Defining “Ownership”

An online acquaintance asked me the other day about what it means when I call W my “Owner” or when I say I am “owned” by him, especially in light of the fact that a) I have another primary partner and b) the only control he exerts over me is in respect to my sex–and sometimes, even there, it seems a tenuous control at best, when you consider that he likes me to be as sexual as possible, and has never tried to control me in the way of telling me not to have sex with someone–quite the opposite, in fact.
Since we all hear a term and define it through our own set of understandings, perceptions, experiences and beliefs, labels can be tricky things. Even within my own understanding and perception of what it is that he and I do, sometimes I can get a bit fuzzy about the terms we use. W often calls these kinds of terms “scene speak,” which I take to mean that they aren’t reality–such as using the term “slave.”  Since slavery is not legal or enforceable, in the BDSM respect it is actually a construct that those engaged in have created to give definition and interpretation to their dynamic.  There is no “true” slavery, except the agreement that the two partners have made to construct and live their relationship in a way that reflects their desire for that state.
I get what he’s saying…and that he does not “own” me in that way at all.  But just as the slave in a M/s relationship feels her slavehood as her reality, I feel W’s ownership as my reality.
And yet…that “reality” probably doesn’t look anything like what a conventional (if one can call any BDSM relationship conventional) O/p relationship looks like. It is so far removed from that that even though I enjoy reading the discussions on the O/p discussion group on Fetlife, I don’t have the nerve to join the group or in any of the discussions, because my relationship just doesn’t fit the definition, as most seem to understand it.
I remember a discussion I was listening to when I first started my journey into the lifestyle.  It was at a local submissive’s group, and at one point someone in the discussion said, with a sneer in her voice, “Well that’s just bedroom submission. We’re talking about real submission here.”  Yup, I had run into “One True Wayism,” right at the very beginning.  Even brand new though, even without understanding all the terms and implications, I instinctively bristled at that, and knew, somehow, that what she was implying about “bedroom” submission being a lesser thing than the “real thing” was bullshit and elitist.
And yet.
And yet sometimes I still think about what it is that I call ownership by W, and I recognize that it is so unlike what anyone else in the lifestyle would perceive as ownership as to render the term useless, and perhaps an outright misrepresentation…except, to me, that is what it feels like. That is my reality.
So what is that reality?
The reality is that everything I think about in terms of my sexuality I relate back to W.  My pussy, my cunt, my body–and any relationships that involve my body–are his to control, to command, to use or to tell me to use in whatever way he sees fit. When I think of my cunt, when I think of sex, I think of him, and what he’d want me to do with it, how he wants me to use it, what he wants me to be sexually.
In actuality, I do not believe that he strictly requires me to ask permission before having sex with someone new, because, to him, my cunt is there to be used, and in order to fulfill that requirement, if I have the opportunity to get it fucked then I should take that opportunity, whether or not I have the chance to ask him first.  Not doing so because I wasn’t able to get permission first would be the larger sin, I believe, though I could be wrong about that (and perhaps some clarification could be in order.) But in reality, because of the way the dynamic works in my head, I do need his permission–and more often, his outright insistence–before I will have sexual relations with others.  It’s almost a catch-22.
Except when it’s not. I know that he wants me to set up sexual liaisons, and so I will, without being instructed or asked to, because I want to please him. But in order for it to be hot for me, I need to feel that element of coercion, of being forced to perform sexually for him. And yet I know, even if he did not directly demand it, because my cunt belongs to him, I would do with it what he wants.
This dynamic has even bled into my sexual relations with my other partner.  Because I know that W wants me to use my sexuality to please others, it is no longer mine to withhold from my partner Ad, as it might have been before all this. If Ad wants me sexually, I will give myself to him.  Yes, I do it because we have a rocking hot sex life and I love fucking Ad, but also, underlying it all, is the knowledge that I am pleasing W:  I am performing as W wants and expects, and using my cunt and my body in the way that he most wants me to.
It is in my relationship with Ad, however, that we also find the limits of ownership. If W told me tomorrow that I was not allowed to have sex with anyone, I could and would obey that–except with Ad.  That boundary was established in the beginning, and anything that would be detrimental to that relationship is not going to happen. Sometimes even acknowledging that W’s ownership of my sex affects my relationship with Ad in any way–even a positive way–makes me a little uncomfortable at times. But that is the thing with dynamics. Just as I can’t turn off being W’s submissive, even if he really doesn’t want a submissive, I also can’t turn off knowing that everything I do with my cunt I do for him.
And that, to me, is what it means to be owned by him.
(Edit: Clarification made. Him: “And yes, just to clarify, contingent upon safety, if the opportunity arises for you to get fucked, you are required to do so.” Happy sigh.  And that really is what it means to be owned.)

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