Mentoring women of different ages

Greetings,

Long time reader Vesta left a comment to my recent entry on mentoring and training:

I would be most appreciative if you would care to expand on how women of different ages are mentored differently.

Well, there is nothing like the appreciation of a well-trained submissive to provoke a response in me, so I am happy to oblige this request.

As I mentioned, I believe mentoring a submissive has less to do with her age than with her development and maturity. There have been 30-year old girls I have mentored who were much easier projects that girls at 50. IMO - the difficulty of the mentoring process is related to things such as:

- Social conditioning (be it feminism, pop culture, religion, etc)

- Previous relationships (and in particular if there is any history of abusive relationships)

- The motivation to be mentored (why have they come to me?)

- The support (or lack of it) from friends, family, etc

- Sexual maturity (only because many girls are provoked to sub-fever for the first time during mentoring).

It has always been the case that I have had to tailor and customizes the mentoring process for each girl. While I have a few techniques, rituals, and disciplines which would be common to all (for example the use of third-person form), I recognized fairly early on that it would be foolish to try a "one size fits all" approach to mentoring. Different girls are... different, and what works for one, will not work for another.

A good analogy can be taken from ski instruction. One of the things that is critical in learning to ski is stance and balance. There are many different techniques, exercises, instructions that can be used to teach this. All are aimed at the same goal, a proper stance and a dynamic approach to balance, but what works for one student may not work for another. Sometimes, as an instructor, you must come at the problem from a number of different ways until you see the light bulb click on over the students head. And when it does, no other techniques are required.

So too, is how I find the process of mentoring and training.

But now, back to age differences. In general, I have found it more of a challenge to deal with young girls (say under 30) than those who are older. Sometimes this is because the younger ones come with an attitude (I already know everything, I am the best pleasure slave in the world). Sometimes it is because they use words without really understanding what they are saying (I want to be the best submissive ever. I want to be a slave, etc). Sometimes it is because they are using D/s as an approach to finding love ("I will only submit to my One").

Regardless of the reason, the lack of maturity and experience can be a barrier to acceptance. Simply put, they do not have enough life experience to evaulate what I am trying to teach them, in comparison to what has already happened in their life. Often, there is also a fear. Fear of exposure ("Its so dirty!"), fear of the implications, fear of being abused. Older woman are less likely to have these fears. Rather, they are concerned about how the notions of D/s conflict with what they have been taught about being strong and independent, or they are concerned about not being "good enough", or of finally allowing the sexual beast inside them to come to the foreground. So, while older women may not suffer from the anxieties of their younger sisters, they certainly have their own to deal with.

And, as I said, this is far from a universal truth. I have known women who, even in their fifties, have never gone down on a man, never experienced a true orgasm, and categorically refuse to acknowledge the power relationship between Dominant and Submissive because it conflicts so deeply with their inner beliefs on the equality of the genders.

What this implies is that I often find myself in rather long and challenging debates with the older girls, while the younger girls can often be taught in a more experiential manner. In the same vein, I often find older women to be more articulate, better able to form and state their opinions, than younger ones. Or perhaps, this is only a question of assertiveness and self-confidence. OTOH, in some cases I find it easier to develop and enhance a younger girl since they have not yet had decades to build barriers and walls that must be torn down before the real development can begin.

Another difference I find between younger and older girls is in the area of self-esteem and self-image. Self-esteem in older girls is often higher, perhaps because they know themselves better, and have a proven track record of their ability to handle a wide variety of situations. Conversely, self-image in younger girls seems to be higher, perhaps because their bodies and faces have not yet begun to show the inevitable results of aging. This means that they will have different sensitivity to the same topic.

In the final analysis, I really do not let age affect my decision with respect to accepting a girl to be mentored, although I doubt I could be convinced to mentor a girl younger than 25 or so, but perhaps that's just an arbitrary value, since I have never been approached by anyone younger than 25!

Be seeing you,