A View From A Top 2

personal view by Hans Meijer

Hi all,

This is a post on request by a member of the list. The request is to try and go in detail a bit further on doms and feelings. I'll try to do so, but not before I set out a list of disclaimers and requests.

The requests first

* this question is anything BUT new. It is also important. There are very few doms responding to the question and that DOES make it difficult for subs - especially new ones - to understand their counterparts. And if they do, although I KNOW it is their way of trying, their answers are usually to superficial. So common guys, let's hear it this time :)

* secondly this - I am not easily hurt. But that doesn't mean I will take all the crap. Not for me personal, but much more because a lot of that will discourage others to open up. For once I felt personally offended by the "this is an old story, nothing new to it" post that came in earlier. If that is your attitude towards anyone trying to open up, please go take a hike and never come back. You are only frustrating communication here. Sex is old as humanity and as a result every sexually related emotion is "an old story" (the female ones included). But that doesn't mean it may be very new, personal and important to the person in question. Next to that: you will not hear one of the experienced people respond in the same offensive and ignorant way to the 12,571st time a discussion on shaving comes up or he/she has to responds to the 8,769th question about not whipping the kidney area (to give just one example. Another listmember in a private discussion described it this way: "to some of the experienced ones it must sometimes feel the way teachers sometimes feel when the start the next semester explaining the Middle Ages for the 21rst time". So, sit back, learn, delete if not interested but spare us comments like the above, especially in cases where males are trying to open up. You won't hurt me, but you WILL hurt others.

Oke, disclaimers:

* there are hardly any specific general denominators when it comes to feelings. At best, there are common denominators between majorities, but then there will always be those that will not fit in. Anything said below is personal and applies to my situation and my personality. So they do not have to be your feelings (in fact they're copyrighted ), neither will they be any indication for the way you should do things - or expect emotions - in your situation.

* not all of what is likely to follow is fit for "young eyes", as in people with less experience. My emotions are mine and based on 25 years of active experience in the lifestyle. Meaning that for obvious reasons they will be very different - if not entirely nonexistent - for you.

Right having said all that, let's see. I probably need to sketch a little background so some things may be easier to follow. I probably have a very standard - and in some areas extremely macho-oriented - background. I started out being a sailor (big tankers), was a professional officer in the elite corps of the Dutch army, spent several years reporting on several wars on behalf of one of the big international news agencies and currently (as I have been for the last 12 years) operate as management consultant in the international financial world, mainly in the areas of serious troubleshooting and negotiating areas. meaning that I have seen and experienced power in many different shapes and forms. One of the main advantages of being in the more or less "big" negotiation areas is that you can only do that if you are willing to understand about power dynamics and personalities of your are willing to evaluate the entire process every time again, including yourself. Usually this is done by outsiders and I can tell you, that can be extremely revealing as well as embarrassing :).

I have probably had the benefit of being able to discover as well as develop EPE emotions from a very early age on. My first real EPE based relationship started at 15, lasted until I was 25 and quite rapidly grew into a full swing and very intense (and hard) TPE relationship which incorporated a lot of things that may be scary to most of you. Whether or not it is wise to enter into such a relationship is not the issue here, but a fact of the matter is that it has dominated my emotions for a long time. It was hard, intense, far beyond average borders (if these exist) and it took another ten years to entangle. It was followed by the standard Hegel-type reaction: a vanilla marriage that - of course - broke up (in fact two did) with all sorts of threesomes, play outside your relationships, one night stands, very short relationships and whatever.

What all of this taught me first of all is this: it does not make sense to hide, "soften", downgrade your feelings, fantasies and wishes, not matter how scary they will be to yourself and others. That does not mean you have to ACTIVELY LIVE OUT all of that, but talk about them and most importantly, accept them. If there is one common denominator between doms it is the fact that they don't talk about them. Not really. Having met many, many others over time - having mentored them, talked to them. fought with them and sometimes even cried with them this is the picture that remains: doms do not talk about their real fantasies, wants and needs. Not because they are male and have problems doing so, but because they are scared. next to that - the safe, sane consensual stuff, although badly needed and very good advice, also gets in the way. So do other things, such as the fact that they are told they should care about their subs, respect their limits at all times and well, all of you get the picture.

