I haven’t heard much of it lately, but for a while there it wasn’t at all unusual to hear that submissives have all the real power in a scene. That is, because they absolutely always have the power to end a scene that isn’t working for them, some people say this means submissives are the ones who are really in control. News flash: doms can safeword too. If you ignore my limits, I will end the scene. If you are a dick to me, I will end the scene. If you disrespect my partner or my relationship with him, I will end the scene. If you try to order me around, I will end the scene. If you call me mistress, I might very well end the scene because I fucking hate that shit.

No matter what kind of agreement you’ve made, s-types absolutely always have the right to end a scene. Say whatever you want about your no-safeword lifetime contract, but let me know what happens when your s-type says they’re going to faint/throw up/call their lawyer/call the cops/that this relationship is over. That’s right, you’ll fucking end the scene. However, that power isn’t special. I can end the scene too, and it’s much more convenient for me since if someone’s tied up, it’s not me.

Just being able to end the scene isn’t very much power, though. You only get to decide whether or not you stay on the ride, not where it goes. That is, while I would never ignore someone’s limits, I don’t take orders. If my play partner suggests something that sounds like fun odds are very good that I’ll do it, but it has to be an actual suggestion.The way I usually run scenes is pretty low key – we agree on which toys are on the table and a general intensity level, then I basically do what I feel like within those parameters. I can definitely be steered towards toys and actions that make my bottoms make fun noises, but if I’m not in a caning mood one night there’s no making me get one out.

So who’s really in control of my scenes? That would be me. Obviously I negotiate and I’m willing to do nice things for people I like, but come on. Only having the power to end the scene is not very much power at all, and someone who tells you that s-types have all the real power because they can end the scene whenever they need to is a) being hugely disrespectful of the d-types humanity (I have limits too, I can get triggered too, I can need to end a scene too) and b) sketchy as fuck.

While I feel very strongly that everyone in the scene should understand that s-types are powerful and awesome, the fact is that the s-type is not in control of the scene. If someone tries to tell you that you are, that makes me very worried that they’re trying to talk you into something that you wouldn’t be comfortable with if they were honest about who is actually in control. That’s creepy as shit. Informed consent is a thing, people. Don’t tell someone they’re in control when they’re not. I mean, if you’re willing to give them complete control over the scene then cool, but if they’re not going to be in control (which is very often the way the dom runs the scene, not to mention usually what the submissive person actually wants anyway), don’t fucking tell them they will be.

Submissive people absolutely do have power in the scene. What you bring to the scene can make it fly or fall flat, the dom is never ever the only one whose ideas and effort matters. If we’re going to talk about a submissive’s power in a scene, let’s talk about the power you actually have, not imaginary power you don’t have. Real communication is about honesty, after all.

Hi readers. Earlier today my blog got hacked and some jackass posted a link that will undoubtedly give you a virus. Don’t click on it! If you did, run a virus scan. I’ve already changed my password and added a two-factor authentication plugin, so hopefully this won’t happen again.

I have to admit it, I love a good trainwreck of a thread. There have been two on Fetlife recently, both started by the same person, that are even better than youtube fail videos. Everything this guy could get wrong, he got wrong. Aside from some tasteless rubbernecking, I do think there’s something to be learned from Mr Fail.

The first thread is What about the United Kingdom?, in which the original poster whines and cries about how Fetlife’s developers have had the unbelievable gall not to cater perfectly to his exact wishes, and the second is Calling All Sadistic Women in a 30 mile radius of London or Bedford, which is obviously a personal ad and obviously pointless to post in an international group, which of course Submissive men and women who love them is.

Aside from watching a grown man (nearly twice my age, even!) whine and cry like an overtired toddler, what can we learn from this poor fuckup? The very simplest lesson is to just do the exact opposite of everything he’s done and you’ll be fine 🙂

But to go into a little more detail, the root problem here is that not only did he comprehensively fail to understand what Fetlife is for (protip: it’s not for getting your dick wet), but he also showed that he wasn’t mature enough to deal with the idea that he could possibly be wrong about something and when people tried to explain that he got something wrong he got defensive instead of listening.

