This piece originally appeared on the Ask A Sub Patreon in October of 2020. If you’d like to support my work, please become a patron or upgrade to the paid side of this substack.
Also, an announcement!
Spots are still available in my Conscious Kink 2 Incubator for D/s Couples!
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My partner and I are starting to watch your Conscious Kink course and we’re super excited to start expanding our dynamic outside the bedroom! However, he brought up a concern he has and I’d like to ask about it. He’s worried that if he sets up more rules and expectations for me for every day things, that will create a codependency between us that will become unhealthy.
It is a valid concern, I naturally have a codependent personality and it has been an issue in past relationships. In an ideal world, he hopes that the rules he gives me could foster more independence and self-efficacy around things like cleaning my home and taking care of myself, instead of those rules making me more dependent on him to enforce them.
I’m unsure of how to navigate this with him, I crave more structure and guidance from him but also do not want to lose myself in an unhealthy enmeshed dynamic. If you have any advice or if you cover this more thoroughly later on in your course, please let me know.
Codependence is a hot-button issue in the D/s community. Many newcomers to BDSM arrive on its shores still groggy from relationships that didn’t fit with narratives about ourselves that we may be questioning: “why doesn’t [x love language] fulfill me?” “Is commitment something I really want?” “What relationship structures actually serve me?” and so on. Because society is so quick to tell us we’re broken (BDSM was still considered a disease in the DSM until its most recent edition), I think people in the kink community are quick to assume something else must be wrong with our approach to relationships. I’m already sick — so what else is going on?
I would never doubt your characterization of yourself as codependent or take that label away from you if it is helpful, but I want to challenge it a little for the benefit of the many, many subs who approach me concerned about codependence. I have almost never met a sub who hadn't self-diagnosed as codependent. Often, though, what lies under the surface of this Web-MD style diagnosis is actually just a desire to be loved in one's own language, and to find refuge in a central relationship in your life, which are both noble and healthy goals if cultivated mindfully. But without guidance, it's only natural for this need to be enacted in unhealthy ways — like sublimating your truest self and all those other codependent behaviors we worry about.
You’ve caught me in a poetic moment, because I’m finally reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Potawatomi professor and poet Robin Wall Kimmerer. Each of the book’s chapters hones closely in on “plant teachers,” and the lessons each species has to impart to us as its human neighbors. Kimmerer’s gentle hand will guide you to conclusions about how the plants show us how to live, but even after you’ve shut the book the connections still echo.
One chapter that I can’t stop thinking about explains the indigenous farming method of the “three sisters” — corn, squash, and beans. These three plants are planted amongst each other because each has its job to do to keep the others healthy. This stands in stark opposition to colonial methods of farming (those huge plots of corn that stretch on forever). And this dichotomy draws our attention to differing ideologies about community as well. According to Kimmerer, many indigenous cultures around the world acknowledge that no one species stands wholly alone, that each needs another to form a stronger foundation and to survive. If you’ve received more colonized views on community, it might seem natural to you to only plant one species on a plot, to raise a family separated from multi-generational living, and even to enter a relationship as though you are a wholly isolated individual who must rely on yourself alone.
We are made to be in community with other people, and this is not a weakness. But keeping ourselves healthy in the context of a community (even a community of two) relies on the same principles that govern plants — integrity and tending.
First, integrity. You are you. You need what you need. Whether you’re a tall stalk of corn or a runner bean, you have your own needs for light, water, and shelter. In the same way, you have your own needs for closeness, space, affirmation, affection, and support. These are inherent to you, and part of you that should be celebrated.
Second, tending. If you were left entirely to your own devices, it’s possible you and your vegetable neighbors would overgrow and suffocate each other. Or, alternatively, fearful of taking the resources of your companion, you might shrink yourself and fade into the shadows, leaving them unsupported and you a husk of your fullest self. With proper tending, though, you can live in harmony, each getting what you need.
Psychologists have been talking a lot lately about this tension as ‘codependence versus interdependence.” @SitWithSharon addresses this topic often. In a codependent model, you’re a runner bean trying to convince your corn partner that you are also corn, at the expense of your own needs. In an interdependent model, you admit that you are different, and it's that very difference that will help you support each other.
All of this so far has been to say that it is ok to set up a dynamic where you need each other. It is ok to lean on another person. But as you create a structure to hold this new paradigm of interdependence, ask yourself these integrity questions:
Does this rule support my best self?
Does this rule help me become someone I’d like to be?
Is this rule holding me back or keeping me small?
When I follow this rule (like cleaning my room) am I standing on my own two feet or only doing it for my partner’s approval?*
*some days, you will only be doing it for your partner’s approval because you’re tired or unmotivated. But remember to try to circle your attention back to how it’s benefiting you as well.
And then continue to check in and tend the plot you’re growing:
Does my body feel safe and good when I’m enacting this piece of my dynamic?
Have my Dom and I talked lately about how this rule feels for me to live out?
Does this rule give me more confidence or less?
Does this rule give me space to learn how competent I am?
Does this rule assist me in learning what structures support me in being a good partner/person/friend/community member?
Commit to making your dynamic a place you want to be by knowing that just like a garden, it can’t be planted once then left alone all season and be expected to bear fruit. It’s an ongoing project to live in your integrity, and tend the garden to make sure it’s supporting your best self.
Because guess what? You are going to change. The world will change you. Your dynamic will change you. And just like a plant who adapts to the sunlight of changing seasons, your best regimen of care will change. But it’s up to you to stay in constant communication about your growth.
And that’s the good stuff nobody tells you about when you start down the path of kinky sex ;)
If all of this resonates and you’d like to be guided into bringing even more intention into your D/s dynamic, please join us for my 6 week incubator for D/s couples! Registration closes in just 9 days!
CONSCIOUS KINK 2 CONSISTS OF:
6 weekly meetings on zoom live with me and your fellow classmates
Access to the Conscious Kink 2 member site with journaling prompts and collaborative tools to support your best kinky life
A private session with me, you, and your partner where we can brainstorm on protocols, renegotiation strategies, and knowledge to support your most feral and loving life
Why this, why now?
I created Conscious Kink 2 because of the many sessions I’ve had in my Office Hours over the last few months where I’ve heard people with beautiful dynamics and connections burning out because we don’t have any models or support for how to live this lifestyle over the longterm.
Even relationships like yours with fantastic ingredients and romantic origin stories have been strained by the relentlessness of recent years. If you feel the frenzy of the beginning has unspooled into feelings of confusion or stagnation, you’re not alone!
Feeling alone is very hard on our nervous systems.
Belonging is key to secure attachment, sexual desire, and the mindful commitment D/s asks of us.
I want to facilitate that sense of belonging in this space. You deserve to be well-resourced and filled with joy.
(Also I think we can all agree going into the holiday season with as much D/s support and magic as we can is a VERY GOOD IDEA)
So many juicy morsels in this post 💗