The thing is...It always makes me sigh. You can make people do things, and yes, over time you can even mold someone into something they previously may not have been. Dominants are made over time. Experience shapes their approach, refines their methods, defines who they decide to be as dominants. Submissives are shaped and molded one step a a time over the course of a relationship, a little bend here, a nudge there, sometimes so subtle that we aren't even aware of the changes until something calls our attention to the fact that our reaction is different than it was before.
Yes, people change other people. Yet...You cannot force someone to become something that they aren't, in some shape or form, already.
I think that sometimes we are unhappy, and our first choice is often to look outside of ourselves at the people we are with to try and make them into what we believe will make us happy. The interesting thing about changing someone we love, I mean really making them into something they are not, has the terrible potential to create something we no longer love.
One of the things Alpha and I have fought most about in our time together is his sense of loyalty--how far he will let another person go, how much shit he will take, how forgiving he is willing to be of those that do not return his loyalties; of those who, for whatever reason, he deems worthy of his loyalty. He is solid and immovable in this. Once won, his loyalty is non-negotiable, unconditional, and comes with no strings attached. Sometimes this absolutely infuriates me. Because people are assholes. And, why? I mean, after all--assholes.
At the same time...His sense of ridiculously unshakeable loyalty is one of the things that I love most about him. If I had been able to change that, to make him into something he is not, he would not be the man that he is. He would not be the man that I fall in love with just a little bit more each day. Because he would no longer be himself.
I'm not saying that trying to makes someone dominant or submissive is exactly the same, and things work out differently if it turns out we are just helping someone become what they already are; however, what about ourselves? If we want our significant other to be dominant, are we truly willing to be the counterpart to that, so submit, to surrender to their will? Conversely, if we want our other half to be submissive, to surrender their all, can we become the dominant, the last call, the final say, the one who carries the weight of that responsibility? And if we are successful in bringing about these changes, will we still love what they have become?
All too often, I don't think that people ask themselves these questions. If we want to change someone else, we have to start by asking ourselves if we can be what they need should such changes occur. One must be careful when attempting to change that which they love, because the caterpillar turns into a butterfly and we will have to accept what they become with the knowledge that we asked for their metamorphosis.
We can help someone to become what they truly are, but we cannot make them be something they are not. And if we are asking them to become something which, by nature, requires a counterpart, we had better be damn sure of our ability to feed the beast we help to create. Because we are all so much more than the sum of our parts.
