A question I see a lot in groups like novices & newbies is “How do I get started? Where do I even begin?” It’s tough being a newbie dom, at least if you’re a sub you can ask your dom to tell you what they want. Assuming you even want to give your submissive rules/take control of some portion of their life, here are some ideas for you.

For starters, what do you actually like?

Don’t think about what stereotypes say you’re supposed to like, don’t think about any porn you’ve watched, don’t think about any stories you’ve read, think about what actually matters to you. Is there something that just makes you happy? It could be something as simple as your partner warming up your towel in the dryer while you’re in the shower or making sure to text you good morning and good night every day. Something small and meaningful is a great candidate for a first rule.

Alternately, is there something your partner does that just irritates the shit out of you? You could make a rule that they aren’t allowed to do that, or have to ask permission,or have to do something you especially like before they can do they annoying thing.

Either way, I recommend picking one or two things that you actually care about and starting with those. There are so many scripts out there you could follow, and the big problem with all of them is that if you don’t personally care about doing the thing, then it’s not going to work. It doesn’t matter how hot it is when you read about a slave kneeling perfectly on command, if you don’t personally care about it then don’t make it a rule.

There are no few stereotypes out there about how doms are supposed to behave and what kinds of rules they’re supposed to have, but rules that you don’t care about are just one more chore to remember. If you don’t personally care about a rule, you’re not going to remember to enforce it and that’s just going to suck for everyone. If someone loves having rules, they’re going to feel unloved and unseen if they make a mistake and you don’t notice, and then you’re going to feel like an asshole for making them feel that way and that’s a feedback loop that doesn’t do anyone any good.

Just because your s-type has been fantasizing about having a d-type of their very own for years and has been very insistent that they want ALL THE RULES RIGHT NOW that doesn’t make it a good idea. Don’t do it! Fantasy is great but it’s not reality. Suddenly having to remember and follow all of the rules all at once is just too much, and it’s going to be jarring as fuck even if you do deeply and sincerely want to have all of the rules. You simply can’t expect that going from 0 to 60 is actually going to be fun, that’s not how humans work.

Sure, for a weekend, tops, all of the rules can be fun, but every day? When you’re tired? When it’s a Wednesday that feels like a Friday, and you still have two more days to get through? When everything has gone wrong and you were stuck at work for an extra two hours fixing somebody else’s fuckup and you want nothing more than to sit down on the couch and do absolutely nothing for the rest of the night? You simply can’t, as the s-type, expect that going from no rules to all the rules instantly is actually going to be fun. It’s much more likely to go from “This is great!” to “This is a lot!” to “I’m not sure I like this… to “Oh my fuck time out” and frankly it takes an unusual level of self-awareness to realize that the problem is having to learn all of those rules at once and not that your dom is somehow doing it wrong.

Sadly, it’s also a recipe for resentment if the d-type doesn’t realize how unreasonable it is to give someone all the rules at once. You can’t expect someone to get everything right instantly, learning and habit formation both take time. The most willing and motivated s-type in the world simply cannot get everything right immediately. It’s not that they don’t care or aren’t trying, it’s that humans have limits.

The reason I’m harping on that so hard is that I’ve seen horror story after horror story online from people who tried to go from no rules to all the rules instantly and had it blow up in their faces. I’d like for people to avoid that if they can.

Once you’ve decided on your rule or two to start with, try that out for a couple of weeks. You’ve got to see what it’s like to keep up your rules on a Monday when you’re having a Monday before you add more of them. After your trial period you should debrief, talk openly about what you liked, what you didn’t, what was easy, what was hard, what you want to keep doing, what you want to stop. After that, make your adjustments and maybe add another thing, but if and only if you both want to.

You are not required to aim for 24/7 total power exchange. You don’t have to have any rules outside of sexytime if you don’t fucking want to, and you’re allowed to dial it back at any time if either one of you is more stressed by following the rules than they are satisfied by having or giving rules.

Don’t forget you are not required to have standing rules at all. Not all doms or all subs give a shit about rules. God knows I can’t be fucking bothered to check up on whether someone did the thing or not. If it feels like homework, don’t force yourself! This is supposed to fun, dammit.

