How to Uncollar a Boy

Dom/sub relationships can be profound things and some of them become permanent, essentially the kinky equivalent of marriages. But not all of them last. Sometimes the boy you collared has to be uncollared. Inevitably, sometimes it has to happen because there are serious problems in the relationship–I had to dismiss my first slave because he had a raft of emotional issues that were threatening to completely undermine his ability to function not just as a slave but as an adult person.

But sometimes you have to uncollar a boy because life is taking you in different directions. A couple days ago, I had to uncollar my boy Spunky, whom I care deeply about, because he found a local master who could be more of a presence in his life than I can be (we’re separated by half the country). When he asked to be uncollared, I knew immediately I wanted it to be a more positive process than with my first slave (that uncollaring turned into threats of suicide and a middle of the night trip to a county mental health facility to get him some help).

Our society’s models for relationships are problematic in many ways. The only thing deemed a successful relationship by mainstream society is a life-long monogamous relationship, preferably producing children. Any movement away from monogamy is generally seen as a sign of a problem and any relationship that both parties get out of alive is deemed unsuccessful. The idea that a short-term relationship can be successful is pretty alien to most people, although Dan Savage has been arguing for the idea for a long time. As is common for kinky relationships, we mostly have to make things up as we go.

I’m a huge Star Trek nerd, and on Deep Space Nine, we learn that Bajoran culture has an entire process for bringing a relationship to an end that is intended to help two people go their separate ways without bitterness. I really like that idea, and I’m a sucker for rituals (if you’ve read the second orgy scene in Leather God Descending or the wedding night scene in Bull and Cuck, you can kinda see what I mean). But the only model we have for wrapping up a successful short-term relationship is Gwyneth Paltrow’s Conscious Uncoupling incident, and doing it her way probably requires a $500 chakra massage and some jade eggs. So this post is really just my explanation of how Spunky and I did his uncollaring. Hopefully it can give readers at least a few things to think about if they have to plan their own uncollaring.

I’ve known Spunky for a good long time, 8 years later this month. I had the pleasure of being one of two doms to give him his first formal kinky experience in the late david stein’s apartment, no less–david told him afterwards, “I hope you realize how lucky you are to get that scene as your first experience.” (Hey, I’m a dom–I’m allowed to brag when I want to.) Over the years, we stayed in touch and slowly built more of a connection, played a few more times, and last year we started talking on the phone a fair amount. We found a very powerful connection through verbal abuse and hypnosis play.

So early in 2020 I offered to collar him and he accepted. Since we live across the country from each other, we planned to get together once or twice this year, but Covid fucked that plan and didn’t even reach around. So our Master/slave relationship was conducted entirely online and by phone. We did a little findom, a lot of verbal abuse and long-distance worship, hypnotic dream programming, and stuff like that. Locktober and NOvember were both fun, at least for me.

But we both knew that Spunky needed some things I wasn’t going to be able to provide. For me, the biggest was that he needed an in-person relationship, someone he could see and touch and kneel in front of on a very regular basis. Although Spunky has a very deep need for verbal abuse, he also needs more romantic affection, and that’s something I wasn’t able to provide. So when I collared him, I told him that one of my goals was for him to find a boyfriend or a local master. I told him upfront that I would be very happy to release him when he found the right guy for him.

And early this week, he told me that a local dom he’d known for several years had expressed interest in him, and so he wanted to be released so he could serve this new guy.

I was really happy for Spunky. He’s served me so well, and gotten me through a few rough times during the year, that I felt he richly deserved a more physically-present master than I could. And his new master and he share a pretty major fetish that he and I don’t really share, so I was glad that the new guy was going to be able to feed a part of him that I can’t.

But I didn’t want to end things with just “ok, good luck with that.” Our relationship deserved something more. Spunky and I had connected on a pretty deep level and you don’t just walk away from that. We needed closure, something to tell us what our relationship had meant. And I could tell that Spunky was a bit nervous about telling me about the new dom in his life, that he was afraid I would think he was being disloyal. I wanted to make sure he felt good about the way our relationship was ending.

So on that same call I asked him a few questions about the new dom and when things with him would be official. It turns out the new dom wanted to start things pretty much right away. We talked about whether I would have any formal authority over him going forward and it became clear that the best option was for me to relinquish full control. I fully supported that, because I don’t want to be the ex who keeps coming back into his life and making things messy. I want to be the kind of ex he can turn to for support without fear that I might have some ulterior motive.

