This page sponsored by JT's Stockroom    [other banners]

	TSR : Web boards : M/s D/s O&P : "A family's reaction" 1 2 A family's reaction (16) This post is on the M/s D/s O&P web board. Fri 16 May 08, 6:44 AM 576-582-723 US(OH), 5 yrs this is a long post.. I would like to share something that happened to me last weekend. This is something that has been bothering me and weighting on my mind. I was at my grandmother's house for Mothers Day, so my whole extended family was there, aunts, uncles and cousins. We are a extremely close family. While my Mother knows all about Master and has meet him many times, the rest of my family does not yet know much about him. So when we where all standing around the kitchen island snaking on chips and talking, my uncle started asking me a lot of questions about him. I was happy that they all wanted to learn about him. I told them about all the fun things we have done together, the places we go, how good he makes me feel. Then my uncle asked how old he was.. (Master is 18 years my senior) I told them, he is 40 years old. I expected a little hesitation. But it was much worse then that. My uncle started screaming “WHAT?! WHAT?! he is almost as old as me!!” and my poor grandma just starts rambling about how she is not okay with this at all, that I must be crazy and him some kind of sicko. Everyone just freaked out! I hate confrontation and felt as if everyone was ganging up on me. I felt hurt and betrayed by them. I tried to tell them it doesn't matter what age he is, he makes me happy. It was not working. So I walked away from the table crying like a little kid and went and hid in the back room. Only my little teenage cousin made me feel better. She walked into the room with me and gave me this great big hug. She said “ I am so happy for you, you found someone that makes you happy and I can see it in your eyes when you talk about him, that is the only thing that matters.” And in her whole 15 years of life, she gave me such wisdom. She is right, I am happy and that is all that matters. But then why does my families reaction hurt me so bad. Why cant they be happy for me because I am finally happy? I understand their concerns; they don't want me to get hurt. Plus in a way I think I will always be that little girl to them, no matter how old I get. They want to protect me. I just can't get that reaction out of my head. The words they said and the looks on their face. I feel like I am letting them down. They even had me second-guessing my relationship. I had never thought about his age when we first met. We just got along so well, we liked the same things, and it just never mattered. I am ashamed now to admit that I let their reaction affect me this much. I care for my Master very much and know that he is right for me. He makes me feel beautiful and loved and cared for. I know soon my family will see that and learn to accept him for who he is and not how old he is. My question is to those who are in a relationship with someone much older then themselves. How did you first deal with people's reactions? Did your family and friends come to except him or her as your partner? Did anyone else feel as betrayed by people's reactions as I did? I hope I am not alone in my feelings. *its your last best chance, are you going to take it?* Edited Fri 16 May 08, 6:49 AM by 576-582-723 16 May 08, 7:47 AM masterfiremaam US(WV), 5 yrs My first husband was 12 years older than me. We got married when I was 18 and he was 30. My dad wasn't happy about it. But, it wasn't my dad's life; it was mine and I chose to live it as I wished. I think we are disappointed by people's reactions because we want them to validate us. When they don't, we are hurt...and are left feeling "less than". Why? Because a part of us is reliant on them for our sense of self worth. This is a disaster waiting to happen because when, not if, they are disappointed in us, our self worth crumbles. In the end, you now know that there is this piece of you that you can now heal because you know that you don't need their approval to be happy. Master Fire "Be excellent to each other." - Bill and Ted *air guitar* 16 May 08, 10:22 AM Property US, 4 yrs there will always be choices in your life others do not accept and like. It is them that do not have to wake every day and live with them. As long as you are happy and Master makes you happy, what is an age? Live life like it is the only one you get, as it is. property wishes you well. www.ownedbymyhusband.blogspot.com 16 May 08, 2:32 PM LadyPhay 5 yrs i can relate to what you are talking about because my Master is 16 years older than me. A similar thing happened to me when i told my family that we were engaged. my mum and my Grandma particularly took it very badly. my Grandma was constantly saying how bad a decision i had made and how i should wait before i