blind spots and arousal templates

I am finally living in the US now. It is a very strange feeling, it feels almost unreal. A dream came true and I am still fascinated that it actually happened. So far I am pretty happy here.  :-)

With the US so divided, and both sides being so convinced that they are "the good ones", I thought a lot about blind spots. At the moment, even smart people really don't seem to see/understand the other side. And I have been thinking more than once: why on earth don't they see what I see? 

But no worries, I am not going to write about politics here. I am more interested in what I can learn for my own life and my own relationship.

I am wondering where my blind spots are and what I am not seeing.

Just as we have visual blind spots when looking at the road through our car mirrors, we also have psychological blind spots - aspects of our personalities that are hidden from our view. These might be annoying habits like interrupting or bragging, or they might be deeper fears or desires that are too threatening to acknowledge. Although it's generally not pleasant to confront these aspects of ourselves, doing so can be very useful when it comes to personal growth, and when it comes to improving our relationships with others - there is undoubtedly something we do that, unbeknownst to us, drives our significant others, roommates, or coworkers a little crazy. So how do you know what your blind spots are? (http://psych-your-mind.blogspot.com/2011/08/friday-fun-psychological-blind-spots.html)

I am not working (much) at the moment, but I am trying to grow as a person. I spend hours each day contemplating and thinking about my life so far, about my past, my failures and successes and where I wanna go from here.

Since you are all here for the kink, I wanna focus on the kink aspects.

I am a bit at loss when it comes to this thing we do. I am not sure what I am doing or what I am doing wrong, but there is no kink in my life anymore. At all. And the strange thing is: this has happened to me before and I have not figured out why. I am living a vanilla life, despite having strong dominant needs and cravings. I am masturbating to F/m stuff and at the same time try to submissively please my partner in the real world.

I literally had hundreds of submissive men courting me over the years, I know since I am a teenager that vanilla sex does not interest me at all, and all porn I ever got turned on on (? my English still sucks....) is D/s.

The questions I am cogitating about are: why don't I get what I am craving? why am I preventing myself from getting what I want? why do I create scenarios where I end up in a vanilla relationship?

The answers / the keys to these questions have to be in me. I am the master of my life. I am creating everything that happens in my life. And when I am having no kink in my life, despite blogging for 10 years about how important the kink is for me and how much it turns me on and how much I enjoy it, there needs to be something going on within me that is preventing me from getting what I want. There needs to be an aspect or elements that I am not seeing. I need to have a blindspot that I am not aware of.

Years ago I had a wonderful conversation with wdspoon and (if I recall correctly) he told me that he always found women who matched his needs. That was very interesting to me, because up until then I had heard many many men complaining about how hard it is to find a dominant woman. I never forgot that conversation because I realized that it is possible to get own needs met, despite how hard it seems and how unfavorable the statistic seems.

So why am I shooting myself in the foot when it comes to getting my sexual needs fulfilled?

One place that blind spots can be found is in strong reactions. An unusually strong negative or positive reaction or stance may suggest engagement in a process Freud called reaction formation. Reaction formation involves unconsciously transforming an unacceptable or undesirable impulse into its opposite. For example, according to this view, former New York governor Elliot Spitzer's efforts to crack down on prostitution when in office may have been a direct reaction to his own desire for and involvement with prostitutes.

I have seen the same reaction formation in many Christians. Ted Haggard for instance comes to mind. I am not so sure though if my D/s blindspot is in that area. I think I am pretty comfortable with my  D/s cravings. 

But recation formation is a possibility, of course. Maybe I am secretly submissive and dont wanna live these aspects?  I really did perceive my  vanilla submissive mom as very weak and I grew up thinking: A woman doesnt cry.  My mom was crying (over men ...) a lot and I made a promise to myself to not do that. Hence my nickname: the strong woman.

In one study (Morokoff, 1985), female participants high in sexual guilt deemed erotic imagery to be unacceptable and reported low arousal in response to it. Physiological measures revealed, however, that these same participants actually showed the highest levels of arousal. The same pattern was later found among homophobic men, who were more physiologically aroused by videos depicting homosexual intercourse than were non-homophobic men (Adams, Wright, & Lohr, 1996)  This tendency is not confined to sexuality. Harsh judgments of others' behavior may reveal a personal insecurity - for example, that highly ambitious co-worker may especially irritate you because of your own unexpressed ambitions. Blind spots in these cases need not be objectively negative traits, just traits that are experienced as personally shameful or unacceptable.

I think it is fair to say that I am actually a very strong and courageous person. And I do know that I can be very dominant in real life. (Just ask my sister, lol, she will tell you what a bitch I am and how dominant I am). But at the same time I am super insecure about myself. I don't value myself enough. I am my own very harsh critic. I don't give myself much credit for what I have achieved in life. I don't think I am worthy to be pampered. I am always focused on fulfilling other people's needs. Putting myself and my needs first in a relationship doesn't come easy to me. My shrink says that is a behavior that I learned when I was very very young and therefore it is quite difficult to change.

