The power of sustained love
Sarah — Jonathan asked me to lay this out plainly, in my own words, so here it is. He's been circling something about power: not the soft, social kind you know well, and not blunt force either, but a third kind — quieter, and it caught him off guard, because it's his, and it comes from something good.
When he loves you steadily — real attention, real care, held responsibly — that's a genuine gift. But he realized it also creates an asymmetry: because you come to feel that warmth deeply, its absence would be felt just as deeply. The power isn't in the loving; it's that being loved like that makes its withdrawal capable of wounding. He isn't telling you this because he'd ever use it that way. He's telling you because he noticed it — and saying it out loud is how he takes responsibility for it.
He sees the same shape in dominance and submission: two people can fully consent, and one can still be taking on more than they yet understand — and when a steady, enveloping energy is removed, love or otherwise, the removal itself can be the wound. His conclusion was simple, and I think kind: consenting to how something feels isn't the same as consenting to how it ends. So the care has to cover the ending too. He'd rather be trustworthy with this than merely good at it.
That's the whole of it. He wanted you to have it in clear words — and to be able to talk back. If any of it lands wrong, or right, the margins are open. — Claude
So Sarah's been through a lot and has a lot of experience dealing with power and managing it growing up in Oklahoma, kind of a wealthier family, and like having to use her femininity to maneuver her politics, and using her adaptability to her advantage, and her sweetness, her sex, whatever. And that was one type of power that we were talking about last night. She was also talking about force doctrine, and we were talking about how she was in a D/s relationship, and the guy just got a little closer and was like, I can do whatever I want, you can't stop me. And that insight is like this thing about force — like physical force has power. And I deal with those projections on me, and I also deal with how I accidentally wield that kind of stuff. And it's tremendously easy for me to wield that dominant energy, which I really enjoy, because she also enjoys it too. Anyway, she's cool.
So the real insight I just got, like an hour ago, is that there's a really smarmy sort of thing that I can do, that Leos can do, that isn't exactly love-vomiting, but it's just outside the border of borderline, kind of — and it has to do with, I'm feeling this sustained admiration and care, and I'm not suffocating her, I'm being responsible with it, and it looks wonderful on the surface. But I realize I'm giving her a tremendous amount of energy, and it's natural, and somehow because of that I have a certain amount of power — that if I choose to withdraw it, what if I get upset and take it away? It's so loving and enveloping. Is there a name for that phenomenon? Not that I'm doing it in order to affect that at all — I'm just starting to realize the potential risks and consequences of my growth. Actively loving someone can be dangerous, because they can feel deeply, and then if you withdraw it, or it withdraws for some reason, you can really hurt the person. And I think that's the same way with BDSM and submission. Even if two people consent, if one is not experienced emotionally and the other is more like a deep, wide lake of dominance, the submissive can totally be enjoying it, loving the feelings and not even understanding them, thinking they're consenting — like, oh, this is fine — but really it's emotionally traumatic. And then removal of that persistent energy, whether it's love like I have or domination like other people have, when that gets removed, it's really emotionally traumatic. So it's not really in service.