Beyond Trust

I tend to get caught up in semantics and precisely what a word means to me.  Lately my thoughts have turned to the word vulnerable and it’s sibling, vulnerability and how my changing perceptions relate to another key word, trust.

I had a long time definition of what trust in a domme meant to me.  It was to reach the state where my mind was fully open and she could explore every dark recess, understand the knobs and switches of every dark vulnerability and I could trust her to keep it to herself, to not abuse what she found.

That definition has worked for so long that I was caught by surprise when I realised that in my current circumstances it is rendered obsolete.

Sure my mind is open to her.  It’s open in a way it never has been before.  She’s a skilled hypnotist and has several years experience of rummaging in my mind and gently manipulating it.  She knows how to manipulate me, sometimes quite specifically rather than more general efforts.  She knows how to use my protective sub-conscious as an ally.

To me, trust is a variable thing.  The better you know someone and the history of their interactions with you, then the trust can become stronger.  However, within that variability is always the question in a D/s context of, what is my confidence that those dark vulnerabilities will not be exposed and exploited ?

I’ve realised that for me, the word trust implies an inverse relationship to exploitation where the value for potential exploitability is always non-zero.  In other words, it’s a calculated gamble to trust.

And this is where the surprise has come in the last couple of months.  I find that I no longer have any such vulnerabilities when it comes to her !!!  Anything she might exploit is for positive reinforcement only, otherwise the exploitability is genuinely zero because she’s absolutely not interested in playing on those fears.

And when I come back to the semantics.  If the exploitability factor is zero, then in a mathematic sense the trust value becomes infinite.  I’ve gone beyond the need to trust, it’s no longer a factor with her.  I may not be invincible (she regularly proves that) but I no longer consider myself vulnerable when she demonstrates her power over me.

As much as it was a surprise to come to this realisation, it’s a pretty rare gift to accept that someone can turn every dial inside me without giving me the slightest concern.