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ORIGINAL: LafayetteLady

Is it important for others to be able to define your relationship?  It seems that people are searching for so many thing on so many levels, I don't understand why other people would have such a need to question the "trueness" of someone's involvement of this lifestyle.

Are you a sub or a slave?  Are they looking for a dom or just a controlling man?  You are a slave, and you have limits, then you are a sub, not a slave!  I don't know about everyone else, but it would seem that if it works for the people involved, what difference does it make how others define you? 

Rather than viewing this as so many do as people looking to define you, I rather liken it to a period in which two seperate minds come together and see if the words they use to communicate th ideas they have about how they want to live their lives match up and to come to an agreement of terms. Until you come to an agreement of terms communicating meaning is almost impossible.

I say I'm looking for a slave (and I know pretty much what I mean when I say slave)
However do you know what I mean when I say slave? chances are pretty slim today that my slave and your slave have very different meanings.

That said sure folks when they run into different definitions than their own tend to get pretty ugly about how they express their definitions as the best definition possible and why there is no other defonition that really fits the word as well as theirs does.

I guess this post is part rant, part question.  I have been involved in one way or another for a significant number of years, and during this journey, what I seek has changed and involved as my experiences have changed and evolved.  In my opinion that is completely natural of the human experience as a whole.  I have not always been enjoying the journey, but for the most part, I have learned something from each and every experience.

During my quest, I have become increasingly frustrated with "potential" dominants and masters.  Not the ones who give me the bullshit "you aren't what you say types", but the ones who we have had long conversations, there seems to be an interest and then when I bring up the all important (to me anyway) question of  wanting more detail of THEIR expectations and what they seek, I keep getting evasive, let's play 20 questions types of answers. 

The infamous, "I will respect your limits, but use you as I see fit."  I just asked you about your what YOU are seeking and what YOU want, and you feel this is an appropriate answer?  Certainly it is comforting to know that you claim you will respect my limits, but are you saying that you have no "search parameters" of your own?

I know that I have my "list" and believe that everyone has a "list" of their own, whether it is written down or in their head.  I don't care if you are looking for a master to own you, or a dominant, you SHOULD have a list.  When I get the old, "if you are a true slave, you will have only the limits I, as your Master, set for you" crap, I do, I admit have a tendency, with some, to get pissy.  This is, after all, the SEARCH portion of finding someone.  Before I am going to say that I will give up my free will to YOU, before I say that I am going to live by YOUR rules, I am entitled to know what it is that YOU want.

Let's step out of the lifestyle demands for just a moment.  If I am talking with someone and we are considering each other, and I find out that he is an atheist, we will never go beyond where we are.  I have a very strong belief in God, and it would be ridiculous for me to give myself to someone who doesn't share those views.  I fully understand that when you enter into such a relationship of being owned, I give over my free will to a master.  But I am also not going to give up that free will to someone with whom I don't like, or have common interests in.  It would make no sense and is a recipe for failure.

So that concludes the "rant" portion.  The "question" portion is simple.  Is it really that difficult for some to state clearly what they are looking for?  From my perspective, if a potential master can't answer simple questions about what they are looking for, instead looking for me to read their mind (in the "getting to know you" phase no less), and guess at what they like and dislike, their "prospectiveness" immediately begins to drop for me. 

Slave, submissive, bottom, whatever, I have a list, I know what I seek, and I don't have problems telling people what I am looking for.  When a prospective master, dominant, top, whatever hedges or becomes evasive in telling me what he is looking for, is it so wrong to begin to think, this will never work out?

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  Most of us Dominant men know we want things our way, what we have not often actually formulated is what exactly is OUR WAY