Courtesy

Syr assigned me this topic from Submissive Journal Prompts:
Does your Owner stand on courtesy? Do they use please and thank you with requests from you? How does it make you feel? Do you not take it as an order if it has please after it?

My Owner most definitely stands on courtesy. She often says please and thank you, is often polite and almost always kind. I hadn't really spent a lot of time thinking about how Her courtesy makes me feel, or how it affects my submission, but upon reflection I think this plays into a lot of stereotype-based patterns of mine.

In my former experiences as a submissive, there were always really clearly defined 'times' when my submission was expected - and others when it wasn't. I blame that primarily on never having had an Owner as a primary or monogomous partner in the past. Because my kink relationships were always outside of my primary, more vanilla one, it kept things fairly compartmentalized.

I think the result was that I tended to associate my submission with certain circumstances/locations, etc and the rest of the time just go about day to day life. Now that I am in a more immersive 24/7 dynamic, living with and married to my Owner - I find that I still can have a tendency to compartmentalize. When my Owner is polite in asking me to do something or in expressing Herself, I can forget myself - and my place - and respond casually at or flippantly or even crankily (at worst).

Her courtesy sometimes translates as complacency and I forget my place and lose sight of the need to be respectful.

It isn't any fallacy of Hers that She is courteous - after all - She owns me - and shouldn't have to be aggressive just to get what She wants or needs from me. But it is certainly helpful for me to remember that even with a "please", it is still up to me to serve Her consistently.