• Passive/aggressive behavior: He/she keeps saying "yes", yet your request is utterly ignored or poorly completed. Outward behaviors such as these have deep roots. It's not likely you will be able to do something with a fully grown adult who exhibits them.
• Secretive behavior: The slave keeps an online journal (blog) that you either don't know about or don't monitor on the grounds that it is trivial. (I know of a case where a Dom chose not to monitor his submissive's blog. As it happened, she was a distrubed person and was broadcasting extremely private and negative half-truths about him. These unchallenged fabrications went around the "submssives network" like wildfire and caused him to be declared persona non grata in a number of local clubs.)
• Warnings from others: People seem to be trying to tell you something about your slave candidate, but you can't quite understand what they're getting at. You sense that you're being offered a warning, but you bristle, and the other person retreats. All I can say to this is: suppress your knee-jerk defense of the slave candidate and listen.
• Refusal to negotiate: Your slave-to-be doesn't want to have a formal negotiation and contract with you on the grounds that this is a Master/slave relationship, and as Master, you surely know how to treat him/her, and you only need to know that he/she wants to serve you. Ummmm, errrrr this is, perhaps, an Internet person? Knowing, understanding, and communicating your limits and needs will help prevent abuses of trust.
So, let's say that NO red flags have surfaced. As the Master, you are ready to start negotiating the terms and conditions of your relationship. That means a contract. There are mixed feelings about contracts, so let me take a minute and share my thoughts.
Negotiations
The next few pages are about negotiating about the ownership and use of your slave's body.
Heady stuff.
For starters, if you've not done a fair amount of negotiation in your life, you'll want to read these sections more than once. Also, if you're negotiating with an intended slave who has not negotiated a number of prior contracts, moral/ethical honor binds you to recommend to your intended that he/she seek an experienced Master to represent him/her in negotiations with YOU.
Opening Notes
In real-life business negotiations, it is a truism that the real guts of the negotiation occur just as the clock is running out. That is, if you allow an hour for a negotiation, most of the serious issues get negotiated in the last five minutes. If you allow a day, they get negotiated in the last five minutes. If you allow a week, they get negotiated in the last five minutes.
Also, you will be able to conclude a much more successful negotiation if you understand your slave's needs/wants through his/her eyes. The better you understand what the other person needs vs. wants, the cleaner and clearer the negotiation. That said, I'll now start in on this section.
Much is said about negotiations. Negotiations live in the world of D/s (for scening) and M/s (for the first few years of the relationship, at any rate). On a strictly logical level, it's hard to imagine a slave negotiating for any "rights," but that discussion should be saved for the advanced class.
My own experience is that slaveless Masters often jump right in to "negotiations" with slave candidates before taking the time to learn about the PERSON who is petitioning to be the slave. I certainly endorse the use of short-term contracts that provide some minimal guidance for both parties while the two people endeavor to learn about one another. NOTE: I caution you against drafting an initial training contract that exposes your intended slave to the full brunt of your idiosyncrasies and protocols.
• Consider putting yourself and your intended slave through a series of personality and skill-battery tests. At a minimum, an online IQ test and a Meyers-Briggs test; ideally, find some tests that will demonstrate both your preferred working styles and your mutual skills.
• Consider taking courses/workshops that promote a common set of problem solving skills - Landmark Education comes to mind.
About Negotiating
• We negotiate all the time.
• Almost everything is negotiable.
• Avoid early positions.
• First, create value. Why should someone want ygu or what you are offering?
• The first option isn't necessarily the best. Create many options.
• Deadlines can be tricky when you're negotiating matters of the heart. However, in business negotiations, the general rule is to negotiate early, or to use deadlines to achieve success.
• Again, I offer this next tip in the context that "no" means "no" when dealing with sexual issues. However, you may sometimes treat "no" as "not yet" if you're negotiating a service issue. Often "no" simply indicates that you haven't explained the benefits in terms that appeal to your listener.
• While the textbook on tough negotiations instructs you to give concessions only when you get something in return, you might consider introducing humorous concessions when you negotiate your M/s contract. That is, if Master wants the floors scrubbed each Saturday morning, the concession could be that Master takes his slave out to dinner each Saturday night.
• Use: "What if..." to break open the discussion to create value.
• You must leave the other person with a sense of satisfaction. This is the "win/win" school of negotiation, not the "winner takes all" school.
• Do your homework. Determine your partner's "belowthe-surface" needs. Determine why your intended slave is seeking certain specific terms or conditions.
• Take the other person INTO THE FUTURE to see possible results of various positions.
Problems with Negotiations - YOU as the Buyer
Some negotiations go better than others, yes? Sometimes you come away feeling really good about the outcome, but sometimes you feel that the other person got more than you did. Here are some reasons.
