Maymay has this blog post that’s been sticking with me recently called “How not to fuck up a D/s relationship.” In it, he correctly points out that successful relationships are not a monolithic mass but are actually made up of multiple layers (like onions or, perhaps, parfaits), each building upon the last.
Expounds brother Maymay:
There’s this concept of layers, or more technically a stack, that is fundamental to the construction of many things in our world today. The basic idea is that one layer builds upon the things it receives from the layer beneath it and provides things to build upon to the layer above it. In this way, a robust and reliable system can be developed—and maintained—by segmenting different pieces of the system.
I think that a D/s relationship could benefit from a construction similar to this. It’s the way I think about my relationship with Eileen. I am at once her friend, her lover, her boyfriend, and her slave. Indeed, I am her slave because I am her boyfriend, and I am her boyfriend because I am her lover, and I am her lover because I am her friend.
I was reminded of this because, for the past two weeks or so, there’s been a kind of dissonance between Belle and I that’s taken the wind out of the sail for the sexual part of our relationship. The cause of the issue stems from a commitment Belle made to me a few years ago totally disconnected from anything this blog usually covers so the specifics are not important, but I’ve been noticing that she hasn’t been living up to it. For whatever reason, I find it hard to discuss this particular issue with her so I let it stew until it became a real impediment to everything else.
I finally asked her what the deal was. Why had she not done what she said she would? Her answer was, “I guess I just got lazy,” which is funny because the first thing I said in response was, “I don’t get the option of being lazy in my commitment” meaning, of course, that the device doesn’t allow it.
This is where it gets kind of squishy. I do think of her commitment as being more important (i.e., a lower stack, in Maymay’s parlance) than my commitment to chastity, but I think in Belle’s mind my chastity has stopped being just a game we play. It’s been elevated over time to be a fairly significant commitment I’ve made to her. A sign of my devotion. A permanent part of our relationship. And for some reason, I played right into that by equating my chastity to her commitment. So, I guess, what this boiled down to was a conversation about our commitments to each other and how we need to keep them. And a tacit implication that I will probably be chastised for the rest of my life.
So anyway, after Belle said she’d change her behavior back to match my expectations, I felt like a valve had been opened inside me. Within hours, I found my entire perspective about the device and our exchange of power had flipped. Before, I had developed a kind of begrudged resignation toward the device and had more or less lost my interest in being sexual with or even touching Belle. Last night, though, I was all over her and fell asleep clutching her body, my hands up under bedclothes. Her hand was down around the device and she stroked my balls as she fell asleep and I just about melted. On the way into work this morning, I sensed the tube on my body and the stirring of the cock inside and a warm, excited fluttering was in my chest. Once the issue with the lower stack was resolved, the issue with the higher one was, too.
All this is a long way of demonstrating that every time Tom says $200 worth if plastic locked on your junk won’t fix your relationship is totally and obviously correct. Also, chastity has stopped being a kink for us. I don’t think of it that way anymore at all. It’s how we are, not what we do.


