undergroundsea -> RE: Service vs. favours (5/30/2009 11:01:01 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Andalusite peon, you were one of the guys on that thread who said that doing a favour for a woman you're attracted to feels the same as helping a neighbor or male friend, unless she expresses D/s. It was I who said that and I sense some elaboration will help. I have different centers of feelings or components that create different wants and needs. I see service to be an activity that spans multiple components. Service carries appeal for masochism if it creates a feeling of being subservient. Service allows an opportunity to express appreciation for those I appreciate for my social component. Service provides an opportunity for gratification that can be had by helping others for my spiritual component. Service carries appeal for my ego-related component for how I might feel about myself as a result of service I provide. A desire for service can also come from a desire to ingratiate or earn good favor, which could come from an objective or lack of esteem. I have no idea where to place this motivation with respect to the components I list above ;-) I expect it comes from the ego-related component. The masochistic component is specific to submissives. All others apply to people in general. How much the latter three components create a desire for acts of service varies with pesronality. Sexual preference and personality are independent traits. I expect to see selfishness and compassion distributed across all orientations, it is not specific to submissives. That I am a submissive does not mean I do not help neighbors or others for sake of helping. For those familiar with the five lanugages of expressing appreciation, acts of service is one of my modes of expressing appreciation. When I help others in a vanilla context, it comes from the vanilla components. When I say that it is not different from helping a neighbor, I do not mean that there is no value of helping a neighbor but that the motivations and gratifications are the same as helping a neighbor. The point that I try to emphasize via that statement is that if there is a difference between acts of service extended to a neighbor versus a dominant, what is that difference? If one expects acts of service to come from the non-masochistic, vanilla components then one should form expectations that one could have in a non-masochistic vanilla setting. A half hour of time to help move computer equipment can easily come from vanilla components, eight hours of yard work not as much. If the expectation for an act of service is what one could expect in a vanilla setting, fair enough. If it is not and it is relying on however much motivation to come from whatever is specific to submissives versus vanilla persons, then I think that motivation needs to be touched. I do not say that it must be touched a specific way but that it should be touched for that motivation to stay alive. If the motivation is not touched or fed, this motivation will go away. And if the situation is such that vanilla motivations are not enough, then the desire to be of service will go away. I sometimes sense that people want to receive service from service submissives without providing any energy in return, an idea with which I have difficulty. It's like, there, I've said the word service submissive so that should be enough motivation. And sometimes the statements in such discussions suggest that a service submissive is wrong for wanting an energy return, or to expect that the experience might bring him gratification through whatever means, with which I also have difficulty. To me the situation is similar to the objection sometimes dommes raise; there is not an effort to understand why the service submissive enjoys providing the service and what might make the experience positive for him. In a situation that relies on some of the motivation to come from the submissive component, I do not say that a domme must do a specific thing like dress in a given way or carry a whip. I simply say that it is important to understand the motivation and touch that motivation for it to sustain. After having understood the motivation, I do not say that the domme must feed that motivation. It is then for her to decide how she feels about that motivation and whether the situation is a compatible one. However, if she does not touch the motivation, it is fair for the submissive to feel unsatisfied or see the situation as an incompatible one. My statements in the other thread and this thread rest upon this philosophy. Cheers, Sea
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