Disparity of power:
• You may be exhibiting - or you may be negotiating with someone exhibiting - Alpha male characteristics - pushy and assertive/aggressive. Apart from having to decide if you want this kind of personality in your life, you may find it nearly impossible to be heard. That's a problem.
• Your opposite (either the Master looking for the slave or the slave looking for the Master) may need to sell themselves to you more than you need to add them to your life.
Disparity of information:
• Your opposite may have done much more research on you than you did on him/her.
• Your opposite may be much more experienced in M/s relations than you, and may assume that you know/ understand things that never even occurred to you.
• The other person may specifically be hiding things from you.
• Your opposite may know that he/she has another candidate in the wings if you don't work out. In the alternative, they may knowYOU have another candidate waiting, if they don't work out.
Disparity of experience:
• You may have this kind of interview/negotiation all the time; your opposite may do it only once or twice a year. This is particularly true of Doms/Dommes who may be (culturally) more used to being the negotiators in relationships, and also of Doms/Dommes who may be more used to interviewing or negotiating with subs for BDSM scenes or for relationship positions.
• Your slave candidate may not be used to thinking like a salesman, yet the success of this negotiation depends upon each of your selling points.
Disparity of pressure:
• Is your opposite a "high-value slave?" That is, if you don't compromise and agree to his/her terms, is there another person waiting to accept those terms?
• Are you rushing in to replace a relationship that just ended? Are you under social or personal pressure to demonstrate that you're OK and the proof is that you can immediately form another relationship?
WHAT do You Negotiate?
Remember: this is a book about Master/slave relationships, not Owner/slave relationships. In that light, it is still relevant to discuss negotiating the relationship.
Also, bear in mind that I'm assuming that you are going to start out with a training contract, and not a full-blown M/s contract - for that is hugely different. This is the getting-to-know-you stage, not the okay, here we go stage.
In a general way, I suggest you, as Master, negotiate the indicators of success for the next three months. Note: the points I'll mention here live outside the "boilerplate" language of a contract. I'll assume that your slave candidate will agree to serve you with humility and to please you in a variety of ways, and so forth. These comments go beyond those statements/actions:
• If you're going to require the slave to be studying, how much time does that involve per day or week?
• If the slave is going to be journaling, what is the content of the entries and how long must they be? (NOTE: I failed to negotiate this with my slave, and, as a result, she thought that sending me summaries of her day fulfilled her journaling obligations. I was looking for introspection and didn't care very much about what she did at work during the day. As a result, we were both disappointed about the journaling experience: she was hurt that I didn't respond to her writing; I was disappointed that I wasn't getting any "meat" out of the exercise.)
• If you are going to allow your slave to retain certain rights, be crystal clear about that.
• During this trial period, you may want total and solitary sexual access to your slave. But, there are many combinations out there. I know of a case where the slave is owned by someone who wanted to take her to swinging parties - and that had to be negotiated up front. I know another case where a woman had her own vanilla lover of many years before becoming a slave to another man.
• Staying on the sexual front for a minute, will you, as Master, require the slave to stop all self-pleasuring during this period? And what if Master considers "selfpleasuring" to include eating chocolate? Again, be specific.
• How much full responsibility are you agreeing to take on during this opening period? What if...
o The slave is fired from work five weeks into the relationship and can't make his/her rent payment? Do you take over?
o The slave is out running an errand for you and is injured in a car accident; what is your moral/ethical position? What if it's YOUR car?
o You are playing with your slave and you hit a land mine that triggers a psychotic episode in your slave; he/she requires long-term therapy. What's your moral/ethical position in this case?
• If you wish your slave to dress in a certain way, who's paying for the outfits during the trial period? Will you pay for the first $500 of outfits? The first $200 or $1,500? (You may think I'm pulling this stuff out of thin air - I'm not. My fetish involves dressing elaborately for full fetish formal dinners. We do this many times a week. For me, a slave's appeal is affected by how she looks when all dressed up. Dressing this way extends to manicures, pedicures, and shoe choice, as well as hair and makeup combinations.)
• What if you are an experienced player, but your slave is fairly new to the Lifestyle: are you still going to negotiate playing by RACK standards (Risk Aware Consensual Kink - a more advanced form of play), or are you going to go back to SSC standards (Safe, Sane and Consensual)? Does your slave understand the differences? (If you are not familiar with the crucial differences between these sets of rules for BDSM play, please seek out an experienced kinkster and go out for a cup of coffee to discuss it.)
• If you are requiring a full disclosure contract, does your slave candidate fully understand exactly what you mean by that phrase? You may want to explain clearly that this will mean that you can rightfully demand to know from your slave anything that another person says to him/her "in confidence." Further, you should explain that your slave will be bound to volunteer that information to you if, in his/her heart-of-hearts, the slave knows that Master would like to know about it. Jay Wiseman points out that this creates a seperate duty on the slaves part to tell someone in advance that nothing said to this slave can be held "in confidence."