got married (i was 17 at the time) and she thought that my Master was bad for me, i did explain to her countless times that He loves me very much and always has my best interests at heart, that we BOTH wanted to get married and that it was my decision. i was worried that she would stop speaking to me at one point and she wouldn't even speak to Master on the phone or get to know Him. It was getting to the point where i thought i might have to cut my family out of my life all together. Then when i turned 18, Master and i began to plan our wedding, my Grandma and everyone else finally saw that we were serious and that i really did want to spend the rest of my life with Him. Suddenly we were going out for meals as a family and to be honest i can't really remember when it turned around so quickly! It was such that they all came to the wedding and my Grandma paid for my wedding outfit and made the most beautiful wedding cake, and my mum paid for a lot of the wedding and our lovely honeymoon. We have now been married for nearly 4 years and i have a great relationship with my family and they have accepted Master and He is part of the family. What i am trying to say (in a rather long-winded fashion lol) is that if your family truly care about you and want you to be happy, they will come round - they just need time. What is important is that you do not question your relationship, although my family were against it i never questioned my relationship, i stood firm and my Master was always there to support me and back me up. You need to remember that your family are just worried about you and when they see how happy you are with your master they will eventually come to accept the two of you as a couple. my family also saw me as the 'little girl', particularly my Grandma, as she had been like a mum to me growing up, but when they all got used to the idea, our relationship quickly repaired itself and now its like all that stuff never happened. So really all you can do, is keep explaining to them that your master is not a bad person and that the two of you are in love until they get it into their heads that its something real and that you are not a little girl anymore, it is hard and will take a while, but all you can do is persevere. It's if you give in, and 'be' that little girl they see you as, that things will fall apart, and your relationship with your master won't get accepted by the family. Good Luck Sabina ~ Master's l'il one ~ Edited 16 May 08, 2:43 PM by LadyPhay 16 May 08, 2:42 PM 741-498-880 4 yrs I am 13 years younger than my Owner... My oldest sister pretty much disowned me because she couldn't handle me marrying someone closer to her age. (she's 9 years older then me and feels she's generations older... so she just couldn't possibly understand how I'd have anything in common with a man even older than she was!) My family... tolerated it okay... MY grandparents see how happy I am... so they just see "him". They don't see an age... I pretty much haven't discussed his age after my sister reacted that way... my family doesn't ask, so I don't really tell. I've had friends ask me if my husbands a pedophile because I was 20 when we got married... and he was 34. (we were maried the day after his birthday and I turned 21 a couple months later.) needless to say im not friends with most of my old friends due to their intolerance to the age difference.... (and lifestyle change we had.) the bigger issue is our lifestyle. I hate hiding, and keeping secrets, or ptending to be something im not.... and around family and in vanilla situations, I have to be careful how I defer and address him in front of family and others.... calling him Master in front of my mother in law, could be written off as a joke once.. maybe twice... but if I slipped up and kept doing it, it wouldn't be so funny to her... or to Masters sisters. I accidently called him my owner when talking to a vanilla friend and she never contacted me again... it was completely accidental... but the damage had been done, I went from being an interesting nice friend, to some sort of weird person she never wanted to talk to again because she was a feminist and thought that a woman being submissive to a man was wrong.. in any context. No one in my family knows about my relationship, I don't have anyone I can admit it too.. so we saught out lifestyle friends.. people like us in real life to have someone to talk to, to relate too.. someone who doesn't think we are weird, or he's wrong for loving me.. or me for giving myself to him to own me. It won't be easy. You may lose friends and family members, even with out going into specific details about personal relationship dynamics.... But as long as your happy, it will be worth it in the long run.... I wouldn't trade anything, my Master is the most important thing to me in this whole