christmas bunny

Being part of a community with all kinds of kinks means I am bound to come into contact with people who are less than savory.  I will also, sadly, likely give someone untrustworthy my trust.

Have, actually.  More than once.  Which presents a dilemma.

I am not responsible for someone else’s actions.  My warning or lack thereof is unlikely to change anything other than the way the object of warning sees me – as suddenly a meddlesome shittalker, determined to undermine some innocent person for my own reasons, to satisfy my own agenda.

Yet if I have had a notably negative experience with a person in the community, who am I to approach others about it?

The thing is, I often see two roads when it comes to things we see as consent violations. The first is denial or dismissal. The second is scorched earth. We really have no community consensus on how to proceed.

Is that the best way to handle things? The first is problematic, as by not speaking up, this person who doesn’t have the ability to comprehend that their actions caused pain is likely to repeat those actions (as I’ve seen), with the unspoken blessing of all those who turn a blind eye.  Such as me.

The second solution is problematic as it drives this person out of the scene, leaving them to prey upon members who may be less connected or outside of it, often leaving those other people without the resources or support that could have helped them.

How do we find a middle ground?

How do we implement a system that will identify people who are potentially dangerous and keep people safe while also allowing them to learn from their mistakes and become better aware of others, better negotiators, better people?

Can we genuinely help people understand and rehabilitate and where do we draw the line if they cannot acknowlege the damage they do or if it seems they don’t care?

Are there cases where we can see people benefiting from community involvement as learners, participants, but being careful to exclude them from leadership and the hazards that can bring?

Even after people behave badly, isn’t the goal to help them learn from their mistakes and become better people?  It seems we are often very long on memory and very short on forgiveness.  While I don’t have the answers to these questions, I believe we have to consider them within our own communities, have the hard conversations, and make decisions about how to handle these situations.  Sadly, we never know when we may need to have already done so.

About the Author

Christmas bunny has been exploring kink since she was legal to do so.  Her serious writing started in college, where she accidently got some of her papers published in educational journals.  She has recently expanded her writing to include her kink journey.  She began writing in the physical realm, but shed some of her inhibitions and began sharing those entries with others.  She now keeps an active blog of her personal growth and her relationship with her Master / Daddy Dominant and writes helpful educational posts on a variety of subjects.

One of the most challenging things about human relationships can be knowing when to walk away from them.  Hell, knowing when to run can be just as difficult.

This time has been particularly challenging for relationships.  I’ve seen ones that seemed solid crumble early on in the lockdown, while others I knew were shaky have held on because the people in them felt they had no other options.  Finances are in trouble, sex is a struggle even on the best days, and those two things already point straight at a split or divorce without factoring in that everyone is stressed in ways many of us never anticipated.

But when is the time to go?

Well, if you’re asking yourself that, it probably already isn’t a great sign for the longevity of your relationship.  When your reason becomes staying because you can’t afford not to or because of the kids or the dog, it is long past time to have gone.

Ideally a breakup should happen when people realize they aren’t compatible long-term.  Unfortunately, feelings are messy and seldom so cut and dried.  Love, memories of past love, and misguided honor can keep us in bad or simply ill-fitting situations longer than we should let them.

If practicality can win, a separation occurs more clinically and the ability to retain friendship remains.  It happens before the disagreements become fights and the fights become unresolved issues and finally resentment.  Resentment generally become a rather drawn out an expensive divorce, in my experience.

The hardest part?  It isn’t admitting things aren’t working.  Odds are good your best friend or your mother or someone else you’re close to already knows.  You’ve told them yourself, even if it isn’t in those words.  The hardest part is letting go of what you believed your life was going to look like with that person.  You are letting go of your vision of your future, even if you’ve never sat down and explicitly planned it.  Maybe it was a flash of you with them in a rocking chair on a porch, white-haired and laughing.  Maybe it was visions of a mobile home driving cross country or living on a cruise ship.

You have to let those things go.  Maybe people are finding it easier to walk away from relationships now because they are already having to let go of what they imagined their futures would look like.  Letting go of a partner is just one more release among many, and the grieving can happen together.

You are exchanging your happy vision of what might be with a blank canvas.  That’s really fucking scary, particularly now.  But maybe there’s a better way to look at it.

