I’m going to make a generalization here and say that many kinksters tend to be empaths; it’s something that I discovered about myself in the past year or so, and it explains much of my kink as well as many of the issues I’ve had in both my kink and polyam relationships. Whenever a partner tended to be in some kind of funk or dealing with some heavy (and scary) emotions, I found myself sucked in with them; and for many reasons, I had the wrong idea in my head that “holding space” for them meant that I, too, had to feel their emotions. I thought that was just how it worked.
For the more enlightened, experienced empaths out there, you know how this went down: I’d find myself feeling angry, sad, depressed, and didn’t know how to let go of the emotions that I was taking on myself. And so, when a partner was upset, I was upset. And because I was taking on all of those emotions myself, I felt that the only way for me to feel better was to “fix” whatever problem(s) my partner(s) were facing. Of course, it was not up to me to fix them; nor would I have been able to. But again, this is what I thought that “holding space” meant. And so, unable to fix them, sitting in sadness and depression that wasn’t my own, I’d grow increasingly angry myself: and resentful.
One things I’ve discovered through my most recent stint in therapy was that I often hide my sadness and grief behind anger, rather than let myself actually feel the disappointment, or sadness, or grief itself. Anger is a dangerous emotion, not just for the potential for damage that it does, but because it fools us into thinking that it’s actually doing something. That is to say, the rush or temporary feelings of strength one gets from bursts of anger gives a false sense of efficacy; as if anger itself could solve whatever problem that was happening in my own – or worse – my partners’ lives.
Even writing this out makes me feel ashamed, because I look back at past and even present relationships and I see how much damage was done via my own anger and frustration. Because, inevitably, the anger would turn on itself, on me, and on the people I loved. I’d try to “fix” the situation, and of course, I couldn’t, and that anger would turn to frustration and resentment. Yes, unchecked, I found myself starting to get frustrated that the person I was trying to help couldn’t help themselves by accepting my help; which was just a sad and misguided projection of my own feelings of inadequacy. It was me denying the vulnerability I was feeling.
I turn to the great David Whyte in his wonderful Consolations collection:
“ … anger points toward the purest form of compassion; the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and those things for which we are willing to hazard or even imperil ourselves.” (19)
and
“What we have named as anger on the surface is the violent outer response to our own inner powerlessness, a powerlessness connected to such a profound sense of rawness and care that it can find no proper outer body or identity or voice, or way of life to hold it.” (20)
The above is extremely important for people in authority-based relationships, because it speaks to the cornerstone of what and who we are, and what we value: our own power, and the power of our partners. Regardless of which side of the slash you find yourself, authority-based relationships are power-centric. Thus, what becomes the most detrimental to them is a non-consensual feeling of powerlessness. Whether due to external circumstances, narcissism, abuse, or just plain bad behavior within the relationship, a feeling of powerlessness hits us in our core.
For D-types, powerlessness in the relationship strikes at our egos in a particular way, making us grasp even more desperately to any kind of protocol or outward reinforcement of our own position within the relationship. We become desperate to “help” and to “fix.” We try to enforce protocols and assignments, outwardly hoping that the “structure” will help, but inwardly trying to compensate for our own powerlessness. As submissives and slaves, we look for the right “service” that will “fix” our Doms, we try to show up in every way possible, but feel like we’re erecting sandcastles about 3 seconds before the wave hits and washes it away. Or, even worse, we look to the spaces in which we could tap to find our service, and simply find nothing there. If I’m feeling helpless in my life, how can I find the power to serve my Master/Dom?
“What we call anger is often simply the unwillingness to live the full measure of our fears or of our not knowing, in the face of our love for a wife, in the depth of our caring for a son, in our wanting the best, in the face of simply being alive and loving those with whom we live.” (20)
Holding space, then, is an act of courage as much as it is an act of compassion. That is to say, to hold space for our partner(s) is to “live in the full measure of our fears or of our not knowing.” As a Dominant, it is hard to allow yourself to feel the fear of not knowing where you Dominance has gone, or not knowing how to solve of fix the problems that your slave is encountering. For a slave, it is hard to share the fear you have that your desire to submit or surrender has suddenly evaporated, if only because you are unsure of yourself and can’t find your own inner security to allow yourself to. It is hard to share your fear that your Master or Mistress no longer has the spoons or the space to hold you like they once did, or are themselves feeling “powerless” in the wake of an external force or tragedy.