Now THIS IN MANY CASES IS NOT WHAT THEY FANTASIZE ABOUT! Not all, but the majority of doms have fantasies that go a lot further then this. Dom fantasies about camps, intense training, physically and mentally "rebuilding" the sub, types of punishment and humiliation that would scare the sh** out of many including the majority of the community are anything BUT uncommon. They are also extremely scary. Very, very extremely scary. So to the question do you sometimes get scared ........ damn you are, especially if you are a dom and probably all the time but they are not going to tell you. No way. It's way to scary. They may be branded monster, Nazi, or whatever. To you doms: ever (for example) had fantasies about "breeding subs"? They are not uncommon but yes, fantasies likes these scare the living daylights out of you. Not so much the fantasy as such, but the fact that your brain - not THE brain but YOUR brain - is capable of dreaming them up over and over again, even perfecting them, improving on them, adding more details. Worse, they may even haunt you.

What doms will do is hide all this behind other things. The overemphasis on care does not have to - but may indicate this process. Learning to talk about them takes time and a huge amount of trust - something that the average male is not used to.

This is why many doms do not open up. Not really. They can't. They don't dare to. It takes years and years to accept what you are and even then you may not be ready to talk about it.

Now all of this doesn't mean doms aren't the caring, loving people the way they are usually described. That too is a part of the multifaceted personality, everybody is. It is however only one side. The side that is talked about the most - especially by subs - but probably the one least important to the doms. But is does make a great cover to hide behind .

Another thing: you do not "play" power. You exercise it. You want to feel it, right down to your balls (hey, where did we hear that word before ). Any experienced management trainer will tell his students that HE will feel the power in his balls and actually he needs to. That goes for doms as well. You do want to feel the intense power emotion and you don't get that from holding back. Now mind you, I am not in any way advocating here that doms should let all their fantasies out and turn them into reality. But just "playing" it is not good enough. Any online dom that has never experienced anything in real life and will tell me he will feel power behind his computer is either an extreme newbee (no offense) who indeed is genuinely fascinated by the fact he can exercise (a bit of) power but more likely either talking BS or hiding his true colors.

Power is about adrenaline shots. I personally go off on it. Professionally speaking I can get great kicks about negotiating millions of dollar situations. Like I enjoy diving, parachuting, mountain climbing and much more.

But adrenaline shots come in peaks. You can not - and actually should not - be on an adrenaline high all the time. Meaning that one intense session does a lot more then a more or less constant level of getting may be a bit but not everything.

Let me try and give you an example here. If the sub constantly brings her dom his drinks, rubs his back and whatever she is in fact constantly reminding him of his power. Knowing you have that power can be an intense kick by itself. But constantly being reminded about something you already know is a bore and in fact counterproductive. What you are waiting for is the explosion, the big one, the experience, scene, moment that will wipe you of your feet - and then feel the intensity, the closeness, the bonding, the feeling of being real true soulmates with your sub afterwards. Starting to see a resemblance here?? Exactly - we are talking something here that closely resembles the differences between the male and female orgasm. Power is about peaking, about being on the edge and just, but only barely, not falling. it is not about telling where the edge is and that you can visit it using the carefully protected tourist route.

Wanna know why males like fishing, hunting, sports, etc. so much? Because it is about exactly that: peaking. That is what there entire physique and mentality is about. They are built that way and the doms are basically the sports cars between the other varieties of the male species. What attracts the dom? The uncertainty, taking the risks, not exactly knowing where it is going to end. If it is predictable the fun is gone. If I exactly know what the sub wants, needs and if I stay carefully within her limits without pushing them or at least taking her to them I may have all sorts of (technical) fun, but not what I'm looking for.

Hans