I've been thinking a bit lately about trust and the role it plays in a disciplinary relationship. Obviously you have to trust a disciplinarian with basic things like safety and consent, but there are other issues that go along with it. Discipline is a very deep thing for me--much deeper than (though linked to) sex. In my pre-M days, I used to muse about whether I'd find a vanilla partner and how I'd convert them. I even dated a few people without telling them about my need for spanking at all, and these were people with whom I was sexually active. I was willing to have sex with them, but not to let them spank me. Sex is a less intimate activity for me than spanking, and MUCH less intimate than discipline. To have sex with someone I only have to be attracted to them and aroused--and trust them. But to allow someone to spank me, especially for punishment, means that I am handing them my whole self in a little ball and asking them to be careful with it, please.
The other part of these trust musings has to do with my vanilla friends and family. Of all the people I know in the world, maybe 10% know about my spanking side. And outside of others in the scene, NO ONE knows about the discipline part. Not one. Not my best friend who knows about Shadow Lane and asks about it, not my sister, no one. Which means there's a whole other layer of trust around punishment spankings. Somehow it's ok if they think I do this for sex, but not ok if they know I do this for real things.
I'm not sure there's a point to this, I've just been thinking about it. Anyone else have thoughts?