If you’re going to join any community, whether it’s something online like Fetlife or something offline like a meetup, for fuck’s sake make sure you understand what it’s for before you start whining about how it doesn’t do a good job of something it was never intended to do. Whether it’s a meetup or a website, watch and learn for a little while before you decide someone else is doing it wrong. Just because the community isn’t quite what you wanted doesn’t mean they’re doing it wrong. I can’t believe I have to say that to grownups, but clearly some of you need to hear it. And honestly, when you’re really emotionally attached to something and you’ve built up this community as The One Way To Get The Thing, it’s really easy to flip your shit when it turns out this community isn’t your one stop shop for whatever it is you’re looking for.

Which conveniently brings me to my next point, maturity! It takes some maturity to stay in control and act like a grownup when you’re disappointed, and it takes maturity to act like a grownup when people tell you you’re wrong about something. Nobody likes being wrong, but what exactly do you think is going to happen when you throw a tantrum when people give you advice in a thread where you asked for advice? (Actually, don’t throw a tantrum anywhere, but especially don’t do it there.)

If you can’t act like a grownup on a discussion on the internet, you are simply not ready for kink. Words on a screen can certainly be infuriating, I’m not denying that, but if you flip your shit in that situation there is zero chance whatsoever you can handle the smallest thing in a scene going wrong. I hate to burst your bubble, but actual kink scenes are not like the porn you watch. Things go wrong sometimes. I’ve had scenes that just didn’t work, I’ve accidentally wrapped with a flogger and whapped myself on the ear with a whip and bruised people unevenly because I’m not that good with a cane, I’ve had play partners safeword because they were just physically done and because I accidentally triggered them, I’ve had to cancel planned weekend play dates because I just didn’t have it in me. If you can’t handle people on the internet failing to verbally kiss your ass, how can you possibly convince anyone you’re safe to play with? Tops get to vet their bottoms too and we are not the only people who can make someone feel incredibly shitty about the scene they just had. Be nice to yourself and skip the shitty scene with Mr Fail and especially skip the part where he calls you a failure as a top because you couldn’t magically read his mind and make his every fantasy come true.

The message you should be taking away from this entire rant is that nobody owes you shit. You are not entitled to meet people from your area when you show up in an international group on Fetlife. You are not entitled to have Fetlife cater to your every whim just because you showed up. You are not entitled to a hot dominatrix who can make your every fantasy come true when you have shown absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

And one final piece of advice: if you’re going to run your mouth about how you’re a big time computer expert and [insert name of website here] is doing it wrong, double check, triple check, get a friend to check, and then keep your mouth shut anyway because you are probably wrong. The less you say about how incredibly smart you are, the fewer chances you have to make a complete ass of yourself.

To summarize, in case you had better things to do than read almost 1000 words of my ranting, is that if even if you behave like a total douchebag, you’re still useful as an example of what not to do 🙂 Or more seriously, doing a bit of watching and learning before you dive in is always a good idea and you should prove that you’re a grownup by allowing for the possibility that you aren’t right about everything that has ever happened. Also, to paraphrase an old saying I half remember “If one person tells you you’re an ass, ignore them. If two people tell you you’re an ass, think about it. If three people tell you you’re an ass, get measured for a saddle.”

Way back in the depths of the archives, Mistress Matisse has a really good article about how to tell if your scene went well as a top. To summarize her article, there’s a really simple 3 level scale that she learned from Joseph Bean:

1. The person you played with wants to do that particular thing again with you. You did well!
2. The person you played with wants to play with you again but doesn’t want to do that particular thing again. Hey, you still did okay.
3. The person you played with wants to play with someone else in the future but not with you. Something has gone thoroughly wrong.

It’s really, really common (probably universal) for tops/doms to worry that they’re somehow doing a scene “wrong.” It’s completely normal and understandable to feel that way, but if everyone had fun then you did it right.

Another point from the article I want to reiterate is that if you have a scene with someone and they don’t want to do that particular thing again, that doesn’t mean you’re a bad top. Sometimes the only way to find out whether you like a certain thing or not is to give it a shot, and sometimes you discover that you don’t like that thing. That’s totally normal and not something you should ever blame yourself for.

There is one part of the article I want to expand on. The third level of success Mistress Matisse describes really only applies if everyone had reasonable expectations and negotiated in good faith. It’s totally normal to have built up all these grandiose expectations for your first scene if you’ve been interested in kink for ages and you’ve finally gotten the chance to try it, but you have to remember that your top is a human being. You are not going to get to live out your porniest fantasies right away, you need plenty of time to build trust before you can do really intense scenes with someone.

