Slave Love Taken for Granted

So there was some tension the other day between the slave and I. By tension I mean she upset me in a way that wasn't her fault directly, but was her doing. I try not to punish unless I have a reason to. And I do  mean punish. By all means if you have a desire to grab your slave and beat them do so but we all know the difference between a punishment and a funishment if you will.

Something I had discussed with her before is stepping up how mean I am. She seems to think I'm pretty mean as is, I don't. In the past I had noticed that sometimes she relied heavily on fundamental parts of our relationship to get her through the tough times. In this example saying "I love you." It seems that whenever I'd get angry or at the end of a punishment (or sometimes before) she would spit out "I love you" and I of course still loving her despite any unpleasantness responded in kind. This time I tried something different.

In addition to me being unpleasant for a bit, when she would say "I love you" I just wouldn't respond to it, act as if I didn't even hear it. This defiantly seemed to get the message across. Before it's like she could shrug off anything I did because that 'I love you' was still there. However just taking this simple phrase away for a little bit even without a true punishment drastically affected her, got my point across loud and clear without raising my voice, and had her correcting the problem.

So ultimately I'm left with the question of is there some boundaries that shouldn't be crossed despite effectiveness. I don't mean limits of what they don't like kink wise, but truly manipulative mind games. It's always something that seemed easy to do intentionally but I refrained from it (mostly, unless I was using it as a weapon) because, well.. it's a bitchy kind of move in most peoples book. Most BDSMers,myself included, stress above all else good communication is key.. does that necessarily go against intentionally playing mind games with your slave? Does it make a difference the motivation behind it?