It may be that your only rule is for the s-type to do what the d-type says when they ask for something. Not everybody wants service all the time, it’s totally okay just to want to have your partner do what you tell them if you do give them an order. It may be that you try out a bunch of rules and only a couple of them end up sticking. It’s okay to only have a few rules, it in no way means you’re less of a dom if having tons of rules doesn’t work for you. It’s okay to drop rules that don’t work for you anymore even if they worked great for years. It’s okay to have temporary rules too.

Any rules that make you and your partner happy are good rules, no matter how small or silly they are.

Yay for interesting search terms! Since I obviously don’t know what it’s like to be a submissive man I would really love it if my commentors would jump in with anything I’ve missed – I’m sure there will be plenty.

First of all, some people may be jerks. I believe they’re a minority, but they do exist. That’s kind of a downer to start this post on, I know, but I think awkwardly sidling around the elephant in the room just wastes everyone’s time. Don’t worry, there’s happier stuff coming up. Anyway: jerks exist. Even in the scene, where you would expect that people who are open-minded enough to even identify as kinky in the first place would be able to understand people not wanting to stuff themselves into tiny little boxes marked “man” or “woman”, you’ll probably run into a douchebag or two who is freaked out by the idea of a guy who refuses to cut off every piece of himself that doesn’t fit in the “man” box. You should ignore those douchebags as much as possible and remember that straight (or bi or pan) dominant women think submissive men are hot as fuck.

You’re also going to hear a lot of idiotic bullshit about how there are dozens and dozens of submissive men for every dominant woman and everything is terrible and you’re going to die aloooooooone!!11! I’ve already yelled a bunch about how that’s complete bullshit so I’m just going to quickly recap that here and direct you to some of my other posts for more detail: 100 Submissive Men For Every Dominant Woman and This is your competition. Basically submissive men who give a shit what their partners want and bother to read a fucking profile are not a dime a dozen, they are rare and precious. The dime a dozen guys who get counted in all those terrible statistics are the ones who think “here’s what you could do for my penis!” is an enticing message. You can do better than that, so don’t worry about never finding a dom. The upside of how many barely-literate assholes there are out there is that dominant women are pitifully easy to impress. No really, we are So Fucking Easy To Impress. So easy! When I get a message from a stranger that doesn’t call me by a title I didn’t agree to or launch straight into a list of his kinks like he’s placing an order at a fucking drive-thought, I am seriously thrilled.

All that stuff you saw in porn? Not gonna happen. Sorry to crush your dreams, but porn that’s written by men to make money off of submissive (or “submissive”) men by appealing to as many of them as possible does a shitty job of depicting much of anything that dominant women actually like. Some women do enjoy dressing up for a scene, but lots of us can’t be fucking bothered. Some women do enjoy role playing a cold, bitchy persona in a scene but lots of us are openly affectionate with our partners and play partners while we’re tying them up and hitting them with stuff. Some women enjoy giving orders, some of us hate doing that. Some of us get loud, some of us never raise our voices.

It’s not fundamentally bad to enjoy porn or to want to try out things you’ve seen, but you will never ever get anywhere with a real live dominant woman if you can’t put the porn out of your mind for five goddamn minutes and treat her like a person. She doesn’t exist to get you off, she has needs and desires of her own that you will absolutely have to give a shit about if you want her to give a shit about yours.

Speaking of dominant women being people, you can expect us to, you know, be people. Sometimes we come home from work too tired for that scene we had planned, sometimes we have a shitty day and just want to cuddle on the couch and watch some tv, sometimes we just have stuff to do besides have an hours long scene. We get sick and need someone to bring us soup, we get sad and want someone to stroke our hair, we make mistakes and get things wrong and generally don’t know everything. We’re just people, and if you can’t deal with that you’re going to need to see a pro.

As for events, you will not be leaving your very first munch with a hot dominant girlfriend and you will not immediately live out all of your kinky fantasies at your first play party. You can, however, leave your first munch with new friends who may end up dating you or introducing you to someone you end up dating, and you can leave your first party having learned a lot about what regular old non-pornstar kinky people actually do and having had a good time hanging out with your friends.