world, I love him with every breath in my body. Your cousin's a smart girl.... regards, Jake's emma 16 May 08, 2:57 PM slave_emma US(OK), 6 yrs Y! My Master is 30 years my senior. When my Master met my parents it went well and they really liked Him. The only family member that took issue with His age was my twin brother. My twin didn't like that I was seeing someone so much older, but overtime he adjusted to the idea and has even taken a liking to my Master. It took a while (about a year) for my twin to get past the initial shock of the age difference, but once he got to know my Master as a person and not by a number everything was fine. So just give it time and let your family see your Master for the great person that he is. Don't be too concerned about what your family feels in regard to the age difference. Age is only a number. best wishes, slave emma Master Howard's little girl 16 May 08, 3:01 PM charlie UK, 4 yrs I was 22 years younger than my last partner (me 23, him 45). I don't know if that was a bigger issue than the trans thing (he was female and didn't really pass as male). Whether it was the former, the latter or the combination - my dad refused to acknowledge my relationship as anything other than harmful and 'not what I needed'. [My mom's cool and knows all about my sexuality, my D/s relationships, my preference for older partners.] My dad also told me, a few days after introducing my ex, that *I* was welcome to see him and stay any time, so long as that did not include any of 'my entourage'. The ex and I nearly had a civil partnership - and all my dad would say was that he disapproved, was disappointed and didn't want to talk about it. And he certainly wouldn't come over to the UK to be there. He's pretty cool with my sexuality (it seems - he'd met girlfriends before) so I think age was a big factor in this. It's hard dealing with the disapproval of family... especially as a 'people pleaser', I find it difficult disappointing him. But I've come to a place where biological family means a different thing to me than it did, I'm no longer willing to suffer and be injured because of a blood bond. Of course, I love the family members who do accept me for all my quirks (the majority of my family, I'm very fortunate). But when family becomes a source of loss of confidence, loss of self-esteem, constant anxiety, etc... that's when - for me - it's time to take a break. A little while after the disapproval over the civil partnership, I wrote my dad a few long emails and spelled out to him my discomfort in his presence, my discomfort speaking to him, etc and asked to not speak/see him for a while (basically until I got in touch). He wasn't happy, but I think it was a wakeup for him. Things have been much better since then, much easier, and he's shown more non-judgemental interest in me and my life. It could have been much worse, and it would have broken my heart to not have him in my life anymore. I'm very, very happy that it didn't end up in pieces. Wish you all the best. Charlie. Edited 16 May 08, 3:02 PM by charlie 16 May 08, 3:01 PM Red_Spark UK, 5 yrs It is very hurtful when people behave like that, especially your family. IMO the best thing you can do is prove them wrong. Okay, some people's families 'come round' in the end when they see two people happy together and the relationship being successful/lasting. Other people's families might not be so open-minded and still keep something of a 'distance', but you know in your heart that you are doing the right thing. You have to stick by your own principles, which you are doing anyway... that doesn't make it any less upsetting, but you can still hope that they will be convinced by real proof that the relationship is right for you. Your own age makes a big difference to people's attitudes as well; you might find that as you move into mid to late 20s people don't make such a big deal out of it as when you're in early 20s and late teens. Admittedly the biggest difference I've experienced has been only 13 years, but there was a distinct difference in attitudes when I was 15 and when I was 26. 16 May 08, 3:31 PM Mr_Matero US, 4 yrs Y! Thank you everyone for the sound and supporting advice. The girl who posted this is my slave, but she is so much more my best friend, confidant, lover and support. Age has never been a matter of discussion between us, and we fit together like a lock and key. I never thought I would ever find someone so precious and tender. I am so glad I did. I am here to support you bella, and once your family knows me better, they will come around. You'll see. 16 May 08, 4:25 PM SeanT70 9 yrs I haven't seen most of My blood family for donkey's years, so they don't so much as come into the conversation or thread; My eldest sister is pretty much the only one I see now, and she came to our wedding (My Girl