For female tops in particular, it’s not terribly unusual to run into s-types who have expectations that no actual human person could ever possibly meet. If you run into one of them and have a shitty scene, it’s really and truly not your fault. What’s tricky, of course, is figuring out whether the person you played with had unreasonable expectations. Without experience, it can be really hard to figure that out on your own. This is where you need to either ask around in your local scene or ask around online. God knows the internet is full of people with opinions, somebody out there will be delighted to give you theirs 🙂 Bloggers are often willing to answer reader questions too, if you want to ask one of us. Just don’t forget that anyone on the internet could be a total asshole without the common sense of a radish. Take any advice you get with a grain of salt and if at all possible read the person’s posting history before assuming they have any idea what they’re talking about.

While there’s no wrong way to do kink, it’s important to remember that both parties have the ability to ruin a scene. Tops are not all powerful and bottoms are not blank canvases.

Pushing limits gets talked about a lot as part of a d/s relationship. It’s not unusual to hear people say that pushing limits is necessary or that it’s a dom’s job. That’s bullshit, but we need a little background so I can explain why.

First of all, not all limits are created equal. I’ve seen plenty of discussions of pushing limits that didn’t clarify what kind of limits they were talking about, which is kind of an important detail. Hard limits are things you are not willing to do anywhere, anyhow, with anyone, ever. Soft limits, on the other hand, are things you might be willing to do once you’ve gotten to know your partner (play or otherwise) better, or once you’ve seen them do a similar scene with someone else, or once the two of you have worked up to it.

Obviously it’s not okay to push hard limits. If someone tells you that needles are a hard limit for them, you goddamn well listen to that and respect it. Asking questions to clarify things that might or might not be okay is totally cool, but pushing or rules lawyering douchebaggery is absolutely not. For example, if one of your sub’s hard limits is needles, you can and should ask whether it’s just needles that aren’t okay or whether other pointy things like Wartenberg wheels or knives are also out or whether breaking the skin in general is out. What would be total assholery would be to hassle your sub about trying needles if it turns out they’re okay with knives and you think they should be okay with needles if they’re willing to play with knives.

Soft limits can be a little more complicated. The bottom line is still simple, though. You do not pressure people to do anything they don’t want to do. Doms are not special and we are not entitled to badger our partners to like what we want them to like.

While I’m at it, subs are not entitled to badger their partners either. It doesn’t get talked about quite as often or using the exact words “pushing limits,” but I’ve seen discussions started by s-types asking for advice to basically harass their partners into playing as hard as the s-type wants them to without showing any respect for how the partner is comfortable playing. That’s not magically okay just because the sub is the one doing the pushing. Tops have limits too, dammit.

What can be harder to explain to people who are wrong about limits and whether it’s okay to pressure people to do things they don’t want to do is that soft limits naturally expand as the relationship grows. That is, it’s really common to have a soft limit of having your hands tied behind your back until you’ve gotten to trust your top but if you never get to the point where you trust them enough to let them do that, you’re in the wrong relationship. From either side, I think it would be totally fair to say it’s not working and break it off.

Of course, some people do like having their limits pushed and seeing if they can do things they didn’t think they could. I don’t mean to come down on people who enjoy having their limits pushed and would be totally bored if their dom didn’t want to challenge them, I just want people to know that if their partner says it’s okay for doms to pressure their subs then their partner is being an asshole. Maybe they can be educated and maybe not, but it’s really important to know that the only person who gets to decide if the sub has their limits pushed is the sub.

If you want to push limits, for fucks sake just find someone who likes that. It’s not that goddamn hard to put that in your profile or bring it up early in the getting to know you process. It’s still totally uncool and counterproductive to lead with your kink (if you pull that shit you don’t deserve to play), but it’s really important to talk in general terms about your needs. If you’re looking for a romantic partner, say that! If you’re interested in d/s, say that! If you only want to get your kink on in the bedroom, say that! Just don’t fucking ask me if I’m willing to spank and then peg you as if you’re placing an order at a restaurant.

Pushing limits is not necessary (and never ethical if you’re talking about hard limits), nor is it the dom’s “job.” You can have plenty of fun without doing stuff that one partner doesn’t want to try and calling yourself a dom doesn’t magically make pressuring someone to do things they don’t want to not abusive. If you want to find someone who will push your limits, more power to you, but don’t feel that you ever need to accept someone else deciding that your limits should be pushed.

