In their 1999 track, “Affirmation”, the band Savage Garden wrote:
I believe you can’t control or choose your sexuality
I believe that trust is more important than monogamy
In a way, those words are central to my view of myself, and my relationship with Master C.
I make no bones about the fact that I consider myself to be bisexual. I am sexually attracted by both men and women. I’ve mentioned before that the first time another person brought me to orgasm, it was, quite literally, at the hands of another girl; “The Girl” to be precise. I won’t repeat the details as you can read them if you follow the link to that earlier post, but the point was, at no time did what I was doing with “The Girl” seem in any way wrong. Yes, as I alluded to in that earlier post, the nature of all-girls schooling being what it was, while no one wanted to be known as a virgin, no one particularly wanted to be openly branded as a slut (although we “sluts” were quite happy to compare slutiness notes and tips within our own friend circles). The only thing “worse” than being a slut was, almost inevitably, to be a “lez”.
Of course, by the time I left school at 18, I was no longer a virgin and had had a number of sexual partners, both male and female and, name-calling aside, it all felt good and right. Sex with male and female partners was different, and different partners did different things, but it was all sex and it was all about pleasure and it was all good (apart from the times where it wasn’t, but, sadly, bad sex happens sometimes; we all have had our disappointments somewhere). Never, at any point did I ever feel the need to pigeonhole myself into a category that potentially limited how I could enjoy myself and who I could enjoy myself with.
I was fortunate. I had a good relationship my mother where I could discuss sex and sexuality openly. And, while I didn’t give her a running tally of how many partners I’d had, I was able to talk to her about the fact that I was attracted to, and had had sex with boys and girls. My mum’s advice was essentially, if fucking someone makes you happy, go ahead and fuck them (she didn’t use those exact words, but they convey her meaning). That, essentially, since the earliest days of sexual awakening has been central to my self-image and approach to my sex life.
So, that’s the first line of the quote dealt with, now on to the second…
At no time in our relationship have Master C or I been exclusive. When we first met, we were essentially fuck-buddies/friends-with-benefits and both of us had other arrangements in addition to what we shared with each other. When we became a couple, we agreed at the outset that, given our history, and the nature of our personalities (mine, I suspect, more so than Master C’s) that even attempting to be exclusive would be pointless. We both knew that even if we could do it, it almost certainly wouldn’t satisfy either of us , and, in the worst case scenario, could possibly drive an irreparable wedge between us. The solution was, quite simply, total honesty. Even before we became what would now be recognised as D/s, there was still the requirement that we were both free to fuck anyone else, so long as we were always honest about it.
This isn’t to say that there weren’t jealousies and insecurities, because we are both human, but it allowed us to find something that worked and what would, ultimately, lay the foundation of our D/s dynamic. In a way, Master C telling me how much pleasure another woman had given Him would become a kind of punishment or a form of humiliation for me. Me admitting to my indiscretions and having to be disciplined in order to atone for them, would, of course bring corporal punishment into the mix. In a very real sense, our particular D/s dynamic evolved out of a recognition that, so long as we were emotionally “faithful” to each other by being open and honest, the “need” for monogamy disappeared.
This sin’t to say that other emotional attachments aren’t allowed. There is obviously a very strong emotional (as well as sexual) bond between “The Girl” and me that extends back more than a decade before I’d even met Master C. There is also a lesser, but still strong emotional attachment between “The Other Guy” and me as well. For His part, Master C is very closely attached to one of the other women in our poly circle. The point is, that we know about this, and we are honest about these things, both with ourselves and with each other. While some of them may be friends, or perhaps a little more, the various sexual others in our lives are simply people we have sex with, either on our own, or together. None of those others, however, share a bond with us that is anything like the bond that Master C and I share. We are partners in every sense. If I’m allowed to be vomit-inducingly cringe-worthy for a second, we complete each other. Yes, we love, we fuck and sometimes we fight but, most importantly, we share, we confide, we support, we occasionally drive each other nuts, we argue and then we make up (and there’s almost always fucking involved). All of those are foundations of not just our D/s dynamic, but our relationship and our lives together, and they are all built on the bedrock of openess, honesty and trust.