Sullen Rebellion

I think sometimes I am the balkiest sub around. 

I know that lots of you leave me comments about how much sweeter and more understanding you would be in my situation, how lucky I am and how I just really need to suck it up a bit more, how you'd never be jealous, how you' never revolt, how you'd never talk back. There are suggestions that other Masters, your Masters, wouldn't put up with my behaviour. That I'm a brat, which is not the way I think of myself at all, cause I know that brat is not what he wants. I think of myself as a strong independent woman who submits. And I think that we have a great relationship, but I also think, honestly, that he is as lucky to have me as I am to have him, and that there's a give and take that makes us work.

And of course tons of you leave comments the other way too, saying that you think I submit to lots that you would struggle more with, but those aren't what I'm talking about here. I guess there's always a continuum of behaviour and that I'm on it somewhere.

I know that when he and I are fighting or when he's making me do something I don't want to do, I feel like a little kid or a rebellious teen. With him as the parent, and not really in the good Daddy way that is normally the way we use the Daddy role. I think in those times, when he is struggling to make me submit, he is the frustrated parent of a teen, who is sulky, angry, bitter and unreasonable (and sometimes wild and hormonal and just plain crazy).

And I feel like I know teenage angst and sullenness and surliness from living with my teenagers. This weekend I have friends and their teens staying with us. And I realize that I really have no concept of how surly surly can be. These kids are rude, disrespectful, sullen, uncommunicative, unhelpful. They are aggressively unpleasant. The parents are infuriating and condescending and disrespectful too, embarrassing the teens publicly, needlessly. I feel sorry for parents and kids in this relationship, and it seems to escalate by leaps and bounds every time I see them.

And my kids, (and maybe me too) next to them, seem more sweetly eager to please rather than mildly sullen and surly and unhelpful as I often see them, because I think my kids are shocked and embarrassed by the rudeness and disrespect.

This interplay this weekend has made me think about my own sulky behaviour with my Owner sometimes. And how I kind of ... do I take pride in my rebelliousness? Just like teens do, standing on whatever point of pride, angry at the world and their stupid parents for not seeing things their way.

I have assumed without really examining it, that my behaviour is more like my teens occaisionally annoying version of teenage rebellion rather than those other kids. It must be, right? After all, I'm in the relationship by choice, overall. And the sessions of rebellion and anger and angst are short, they don't go on for years.

But I think I suddenly see the potential for the bad stuff to grow and feed on itself and expand and crowd out all the good. When there's disrespect and anger from one side it elicits the same from the other side. I can look back on at least one time when this has happened in our relationship, everybody expecting and giving the worst. And it really did feed on itself.

I often wish I felt the submission that I read about, and it's hard to feel something I just don't feel. It's hard to regulate feelings. But it's easier to regulate behaviour. And to try a little harder to be gracious and giving, rather than surly and pridefully correct.

I don't expect I will ever feel perfect submission. Oh I feel it fine some days. But some days I simply don't. I think that I feel all the powerlessness and injustice and arbitrariness that teens feel. But I can try (that's "try" Master) to be more gracious about expressing it.