 

In which Stabbity continues to rework advice into blog posts 🙂 The first installment is over here if you’re interested.

Last time I talked about really common things new submissive guys worry about, this time I’d like to start with a slightly less common worry. I’m sad to say it’s unusual to see a guy worry about whether it’s topping from the bottom just to ask his partner if she’s interested in doing a particular kink with him. What I’ve usually run into is guys leading with their kinks to the point where I feel like a fetish vending machine. If you’re actually worried about whether you’re being pushy when you don’t mean to be and can conceive of the possibility that your partner isn’t interested in all the same kinks you are, then honestly you’re probably fine.

As well documented as my loathing of being treated like a life support system for a whip is, once you’re actually in a relationship with someone who you treat like a human fucking being, listening to and caring about your desires is pretty much the least you should settle for in a partner. Guys, if your dom doesn’t like you enough to even considering doing stuff you like some of the time, you’re dating the wrong woman! And women, if you don’t like your sub enough to do something that makes him happy once in a while, for fuck’s sake dump him and find someone you do like. Everyone: life is too short to date people you don’t like.

Also, I actually really like it when my play partner gives me ideas. Smart assed masochists with bad ideas are basically the most fun ever 🙂 It’s a lot of work to come up with all the ideas all the time, and I’ve had a lot of fun trying out stuff that I wasn’t super into but wasn’t opposed to because someone I liked wanted to give it a shot. Things you didn’t think you would really like can turn out to be pretty awesome if you get a chance to try them in a low key scene where it’s cool to change your mind at any time. That low key scene where it’s cool to change your mind at any time part is really important, though. If I don’t feel like I have the opportunity to stop doing something that isn’t working for me, I’m going to default to saying no to anything I’m not already sure I like.

Really, it is good and helpful and normal to share ideas about fun things you could do with your partner. Hot roleplay scenes aside, anyone who doesn’t care what their partner wants is an asshole and you should dump them.

On a related note, it is simply not true that there are dozens or hundreds of submissive men for everyone dominant woman. I’ve yelled about that before and I’m going to keep doing it until people get the hint. Awesome submissive men are rare and precious. Your competition for the most part is the miserable douchebags who inspired the rant above about guys treating female doms like life supports system for whips. If you can treat a dominant woman like a human fucking being, spell halfway competently, and make the slightest effort to meet people online or off, you are golden. It is really, really easy to impress dominant women. Other men have already set the bar so dismally low that we’re happy if you just manage not to message us a picture of your dick that we haven’t specifically asked for.

To reiterate the advice from my last post, you are probably going to be fine.

Punishment dynamics (also known as domestic discipline) are one of those things that really seem to polarize the kink community. Either you insist on having a punishment dynamic in your relationship or you absolutely refuse to, there just don’t seem to be a lot of people in the middle.

To make sure we’re all on the same page, when I talk about a punishment dynamic or domestic discipline, I’m talking about the d & s in a d/s relationship agreeing that when the s does something wrong, the d has the authority to punish them in some manner. The punishment could be anything from corner time to writing lines to doing the task that wasn’t done properly over and over to physical punishment like caning, basically anything that the d & s type agree on. Funishment, on the other hand, is when people enjoy doing a little role play about what a bad boy you’ve been and how hard it’s going to be to make up for it. It’s a completely and utterly different thing and not at all what I’m talking about in this post.

In case it wasn’t clear already, not everyone has even the tiniest bit of interest in having a punishment dynamic! If people didn’t keep assuming I must be into that because it’s obviously the One True Way™ then I wouldn’t so irritated by the whole idea. If you like having domestic discipline in your relationship that’s totally cool, just look for someone else who also wants that and don’t hassle people who aren’t interested.

Personally I’m not interested in domestic discipline, but I can see how it can actually be a useful tool if you’re willing to use it. And just to get it out of the way, when I talk about domestic discipline of punishment dynamics, I’m talking about rational grown ups who talked the problem out first and made their apologies before they moved on to using punishment to help the s-type stop beating themselves up or to actively repair the d/s dynamic. I know the most common objection to punishment dynamics is “in my house we talk our problems out like grownups” but even I can admit they’re not mutually exclusive.