You are exchanging nights of fighting in a home that feels like a war zone for nights of peace, wandering through the house in pajamas not worrying about the next fight.  You are exchanging words of hostility for silence, or even better, for the possibility of words of love and support from others.  You are exchanging eggshells for wood floors and peace and the possibilities ahead are endless.

You are exchanging a guarantee – misery every day or however often for a possibility of happiness in the future.  The unknown is a scary place, and it can be hard to give up even a miserable present in exchange for a world you can’t imagine.

When I was a little girl, my parents wanted the best for me.  They wanted me to be happy and find a partner who loved and cherished me.  As I got older, that desire didn’t change.  It’s what we all want for our children.  I have learned to ask myself questions.

Would my parents be filled with joy at how happy I am if they could see inside my relationship?  (Discounting any assumptions about bias – they don’t have to approve of the relationship, just my happiness level.)  Would they feel my partner treats me well or would they want to punch my partner if they really knew how they treat me?

And most of all:  do I want my children to grow up and have a relationship like this?  Is that the happiness I envision for them?  They will model their relationships on what they see from me.  Would I want my child to stay with a partner who makes them miserably unhappy, or would I open my arms, tell them to come come, and support them pursuing happiness?

If I wouldn’t want it for someone I love, the real question is, why don’t I love myself enough not to want it for me?

You know what they say about saying never. Well, I swore I would never call a man Daddy. For the majority of my relationships that felt right to me.

“Who’s your Daddy?”

Was met with my standard response which never failed to amuse me:

“bunny’s father.”

When Santa and I opened up our relationship to kinky play and it subsequently evolved into a (then) bedroom only D/s relationship, I queried him as to his preferred title. He didn’t have one in particular he demanded, so he gave me a few choices. Daddy was on the list, and I passed that by without a second thought. I’m not one of those littles I read about. That’s not for me. Master was right out, at least then. I had some seriously negative associations there. The only logical choice was Sir, as far as I was concerned, so that’s where it landed.

I didn’t count on the way our relationship stripped me bare of pretense, forced me to be honest with myself above all else, and passed that straight on to him. Journaling. Seriously the best tool, which I have definitely said many a time before.

We had been playing with some bondage and impact. His teeth marked me as he nipped at shoulders, arms, breasts and I felt the delicious wash of sensation of his variance of pressure that never fails to excite me.

“Do you like that?” He growled at me in that sex voice he has.

“Harder, please,” mine got all breathy, as it does.

“Harder, what?” He said with an eyebrow up.

“Harder, please, Sir,” I responded properly.

But it didn’t fit. It didn’t fit how I thought of him, how we were together. He nurtures me, protects me, cares for me, defends me. He values my emotional and physical well being. While those things can definitely be characteristics of regular D types, Sir just wasn’t feeling right. He felt it, too.

“Try Daddy,” He encouraged.

I looked at him shyly. I did a lot of things shyly then. “Harder please, Daddy,” my voice dropped to almost a whisper by the end, but it came out.

Have you ever been working on a 5000 piece puzzle and gotten stuck on a certain piece? It might be a little oddly shaped and might have colors that don’t seem to match any one section. You try it everywhere there is an obvious hole, and it doesn’t fit. Over and over, across that puzzle it doesn’t fit anywhere. Then you see a hole that it clearly doesn’t fit into but you’re running out of places to put it and the damn thing has to go somewhere. So you try it anyhow, and somehow, like puzzle magic, it fits, connecting those huge chunks that were floating about needing anchoring. Once it’s in, if looks like it has always belonged there, and the strange wash of colors suddenly make sense in a way they hadn’t before.

That was how this moment felt for me. For us, really. It is one of those defining moments that will stay with me.

He looked at me intensely, eyes almost glowing with love and desire, and He kissed me the same way. He kissed me passionately, with a single-minded focus, pinning me beneath him to join our bodies.

It took a little time to realize that was how our relationship had truly evolved, and that I needed to accept and embrace some things about myself which had always been present.  This is who we are.

I call him Daddy.

But the thing is, that isn’t his only name.

When we are alone, or at a kink friendly event, he can be Daddy without reservation for me.  When he gives me a command I need to acknowlege, I have enough Southern in me for him to be Sir.  When it is an order I definitely am not excited about, I remind myself that this is the path I chose, and the good outweighs the bad.  Those moments, I address him as Master, as I need the reminder.  And when I call out to him in public or refer to him in conversation, he is Santa, as it has become a term of respect, and his title, as odd as that may seem to others.