No few guys seem to have completely unreasonable expectations for their first events and end up really disappointed because of that. Guys, you’ll honestly be a lot happier if you go in with reasonable expectations. Munches are just an opportunity for kinky people to hang out together, they’re basically meetups. Would you expect to go to one meetup for writers and come home with a girlfriend? No? Then why would you expect to go to one munch and come home with a dominant girlfriend? On the other hand, if you give yourself a reasonable goal like “talk to two people you don’t already know” then it’s a lot easier to go home feeling like a success.

Sadly, you can expect to be contacted mostly by scammers. Some dominant women enjoy searching for and reaching out to submissive men, but some of us are shy. The big thing you need to know about scammers is that if something sounds too good to be true it almost certainly is, and non-scammers won’t ask you for money. Lifestyle (as opposed to professional) doms generally don’t want there to be any misunderstandings whatsoever about whether you can buy our attention, so we don’t ask for money. I’m simplifying a little bit there but you can still safely write off anyone who asks you for money. The scammer who is trying to extract money from you is definitely not the only dom who will ever show an interest in you and considering how little it takes to impress a dominant woman, you can definitely find another one.

And finally, since this post is already super long, you can expect having a real life relationship with a real live dominant woman to be fucking amazing even if it’s nothing like your fantasies. Seriously, getting to do this stuff for real is awesome even when there aren’t any complicated leather outfits involved.

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.

Okay, so I’ve written a bunch about how you don’t have to go to a munch and how to meet people if you don’t want to go to one, but what do you do if you do want to go to a munch but you’re scared?

Well, you’ve got to break down what exactly is scaring you so you can fix it!

Are you worried about being outed? Most munches have a strict normal-street-clothes-only dress code and expect attendees not to go out of their way to draw attention to themselves (ie, thou shalt not stand up and tell a very loud story about your needle scene the other day) and don’t allow any sort of play, but not all munches are the same and it’s definitely worth messaging an organizer and asking how that particular munch works. While you’re at it, ask how to find the group 🙂 If they look like any other group of people at the pub, which they most likely will, how will you know which group is the one you’re looking for?

Are you freaked out by large groups of strangers and worried you’ll spend the whole time sitting in a corner wishing the ground would swallow you up? That is totally normal! Honestly I’m not sure who *does* enjoy meeting a big group of strangers by themselves. There are a couple of potential solutions here: 1) message the organizer and ask if they can introduce you to people/find you somebody to sit with. That’s totally normal, you will definitely not be the first person to ask for that. Hell, you might not be the only person at that particular munch who is new and needs somebody to sit with. 2) ask in a local group if anyone is going to the munch and is willing to bring a newbie with them. Again, totally not weird, everybody who has gone to a munch remembers being nervous about meeting that big group of strangers.

Are you worried you won’t immediately hit it off with a hot <d/s orientation of your choice> <gender of your choice>? Fucking chill, munches are for making friends. Assume that you won’t go home with plans to fuck anyone and you’ll be a lot happier. A more reasonable goal for going to a munch is talking to a couple of people you didn’t already know.

Are you worried some dumbinant will try to order you around? That’s extremely rude and also unusual and the organizers should definitely put a stop to that immediately. There should be a list of rules posted about how to behave at the munch, if you’re not sure about anything (like how to handle it if some douchebag tries to order you around), ask the organizers!

Are you worried you’ll accidentally commit some kind of terrible faux pas and be blacklisted from the community forever? Like I said for the previous issue, there should be a list of rules posted where it’s easy to find them, and even organizers of any sort are reliably happy to hear from people who want to make sure they don’t cause problems. In general, regular vanilla politeness (please, thank you, excuse me) is all you need. If it even occurs to you to worry that you might offend someone, you will almost certainly be fine. I say almost because people get some fucking weird ideas about the “right” way to address dominant women and then insist they just want to be polite, but in general if you’re thoughtful enough to realize it’s possible to offend people by accident, you’re going to be fine.

Are you worried you’ll be the only male sub/female dom/switch of any gender/trans person/non-binary person? Ask the organizers about that! Or ask in the local group! It’s not weird to worry that you won’t fit in if you’re not a male dom or female sub.

