part 2...love submission love ...the response

This is a topic that has provoked some fantastic debate and was clearly close to a lot of people's hearts. Thank you to all of you who have taken part. I thought with the learning's I took from all the comments and some private discussion as well as some deeper thought, I might just round off the topic. In my first post here I pondered whether I must experience love for Him in order to submit truly and more deeply.

There were a couple of issues highlighted in the responses.

1. The capacity to love deeply more than one while that person may not be one's significant other (non-Dom and Local D in my case).
2. The difference in the nature of love. We love differently in different relationships and all are valid, healthy and an experience of honesty to oneself and others.

However my original question, which perhaps was not very well expressed was not really touched on.

I think I am not asking if it is right or wrong to love more than one man (or woman, insert your favoured gender here) and at which point? Rather, in searching for a more perfect submission..in searching for my submission, will any submission I offer only deepen or carry authenticity if I love? Does Love bring the strength to submit? If I never love, never give into these feelings which I have experienced in the moments where he Dominates me (and I want to wrap myself around him in love, like a koala in a high waving eucalyptus tree, face buried in the trunk eyes closed away from the sun), if I never give myself completely in Love, can I ever deliver an authentic overwhelming submission to him? Do I really care if I have another to love? I can answer this last one, I do care though sometimes I feel very mercenary in all this and most decidedly unsubmissive!

There is an issue for me in loving more than one man at once. It would feel like infidelity to me. This is an important boundary not to be crossed for the very real fear that it would hurt non-Dom. If I could get past that, if I could live with real secrets from non-Dom then all would be well! One of my biggest barriers in all this TTWD is my overwhelming sense of guilt that my actions will not honour non-Dom. Loving another man would be crossing the line. I truly agonise over these things...thinking too much. This is the man however with whom I hope to share myself to the end of life.  If I fuck it up there is no recovery, not really. We have survived one such major fuck up, no matter how many years, no matter how much forgiveness, the memory has not faded.

If I let myself love in order to submit, it would be in secret, in a lie to non-Dom. This is not part of our agreement around this episode in our lives. Would I risk this though if it meant a more authentic experience of my submission? An honest experience?

In his comment on the post, Bruce may have come the closest in addressing the relationship between submission and love, calming me in the same moment, when he said,

I like to think of D/s love as occupying that grey area between spousal love, and parent-child love. And it is on a sliding scale in that grey zone. I believe as the trust and submission grow, so too will the scale move. And just as the scale moves, so too can the submission deepen.

In a private conversation, a friend advised to stop thinking and enjoy the moment, enjoy where you are and stop thinking about the future (how did he know I was thinking about tomorrow, wondering if it would be as good as today?..lol).

So would I take the risk and love in order to engage with submission? Maybe...even probably. Or should I wait for the pendulum to swing traversing the sliding scale of grey light between spousal love and parent-child love?...Most probably.  This is the paradigm that fits most closely with who I am and takes the dilemma of choosing to love another man away from me. It is no longer in my control and isn't that the point after all. Submission, in this paradigm is inextricably linked to a love that is comfortable and has its place in the grey light where D/s lives. Funny the wisdom one can find in the strangest of places.

unknown photographer: sourced from the interweb