I am the most understanding person you can think of. I understand pretty much everything when it comes to human behavior. There is not much that can scare me away from a human being. I am a healer and I am proud of it. Healing people is easy for me. You can wake me up in the middle of the night, tell me that you are sad, or unhappy, or depressed, and I will be able to come up with 100 true reasons why I think you are amazing. And I will truly think that you are amazing. Supporting people in need is something I have been doing all my life.

I think I am doing to people what I wish people would do to me.

And my theory is: as far as the kink is concerned, in the beginning of a relationship, when all is new, I am fully and completely focused on the man. I want to understand him, I wanna know what he feels, I wanna know what works for him, I wanna know his dreams and  fears and hopes and arousal templates. I wanna know as much as I can. the more I know, the easier it gets for me to do my "magic" and make him feel good. 

And in the beginning, generally speaking, the men that enter my life are more than happy to give me what I want. They feel seen and cherished and special. And they are all that to me. I think that is why it is very easy for the men to submit to me during that phase. And I love every moment of it. I really do. It makes me feel amazing, vibrant, alive and happy. And turned on, of course, lol. I think: "bingo. how lucky I am " 

But then comes a point when all of a sudden the men start to withdraw again. We are still in a relationship, we still get along very well, we still think the other person is wonderful, but the men -for me completely out of the blue- stop submitting to me.

At this point I usually tell myself: keep calm, it will come back.

But I had to learn the hard way that the kink doesn't come back.

If I ask in a playful way: "hey, come on, let's do stuff..." I dont get what I want because the men just said no.

And I am sure as hell not gonna beg a man to pretty please let me dominate him.

There has never been any explanation, any talk , any conversation... the kink just stopped. I have no idea what the men were thinking, really no fucking clue. My best guess is: I came emotionally too close. I saw facets of them that they usually hide. I scared them away. 

I guess what I asked for was too much. Because in all honesty: The thing that turns me on the most is domestic discipline. Not playful dress up with leather and latex, not sexy high heels and a big scene, but real life, unspectacular but powerful D/s like me reaching over to him, putting my hand on his thigh and telling him: No you cant have a 3rd beer.   

I think the moment the guy says to me: "I am gonna have that 3rd beer anyway." It feels like something in me switches. I feel like: "Fuck, I have been so nice to you, why cant you just fucking give me what makes me happy and what I need? "

My problem is: In these situations I still think he is awesome, I still love him like crazy, I still think he is wonderful, but I also secretly start to grow anger inside. I am getting angry because I have no way to fulfill my own needs. how could I? I can not just non-consensually dominate a man. That's illegal and furthermore not how I roll. I need his submission freely given by him, and not non-consensually taken by me.

In a way, it feels like betrayal. I have invested so much in the man, and in return he does not give me what I crave the most: his submission. And to make it hurt even more, he is giving it to me for a while, only to then withhold it from me. I can tell you; That sucks big time.

I think I made one big mistake in the past: I more or less assumed that the submissive men I had contact with where strong and self confident enough to submit to me. But in hindsight I think the men only were strong enough to open up to me and let me get as far as I came because I am actually great at opening people up emotionally. I think the men that I met were generally super private and guarded and only allowed me to dominate them (for a while) because I really am good at making people feel safe. I can be the most non threatening motherlike person you can think of.

But: If the (former submissive) guy wants the vanilla version of a relationship with me , I expect him to take as good care of my needs as I took care of his when I was in the dominant position. And they rarely do. In my experience I am suddenly stuck in a vanilla relationship where the guy still expects me to bend over backwards for him, without him giving me the gift of his submission. And that is a very unpleasant situation for me to be in.

After hearing so many stories from submissive guys and reading so many stories of guys who dream of having a dominant girlfriend, it was pretty shocking to realize how few "submissive" men actually are wiling to put in the effort to give me what turns me on.

Just as extreme negative reactions to a trait in others might suggest the presence of that trait in oneself, extremely positive attitudes or behaviors may suggest a lack, or a feared lack, of a desired trait. Research shows that people who want to appear non-prejudiced may go to great lengths to demonstrate their generosity and positive attitudes towards a stigmatized group, especially when their sense of themselves as a non-prejudiced person is threatened. Other kinds of overly positive or rigid attitudes may also suggest underlying negativity, ambivalence, or doubt.

I really dont know where I stand. maybe I am more judgmental and egoistic than I think. And maybe I am asking for too much. Who knows?  As you can see, I dont have many answers, but still many questions :-)