As a bit of an aside, my understanding of animal training is that punishment is not an effective way to modify behaviour. It doesn’t work on children either (not to mention that hitting a small defenseless person who literally depends on you for food and shelter is absolutely reprehensible). Yes, your partner isn’t a child or a puppy, but the point stands. If your partner is doing something you don’t like (other than continuing to beat themselves up about the original issue when you feel it’s resolved, which punishment actually can help with) and saying “honey, it makes me really unhappy when you _____” doesn’t fix it, punishment isn’t likely to help either. I know it’s tempting to look for a quick fix, but there just isn’t one.

So, the first thing thing punishment really can be good for is helping the s-type who messed up feel like they’ve “paid for their crime” and stop worrying about it. It’s not exactly unusual for people whose whole relationship style is based around pleasing their partner to take it really hard when they fail. What I’ve heard from s-types who do punishment is that getting a physical punishment after everything’s talked out helps them feel like they’re absolved now and can stop worrying about it. On the other hand, some s-types feel even worse if they’ve screwed up so badly they need to be punished, so approach the whole idea with caution (you know, like everything else we do).

Another thing punishment can do is actively repair the dynamic. For example, if one of your agreements is that your sub texts you when they’re going to be home late and they forget, that can feel like a rejection of your dominance and your whole dynamic. Performing a punishment like texting you status updates every time they do much of anything can help rebuild your confidence in their desire to obey you and reinforce your dynamic where it got torn.

Those are actually really useful things, so why am I so totally uninterested in punishment? Mostly because I can’t separate the idea of punishing someone from the idea of treating them like a child. I know it’s not the same thing, but I still have this visceral ‘ugh’ reaction to the idea of treating an adult like that.

Another issue is that running my own life is quite enough work, I don’t need to run anyone else’s. If you need someone to spank you if you don’t finish your chores, I’m just not the dom for you. I also have this association between people who are interested in punishment and people who are interested in super high maintenance rules and protocols, and I can in no way be bothered to enforce rules I don’t care about. If god forbid someone who did like rules was interested in me, he’d end up miserable and feeling ignored when I totally failed to work with his relationship style.

Maybe punishment is for you and maybe it’s not. Either way we’re cool as long as you don’t bug me about how I’m supposed to want to do something I just don’t care about.

Not so long ago I wrote a post sort of loosely inspired by a question posed ages ago about whether it was okay to s-types to blow off commitments they’ve made. Now I want to turn that question around. Is it okay for d-types to blow off commitments? I hope it’s obvious that the answer is no. I don’t see why anyone should be willing to be vulnerable with me if I won’t prove that I can be relied on to look after them.

There are two related ideas I want to get at here, so this post might get a little tangled up. The first one is that if you’re trying to figure out whether something’s okay to do, try looking at it from another angle. If you’re wondering if it’s okay for an s-type to blow off a commitment, turn it around and ask whether it’s okay for a d-type to do the same thing. Or to paraphrase Cunning Minx of Poly Weekly, what would you do if you were monogamous? The second idea is that if you get different answers depending on the circumstances, it’s worth looking into why that is.

Personally, I think blowing off a commitment is equally uncool for both an s-type or a d-type. Trust is a big fucking deal no matter which side of the slash you’re on. I personally can’t top someone I don’t trust and I can’t imagine anyone would feel comfortable bottoming to someone they couldn’t trust.

If you think some behaviour is okay for subs but not doms (or the other way around), it’s worth asking why. I’m speaking in very general terms here – inside of a relationship, the answer is very likely “because we like it that way,” which is totally valid. But outside of your personal relationship with your personal dom or sub, why would you hold people to different standards depending on the way they identify?

Outside of a negotiated relationship, I think it’s really insulting to expect less of s-types than we do of d-types. That’s like saying submission is for fuckups who can’t handle adult responsibilities. To keep beating on the now very dead horse of blowing off plans to attend a party together, I’d accept “I just don’t wanna” from a five year old but would see that as a ridiculous and immature non-reason from a twentyfive year old. Submissive people aren’t children! They are just as capable of keeping agreements as a dom or grownup.

Or to use another example, I’m very sad to say that I’ve seen more than one horror story online from a submissive person whose dom unilaterally decided they were going to find more submissive partners and the original submissive who thought they were in a monogamous relationship would just have to deal. If a submissive person decided they were going to look for more doms without their existing dom’s enthusiastic consent, we’d all say that was totally uncool, unkind, and more or less guaranteed to end the relationship, right?

