Am I Flawed, Or Am I Doing Just Fine?

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Sir. I’m happily & proudly submissive. I thrive on humiliation, degradation, some pain, high expectations & frankly, getting fucked often. This feeds me sexually, spiritually, intellectually & psychologically. I’ve been asked if I was abused as a child & if this might be a form of re-traumamatization. 
I was bullied relentlessly and emotionally neglected, but I find my submission therapeutic. I’m rewriting my story with an ending in which I thrive & am fulfilled. Am I just fooling myself? 

Papa Tony:

Frankly, you are speaking on behalf of a LOT of people. I have no certificates of professional attainment hanging on my wall. I am just an opinionated old guy who has met (and grown to know) many thousands of kinky folks.

For me, your last few sentences say it all. You sound entirely functional and self-aware.

Whenever I get asked something like this, I like to ask two rhetorical questions:

- Are you in jail?

- Are you dead from your activities?

Being rhetorical, these questions are meant to make my point:

You have reached this age, having made conscious adult decisions in order to cope with how your life has gone. I am assuming that your proclivities have not been used to harm others without their permission. You are clearly continuing to work out ways to do well in your life… You’re not just surviving, you are thriving.

Folks who will judge you from outside of your own experience are projecting their biases upon you. It’s what folks do. In cases like this, I like to give away one of my favorite mantras:

“The Dogs Bark, and the Caravan Moves On.”

This means that folks will always lay “shoulds” upon us. It doesn’t obligate us to take on their judgments. If somebody has not walked around inside our highly-polished kinky boots for a few miles, then they can have all of the opinions that they want.

They just can’t really affect us, unless we allow them to have that power over us.

Please, be YOU. If how you live your life stops being useful, valuable or practical, I trust you to pivot to another way of being that works better. For YOU.

The following sentence really jumped out at me:

“I’m rewriting my story with an ending in which I thrive & am fulfilled.”

That’s a very evolved viewpoint. I talked about something similar here.

In my own case, I was heavily traumatized as a child. As a result, I have made decisions that have worked well for ME for the last half a century. Those decisions went in an entirely different direction, compared to yours.

Big deal. Come sit by me, and let’s be friends. Let’s swap some sensational coping-mechanisms!