And, most tragically, in an insidious rearticulation of patriarchy, master narratives, and heteronormativity, we feel that to be vulnerable is to be somehow “wrong;” that our vulnerability belies the independence and autonomy that is the core of our strength as D-types and s-types.
“Our anger breaks to the surface most often through our feeling there is something profoundly wrong with this powerlessness and vulnerability; anger too often finds its voice strangely, though our incoherence and our inability to speak, but anger in its pure state is the measure of the way we are implicated in the world and made vulnerable through love in all its specifics: a daughter, a house, a family, and enterprise, a land or a colleague” (21).
While autonomy is a cornerstone of everything we discuss in the kink community regarding consent, I think that we often conflate the subject with “strength” and a sense of power itself. But autonomy is not necessarily power, it is “self-law” or, translated into something a bit more accessible, it is about creating boundaries. The boundaries themselves do not constitute strength. The may enable strength, and be enforced by strength, but the boundaries that we create are are there in service to our vulnerabilities. In other words, we create boundaries to delineate and protect that which makes us vulnerable. Vulnerability is the space from which we love. Vulnerability is the space of possibility; thus, our boundaries create spaces in which possibility arises.
And in D/s, the love we share is a different kind of vulnerability than in vanilla relationships. I know some would say that it’s an even more profound vulnerability, simply because so much more is at stake, and the revelations we make to our partners in terms of our deepest desires, fantasies, and needs have a particularly intensity in D/s: there is a reverence for the power in which all parties in the relationship partake; which is why a feeling of powerlessness can become so detrimental.
“Holding space” for our partners, then, means that we must be willing to sit in those powerless spaces with them and with ourselves, and to accept the fact that this nonconsensual pain is assaulting all of those involved, and that we simply do not know the answers, do not have the protocols, and do not have the spoons to endure all that we are experiencing. We can only experience it. But we can, and do, experience it together. We can make ourselves available to those we love, we can intervene when needed and necessary, but only to the extent to aid, hold, and support them, and to acknowledge (hopefully with grace and dignity) the unsharability of the pain which is being experienced by ourselves or the ones we love.
And when our partners are in particularly existential, transformational spaces of grief, sadness, and pain – we have to fully embrace the reality that they will come out the other end changed and transformed, and that our place in that new landscape is not necessarily guaranteed, nor is the possibility of earning a new place in that new landscape. This is utterly terrifying. To simply not know if your partner is going to “come back” either figuratively or literally can become an all-consuming fear; ironically the type of fear that – under normal circumstances – the partner in question would help alleviate. But when the partner in question is implicated in that fear, we have no one else to which we can turn. Even in parallel polyamorous relationships, the instability in one relationship causes turbulence in the others, and ethically we cannot transgress the boundaries of those relationships, lest we risk using a partner as a “stand in” for another; which is as unpalatable as it us unethical.
Our broader community of friends, and especially our fellow kinksters, can often give us support via their own empathy. And thus we are implicated in a broader tapestry of care that only “community” can give us. Even if we haven’t “been through it,” we can offer an ear. Or a cup of coffee. Or a stuffy. Or a beer. Or a couch to crash on, a caress on the arm, or a hug.
But most of all, we can hold ourselves accountable for those moments when we have stumbled, or transgressed a boundary. Doing so means looking hard at how we can make amends, of what actions we can take to show that we’re aware of the damage we’ve done, and that we want to do better. Even without the intent to harm, we still need to take responsibility for our role in the impact. Ironically, that means holding spaces four ourselves, knowing that the work we have to do is ours alone, and that we may have to let go of some things in order to get it done.
This is excellent. Thank you. I've added it to my digital library of articles I send people when asking about certain kink and kink scene topics.
In one of my previous relationships, where I was the sub, my dom didn't share a lot with me. And I also didn't do a good job of taking her hints when she did want me to infer something. Ultimately we weren't right for each other--but it was a rewarding relationship while it lasted. However, I couldn't feel close enough or able to feel what she was feeling because of differences in how and what we were communicating.