Are you worried that going to a munch means you’re a filthy pervert who will never have a normal life or that everyone else at the munch will be a total fucking weirdo? Okay, this is not super helpful but going to a munch is a great way to see how normal kinky people actually are. Talking about kink is fun and all but no small amount of the conversations at munches are about totally mundane stuff like what everyone has been up to since they last saw each other. What might be more helpful is talking with kinky people online. That one fetlife group I really like has pretty regular chat sessions, and just because it’s a kinky group doesn’t mean the chat is all about kink. People are just as likely to talk about their hobbies, how work is going, how <local sports team> is doing, interesting news, or about a thousand other things that have nothing to do with kink. Full disclosure: I haven’t actually showed up for one of those particular chat sessions yet but because kinky people are, you know, people, I can comfortably assume the chat is not all kink all the time.

Readers, did I miss anything?

One of my readers came up with a really interesting experiment: she left a comment on my post 100 Submissive Men For Every Dominant Woman about how most online dating profiles attract exactly the kind of “submissives” I rant about in that post and how she’s looking for, in her words “a wholly submissive man.” If you’re thinking of responding to her, you’re going to want to at least skim that post first, that’s why I’m not linking directly to her comment. It’s a recent one, just look toward the end of the comments 🙂

I’ve started a tradition of supporting people who have a hard time with mother’s day, but I’ve neglected people who have a hard time with father’s day and I feel like a bit of a jerk for that. People who have a hard time with father’s day count too! Just because that day isn’t as much of a stuggle for me doesn’t mean you don’t matter!

In my post about mother’s day I hit most of the points I’m going to want to about father’s day, so if this seems strangely familiar that’s why.

If your father died and Father’s Day is an agonizing reminder, I see you. If you are trying to become a father but feel like a failure because your body isn’t cooperating, I see you. If god forbid your child died I see you. If you’re read as a read as a man but don’t identify as one and feel dysphoric or erased on Father’s Day, I see you. If you’re a trans man who wishes he could father a child one day, I see you. If you are a father but don’t know where your child is or if they’re safe, I see you (and don’t judge you, it’s impossible to love a mental illness or addiction away). If you have a hard time with Father’s Day for any reason, I see you.

Most of all, if your father doesn’t love you, I see you. If ignorant jerks are appalled that you aren’t going to call or visit your father, I see you. If you do visit and hate it, I see you. If self-centered assclowns won’t drop the fucking subject when you try to talk about something else, I see you. If you feel like an unlovable monster, I see you. If you were or are afraid of your father, I see you. If you were abandoned, I see you. If you don’t know who your father is, I see you. If all you have is a male biological parent, I see you.

To be clear there, I don’t believe in awarding the title of “father” to any asshole who provided some sperm. A father is a part of your life, he knows what you love, what you hate, what you do for a living, what pisses you off. I have both a biological male parent and a father, and my father is the one who has the slightest fucking idea when my birthday is. He fucked up in a multitude of ways and failed me profoundly and he is certainly my real father where the sperm guy is just the sperm guy.

For me, the worst part of Father’s Day is the assumption that everyone had a loving father who could be bothered to protect them. It sucks a lot to be inundated by all these ads and articles that assume everybody has a father who did his duty as a parent. I believe that mine loves me in the “I feel a feeling!” (that post is mostly about romantic love but the basic idea of “I feel a feeling!” love versus the real love of actions that make a person feel loved still applies) sense, but that’s cold comfort when he didn’t protect me from my asshole of a mother.

If your life is better without your father in it, that doesn’t mean dates like his birthday or Father’s day don’t still suck. That doesn’t mean you never feel guilty (even if it’s totally irrational) or wish you could reconcile no matter how many years you’ve been estranged. The societal programming that says you have to do certain things on those days is also a real pain in the ass to root out even when you know that you can’t have contact with your father and be happy.

Try to take care of yourself. You have this random internet asshole’s official permission to hide in your home all day and not interact with the outside world if that helps (either the permission or the hiding). It’s okay to have a rough time, it’s okay to excuse yourself, it’s okay to change the subject, and it is definitely okay to give people an extended icy glare and/or extremely blunt statement that you don’t want to talk about it if they decide to be prying assholes.

