Maybe all the good male subs in Denver gave up already.

Or, to pound on the submissive man’s side of the coin so no one forgets it: the minute some guy with harder abs or a higher pain threshold or is more physically skilled walks in?

It’s not just women who face this problem, and it never was, even though it’s all most people ever seem to notice.

Nooo! I demand long comments and relevant anecdotes!
I have not ever been in a situation quite like the one you’ve described here, but I have seen examples of this kind of competition in my life. Rarely over me, but plenty of times over other people. I just don’t tend to put myself in situations quite like that one.
However, funny thing, the one place where situations like the one you describe come up the most involving me is at Renaissance faires. (I should write a post about how liking ren faires does not intrinsically make me a loser.) Because I’m in this big old fantasy space where men just love to fight over things in a way that I find rather hilarious, and is fortunately conscious and usually handled with humor.

What they have the power to “give” capriciously, they have the complete power to take back capriciously, which means they never actually gave it in the first place. All illusion.

YES.
I mean, ah, yes. Spot on. There’s this crazy imbalance of power that is simply fucked up. And when you’re being adored because you have breasts and red hair, what happens to your adoration the minute some girl with better breasts and redder hair walks in?

In the context of D/s, (and the greater world, you see this in male/female dynamics all the time), ungrounded adoration leaves all of the power in the hands of the one doing the adoring. (These thoughts have been running around my brain for a post at some point.)

What they have the power to “give” capriciously, they have the complete power to take back capriciously, which means they never actually gave it in the first place. All illusion.

Good enough for some people for a sex game for an evening, and if that floats their boats, they should enjoy…..that it doesn’t work for me doesn’t mean it couldn’t be quite enjoyable for others.

There are women around us who are crushed and disillusioned, I read them, that interactions with submissive guys keep breaking them. There is this heady flood of “adoration” that is all of the sudden withdrawn when the guy bugs out, and the women are left going, but he told me I was in charge, I thought this was going to be different from the vanilla world.

God, women, buy a clue. It’s no different from the guy wearing too much gold who comes up to you in the bar and tells you that you are the most beautiful and amazing woman he’s ever met, as the initial pick up line. It’s just a different line! The chances of either one of them being around a week from now are a thousand to one.

*blush*

I really should get my own blog so I don’t write such long comments on other people’s …….

I grew up geek girl and also poor, although the two had nothing to do with each other except in context of the embarrassing story. While I was always *reasonably* physically attractive, it was in that awkward, tall, geek girl kind of way that disconnected from any internal sexuality. IE, if I had wanted to trade on any piece of physicality, I wouldn’t have had a clue how to do it. They weren’t wired together.

The only thing I knew how to trade on was brains.

I fell into (vanilla context) a group of slightly older men with money in my mid 20’s. I’d never been around money before, and I’d never been around men before who couldn’t give a fuck, really, about my brains or me as a person (their thinly veiled attempts to pretend to care about either were laughable), but for some unfathomable reason, they fell into some kind of macho competition for *me*.

I *knew* at the time it had nothing to do with *me*…not the soft things or the hard things or the brain or the heart. Still, I let them pour on empty flattery, telling myself that I was using them as much as I felt I was being used, to go places I’d never been and drink $100 congac while they out-roostered each other to impress me (no, to impress each other).

Every word of “adoration” was completely false. I knew it at the time and I still sucked it in and let it become a drug, for a time. I think there was a point I began to believe my own press.

Predictably, there is no good end to a story like this and there wasn’t to mine. I was in pieces for several years later, wondering how I had turned into “that woman” and how the fuck I was going to get *myself* back.

Which of course I did, no harm no foul, but to say that was the darkest point of self identity for me is no lie.

I ramble to say that I think what one has to trade in oneself for the heady feeling of ungrounded adoration ain’t worth the heady feeling of ungrounded adoration.

*Grounded* adoration? I’ll take that with the $8 cognac, thank you.

:)

hugs, E

Looks like she’s a popular lady.

It doesn’t actually happen, or hasn’t in years. I think I yell loud enough to scare all potential worshippers away.

I can’t abide it either. It gets under my skin in ways that are crawly. That was a lot of what I was trying to get across.

You do well to stand it when it happens.

“Francisco” -

Sorry, I was unaware that pizza was a viable alternative to angst :).

Darkness -
Always glad to see more of what goes on in your head. Not like you let me in much ;).