Abused?

[SexualChoc]

A recent story got me thinking
and I know that some of you will disagree (which is okay)
However, How much abuse that we subbies want is actual real abuse
and the kind no one should put up with.
I am not trying to use either/or Black/White ideas here
but to look at the subtlety.
Scenario: I enjoy long term tease and denial at what point does my enjoyment of denial become abuse?
Or I enjoy pain so my mistress whips me is that physical abuse?
And WHO decides what I want and enjoy is abuse?
not clear or well defined, Eh?

However here are the warning signs as defined by those Outside our community.

SIGNS THAT YOU’RE IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP
Do you:
• feel afraid of your partner much of the time?
• avoid certain topics out of fear of angering your partner?
• feel that you can’t do anything right for your partner?
believe that you deserve to be hurt or mistreated? (gray area here)
• wonder if you’re the one who is crazy?
• feel emotionally numb or helpless?
Does your partner:
• humiliate or yell at you? (gray area again)
• criticize you and put you down? (and again)
• treat you so badly that you’re embarrassed for your friends or family to see?
• ignore or put down your opinions or accomplishments?
• blame you for his own abusive behavior?
• see you as property or a sex object, rather than as a person? (really tricky one)
Your Partner’s Violent Behavior or Threats/ Your Partner’s Controlling Behavior
Does your partner:
• have a bad and unpredictable temper?
• hurt you, or threaten to hurt or kill you?
• threaten to take your children away or harm them?
• threaten to commit suicide if you leave?
• force you to have sex? (you should be able to say NO)
• destroy your belongings?
Does your partner:
• act excessively jealous and possessive?
• control where you go or what you do?
• keep you from seeing your friends or family?
• limit your access to money, the phone, or the car?
• constantly check up on you?

I am not a licensed Psychologist but I am trained in counseling
I think for us submissives the key is How do you feel about yourself as you go about your day? Do you feel like a worm ALL the time?
Have you ever had to go to hospital because of whipping, lashing that You or a partner did?
Do you have at least one person you can talk to face to face if you’re feeling depressed/sad?
Do any of your sexual activities make you consistently late for work/ appointments?

Please stay sane and safe my fellow Milovanians.

[1azzu1]

hmmmm.. nicely put... and really worth discussing...

when does a sub feel abused?
i think its when bounderis are crossed by great lenghts...

but it also comes down to the sub/doms limits...

most importen thing in a sub/dom realtionship is trust...
so play safe and allways have a safeword in case it gets too intense...

i like getting my bounderies pushed... and have tried alot of things after i join milovana that i before joining would never have had the will/guts to try myself... and im glad i did...

just my 2 cents

[masterstroke]

When is it abuse? When the sub no longer enjoys the treatment. Unless you are in a 24/7 bdsm relationship or other long term lifestyle, there is a time and a place for the pain and humiliation.

If a Master/Mistress whips his/her sub during a scene, its probably not abuse. If a Master/Mistress slaps his/her sub in public or in an argument, that's probably abuse. If a Master/Mistress verbally humiliates the sub other than during a scene, its a good argument for verbal abuse.

What you are describing is abuse, not bdsm or some other alternate lifestyle.

Of course, there exceptions.

That's my take on the subject.

[SexualChoc]

In my own personnal expierence
I have enjoyed a few expierence that were- well abusive
at least I enjoyed them at the time, but felt like shit later.
Thank you for you posts.

I actually have a perment scar from
self bondage situation.
Is it possible to do real abuse to yourself? ?? ???

[Heathcliff]

f they enjoy it, then you can hardly consider that abusive. However, when it crosses the line from enjoyment, to uncomfortable, it's abusive, and *must* cease.

That's the problem though: love makes people stupid. I've heard the term "submissive crush" refer to cases like this in a blog and I thought it was rather fitting. While submission is different then "romantic love" it's still a feeling of affection towards a person driving that desire to 'submit'. (If only for a single scene/temporaraly.)

The honest truth is that when one person has/is given control over another it can turn abusive. Just think of the wife that constantly makes excuses for her abusive husband. Many times it's emotional blackmail and brainwashing that keeps her from leaving rather then a physical threat. Her self esteem has been lowered so much that she's become 'dependent' on the abuser.

In D/s long term relationships where there is already an imbalance of power this slide can be significantly less dramatic but no less tragic.

(In my own personal opinion.)

[Lady X]

*Doesn't offer opinions or thoughts, but simply listens..........*

[silversmith]

I think there is a key difference, between abuse and "play" (sorry if this isn't the right word for it), but we have to introduce an abstract (and probably insensitive) concept to show it plainly.

I'll use the word "wellbeing" to denote a person's state (e.g. health, state of mind, prosperity) at a particular time. I don't have a good definition for this, since it quickly becomes confusing if you start to take into account things like experience and knowledge, but if we assume it exists, we can continue to:
"Long-term-wellbeing".
Informally, we can say that this is like the total amount of wellbeing the person will experience from that day forward, for the rest of their life. (Formally, let's say its the integral of wellbeing dt over the interval [that_day, infty) )

So what can we say about abuse?
I think we can say that it definitely decreases the long-term-wellbeing of the victim, compared to if it hadn't happened.
"Play", on the other hand, doesn't do this.

Where do accidents and mistakes come into this?
I think negligence could well be a form of abuse, and doesn't have the stigma attached that I feel it deserves. In this sense, self-abuse is probably possible.
Ignorance, on the other hand, is quite different. There is a fine line between ignorant exploration and being foolhardy, which leads to negligence, but ignorance alone IMHO should not constitute abuse. Learning and experience contribute to wellbeing, but it's not obvious that this makes up for any resulting accident. (We can clear this up by adding yet another level of complexity, the expectation of l-t-w, but I think that is too much for one short forum post - I'd need to start defining infinite sets of timelines, and so forth.)

Note: I haven't talked about blame, a very sensitive subject, and I haven't talked about consent. Maybe another day, if my powers of explanation are good enough to be understood.

[Human]

Related, but from another angle, is the milovana community psychologically damaged to seek out punishment in the form of denial/humiliation/cbt whatever, or to dish out punishment in these forms ?

[Lady X]

Related, but from another angle, is the milovana community psychologically damaged to seek out punishment in the form of denial/humiliation/cbt whatever, or to dish out punishment in these forms ?

No.