Practical Questions about Our Relationships

Ernie emailed some questions and I think the answers deserve sharing. To begin, though, let me restate my usual themes. First, all relationships are created by the two people in them. That means they are freely negotiated and never unilaterally dictated. That statement applies to the master/slave relationship as well as any other permutation you want to create.

Second, the relationships we are creating are human relationships. Most of them, if they are going to be intimate, long term, and viable, are going to follow rather traditional guidelines involving finances, health, chores, responsibility, etc., since those guidelines have generally withstood the test of time.

In answering Ernie’s questions I am going to use the word partner instead of slave, because masters and slaves are partners. Denying or ignoring that fact is to create a relationship that is probably not going to last. Likewise, what applies to Ernie and his partner-to-be, applies to us as well.

(1)  Do you think it is acceptable or realistic to require that boy/slave deposit his income into master’s checking account? From your experience and knowledge, does this create problems?

Money is, for most of us, always a problem. My rule is that any assets a partner brings into a relationship, remain his or hers. Therefore, it is put into an income-producing account in the partner’s name. Current income, on the other hand, is negotiable, depending on the relationship. A slave’s income belongs to the master. A partner’s income is mixed and the two share equally. In some cases the partner’s income is separate and an agreed-upon amount is put into a common fund to pay common expenses.

Obviously if the partners (of any kind) don’t live together, there will be little sharing of finances.

You’ll hear more of this later on, but finances need to be dealt with responsibly. That means, for instance, that arrangements must be made for everyone in the relationship to have (or gain) financial security. Yes, a slave should have a retirement plan and a savings account, to say the least. That, by the way, is why you’ll often find heterosexual masters marrying their slaves, just to insure that the slave is legally protected when it comes to assets. If you aren’t able to marry, then you’ll need a good lawyer to help you write the documents necessary to accomplish the same goal.

(2) I am poz, but I am often contacted by boys who are neg and they declare that they want to be pozzed [i.e., infected with HIV].  Do you think something like that should be incorporated in some manner into a contract?

Most certainly! One of the concepts more often forgotten in our subculture is responsibility. The partners are responsible for one another. In this case, then, you are responsible to protect and maintain the good health of your partner. Acting in a way that endangers his or her health is irresponsible.

On another note, in some states, it is also illegal to knowingly infect another person with HIV.

Lastly, I would be very careful about entering into a relationship with a person who was so misguided as to want to become infected with HIV.  If it’s not a suicidal wish, it certainly is a foolish one. He or she obviously isn’t thinking about who’s going to pay the more than $20,000 a year for medication and how he or she will deal with both the physical implications of the infection or the very bothersome side-effects of the meds.

(3)  In your experience or from your knowledge, do you think it is likely that someone 20 or more years younger than the master can GENUINELY commit to a long-term slave relationship?

Of course “Winter/Spring” relationships can last and anyone can genuinely enter into a long-term relationship. That said, we are all human and subject to the realities of our humanity. When I was married in 1971, I genuinely believed that it was “until death do us part.” When I was divorced in 1983, I was as heart-broken and surprised as anyone else. None of us knows the future. That’s why I so often write about planning for a relationship and asking all the right questions before you agree to enter into it.

Planning means that we need to especially consider the financial implications of the relationship, as very often the older partner has significantly more assets than the younger one. Be careful here, as unless the relationship is a legal marriage, biological family members might be able to trump any but the most carefully written wills.

For a fuller explanation of this, you can consult many of my books. In fact I wrote about this in my blog of January 4^th, which you can find at http://leathermusings.blogspot.com/. The books that are most pertinent are Partners in Power and Becoming a slave.