Why yes, I have totally given up on numbering these 🙂

I’ve seen a lot of guys worry about being the perfect submissive or whether they’re doing submission right. Considering how many manchildren there are out there who never give a second thought to whether they’re actually good at submission it’s kind of adorable, but I still want those guys to relax. If you’re worried about whether you’re doing submission right, I have one simple message for you:

THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL PERFECT SUB CHILL THE FUCK OUT.

There is literally no way whatsoever for you to be perfect for everyone so just relax. What matters is being the best “you” you can be, not trying to twist yourself into knots to be perfect for a huge group of people who all want different things.

Using myself as an example, my ideal sub would be terrible for someone else. I’ve said this a lot and i’m getting a little worried i’m boring all of you, but still: I love anticipatory service and am very low protocol. Other women hate anticipatory service and love giving orders and having rituals and slave positions and stuff. Their perfect sub would irritate the shit out of me. Take some fucking initiative! I’ve got shit to do besides order you around!

Someone who’s really into obedience on the other hand, would be thinking: “Stop it! if I wanted you to do something for me I’d fucking tell you, stop trying to push tea/snacks/a book/whatever on me!” if they tried to have a relationship with the perfect sub for me.

Do you see how there is no “perfect submissive” for everyone? There’s only a really great submissive for that one special woman. For fuck’s sake guys, the idea that there could possibly be “a perfect submissive” depends on women being a hive mind. Do I have to get into how much I fucking hate it when men act like all women are interchangeable?

Imagine if dominant women assumed all submissive guys wanted exactly the same thing just because they’re male and submissive. You’d hate it! Not all guys like pain! Not all guys like humiliation! Not all guys like bondage! Not all guys like needles! Not all guys like getting orders! Not all guys like exhaustively learning all of their doms preferences so she never has to give you an order! If you’re a person, for fucks sake do me the courtesy of assuming I’m a person too.

To be fair, there are douchebags of all genders who will tell you you’re not submissive because you don’t share their tastes. While there is certainly something to be said for figuring out which side of the sometimes very fine line between submissive and bottom you’re actually on, those people are usually assholes you shouldn’t listen to. There are about a zillion ways to submit and all of them are just right for the right dom. If you actually care about what your dom wants and enjoy giving her control, even over limited parts of your life, congrats, you’re a real sub.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: guys, you’re probably fine the way you are.

Clover of Kinky Clover wrote a guide for rope bottoms. I’m by no means an expert so you shouldn’t take that guide as gospel just because I mentioned it here, but it all sounds pretty sensible to me. Plus it’s really cool to see someone acknowledge that bottoming is work and requires skill just like topping does.

In which Stabbity tries to be nice and deeply regrets it.

First of all, I totally stole the idea of posting my sent messages from Ferns. You should read her sent emails category, it’s really funny if you can stand being sad for humanity. Second, I do have a point in posting my side of this (unbelievably terrible) exchange aside from just yelling about ignorant fucksticks who think I’m a life support system for a whip.

me – written about 22 hours ago:
Wow. That was pretty terrible, but I’m having a good day and I’m feeling charitable. Would you like to know what you got wrong or would you rather I just block you? It’s up to you.

me – written about 22 hours ago:

That’s not really an answer. Do you want to know how to not completely fuck up next time? I’m willing to explain it if you convince me you can learn.

me – written about 22 hours ago:
Alright, let’s give this a shot. First of all, stop calling me ma’am. My name is Stabbity. I’m not your dom, you’re not my sub, there’s no need for titles unless we agree on them.

Second, you’ve made it painfully clear that you haven’t read a single word I’ve written in either my personal ad (it’s linked toward the end of the about me section of my profile), or my blog (also linked on my profile in the websites section). Try reading both my personal ad and a few of my blog posts, those will give you some very strong hints on what you’ve gotten wrong.

I want you to learn but I’m not going to spoon feed you the answers, you’ve got to do a little work on your own

me – written 25 minutes ago:
FUCK OFF I AM A HUMAN FUCKING BEING NOT A KINK DISPENSING ROBOT.

The part that really makes me want to flip tables is that miserable waste of space who sent the list of fetishes that inspired me to yell at and block him a solid DAY after my message about reading my goddamn blog. An entire day to think and he, in a good friend’s words, “Just bursts right in cock first again.”

There are a lot of fucking moronic myths out there about the relative numbers of submissive men and dominant women, which I’ve yelled about before and undoubtedly will again. What a lot of guys don’t seem to realize is that while there is certainly no shortage of self-centered shitbags who call themselves submissive, the quality of the competition is fucking dismal. The asshat who inspired the “exchange” (is it really an exchange when you’re obviously talking to a wall?) above is only slightly worse than usual.

