In which Stabbity continues to mine Novices & Newbies for post topics 🙂

Only the power exchange part of power exchange is required, and that’s only because it’s not power exchange if you don’t, you know, exchange some power. You are not even slightly required to do power exchange if you don’t fucking want to, but that’s a separate post. This post is about how pain play, bondage, verbal humilation, financial domination, 24/7 TPE, eye contract restrictions, slave positions, consensual non-consent, and every other kink you could possibly list are absolutely not required or expected parts of power exchange relationships.

In the fetlife post that inspired this one, some poor submissive person was asking how they could make themselves be okay with “the verbal aspect of submission.” WTF, you say? Yeah, me too. There is no “verbal aspect of submission.” Verbal humiliation is fun for some people, so they do it. Pain play is fun for some people, so they do it. Slave positions are fun for some people, so they do it. But absolutely none of that is required!

People get all sorts of ridiculous ideas about how kink in general and power exchange in particular work from porn, questionable fiction, jerks on the internet who pretend they’re experts when they actually wrote everything on their site with one hand on their dick, misguided friends, etc, etc. Just because every single one of your dom’s favourite pornos involved verbal humiliation doesn’t mean that’s actually a fundamental part of submission or that you have to put up with it.

Things like verbal humiliation or pain play or bondage can reinforce power exchange (and be super fun!) but that in no way means they’re necessary to have a power exchange. The only thing that’s actually necessary is to freely choose to give someone who freely takes it, some degree of control over your life. You don’t have to own a single toy or sexy outfit, you don’t have to have any sex that’s not missionary position with the lights out (or have any sex at all, for that matter), you don’t have to use a single special title or code word, you don’t have to do punishments or eye contract restrictions or a single goddamn thing that doesn’t work for you and your partner.

It’s worth putting a little bit of a caveat here: sorting out a relationship is more complicated than “I love doing x and hate doing y so I’m going to hold out for someone who only does x and never does y”. Plenty of people agree to things they don’t absolutely love in and of themselves to make their partners happy and see it as a good deal. Plenty of people do things they hate on the face of them too because those things make them feel especially submissive and that’s worth it to them. It is 100% okay to decide for yourself that you don’t love, say, getting whipped but it makes her so happy that it’s worth it. It’s also 100% okay to decide that it’s not worth getting whipped and that you’re going to find someone who isn’t into impact play.

That said, I want to stress that it’s not weird to not like pain, it’s not weird to not like verbal humiliation, it’s not weird to not like bondage, and that there is definitely someone out there who is compatible with you. If you decide to do a thing you don’t enjoy, it should be because your partner brings so much joy into your life that one little thing you don’t love is a small price to pay, not because you’re scared you’ll never get the d/s relationship you need if you let your current partner go.

You don’t have to follow a script in your d/s relationship, you really and truly don’t. It doesn’t matter how many other people follow that script, it doesn’t matter if your dom follows that script, it doesn’t matter if all of your friends follow that script, it’s up to you and only you to decide how you want to be treated.

No matter what, you always, always have the right to say no to anything, any time. If your dom says you have to do things that don’t make you happy, they can go fuck themselves.