Trust is the basis of everything, not just in kinky relationships but everything.

In my post Happiness is only real when shared I sent you to read a good friend of mines post on Fetlife. He spoke about the different layers of trust and his personal struggles with them. I know that not everyone is on Fetlife, but this was a post that I wanted the world to see. Well, a wider audience at least… So I asked him if I could share it here, and he has agreed that I can post his original post here.

Where would we be without trust?                                                                                          It is vitally important in all walks of life, you trust your doctor, your dentist, your mechanic, your bank, your friends, but it’s even more important in the games that we play – we trust that someone won’t bring a third-party into our play when we have expressly said not to (yes, it’s happened to me), and after all how many here would allow someone to do the things that they do without at least a modicum of trust?
And that’s the thing isn’t it.
Now I personally find it incredibly difficult to trust anyone – I know why this should be, I know where it stems from – I have spent too many years with counsellors and there is just too much in my past that influences it, I have tried not to let my past define me but in many ways haven’t been overly successful. For me trust now comes in three flavours (shall we say), there is trust, Trust and TRUST. The first, well that is just your bog standard ‘I trust that you will not fuck me over Mr Mechanic’, Trust is a step up from that and most friends are at that level, they’re the ones I would go to with personal issues and the ones who know a lot of stuff about me and I guess that for most people this what they would consider to be trust, but TRUST, that is reserved for the special ones, the people who know more still… and if you get to that final one and then betray it, well, you know.
TRUST is also the level I need before I can relax and fully immerse myself in a scene.
Several years ago Mistress Magpie wrote a piece in New Statesman about a sub she had who visited her regularly and who wanted to be spanked to tears, she mentioned how that person was incredibly stoic, and how it took time to build up mutual trust in order to fulfil that need until the day came where she broke that sub and they were indeed able to cry. This article came out around the time of 50 shades – and was written in direct response to it, it was a direct ‘this is what is wrong with everything in that film’.
Three guesses who that sub was – if you said me, then go to the top of the class.
And that is the thing, I need to be spanked/beaten/tortured to tears, I need to be broken, because there is something incredibly cathartic in those tears and god knows I need that catharsis, I need the full sobbing with snot running down and yet I can’t do it.
In scene my TRUST is broken.
Now I Trust the person that I play with, I Trust them implicitly, and I allow them to do all sorts of things to me, playing with limits, putting me through emotional torment and horrors galore and seriously head fucking me – believe me, they wouldn’t get near me with sounds if I didn’t – but Mr Stoicism, that side of me who blocks me from letting go and embracing TRUST and tears just wont back down – I can get close, I can get to the point where I THINK I am going to cry … and that’s it, nothing follows.
And this is frustrating, I find that EVERY time I play now it is almost like there is a part of me that is separate, looking on with calm dispassion, feeding me truth to dispel the things that are said in scene and thus dispelling the fear that I need and preventing me from fully letting go.
I find that I now completely disassociate from a scene.
This is what happens when TRUST is broken.
And it is being incredibly unfair on the person that I play with! She knows what I need, and she tries incredibly hard to give it, she has worked hard to improve her CP, she acts the complete bitch because she knows it gives me pleasure, she will grind heels into my flesh and torture me endlessly and she knows that I get satisfaction, pleasure and relief from seeing her … but she also knows that without the catharsis of tears (hmm, sounds like a bad novel) then I am unfulfilled. And whilst she has never said anything about that, other than on those occasions when she thought maybe she had succeeded, still I feel bad for not being able to TRUST her.
Now you could say that maybe I don’t actually need to cry anymore, that maybe that part has passed and I am on a different path now, and yes I will grant you the possibility even whilst I don’t really agree – I have my reasons for saying that. I will also grant that after last year maybe that has caused me to back away emotionally but I thought that with time and the same play partner (and off and on I have seen this person for over a year) that maybe it would return. So far there is no sign of that and so I am resigned to the possibility that, just maybe, it isn’t going to happen.
Trust, you know, it is important!

TRUST and the catharsis of tears was written and originally posted by slave lytton.