Is the owner owned, do they belong to the person they own…?

[Daddybrains]

The reductionist but short answer: if you and your partner believe different things about this specific issue, you are fundamentally incompatible.

But I’d rather be more thoughtful.

In a Master / slave dynamic, ownership is by definition unidirectional. Master Owns / slave belongs to. “My master” has the same form as “my employer” or “my ethnicity” and doesn’t imply any degree of control or ownership.

Outside of the dynamic, the people are just people having a relationship. A relationship can be based on feelings of possession, or on feelings of mutual enrichment, on feelings of using each other to meet a need, on friendship, on brain chemistry, on pheromones, on chivalric love, etc.

No one of these kinds of relationships is better than the other, but best that everyone involved is on the same page!

[Se****]

1 hour ago, ThaliaV said:

Has he said he doesn't belong to you?

I can see within the context of BDSM a separation between ownership and belonging to someone as a partner. I personally see them as different things and don't think monogamy/non-monog is necessarily relevant. 

He says it’s impossible for him to be mine because he’s owns me ergo I’m his possession and subsequently I can’t own him. What he doesn’t seem to be grasping is that when I say he’s mine I don’t mean I own him, I mean that he means something to me - he’s not just (for arguments sake) a Dom he’s my Dom and I am able to submit to him because he’s mine (and also a million other reasons). It isn’t just a D/s relationship though - so when I say he’s MY partner he’s not simply a person I spend time with, he’s my person. However he views my/mine as akin to ownership (I don’t want to own him) and that was/is where I’m struggling so thinks he can’t be mine.

Make sense??

That said he has also managed to sort my head and stop my overanalysis/thinking in the last couple hours and “put me in my place” 🙄🥰

[Mr_Rochester]

It's complicated. I always feel that the true power in the relationship lies with the sub or slave. They choose how they submit, and to whom, after all. A Dom or Master can employ all the rules and protocol they like, but no amount of telling off voice can *** submission from someone whose just not that into them.

So, really, the master belongs just as much to the slave - depending on what arrangements they have regarding exclusivity, etc.

[Pr****]

You bring up a lot of good points.. Personally, I don’t know how I could be submissive without feeling like I belonged to someone and that they also belonged to me. Of course, I understand these type of dynamics do exist just not for me. Are you currently in a dynamic? Was it not discussed if this would be a mono relationship or not? I’m trying to make sure I know all the questions to ask before going into a dynamic. I would be heartbroken if I gave submission to someone and they were also the owners of others. 😔

[Se****]

30 minutes ago, PrettyVice said:

You bring up a lot of good points.. Personally, I don’t know how I could be submissive without feeling like I belonged to someone and that they also belonged to me. Of course, I understand these type of dynamics do exist just not for me. Are you currently in a dynamic? Was it not discussed if this would be a mono relationship or not? I’m trying to make sure I know all the questions to ask before going into a dynamic. I would be heartbroken if I gave submission to someone and they were also the owners of others. 😔

This is an exclusive relationship. X

[Pr****]

34 minutes ago, SerendipitousKeeper said:

This is an exclusive relationship. X

Yay! I’m so glad you got some answers 🖤🖤

[Mr****]

What you've asked about isn't pedantic at all, you've stumbled into one of the more important elements to discuss in relationships. "Words have meaning" is a concept many like to avoid delving into because it runs them headfirst into facing their own biases and misconstruings (and people already hate to be "wrong", as it were—how much more so about themselves?).

The words express a posessiveness claim in the sense of considering a person to be of essential importance to who you are right now (they are for you a strength and a weakness, and you have acknowledged that they are "a part of you" with such a statement). English, and most other languages, lack a term for the feeling of something or someone having distinct meaning and value to a person without also considering that thing or individual as "a possession belonging to the whole corpus that individual considers their local microcosm".

"My favorite place" is an idea that carries similar weight, as the place itself may not actually be owned property of yours but the combination of that location (the "real" component) and your thoughts on it and experiences surrounding it (the "abstract" component) are very much uniquely and entirely your own, even if that experience is shared or itself not unique.

This requires neither exclusivity nor jealousy, though often it can be poisoned by the latter thing when comparisons start being made without reassurance of the important parts.

I belong to my alpha submissive because she has expressed my importance in her life; it is thus incumbent on me to maintain or improve myself because I encourage her to improve herself, and, flatly, if her feelings are true then I can't allow my own behavior to make a liar of her. (It is alignment with the sub's expression, not a yielding of my own desires or my own control of self—that much is always paramount and it isn't close, and I encourage that in my subs and for them to consciously choose that.) Likewise, I also belong to any other submissive who has expressed such a psychological embrace (within certain limits of psychological stability).

They also belong to me (as is the case with all of my repeat-encounter submissives—I can only repeat-engage with people I care about regardless of exclusivity or distance and don't really find it valuable to waste people's time otherwise).

Such are not necessarily in sexually or temporally exclusive terms, though they can be if that is what is desired or agreed upon in your scenario. "You are a part of me" differs greatly from "You are mine" in spirit, and certainly from either "You alone are mine" or, more definitevely possessive, "You are mine alone".

Which do you prefer, which do you mean, which does your partner use, and which do you share?