Once more for the cheap seats: the asshat who inspired the “exchange” above is only slightly worse than usual.

Submissive guys, I am not kidding. That assclown is pretty normal in terms of messages I get from people who haven’t read my blog (people who actually have read my blog usually send me really nice messages that make me feel all warm and fuzzy). He is your competition. If you can’t stumble over that bar, then quite frankly you deserve to die alone.

Oh, and the truly terrible irony? One of the kinks in the do-me fetish list in his last ever message to me was one of my very favourite kinks. If he hadn’t been such a towering asshole, I would have been thrilled to do that with him. It’s like compatible kinks aren’t enough or something. Of course, the other kink in his drive-though order was something that would be completely out of the question even if I liked him because I’m in a monogamous relationship. My profile only says I’m fucking married right up top. And my (slightly outdated) personal ad contains the exact words “Why does my potential submissive’s gender matter when I’m not going to be having sex with him?”

And yes, I do have the wildly bizarre idea that someone who supposedly wants to serve me should maybe read my fucking personal ad or, you know, a single word I’ve written anywere anytime on any subject ever. Do you really think actually serving me in any meaningful way is going to be less work than doing a little reading? Oh wait “service” actually means “worship my penis as is your place as a lowly feeemale” (yes, you should read that last word in a Ferengi voice). My mistake. God fucking forbid I should assume someone who says he wants to serve me actually thinks I’m a person.

Ordinarily I’d wait a little longer between terrible Fetlife message and vitriolic blog post, but shitheap here could not possibly have made it any more obvious he has never and will never read a single goddamn word I’ve ever written, so it’s not as if he’s ever going to notice or care that I think he’s a total waste of space.

For the rest of you, take heart! This sad bastard is out there making your most half-assed messages look good. If you so much as consider possibly thinking about reading a woman’s profile before you message her, you are fucking golden.

Hey pervs, there’s a new Smut Peddler Double Header kickstarter! I think this will be relevant to your interests 🙂

One of many very helpful things I’ve learned from Captain Awkward is that the belief that “relationships take work” should be set on fire and rolled down a hill and into a river, never to be seen or heard from again. Okay, I might have been putting my own spin on things there 🙂

But seriously, the idea that relationships take work has led to so many sad comments on Captain Awkward from people who spent multiple years in terrible relationships (I’m entirely too lazy to link all of them but check out the relationships category for examples) because they thought it was normal to be miserable. Relationships take work, right?

Now, there is a tiny little hint of something worthwhile in the idea that relationships take work. If you’ve watched entirely too many Disney movies, you may have the idea that the right relationship is absolutely always effortless and ever disagreeing with your partner about anything means something is wrong and that every minute you’re with them you should feel like you’re floating on air. That really is an idea worth combating – if you’re in your teens and have no experience with relationships.

On the other hand, if you’re an actual grownup you’ve figured out that if you want to stay friends with someone, you suck it up and go out for drinks with them when you really wanted to stay home in your jammies (IRL friends, I do recognize the irony in me of all people saying that). That’s the kind of work relationships should take – sometimes you put the other person’s needs ahead of your wants because you like them and you want them to be happy.

There’s a reason I chose friendship as an example there rather than a romantic relationship – if a friendship was a thankless grind, we would all agree that it would be reasonable to run, right? So why don’t we do that for romantic relationships?

Personally, I think it’s because western society has some fucked up ideas about romantic relationships. We have this idea that romantic relationships are somehow totally different from platonic friendship relationships and they’re just not. While all relationships take some effort, no relationship is worth making yourself miserable. If you wouldn’t kill yourself to keep a friendship going, don’t do it to keep a romantic relationship going.

Fuck the idea that relationships take work. If you’re unhappy, that’s a good enough reason to leave (note that I did not say you should abruptly end an otherwise happy many year relationship because your partner starts annoying you. That would be ridiculous and is not even slightly what I’m talking about). You are not required to work yourself to death trying to force a relationship to work. I promise you are not a bad person if you decide not to put your relationship on life support for another year and just pull the plug instead.

If you need to, think of it this way: wouldn’t your partner be happier with someone who was sincerely happy to see them every day and didn’t see their relationship as an endless slog? Leaving sets you both free to find the right people.

