If you rely completely on protocol, you can become a robot.
Margaret Trudeau
Almost all humans love protocols not just the d/s crowd. They may not be aware of it, but they spend their whole lives learning and becoming accustomed to them. We are taught them at every step of our lives even if they don’t make any sense at all. You can call them whatever you like, rules, routines, rituals, protocols. They all amount to the same thing, a pattern that we can follow without thought to navigate life. You know what you have to wear and how you have to behave whatever it is you are doing.
That can be comforting for many people, it can also lead to complacency and stress when having deal with change. I am not saying that this all bad, but I am saying that we need to question those things we do without thinking because we can lose our ability to adapt and change when change is needed.
When it comes to d/s the same applies. If you do things the way you have always done things you might find that you have become a bit robotic and lose the joy of exploration. What fun is that? An invariable path takes you to the same destination every single time.
I don’t mean that your life, or your d/s for that matter, needs to be anarchy. It can be, but that would seem to offer very little in the way of stability and that certainly wouldn’t work for me. I need rules and not just for her but for me as well. Never have a kink moment or decide on a punishment while angry or intoxicated is one of many rules that exists in our d/s for me.
She has rules as well, but those rule are for when they are appropriate and always open for modification as needed. I don’t want a mindless robot (unless that is what we are doing in a clearly defined kink moment.) I want her as she is. A strong, intelligent, amazing woman who has chosen to submit to me because that is what she desires.
Even our ongoing rules get reviewed from time to time to make sure they still meet our needs. Some stay and other go and none of them are sacred. Like any other living thing our d/s needs tending and pruning and constant care so that it can fully blossom.
I am not denigrating protocol for other people, if it works for you then that is wonderful. All I am saying is that it really doesn’t work for me except in very short bursts and I know for sure that my beloved Lillith would push back pretty damn hard if I suggested that she needed a strict and unvarying set of protocols, and that is just one of the reasons I love her.
So you rock on with your bad self and we will do the same, just in a free form sort of way. The both of us bristle and push back when we are told how to do things. I know that seems odd for d/s, but we make it work.
Because as the meme says. There is No True Way.
Michael