just told ya about it above), gven that there was a massive bust-up after My Mum died 14 years ago. There's 16 years between us, and in any event, in any event in any circumstance you, as a couple, have to be able to take, on the chin pretty much anyone throwing the odd insult at you as to how badly suited you are; I realise, by careful consideration of the OP, that you were more, and rightly concerned with how your family reacted to your relaltionship with your master (forgetting the lifestyle for a minute here, based on the age-gap. Personally, after My divorce from from My first wife, I made some simple choices; one of those was 'to never back down from something I believed in', having spent a long, long time backing off from My own justifiable opinions and stances on subjects, no matter what they were... OK, so it cuts a bit tough when you get an e-mail from your own daughter (well, her account anyway, I KNOW who sent that e-mail, it's not rocket-science, after all), when you're a few months into a relationship.. in big red letters..."YOU DIRTY OLD BASTARD!!!!", I know what that was intended to do, and it wasn't gonna win. People that read what I just said are gonna think "holy fuck" (or some such), because for all intents and purposes it looked like I got an e-mail from My kid calling me that..Hmmmm, yuh, OK, no, it was simply a reverse-psychology attempt at getting Me to bend to something..Not happening. I ain't breaking up with My Girl (talking historically, or in the future tense now) unless I say so, period. They (people), have pulled some fuckin' rotten stunts to get us to split up, and ooooooooooh, they nearly got half way to doing it, but that was before we got married, and given that a set of events took place rising to a massive parting of the ways, which I've discussed on My old profile I believe, I solely concentrate on My Girl and her family now..oh, and My sister, when she can be bothered to have a chat, which isn't often. There's no great love lost after My Mum died..for any of us, she was the keystone after all. I suppose it must've been kinda harder for My Girl to tolerate the jibes from friends (not that it's quite the same as the OP intended, but when in Rome jakesemma..), but they soon get kicked into touch when she got phone calls from the more perverse ones outta the bunch when we were out walking one night, and he began questioning her about if we were having an active sex-life...I'm the perve? I think not... It's funny, but always the same that people from, well, anywhere really expect 'you' to accept them for what 'they' do, no matter what, but as soon as you step outside what they find acceptable within their ideal threshold of the norm, they flip and call 'Shenanigans', OK, can I have the biggest broom to club people with because there's sure as hell some wrongs been done to us over the course of time, and all we did was fall for each other..M/s aside of course. We get ..or used to get all kinds of paedo comments about how much of a dirty git I was, and there's 'still' this one clown that won't give it up, although we haven't seen that in a while come to think of it, but then My Girl 'is' a bit older now, all growed(!) up, in fact, so maybe it's about time the people casting the paedo aspersions did too (the one I'm talking about is a 15 year old girl with a pushchair so she obviously didn't do too good a job of keeping 'her' legs closed but we won't so much as open 'that' topic...) jakesemma wrote: I've had friends ask me if my husbands a pedophile because I was 20 when we got married... and he was 34. (we were maried the day after his birthday and I turned 21 a couple months later.) needless to say im not friends with most of my old friends due to their intolerance to the age difference.... (and lifestyle change we had.) the bigger issue is our lifestyle. I hate hiding, and keeping secrets, or ptending to be something im not.... and around family and in vanilla situations, I have to be careful how I defer and address him in front of family and others.... calling him Master in front of my mother in law, could be written off as a joke once.. maybe twice... but if I slipped up and kept doing it, it wouldn't be so funny to her... or to Masters sisters. I accidently called him my owner when talking to a vanilla friend and she never contacted me again... it was completely accidental... but the damage had been done, I went from being an interesting nice friend, to some sort of weird person she never wanted to talk to again because she was a feminist and thought that a woman being submissive to a man was wrong.. in any context. No one in my family knows about my relationship, I don't have anyone I can admit it too.. so we saught out lifestyle friends.. people like us in real life to have someone to talk to, to relate too.. someone who doesn't