You know what’s funny? I just realized I’m publishing this post on Valentine’s Day. That wasn’t on purpose, I just can’t keep track of time. But since it is Valentine’s day, I want to remind you all that while arranging something nice for your partner may not be effortless, if it’s exhausting and doesn’t feel worth it, you are not required to stay. Just maybe wait until tomorrow to break the news, dumping someone on Valentine’s day is just tacky 🙂

I’ve loved that quote about how prettiness is not the rent you pay for occupying a space marked female and the other day I stumbled across the original author, Erin McKean of A Dress a Day. Here’s the full quote:

You Don’t Have to Be Pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.

I’ve totally lost track of which part I’m on here, so I declare this part Q of my ongoing series of unsolicited advice to new submissive men.

If you’ve ever read anything about kink, you’ve probably heard a whole lot of bullshit about how there are tons of submissive men for every dominant woman. That’s wrong to the point of total idiocy, but I want to talk about one of the consequences of that bullshit today. If you believe that the odds are so badly against you, it’s reasonable to assume that if any dominant woman shows an interest in you then you absolutely have to accept her as your dom or risk going your entire life without ever having a d/s relationship.

NO. Guys, you always always always get to choose your dom. I’m going to give you the advice that we usually give young women here: no relationship is infinitely better than a bad one. If you try to make it work with a dom who isn’t right for you, you’ll both end up unsatisfied (and to be fair, she shouldn’t try to make it work with a sub who isn’t right for her either). When you say no to a dom who isn’t right for you, you’re doing the right thing for both of you.

Being alone sucks, I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t. It sucks extra hard when you’ve finally found out that there’s a word for what you want and a whole community of people like you and you desperately want to dive in and explore. If you feel like that, the idea of turning down a dom who’s interested in you seems completely ridiculous, but hear me out. Being lonely and frustrated still sucks less than being in a relationship where you feel like you can’t do anything right and where your needs don’t get met.

Let’s imagine that you’re a submissive guy who loves anticipatory service. You feel your absolute best when you set down a fresh cup of tea for your dom just when she’s finished the last one. Now imagine you meet a dom who loves obedience. People trying to guess what she wants before she’s told them to do anything just annoy her, what really makes her feel loved is your willingness to drop whatever you were doing and tell her “Yes ma’am” when she gives you an order. It’s obvious this is going to end badly, right?

Just because one person is dominant and the other one is submissive doesn’t mean a relationship, even a simple play partner relationship, can possibly work. A smart dom will ask you what your ideal d/s relationship looks like and tell you whether or not she has that to offer, but you know, doms fuck up sometimes. You still have the responsibility to figure out whether the potential dom you’re talking with is right for you and to nope on out of there if it’s just not going to work. It’s hard to say no when you’re scared no one else will ever be interested in you, but it’s the kindest thing for everyone. If you know you’re not right for someone, you need to speak up. I mean, how much would it suck to be the dom who was trying desperately to make it work but finally gave up, only to find that your former sub knew from the beginning that he wanted a different style of relationship than you did? That’s a dick move right there.

Even if the odds were as terrible as some people say (protip: there’s a reason most of those people have so much trouble finding a dom), you would still have the right to turn someone down. Being submissive means nothing about your worth as a person or about your right to say no. You absolutely do not have any obligation to obey someone until the two of you have agreed to start a d/s relationship. Not only do you not have to obey any random dom who shows up, but I recommend you tell her to go fuck herself if she tries to give you serious orders. D/s flirtation is a thing and a perfectly reasonable dom may ask you to do something small for her or playfully tell you to go to bed if she knows you’re up later than you should be.

I honestly don’t have a lot of experience with d/s flirtation, but I’m going to guess that the key here is that your potential dom asks you to do small things that are easy to do and obviously in your best interest. If she assumes that she can give you orders that actually affect your life without you two having negotiated it, that’s a major red flag. If she asks you to do things that seem out of line with how long you’ve known each other, that’s also a red flag. If you’ve never been in a d/s relationship before, just go with a vanilla scale of what’s reasonable for how long you’ve been talking. That is, if you’ve only been seeing someone for a couple weeks, you’d probably be happy to grab her a coffee if you were on your way over anyway, but it would be weird if she asked you to drive an hour out of your way to get her mom from the airport. If in doubt, ask a friend 🙂 There’s no need to go into detail about exactly what this woman is asking you to do, you can just talk about the amount of effort involved in the favour she’s asking for.

So, that was an awful lot of words just to explain that a) you absolutely always have the right to turn someone down, and b) you should turn them down if you know they’re not right for you. No matter how much control you want to give up in your ideal relationship, you still have the right to say no at any time.