Running Away and Running Toward

I’ve heard it said that illicit drugs fall into two categories, Running Away Drugs and Running Toward Drugs. Running Away Drugs are depressants like heroin, oxycontin, valium, alcohol, and the like–they are drugs that take you away from undesirable feelings, deaden your emotions, and put you in a state where you simply don’t have to think about your problems. Running Toward Drugs are hallucinogens like LSD, peyote, mescaline, and so on–they open up the mind to new perceptions, stimulate mental and spiritual growth, and help one work through inhibitions. In this schema, Running Away Drugs are generally viewed as destructive, while Running Toward Drugs are generally viewed as constructive.

BDSM is similar in that it can be used to run away or to run toward. When I meet a boy who says he want to be my slave, I always ask him about his life in general and why he wants to be a slave. A large percentage of these boys tell me they are in unhappy marriages (usually to women who are either unwilling to accept their husband’s desire for men or who are too vanilla to satisfy his kinky desires. These boys often talk about the Locked in a Cage fantasy, saying they want me to make them completely disappear from society. It’s clear these boys are Running Away from something about their life. Often these boys haven’t stopped to think about the practical logistics of being Locked in a Cage because what they really want is to just get away. Boys like that will make bad slaves because they aren’t trying to deal with their personal problems, and inevitably those problems will show up because wherever they go, they bring their problems in their baggage. They lack the emotional maturity to really be a slave because they lack the maturity to talk to their partner about their desires and needs.

Other boys approach me because they are Running Toward slavery. They know that they truly want to serve. Often they’ve been actively exploring kink and have simply not found a partner who is a good fit for their needs and situation. These boys don’t want to drop out of their life; they want to add the missing puzzle piece to it, namely a man who can rule over them and be the object of their devotion. These boys are often successful in their work life or athletics or other fields; they are established in some way and that allows them a foundation to build off of as they seek a life of servitude.

Boys sometimes approach to serve me as a findom because they feel they are total losers and the only way they can get attention is to send money. These boys are essentially running away from something in their lives that make them feel like losers–they’re overweight or small and scrawny, they consider themselves ugly and undatable, they’ve encountered a lot of rejection either socially or in their dating life, they feel they’re too old to be desirable, or something like that. In my opinion, a findom should either gently refuse service from such boys, because accepting it will tend to confirm their feelings of being a loser, or else use serving as a way to help build the boy up. For example, I have used permission to tribute as a reward to motivate a boy to work out or lose weight.

If a boy is running away from something, it’s a findom’s job to act as a life coach or mentor and help him stop running. Sadly, too many unethical findoms encourage boys to feel like losers because it’s a way to get them to send more money. This just ends up damaging the boy’s self-esteem further.