The Dirty "L" Word.

Who do you love?

I bet you love somebody. Your parents or siblings, maybe your grandfolks, cousins, aunts and uncles. Odds are good if you have kids you love them. Maybe you have a friend you love, maybe you're really lucky and you have more than one friend who's worth loving. How about your dog or cat or other not-human companions? And your spouse, significant other, boyfriend/girlfriend... Are they loved?

The vast majority of us love somebody or something. It's just something that we're designed to do, this nifty chemical reaction that helps us form the close bonds that benefit the species and can contribute an awful lot of happiness (or the occasional heart-break) to our lives; Which helps explain why we often go looking for love, even after we know how much losing it can hurt.

When we're in VanillaVille (population: Lots), love is a common-place topic. We're either looking for it, mourning its loss, or clinging onto it. Nobody looks at you askance if you say that you want to find someone to love (well, perhaps the bitter and cynical might, but even then they still understand even if they pretend they don't), and a great deal of people take it for granted that somewhere along the line they'll find it. Loving someone, especially the someone you're with, is just something quite a few people expect to have happen eventually.

Then there's the Kinkyverse where love can turn into the dirtiest word in the cosmos and you hear things like this with distressing frequency: "...been told to forget about finding love, be who I am (a slave) and be happy with that, don't worry about anything else.."
Forget about finding love?
Train yourself to not want or need it?
Settle for less than what it'll take to give you a happy and fulfilling relationship?

Honestly, I don't know what the blue blazes is going on here, but it's really rather sad.

Oh, I'm not talking about folks who are not interested in having love be part of their relationship. It's their relationship, if they don't want it they don't have to include it. I'm talking about the folks who claim that love has no place, anywhere, in a BDSM dynamic. The ones who spout off about how "True" D-types don't fall in love with their s-types. The ones who tell s-types that they have no right to expect or even want love from their D-type. The ones who make it sound as if wanting to love or be loved is a dirty, bad, wrong thing.

You know what? Fuck that noise. Fuck it sideways with an un-lubed cinderblock.

If you want love, or just the possibility of it somewhere down the road, you have every right to go looking for it. You also have the right to laugh at anybody who says you don't have a right to expect that your dynamic will meet your emotional needs (and, IMHO, you have the right to tell them what they can do with an un-lubed cinderblock). You have the right to have your emotional needs met in your relationship. You have the right to love and be loved in return if that's what floats your boat.

So- If you want love, if you need it to make you feel whole and happy- Don't settle for less because someone isn't willing to offer it to you or because of some seriously effed-up notion about what "True" PYLs can and cannot feel for each other. Keep looking until you find that person who will let you light up their life as much as they light up yours.

Let your love-light shine, yo.