think we are weird, or he's wrong for loving me.. or me for giving myself to him to own me. All things in the above lumped together in one big knot, this BUGS the hell outta me and always does, and this is the epitome of why the OPer has the problem they do now. Our lifestyle isn't a secret, in any case, in any event..why? Simply because in any case, in any event, it just doesn't need to be. My Girl defers or refers to Me in public or around family (or in general 'nilla) exactly the same way as she does in private; for one reason alone - split into 2 parts. part one; I AM her Master..and she does OBEY (love, honour, OBEY, ever heard of that one, people?): part 2 (especially for the 'nilla this one really) she calls Me Master, as a 'term of endearment' (babe, hunny, sweetheart, darling <enter nickname> or cutesy names here), same difference; the 'nillas obviously don't and don't need to know the more intricate details of what we or you do..but why hide what you are? Please, don't feel ya have to explain, although do if ya like, but it's just this is the deal....I'm Sean, 37, Master of sabina, 21, she addresses Me as such and that's the way it is (I could go on, but it's only for context purposes anyway...); as I always say, it's only a problem if you make it one, which it seems to me, people far more often make problems for themselves than need be. I just can't understand it. I realise that there 'are' circumstances that don't tolerate such behaviour, I get that part, but, that aside, socially, it leaves Me miffed..in such an apparently tolerant society, people are simply intolerant prudish oafs..until 'they' choose not to be of course. I guess I really 'do' live on some kind of parallel universe.. The other ting that gets Me is..what 'is' there to admit to? I simply don't 'do' admissions or confessions on point of fact that they're for the guilty, and I have nothing to plead guilty about, nor to confess - I am comfy with who I am, with what I do, and how I go about doing it; I find it odd that people that object to it often lead such closeted and compartmentalised lives, sectioning one thing off from another (certain circumstances aside, as above); where is the harmony and fun in that..I just can't see it. What we do doesn't make us any different to anyone else, by reading say..a BDSM book, we are reading just the same, the subject matter might not be everyone cup of tea, I grant you, but, jeeez, if you hide everything away, from everyone else, it's just so, well stifling, isn't it? The thing is, if you think about it, or for what it's worth, choose not to, all of the above are the very reasons why these problems occur..because each little thing is shielded away from the next. I simply choose not to do that, and as a result don't get any of that conflict, nor do I get disharmony on My doorstep or in My house. I just can't get caught out if My guard never has to be up. Think about that. I bring into question then, is it the people who choose to compartmentalise thses things away from one another who are doing the protecting, or do they need protection, and from what? Ultimately, if family and/or friends choose to walk away from you, then I find that there amy have been flaws in your relationships anyway; it's true to say that The Human Race is hell bent on self destruction, there can be no denying that; if there was, people wouldn't be so fuckin' spiteful to each other (I'm not even talking M/s), and put themselves first all the time. they would strive to embrace, not shun, wouldn't they? OK, maybe not, out on a limb I go.... OPer, you'll be OK, if you hold firm in your position that you want to be with your master, whether you've told your family of M/s or not. If ya wanna be 'all growed(!) up' (just like I rip the piss out of My Girl...), then you have to act, look and be the part you're playing, not the sulky little kid the family still sees you for and takes you as. If your family loves you, I can't see they'll go that far, My case was extreme and different circumstances. Sean Master's l'il one®(her Rights are Mine in reserve) 16 May 08, 5:17 PM bluesky 4 yrs my former Master was 18 years older than me. We met just after he turned 38 and I was 19. My family went mental. I got excluded from things because I wouldn't go without him. They tried all sorts of things to split us up. It did just the opposite. It brought us closer together. I even stopped my grandmother seeing my eldest daughter for about 6 months because she was slagging my ex (her father) off. Eventually they learnt to tow the line. They just basically ignored the fact that we were together. It isn't exactly ideal but it made for a quieter life. If your family want to see you then they will, ifnot accept him, learn to hold their tongues. Hang in there...it does get more bearable. Take care mouse Next page