Scarleteen

Hello, it's me again,
Upon various moments of introspection, I have realized that I am unable to separate a sexual dom/sub dynamic from the way a couple would interact with people in real life outside of sex, both in my personal desires (and, to a lesser degree, expectations) for myself, and in my interpretations of other people and fiction.
For example (this will be a tangent), the thing that really made me notice this was that recently I read a fan fiction in which the shipped pair (One of whom I am wildly in love with, and one of whom I see as sort of an idealised version of myself) engaged in (highly consensual and respectful) bdsm, only with the male character (myself) being the dom. This is not what I would prefer. Anyway, my attempt to read this fic (because it was, according to comments, exceptionally well written, tasteful and in character) made me feel like crying, throwing up and killing myself all at the same time, despite nothing remotely amoral being done and it being made very clear even in the small part I could force myself to read that they did really love each other. I realize now that this story is not as related to my original point as I thought it was, but frankly this is bothering me more at the moment anyway. The pain I had for a day or two is mostly gone now, but I still feel inexplicably horrible about the idea of the things written there. I can't begin to explain why. Probably seeing characters I am so (disproportionately) emotionally attached to doing something I am so personally opposed to would make me unhappy, but it shouldn't have had that effect on me.
But that just leads me back to the point. I am repulsed by the idea of male sexual dominance, groundlessly and baselessly, and because I can't differentiate between how people behave in sex and how they behave in the real world, this extends to me resorting to thinking of only one sort of romantic relationship (within the range of my sexuality) as "right", which is even worse by the fact that the love in this relationship model is asymmetrical. The male is courteous and dutiful towards the woman, willing to make absolutely any sacrifice for her, while the woman does not have this same duty towards the man and does nothing to earn it except for existing. This is not the worst sort of relationship to idealize, at least not for a male (A woman who wanted that sort of relationship would realistically be quite selfish), but nevertheless love ought to be symmetrical (even if the ways we express it aren't). This series of vile misconceptions I have made myself feel have led me to think that it is much the same thing as rape (though obviously much less bad) for me to do anything my wife doesn't want. (This isn't the exact same thing as what made me upset in that fanfic, since as I said everything worth noting was entirely consensual, I really don't know why it upsets me so much, but I digress).
This is not a good situation to be in, can you show me a way to mend the above mentioned false beliefs of mine (Especially that about sexual dynamics being related to everyday behavioral dynamics, and my general inability to see any relation except the strange type I desire as morally good), and if you can also help with why I'm so grossed out by that fanfic, I'd like help with that too. All thanks in advance!

Hi Laayiv,

You know, I think an idea that would go a long way towards untangling all these feelings and starting to unlearn that gut reaction to certain dynamics is: people, relationships, and sex are all diverse, weird, malleable things, with a constellation of interactions between them. And when we try to create absolute's in them (any relationship that involves X also involves Y, the only good dynamic in a relationship is Z) we tend to end up false narratives in our own minds. Too, even when we're talking about things that are the broad components of a relationship; support, respect, balance, etc, how those look and what works for each relationship will look different. Internalizing that sex or a relationship being very different from what we would want for ourselves doesn't automatically make it bad is a really helpful thing to do.

With dom/sub dynamics in particular, I think it helps to remember that who we are in sexual situations is part of who we are overall, but not the whole of it. So, someone can enjoy being dominant with a partner in the specific contexts of sex, but the rest of the time interact with them in a very different way because those certain "dominant" behaviors are only things they want in a sexual context.

With the fanfiction, only you can really answer what about it was so offputting to you, since you'll know which elements were, or what the moment was when you were like "nope, not for me." I will say that clicking on a fanfict we think is something we want only to discover something in it, or how it's written, is not for us is something you tend to run across now and then if you read a lot of it.

I suppose the problem comes from that I don't know how to internalize things like this which I know are true but oppose my emotions and previous assumptions. And that I have a hard time imagining people being as different from me as I feel like this change in ideal relationship would make us. That is the lifestyle I genuinely want, but I can't convince myself that other people could not only want, but entirely happily and ethically experience, something different.
I think I've just come to the conclusion that, because that's kind of how it feels to me, sadism and Masochism (which I can only separate from dominance and submission if I try hard enough) are "all the time" things, influential to our entire view of ourselves. Thus, my self-insert would be a form of sadist and my beloved a form of masochist (I think the only possibly pain-based part of the story was use of hot spring water in an erotic context, I couldn't read anywhere near far enough to find what the context is). And because of my ideal of asymmetrical love, a male partner who is willing to and might even enjoy controlling and causing pain upon their lover would be an entirely bad person. The author of the fic and some other viewers all stressed that the sexual experience here was totally safeworded and, once again, consensual, but since Hornet probably didn't ask to be teased with hot spring water, it still feels amoral and almost rapey, despite that it absolutely and in every sense possible isn't. I don't know. I'm going off on a tangent and just don't know what I want. Really what I want is to talk to the author of the fic, who was very polite and comforting, but they've blocked me because I'm underage and shouldn't be talking to strangers in the comments of a NSFW fic.

Hi Laayiv,

You say you don't know how to internalize something that you know to be true when it contradicts your emotions and previous assumptions. I wonder if there is another way of thinking about this. Depending on what you mean by internalize, you may not have to do that.

Let me try to explain. For our purposes, there are two ways to understand someone's behavior. One is to understand it on an instinctive level. You empathize with their mindset and reasons, and you might behave that way yourself. The other is to understand it on a logical level. You can see why they would behave that way, even though it feels off or strange to you. You don't have to understand everyone's behavior on an instinctive level. Maybe you could try to accept it as how things are, remind yourself that it isn't bad, and move on- don't spend a lot of time thinking about the subject.

It isn't bad for you to want to avoid reading about certain dynamics or tropes. If you're reading fanfiction on a place like AO3, make sure you're excluding tags that you don't like seeing. It is not foolproof, but it does help.

Really what I want is to talk to the author of the fic

If I may ask, what do you think you would get from talking to the author?

I don't know, it's just what I feel like I want. Thanks for the other advice anyway, I'll try to work on it. I'm feeling quite good about a couple of things now so this is probably a good time.