make sure that I look my best, which is usually not a matter of clothes, because during scenes I am kept naked mostly. I want my hair to be soft and nice-looking but out of practical reasons it usually ends up in a kind of ponytail. I don't think I have mentioned before that Master sometimes grabs it to direct my head. I want to take a shower. If there really is plenty of time, I might also enjoy taking a relaxing bath. Maybe, I have to do some shaving. More?  Make sure the skin is soft and not dried out. Brush your teeth and so on. You know what you usually would do for your lover, don't you.

The whole procedure, especially if I really have much time for it, creates anticipation for what might happen during the scene. You might even see me grinning at myself in the mirror, thinking about some pleasurable previous scene. What about make-up? If it is my choice, I use waterproof make-up during scenes. Often, hubby wants me without, sometimes he wants the normal one, which washes away rather quickly. I guess it's the dramatic effect behind it, that he likes. When I am beaten to heaven, I cry. It's the nice crying.  Imagine what I look like after it, if black streaks of Mascara run down the face. It looks as if I have endured hell, but it felt surely sort of heavenly for me. Hubby loves that. I'd prefer my immaculate looks, but it would not really fit into some scenes.  All full of welts, bottom sore and dark red, I cried a river, shaking from exhaustion and then the make-up is perfect. Even I understand that it might spoil the atmosphere a little.

Emotional attunement

Well, you can probably see that this part of the preparation is a nice treat in itself. If you are only waiting for the scene to begin, you are already well prepared, probably, because you trust your partner completely. You can enjoy the idea of it. Sometimes, while taking a bath, imagining how we come closer, or how I am completely at his mercy, helps to get into the mood as well. It helps to open up, so that you would like to start better now than later. 

If there are troubles somewhere in the back of your mind, try to get rid of these. Maybe this sounds easier than it is at times. If you are afraid of something that might happen during the scene,  communicate that to your partner early on. When I think about scenes, they are meant to be pleasurable for the sub and the dom. Do all the talking that you need to feel safe. Here, trust is most important. I mean, if I had not enough trust in my partner, I could not simply let myself fall into a scene. Maybe he would do things that let me think about my dark abyss. That's a complete turn-off and scene-killer. 

No, what you want is the opposite, all the nice pain, the exciting emotions, and they are what you prepare for. What you want is that your partner cherishes you, that he accepts you for what you are and what you want and need. This is the safety that probably everybody needs, enough trust to open up and to show who you are. 

Imagine the effects of this trust for your relationship and yourself. You have someone who does the things you want. He does not judge you, he even loves you for what you want. You show him what you need, and he loves you for that too. You and your partner can try out new ideas, new scenes. You will have the atmosphere sizzling with erotic energy between the two of you, sometimes completely unexpected, but more than ever before. You will feel how rich your life has become. If you think about such things while you wait and prepare for your partner, and these thoughts produce a warm and pleasant feeling, or they just make you happy, you are already absolutely prepared to let the games commence.

As usual, when I refer to she I mean the sub and with he I mean the dom. This is just because I find it more convenient because it is the D/s combination that we have here. Any other combination is just as fine as the one we have in our relationship, as long as it is safe, sane and consensual.

Trust

Subs and dominants

Trust is an important issue, in any relationship. But if your relationship involves DD or something like bondage, it is even more important. Trust is something that you need as a sub and as a dominant. Imagine, the dominant partner places his trust in a sub, she tells him that she has had consensual beatings in the past and can cope with that. During the scene it turns out that there is some trauma that she connects with being beaten and has a break-down. I made this example up, but if you imagine the situation, it must be horrible, for the dominant as well as for the sub.

On the other hand, if you are submissive and place your trust in your dominant partner, you should better be sure that you are allowed to trust him. If not, the results could be a real catastrophe. Imagine yourself bound and helpless, which is when you are vulnerable and should be able to enjoy what is going on, and then all goes into the wrong direction. You could be robbed, which is more or less easy to bear, because no actual physical harm has been done. But you could also end up abused physically and mentally.

I am no expert on how to contact dominant partners and learn how to trust them, because my husband also is my Master and we have complete trust in each other, so I never had to think much about trust with my partner. It is there and strongly so. 
But common sense would tell me, in a situation where I would get to know a potential partner to play with, that I have to tell a real friend where I am, with whom and I’d have phone nearby and have a friend call me, to check whether all is ok. This is the least to do, I think. There could be enough other problems that you could not solve by being phoned, but I would not go anywhere without some kind of backup. I keep doing a lot of silly things, but would try to prevent potentially life-threatening situations before they could arise.

Of course, before you have a scene, there is much more to do, you have to get to know each other, find out about your potential partner and negotiate what you want to do in a scene, you have to talk about safety, find safewords, at least note down the basics of what you negotiated before you start.

Men and women

I think that there are differences in how men and women trust their partners. If a man trusts somebody, I sometimes have this feeling that there are dozens of drawers, one for each kind of activity or issue, just like there appear to be different categories of trust for men. As a result, this man trusts his friend Joe when it comes to expert-advice on machines and his friend Jim on expert-advice on women. Jim is the one who is married! Do I sound prejudiced? Nah, can’t be, women never have prejudices …. (I apologize half-heartedly; it is just the hormones…).

Then there is another drawer, the BIGGEST DRAWER, and that has written SEX on it. I am not a man-eating slut, but nevertheless, sooner or later you are in a situation where you meet some man who would go and have sex with you immediately. Try a night in the disco and count the phone numbers that you collected. If you wanted to, you could have another sex-partner (not a lover, for sure) every day of the year. Not my cup of tea, but you get the message. The point here is that many (most? Seriously, I don’t know) men are easy to manipulate by means of sexual attraction (Master says: most men). They really would go into a hotel and let you bind them, so that you could rob them after they are bound and helpless.

I mean, how could men do that? I would not even put my handbag out of my hand in the presence of somebody I would not feel safe or well with, and surely would not let me be bound by somebody I got to know only ten minutes earlier between two Margueritas.

But if I trust somebody, I do that without any differentiation. It is more like all or nothing for me. Maybe I am trust-challenged here, but then I am not the only one. Doesn’t make it any better, I know. If women have come to trust their partner, they would trust him with the money, they would believe all, or most, of what he says and definitely trust him during sex, let him do what he wants, or trust him enough to believe that he stops if she doesn’t want to go on. Nevertheless, in most cases it would take longer than ten minutes to earn that trust. But if you end up with a one night stand after a night out, either you know what you did, or you placed your trust in the wrong hands. This would feel like betrayal for me, and I would feel seriously hurt. But that’s because I cannot separate sex from being emotionally involved, just like most (many?) other women.