Yet I am not the only one who calls him an honorific.  Others have called him Sir, and Daddy, and definitely Santa, though none have called him Master, that I know of.  Another partner addressing him by his title, even when used as a form of affection, gives me zero pause.  I actually find it cute when other women address him that way.  I know many submissives who have difficulties with their D-types being called Sir or Daddy by others, and I can understand the concern.  For some, it is akin to having a pet name, a deeply intimate connection with a partner be used by an outsider.  I just can’t view it that way.  His name is his name is his name.  How someone else addresses him has no effect on the relationship I have with him.

Much like any form of address, we’re all looking to make those verbal connections, and I cannot fault his other partners for seeking those things.  What I call him is a term of respect and affection.  I’ve learned instead that the real sticking point for me is what he calls them in return.

I’ve come to realize in the last few months that some of the greatest challenges of poly are the things that are completely outside of my control and the control of my nesting partner.  What is there to do when you work hard at building open communication and trust with someone only to have it quietly undone by a partner’s other partner, albeit unintentionally?

Backing up.

My current communication style is haphazard. I am honest with people until they teach me they don’t want my honesty.  They can show they don’t want it by responding to it with hostility, anger, or really any sort of defensive behavior rather than seeing it as an opportunity to work towards resolution.  Once I know someone doesn’t want me to be honest, it is often like a countdown clock ticking inevitably towards the end of the relationship in its current form.

It took time for me to break away from my need to hold truth inside.  I had so many past partners who would respond with negativity no matter how I framed my concerns or hurts.  My expression of needs became a personal insult rather than remaining a conversation.  It was easier to stay silent and keep the peace, working out my pain elsewhere, such as avoiding issues, finding time-consuming hobbies outside of a shared residence, or letting events with friends overshadow shared time with a partner.  Avoidance became my style rather than tackling issues head-on.

Santa was instrumental in helping me reframe my communication style back to a more direct yet diplomatic honesty.  He encouraged me to share all of my truths and then engaged with me in productive conversation, working to help me gain comfort with sharing.  It took months of me having to write what I felt before I could speak about it.  As His responses continued to be reasonable and he honored my honesty with compassion and conversation, I became more and more comfortable starting those conversations with words from my mouth rather than from my fingers.

I was so proud of myself when I was finally able to come to Him directly with a concern rather than writing it out first.  Unfortunately, I have continued to attempt to communicate with others around me the same way.

I say unfortunately because not everyone is ready to do that with me.  They don’t always respond positively to it.  Maybe they see my honesty as an ultimatum, maybe as an attack.  It’s hard to say how other people are feeling unless they share it with me.

The real challenges are the ones who are like me.  I can almost feel the sympathetic resonance of two notes vibrating on the same frequency when we talk.  They shy away from expressing their honest truth because it has burned them with another partner.  They have to learn to trust that I won’t put my judgement on them or let those feelings which want to deflect criticism take over.

But what if they are still with a partner who does those things?  A partner who doesn’t want total honesty?

Sometimes I curse Don’t Ask Don’t Tell arrangements.  How can someone know I genuinely want them to be super honest with me when they have someone at home constantly insisting they not share information?  It becomes a tug-of-war.  Me saying it’s okay to share, please tell me the things, while the other partner says no, no, please don’t tell me the things.  That’s a hard line to walk.

Equally difficult are those with partners who still jump to defensive maneuvers or blaming them when they share unpleasant truths.  The lesson they receive there is the constant knowlege that they cannot be truthful without negative consequence, while I attempt to impart the opposite.  Eventually one style will have to win out, and that may not bode well for one or all of us.  Unintentional sabatoge.  Meta-toge.

It still amazes me how many people are living kinky lives and scream about communication to the heavens, yet engage in some form of dishonesty, whether it is in the form of simply not sharing information, or in holding it back.  How can a relationship be at its healthiest when there are hidden cobwebs in the corners which never see the light, and continue to grow in strength?

The only solution I see is to just keep on keeping on.  One day at a time I will do my best to be honest with people, knowing I will also stumble and make mistakes.  I will forgive those who stumble and make mistakes in their dealings with me and do my best to trust them as much as I can when those things happen.

One day at a time.  It’s what I’ve got.