So why on earth would it be acceptable for a dom to do that? Sure, inside of a relationship “because we like it that way” can be a good reason to do things that appear hugely unfair, but that only applies when “we” both actually do like it that way. Nothing about being dominant magically makes it okay to treat your partner like shit, and nothing about acting like a greedy little brat and totally disregarding your partner’s wellbeing makes you worthy of having anyone submit to you.

If you’re having trouble deciding whether something is okay to do, try turning it around. You won’t always like the answer, but you’ll probably learn something.

I was talking with a new submissive guy on Fetlife the other day, and I think the questions and concerns he had are probably common to an awful lot of male submissives. In hopes my advice will be useful to more than one person, here it is.

First of all, it’s totally understandable to look at the stories people tell on the internet and feel like you’re not submissive enough. When you don’t have any frame of reference for kink in real life, it’s very very easy to take people’s stories much too seriously. Yes, people like to talk about how they’ve been in chastity for fifteen months and how they beg on their knees for hours just for the chance just to lick their Mistress’s toe, but that in no way means you should give a shit. Some people do enjoy super long term chastity, and some people do enjoy extremely strict high protocol relationships. What you need to remember is that extremes are called that for a reason – it’s not an extreme if the majority is there. Most people are somewhere in the middle between extreme kink and none at all. And that’s assuming that most of the people talking about how extreme they are, are actually telling the truth, which is just not the case. Take Elise Sutton, for example. Not only is there no fucking chance that Elise is actually a woman, but their advice is both terrible and insulting to women. Having a website doesn’t mean someone is telling the truth. Having testimonials doesn’t mean someone is telling the truth. Having been around for a long time doesn’t mean someone is telling the truth.

Anyone and everyone on the internet could be a total liar. You’re going to need to develop your own judgement about what might have actually happened and what’s definitely just some poor schlub’s fantasy. That will take time and talking with people who are more experienced, but a good place to start is with your own attention span. An intense kinky weekend is a very common fantasy, but how many things can you actually do for 48 hours straight without getting totally sick of them? That’s right, zero. No matter how hot that fantasy is, eventually your knees get sore and your back gets tired and you just want a drink and a snack and half an hour without anyone yelling at you.

Another very important thing to keep in mind that you will be hard pressed to find on the internet (particularly the porny part) is just how much work it is to top in a scene like that. Guys, doms are people. If I do a heavy flogging scene my shoulder is sore for the next couple days. I am not physically capable of beating on someone for more than a couple of hours, let alone an entire weekend. I fucking love hurting people who want to be hurt, but not only do I not have the physical or mental capacity to do that for an entire weekend, but I’d get bored. I love videogames too, but I can only spend a few hours playing The Witcher (no I still haven’t finished it) before I need to do something else for a while.

And to be clear, the “anyone on the internet could be a total liar” thing applies just as much to me as to everyone else. I am just some asshole on the internet, I have absolutely no special qualifications (unless you count being a judgmental jerk). If my advice doesn’t ring true to you, throw it out and do your own thing.

Another very common concern is that dominant women don’t have or like sex and if you get involved with one you’ll never get your sexual needs met. There’s a whole lot to be said about how society fucks things up for women and by extension for straight men by telling women only filthy sluts actually want to have sex, but in the interests of keeping this post from ballooning over 5000 words I’ll just say that you are going to hear a whole hell of a lot about how doms won’t fuck you from prodoms who are sick and fucking tired of men who keep asking for services they don’t offer and that that is not at all relevant to your personal relationship with a dom who you are not paying. Some people do prefer to keep sex out of their d/s relationships – I’ve read about at least one person who prefers not to have sex with her personal submissives because she wants them to be focused on pleasing her, not on how long until they get off – but they’re by no means the majority. I’m convinced the majority of people are a lot like you: they just want a partner they can share their kink with and whose relationship style is compatible. If you haven’t already joined it I highly recommend the Submissive men and women who love them group on Fetlife, which is full of women who like submissive men and generally want submissive male romantic partners. You just don’t hear as much from women who want a submissive boyfriend as you do from women who want a stable of slaves they can rotate as they get bored because once the women who just wants a boyfriend finds him, she stops advertising.

