Advice and Reassurances for
Depressed Kinkters
from Same
When I was a real blogger, posting more than .4 times per annum, I didn’t have very much of an issue with hate-mail. Maybe a few terse comments and some disagreements in discussion, but I don’t recall getting messages that were just about insulting me and bashing my opinions. In the normal course of things I think trolls and online agitators are better off blocked and ignored than engaged with, but in a global pandemic I’ll take motivation where I can find it.
I don’t get much hatemail, and I don’t usually pay much attention to is; I got one negative comment on my Cuckolding post. Which I deleted, it’s a contentious kink with a lot of baggage, and so I expected trolling/flaming on that post. What I did not expect was to get a multi-paragraph diatribe on a post I wrote in July of 2012.
For Sale, to a Good Home is a post I wrote about how living with depression influences my fantasies. Specifically, I wrote that, when I feel bad about myself my sexual fantasies tend to reflect that low value, as well as predicting that my depressive habits would be incompatible with my desire to serve someone who cares about my well-being.
It’s not a great post, and there are a lot of things I wrote about years ago on which I have a changed perspective, but I have to thank my commenter who so thoroughly misunderstands consensual D/s, relationships, and Depression to an extent that I feel compelled to address some of these points in writing.
Some Observations for the Kinky and the Depressed.
Despite what anyone may tell you about the virtue of self-reliance, humans are social animals. Our species evolved and flourished due in large part to our empathetic and cooperative nature. The values of Empathy and Cooperation are constantly under assault essentially because they cannot be used to consolidate profits or power to any single individual or organization. You dear reader, need and deserve to have companionship and reasonable accommodation in your life.
A partner, even a dominant one, who will not attend to you when sick or comfort you when you are in pain is no partner at all. That said, your partner did not sign up to be your full-time caretaker, even mommy-doms and caregivers cannot be wholly responsible for your wellbeing. This means that caring for yourself can be an act of submission. Cleaning and maintaining a dominant’s favorite toy is an important responsibility.
Depression is a condition affected by a lot of factors. It makes you feel helpless, useless and hopeless (and not in a fun, sexy way.) If you suspect that you may be depressed I highly recommend that you seek professional help. It is a manageable condition, but there’s no easy cure. You must remind yourself that being depressed does not make you weak, pathetic or undesirable. You will have better days, and when they come, taking action to strengthen, care for, or better yourself will help you get better, find a partner, or maintain a relationship.
Do not delude yourself into believing that love can cure your depression, or that a dominant will fix you. Life is easier with someone by your side, they cannot carry you always. Don’t despair, even taking a small step to better yourself is preferable to doing nothing. Forgive yourself when you fail, but don’t stop trying to get better. Tomio, linked this post on Depression and Submission in the comments back in 2012, it’s definitely worth a read if you or your sub are living with depression.
BDSM requires informed consent. It is only part of a relationship, whether that’s a romantic, sexual, casual, or professional relationship, there is still a connection being made between two human beings that requires the same level of care and respect you would show to anyone else.
Fantasies are just that. You are allowed to have them and enjoy them. However, You should pay attention to how your fantasies make you feel, as well as how they affect your partner. Some fantasies are unhealthy, because they encourage us to take unsafe risks or engage in dangerous practices.
Other fantasies are unhealthy because we let them replace healthy behaviors. This is, I think, the point I was circling when I wrote on this eight years ago. When I am acutely depressed, I want to be ordered to do all the things I am supposed to do. When I struggle to “get over the hump” of my ennui I wish for a task mistress with a cane and cattle-prod to force me to exercise and clean and cook. I let that fantasy roll around in my head, imagining what a good servant I would be if only someone would take away my free will. That’s not good submission. It just isn’t. I’m not going to castigate myself for it, but I am aware of it and trying to improve.
Intention is not the same thing as effect. You are responsible for how your actions affect others. Not for how you intended your actions to come across. That means that wanting to submit and submitting to the desires of a dominant are shockingly much different things. A lot of guys seem to want to submit in name only. If you are mostly turned on by having sexual things done to you and only want to roleplay service you may want to consider the possibility that you are more a bottom rather than a submissive or maybe you’re really only in the market for BDSM in the bedroom, that’s perfectly okay, but understanding what you really want is the first step to actually getting it.
I am very lucky to have the good home for which I longed, and an owner who cares for my well-being rather than simply pushing me to satisfy her desires without regard to my needs. That’s a good thing, because practicing submission while depressed is as hard as I thought it would be. One of my most common failings as a submissive, is to wait to be ordered to do something that I know Chaos would like me to do. I know it is tied to my depression, because the same type of procrastination is my metier in all areas of my life when I am acutely depressed. It’s something I predicted when I wrote the original post:
“[When depressed, do]… I need gentle care or to just have the sad slapped out of me? I couldn’t communicate my needs because I’m not sure exactly what they are, but I’m sure that if my depression was interfering with the relationship it would become another thing to be depressed about…”
It is something I am trying to improve upon. Chaos is very understanding and it has not been as hard to communicate my needs. Depression does not make submission any easier, but neither has it made it impossible.