We had a second conversation about it and agreed that we would do a formal uncollaring ritual so that we would both know when Spunky’s service to me was done and there wouldn’t be any unfinished business between us. I hypnotized him and removed all the hypnotic commands I had implanted, but I put in a couple that would help him continue working on his fitness goals (with his full permission), and when I wrapped up the hypnosis I told him to remember all the things I had just done, so that he would feel certain there were no ‘backdoor commands’ hiding in there somewhere. Spunky trusts me to be a man of my word, but I wanted him to be able to tell his new dom that he knew for certain that all the commands were gone.

After we finished up, I had him cum on command for me, which worked beautifully–I both wanted to see if the hypnosis had been crucial for that (the answer is no–I’m just that good) and I wanted to formally wrap up his chastity service to me and give him a clean slate.

We agreed we’d do a formal ceremony later that day. As I thought about what I wanted to do and say in that ceremony, I felt more and more strongly like I wanted witnesses. Collaring ceremonies are often done with witnesses, the same way weddings are, and somehow it just felt right that an uncollaring ceremony should have them as well. Since we hadn’t done anything very formal for his collaring, I wanted something more ritualize to mark this moment of passage in our lives. And I wanted to feel like there was a community there for both of us, people who could watch us and support us.

It should have been done in a bar or a living room, but this is 2020, so it had to be done on Twitter. I used a DM channel I already had and invited a couple of my other boys to participate. I offered to invite his new dom, but the new guys decided not to.

I started with talking for a bit about all the things Spunky meant to me and why I was so proud to be releasing him to serve another man. I wanted other kinksters to know that Spunky is truly a Good Boy. And Spunky told me about how he felt my training had taught him the confidence to fully embrace his kinks. One of the witnesses gave him some advice about serving a new dom and all the witnesses congratulated him.

And then, as his last act of service to me, I ordered him to unlock his collar and make sure he would keep it somewhere safe. I gave him my full and joyous blessing on his new relationship. And we all chatted for a while, in lieu of having a round of drinks at a bar.

Then I called Spunky and we talked for a while, just letting ourselves be together one last time with the Master/slave glow still gently fading. I reassured him that he was always gonna be my boy even if he wasn’t my slave any longer, and he said he knew I was always going to have some authority over him. The Master/slave bond, when it is done properly, is an incredibly strong thing. It can’t end at uncollaring, even if the formal power exchange does. It felt sad, but in a good way.

The next day, I had some dom drop to deal with. After almost a full year of talking to him nearly every day–planting dreams in his head and then hearing him recount them the next morning, taunting him about my ability to jack off and his inability to even touch his dick, letting him praise me as I reminded him of his inferiority–not getting to do that takes some getting used to. I have to accept that I’m not his god any more, not his cashmaster, not his hypnotic key-holder. Now I’m just the guy who used to own him. Being someone’s master is a really heady thing, and it will take me a few days to adjust to not getting the on-demand adulation he was used to giving me. So yesterday I was kinda moody. Today I’m better, but still faintly aware of an empty space at my feet. In a day or two, that will be done with.

Spunky saw my Twitter post about the dom drop and messaged to make sure I’m ok, which, of course he did, he’s a sub and he’s my boy. So we talked a bit about it and I explained to him that, because he was the cause of the moodiness (or more precisely, his absence was), he couldn’t be the one to resolve it. He can’t be both the disease and the cure. That’s a lesson I learned when my asshole ex dumped me, and it’s an important one, I think. When we end a relationship, we have to get used to being single individuals again, and the temptation to let ourselves feel like a couple is really just extending whatever pain is there. And I’m not really in pain. It’s more simply learning to live without a source of erotic energy that used to be there.

My other boys really stepped up to help address my dom drop. One boy sought guidance on an issue and praised me, another offered me a good reminder that I was still important to my boys, including Spunky. One of my finsubs did an extended cashfuck and bought me an excellent meal. Another (totally by coincidence) had sent a really sexy bulldog harness that happened to arrive during the dom drop, which brought a huge smile to my face. So they did what good boys do–they rallied around me to help me navigate the moodiness and get back to my usual alpha mindset. If you’re planning an uncollaring, think in advance about how to handle the dom drop. That’s something I wished I had put some thought into.

So those are my thoughts on uncollaring a boy. Obviously a lot of that is unique to us and to 2020, but if you find yourself at a point when a kinky relationship needs to come to an end, here’s a model that might give you a little direction on how to organize your own uncollaring.

I’m curious–have you, dear reader, ever done an uncollaring ceremony or participated in one? Surely I’m not the only one who has. So what did it involve?