24/7, the way we do it

I’m a submissive in a very tight 24/7 dynamic that exists inside a real-world relationship, and a 25 years marriage, where our love and family are much bigger than our kinks. We recently stopped self-describing as TPE because we just don't want to be associated with that line of thinking anymore.

To us, the core distinction comes down to reality versus ideology. Our 24/7 dynamic is an intense, immersive lifestyle choice where power dynamics form the backdrop of daily life, but it remains grounded in a partnership.

TPE, on the other hand, tries to treat power exchange as an absolute contract where the submissive yields all autonomy.

In our view, TPE is largely an illusion and a way for some to describe their relationship as somehow more elite or authentic than everyone else's. To use my owner’s words, a lot of the hardcore TPE crowd are the hardcore football fans of the kink world. Their kink, like their team for football fans, defines their entire identity, and they get entirely tangled up in knots trying to defend the ideology that total means total, only to constantly stumble over the inevitable exceptions.

Because exceptions come think and fast in TPE. Take my day job. My owner couldn't really control my career even if he wanted to. He can’t just tell me to quit on a whim because we live in the real world, life is expensive, and we need that income.

When people in TPE are in this kind of situation, usually the Dominant types say they simply choose not to control that aspect. Buddy, if you cannot control it anyway, it’s not your choice. That is okay. You are not Louis XIV of France or Catherine the Great of Russia, you are just a simple human, like all of us trying to do their best. Leave totality to the totalitarians and embrace the joy of life’s messy relativism!

We also can't relate to the TPE community's disdain for roleplay. We love costumes, characters, and parallel lives. To us, it’s a massive, beautiful psychodrama. It’s theatre, but the emotions and the connection are more real than reality itself.

Finally, the consent piece: we absolutely have a safeword. My owner is brilliant, but he isn't a mind reader. If we are doing a heavy torture scene where usual words like “no” and “stop” don’t have usual meanings and I get a sudden muscle cramp, he needs to know there's a hard stop.