Or to boil this post down to its simplest form: people lie on the internet, odds are you’re a lot like all the other kinky people, and there’s probably someone out there for you if you can avoid being a dick 🙂

If anyone out there has suggestions for things you wish you’d known earlier that might make a good blog post, let me know!

Quite some time ago there was an interesting discussion about whether it’s okay for s-types to blow off commitments. It did eventually start to go sideways, but there were a lot of interesting points made.

The point I want to get at is that different people have very, very different ideas of what submission means and you need to talk that out if you’re going to have a d/s relationship with anyone. I fully agree with KinkInExile’s statement that “It has to be possible to say “no, that’s a limit” & still be submissive for saying no to be emotionally safe.“, and I also agree with Ferns’ when she says “That’s great kids, but *how is that submission?!*“

Obviously it’s never okay to coerce someone, full stop. I’m also too fucking lazy to make my (purely hypothetical) submissive do something he doesn’t want to. But if I did have a submissive and we’d made plans together that he canceled on at the last minute (which is the scenario that inspired Ferns’ post), I feel like it would be kind of a dick move not to warn him about how badly that would damage our relationship. Does that count as coercion? Personally I think it depends on the exact form that warning takes (“You know that being able to trust you to do what you say you’ll do is a really big deal for me, right?” vs “Get your ass to the party or we’re through”), but you can make a case either way.

I think it’s more of a problem of mismatched expectations than any given behaviour being “fundamentally unsubmissive.” Everyone has bad days and emergencies and just plain screwups, no one can be the perfect submissive (or the perfect dom) every minute of every day. I enjoy a noodling theoretical discussion of what submission actually is as much as the next person, but if you want a relationship to work I think it’s much more important to figure out exactly what you expect from each other and how you’re going to handle it if your expectations don’t get met. Sometimes that means a serious talk and an apology, and sometimes that means the relationship ends because it’s just not working.

Another thing to think about is that while expecting a dom to tolerate bad behaviour is nowhere in the same ballpark as actually coercing someone, it’s still massively unfair to expect me to hold up my end of the d/s relationship when you’re not holding up yours. Power dynamics are incredibly fragile, all you have to do as a submissive to break it is to say no and keep saying no (yes I link to that post all the time, I’ll stop when it stops being awesome and relevant). I can’t dominate someone I can’t trust. I literally can’t, trying would put me in a headspace like the one Ferns describes in her post:

Should I ask him to get me some water? What if he says ‘no’? He looks pretty comfortable, maybe he won’t want to get up. Ahhh, he’ll say ‘yes’, I’m sure he will. Maybe he won’t… what if he doesn’t. Ahh, hell, I’ll just get it myself, I don’t want to fight about it.

If you don’t want a d/s dynamic anymore or need a temporary break or need things to change that’s totally fine, but don’t pretend your dom can magically keep a dynamic going without you doing your part. You don’t get the hot fearless dom if you’re not willing to be the devoted submissive.

The reason I’d be so unhappy if my submissive suddenly cancelled plans for no particular reason is because of the way I define submission. If I were going to call someone my submissive I’d expect him to do what he says he’ll do. Someone else might have a vastly different definition of a good reason to cancel plans, or they may only expect their submissive to text and cancel instead of standing them up or they might just think “Hey, there are plenty of other people at the party to hang out with if my submissive doesn’t show up.” Personally “I don’t wanna” is a shitty reason that would destroy my trust in him but “I had an unbelievably shitty week and if I have to spend any more time around people I might start screaming and not be able to stop” is disappointing but valid and “my friend just got dumped and needs a shoulder to cry on” would make me happy that I picked the kind of person who would put his friend’s needs above his desire to have fun.

For me, I define submission as putting my wants above your wants and treating my needs as extremely important (but not necessarily more important than yours). That does mean that I expect my submissive to keep commitments when he doesn’t feel like it but doesn’t have a serious need to be elsewhere, because I can’t keep a d/s dynamic going if he doesn’t. It doesn’t mean I get to ignore his limits or that he can’t tell me we’ve run into a limit he didn’t know he had, just that I expect him to keep submitting to me when it’s not convenient.

That’s only my personal definition of submission, though. Yours is no less valid just because it’s different, although it might mean we’re not compatible. Readers, how do you define submission?