Obedience, Happiness, and the Need to Serve

by OperaShade


The word "obedience" used to leave a bad taste in my mouth, in part because American culture conditioned me to value independence and personal freedom above almost everything else, and in part because I had practically no conscious understanding of what it meant in terms of submission. It brought me pleasure to make my Dom happy, but I was not, as he put it, "eager to please". I was willing to serve him and had given him my meta-consent, but I found nothing erotic about it in and of itself. To this day I still do not fully understand the
process that changed my willingness to serve into a need to serve him - it was, in fact, the last thing I ever expected; I didn't think I was capable of it.

I may not understand the 'how' of it, but I can elaborate on the 'what'. There was a gradual shift in what I wanted out of the relationship; like most people, I had a conscious desire to be made happy by my partner. I was still expecting certain things out of my dom, in the same way that vanilla partners expect birthday presents or orgasms from each other. I was still wanting him to do things for me, and still expressing those desires.

I gradually became aware of the idea that maybe I didn't have to tell him specifically what I wanted and when I wanted it - he probably already knew, and if he didn't, he would surely inquire. And along with this idea came another - that there was no real need for me to expect him to please me - that maybe, if this guy really was all I thought he was, he was perfectly capable and willing to look after my happiness without any guidence from me. Those two ideas spawned a third: if I put aside my own concerns for my happiness, I could focus entirely on him, knowing that he would be keeping my well-being in mind. I could forget about myself and turn all of my attention to pleasing him. It was a way to surrender another portion of control, a way to give him more of myself. It felt appealing, it felt right, it felt like a natural extension of the power exchange that was already in place.

Pleasing a Dom can incorporate vanilla stuff like cooking them a lavish meal or waiting on them hand and foot, but it can exist on a much deeper level: it can mean obeying them simply for the sake of obedience. It is not simply a matter of enjoying being told what to do-- there are some subs who like that but who are uninterested in the other aspects of total submission and surrender. It is a state in which your obedience is a source of pride and pleasure for yourself and your Dom. It is going beyond the mode of "How can I serve you now?" and into the realm of "My obedience to you matters more to me than anything else; you can test it all you want, and I will prove it to you again and again and again, because I am your slave and that is who I want to be."

To give a hypothetical example - if my Master told me to go stand outside without a coat on in a cold rain, I'd do it without a second thought (aside: this is more likely to be a play punishment than an instance of real punishment, there's more on that further down). So it's cold and wet, whoopee - I don't care. I'd stand there being cold and wet and pleased with myself that I obeyed, because I know he's pleased with me. If the phone rings and he goes into the other room to answer it, and then forgets about me for some period of time, I'll merrily stand there shivering. I'll stand there for hours if I must. If I were to become hypothermic, I'd tell him. If I were to become dangerously hypothermic, I'd use the safeword; If I couldn't find him, I'd do the smart thing he'd expect me to do - get myself inside, dry off, and warm up.

There is a good example of this kind of obedience towards the end of the movie Secretary (spoiler warning for this paragraph), though it can be construed as an example of real punishment as well, due to the conflict between the two characters at the time. When Edward tells Hathoway to put her hands on the desk and her feet on the floor and then storms out, she doggedly persists in obeying him even though he doesn't return for a few days! Even when someone physically removes her from the desk, she struggles out of his grasp and returns immediately. She is obviously miserable, and yet obviously hell-bent on obeying Edward, who watches unseen from the window, pleased and touched by her devotion.

It seems to be a viscious cycle of the good sort. I know that when I walk into my Master's home, he might just tell me to strip right then and there, perhaps without bothering to close the front door first... and I know I will obey him, even if I'm balancing a stack of books in my hands, even if I'm cranky, even if I'm just not in the mood. I know he can whisper a single word in my ear in public, and my conditioned response will be immediate arousal, whether I want it or not. I know he can forbid me from eating anything but oatmeal, rice, and fish for a week - and I will not only obey him, I will accept this restriction on my freedom and take pleasure in the opportunity to demonstrate my obedience even if I dislike the command. These demonstrations of control.... even thinking about how much control he has over me (how much control I have given him),
about how willing I am to obey... they are arousing in and of themselves - which is positive reinforcement for those behaviors.

OperaShade