Too much work? Think you can bypass some of this minutiae? Maybe, maybe not. Did you ever consider what could happen if you don't go through a thorough negotiation process? Let me help you with a real answer that concurrently provides some comic relief. Seen this one, lately? It's called The Etiology of a Crisis. I've added the M/s storyline.
• Wild Enthusiasm: (Ohmygosh, I finally found someone willing to be my slave!!)
• Disillusionment: (Ohmygosh, this person is not such a good fit; how could I have done this???)
• Total Confusion: (Ohmygosh, I actually signed a three-month training contract with this person, and my word is my bond, and he/she's making me crazy.)
• Search for the Guilty: (This must be her fault. She must have hidden faults from me - everyone knows I'm an excellent judge of people.)
• Punishment of the Innocent: (Okay, I'll terminate our contract on the grounds that she won't obey me and then make up some reason why I can excuse myself for treating her as my enemy within the Community.)
• Promotion of the Uninvolved: (I'll go over here and take "X" as my new slave. This will show everyone who is watching that there's nothing wrong with ME.)
Okay, quick recap. You're now starting a new relationship. You've decided that this potential slave is OK - no skeletons hid ing in the closet. You negotiated your way through a contract and signed it, and now, you're in a structured M/s Relationship.
Good work. But, let me talk only to Master for a few pages.
How do You Empower Your Family?
Leadership is intangible, hard to measure, and difficult to describe. Its quality would stem from many factors. Self-confidence based on expert knowledge, initiative, loyalty, pride, and a sense of responsibility. They are not easily learned. But leaders can be and are made.
General C.B. Cates, 19th Commandant of the USMC
Pardon my presumption, but I assume that if you've gone to all the trouble to create as unusual a relationship structure as this, you want something really special to result. I would argue that to successfully build an Empowered Family - whether locally or remotely - you should consider the following:
• You must create a shared sense of purpose. I've already discussed how a Leather Household has its own characteristics and how the House becomes known for its attributes. In that light, it's critical that both of you can articulate those House Values and that all the members of your Household share your big picture. Your leadership job is to ensure that individual Family members feel as though they're contributing to this larger effort.
• You must develop procedures that ensure shared decision-making. Boy, can I hear the howls of derision on this one! Okay, let me frame it. Master is responsible for ensuring that all Household members feel that their thoughts and actions are important to the Family's success. That is: everyone in the Family needs to know that the leader (and possibly other Family members) values their contributions. Yes, Master makes the final decision; but - in reality - that decision will be more fully embraced when all Family members see their suggestions honored and applied to the final resolution. Remember, while you may be the King in a benevolent monarchy; you're not going to last long as a dictator: this is a consensual relationship.
• You must build expected norms for behavior. Family members must understand explicitly what they can expect from one another in terms of communication, support and respect. In our world, this is called a Protocol Manual, and is the subject of my companion book, Protocol Theory slave: Leather the for Handbook and Practice. They must know what they will and will not tolerate from one another. When norms are clear, Family members can work together rapidly and correct mistakes rapidly, because they trust one another.
How do You Solve Problems?
I used to work for the U.S. Department of Justice's Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. We had a joke in our division that ran like this: If your problem is that you don't think you have a problem, then you have a problem.
In interpersonal relationships, one party o
ften fails to see a problem that is crystal clear to any outsider. So, I'm going to take some time to discuss ways to identify and solve problems. First, let's start with how you even identify a problem.
In a broad way, there are two kinds of problems. There are problems figuring out how to do something, and there are problems with people performing some act/function. I will tackle solu tions/approaches to each kind of problem.
The material in the first part of this section is really, really helpful, as long as the problem you're about to tackle has to do with a desire to move the Family dynamic from one set of conditions to another set of conditions.
1. Frame the issues:
Understand/explicate the problem. Often the real problem is to be able to describe the core issue(s) that are begging for solutions.
For example, it may help you to distinguish whether you have a HARD or a SOFT problem. That is, you have to identify the kind of issue that you're confronting.
• HARD problems are issues to which you have to react. They are "givens." They are those conditions over which you have very little control. For example, they could involve your Family's relations in the context of the community or part of the country in which you live. Another hard issue would be the social acceptability of your lifestyle in the context of the city, county or state in which you live. In the business world, hard problems concern such things as the political leadership out of Washington, laws, market constraints, product manufacturing, etc. Legal or health care issues sometimes arise that may have a bearing on where you reside.
• SOFT problems, then, are those over which you do have quite a bit of choice and control. For example, whether or not you speak French is a soft problem because you can alter the answer by taking courses that teach you to speak French. Similarly, getting more education or gaining additional skills are both soft problems.
2. Amplify the problem; get better data - whether a hard or a soft problem:
0 Who says it's a problem? Who wants it fixed?
• How do you measure this problem?
Master/slave Relations: Handbook of Theory and Practice Page 9
