Pistanthrophobia

I wrote a piece on trust at the beginning of the year.  This #TellMeAbout prompt allows me to reassess a few things and be clear, at least in my own mind, as to what my own personal nuances around trust mean.

Trust is a strange commodity.  I was going to write that I don’t have any in the vanilla world, but that’s a ludicrous statement.  I trust the pilot of the plane, the bus driver and many others providing differing services, all to the degree necessary to live a life beyond being too frightened to get out of bed each day.

Where I’ve failed to find trust is in personal interactions.  Traumatic events in childhood do not have to be abuse.  What to a child is unexplained upheaval from the cozy familiar environment and thrust in to new harsh surroundings to sink or swim is as good a way as any to destroy trust in anyone and everything, especially those who are meant to protect you.  That may be overly dramatic, I’ve talked to a number of people who have a similar experience to mine to know it and the feelings behind it are not unique to me.

How does one try in later life to overcome the inability to trust ?

Issues with trust boil down to being afraid of being emotionally hurt, recalling the fears instilled from those childhood events.  Can we present another person with all our flaws and vulnerabilities and trust them to accept and possibly love us, warts and all ?  Are we prepared to be burned (again) or exploited by our desire to find trust and love ?

I spent a very long time trying to find an answer and not particularly succeeding.

I did eventually find an outlet for trust by exploring D/s.  It’s not just in my submission that my ability to trust is tested, exposing my cross dressing to someone has always been a major leap of faith.  Add in my kinks and the opportunity for ego-crushing rejection is immense.  It may have been more imagined than real, but that doesn’t stop the demons creating a paralysing anxiety when it’s time to cross those bridges.

In long term service to my former mistress I developed a high degree of trust in her ability to read and understand me.  Her insight to not pick at the more fragile elements of my ego.

I’d have happily stayed in that space and accepted that this was what it meant to deeply trust someone.  Was it also love ?  In a way, but we’ll come to that shortly.

She had to give up being a domme and although it ended amicably and we’re still good friends it put a big dint in my ability to trust and risk being hurt again.  So much so that it was several years before I was prepared to be vulnerable again and grasp a fresh chance that came my way.

My current domme constantly challenges me and has caused me to think hard about who and what I am.  We started with hypnosis which is a big act of faith by someone with trust issues, and we built from there into a rounded D/s relationship.

The depths to the submission she’s created in me are a chasm compared to the pothole from the previous relationship.  Eventually you can no longer hide anything from a skilled hypnotist.  I used to view this submission as a progression of vulnerabilities I was prepared to expose.

And one day you realise that all the mental barriers have been breached, that she knows all the dark corners of your mind, even those that you barely know exist.  What more is there left to hide ?  Nothing !!  It’s like trust is turned on it’s head.  Trust is a hope that you won’t be rejected or hurt by exposing the next vulnerability.  With no more vulnerabilities left in the box there’s no need to hope, I conclusively know I won’t be betrayed.

In the physicality of D/s I think I’ve reached the same stage regarding trust.  I won’t recap here.  Instead I’ll point at the previous post I did for #TellMeAbout: Boiling A Frog.

One of the things I’ve had to address in the last year or so is finally understanding that I am asexual and how it manifests in me.

Everything about trust is rooted in my need for submission and in understanding the asexual drivers I’ve come to an interesting conclusion.  That thing most people call love, has never been a part of me.  The biology is there (and I rather wish it wasn’t), but the mental links are not.  In my world the term love is one that is now entirely cerebral.  There’s potential for great affection, though never translated in to the physical love most seem to be familiar with.

My conclusion is that my submission becomes a manifestation of what it means to me to love.  Almost like a higher calling.  All those different trust issues rolled in to single question, can I submit to this person in the way I need to ?

I am what you might call a monogamous submissive.  I can only submit to one person as I think that the journey of emotional exposure to transcend trust is too hard to undertake on multiple fronts.

Written for the #TellMeAbout prompt “Tell Me About, … Trust #8”.  Click on the image to read informative posts from across the D/s spectrum.