You are not alone. You are not weird. You are not broken. You are not unlovable. Your father not loving you is not about you and never has been, it’s about him (ps fuck forgiveness).

Finally, here’s how to not be an asshole to people who have a hard time with Father’s Day for any reason:

• Stop fucking assuming everyone loves Father’s Day.
• Stop fucking assuming that everyone has a father. Sometimes people die tragically young.
• Stop fucking assuming that everyone’s father loved them.
• Don’t directly ask what someone did for Father’s Day unless you know they have a good relationship with their father/kids. Just ask how their weekend was, they’ll tell you about what they did for Father’s Day if they damn well feel like it.
• If you do ask someone what they did for Father’s Day and they change the subject, for fuck’s sake let it stay changed. Don’t be a pushy asshole.
• If you find out someone is estranged from their father, do not ask why unless you are very, very close. There is no happy answer to that question, you prying fuck.

If you have a father who loves you and are looking forward to Father’s Day, that’s great and I’m genuinely happy for you. Just don’t be an asshole to people who aren’t as lucky are you are. If you aren’t one of the lucky ones, I hope this post gives you something to hang on to – that’s why I’m publishing it early.

Moderation note: This should go without saying, but if you decide to be an asshole in the comments for this of all posts, you will be permanently banned. Do not tell anyone that their father loved them when he clearly fucking didn’t.

So I was skimming Novices & Newbies and somebody asked about jealousy as a newbie to the scene. They seemed to be operating from the assumption that it was inevitable that they and their partner would play with other people and wanted to know how to deal with jealousy around that.

Here’s the thing: you do not have to play with other people. You really, truly don’t. You do not have to grit your teeth and tolerate your partner playing with other people either.

Now, to be clear, play does not necessarily involve sex – you can play without even touching anyone’s butt, and that’s a very common targer for impact play. That still doesn’t mean you have to be okay with your partner playing with other people. It is absolutely okay to want, look for, and insist on a partner who does not every play in any capacity with anyone but you

It is pretty common to play with people who aren’t your partner, I’m not going to lie. Even more so if you meet someone who enjoys going to play parties and to be honest you’ll meet a lot of people who enjoy play parties at munches. But just because it’s common doesn’t mean you have to. Hell, you don’t have to play in public at all, with your romantic partner or anyone else.

Sadly, if you’re submissive you’re not unlikely to run into the kind of douchebag who will tell you that you aren’t allowed to play with other people (or that you have to play with their friends) and that you’re a bad sub if you’re unhappy that they play and/or have sex with other people. People like that are douchebags and you should find a partner who isn’t a total douchebag. To be fair, unfairness is a dynamic that really does it for some people (see what I did there ;), but that in no ways means you are in no way obligated to put up with shit that doesn’t make you happy.

Someone being a dom doesn’t mean they get to dictate the terms of your relationship, you are always allowed to say “fuck this shit” and walk away. There is someone out there who is actually compatible with you, hold out for them. Yes, even if you’re a submissive man. Honestly dominant women are so fucking easy to impress – if you can fucking spell, you are basically golden. Dominant men aren’t exactly rare either, you can find one who will treat you like a human being even though you’re submissive. Having a say in how your relationship works is simply not that much to ask.

While I’m at it, jealousy is not fundamentally a bad thing. Emotions are just signals, they aren’t good or bad in and of themselves. They may mean you need to change something, they may mean you need to do some work on yourself, they may mean that your partner needs to admit they want to date somebody else and stop jerking you around, but it’s not fundamentally bad to feel a feeling.

If you even want to play with other people and have your partner do the same but you feel jealous, then you may have some work ahead of you. But don’t forget you never ever have to play with other people or have a partner who plays with other people if you don’t fucking want to.

It seems pretty common for dominant women not to have any interest in online play. Obviously I can’t speak for all women (and oh how I hate it when men ask questions as if women are a hive mind and one of us can speak for all of us), but here’s my take on it.

First of all, by online play I’m talking about playing on cam where one person gives instructions and the other one carries them out and sexy chat, where the people playing describe what they would do to each other and how they would react.

For me play is about personal connection, so my biggest stumbling block with online play is that it always seems to be strangers asking for it. Dude, if you want someone to watch you jerk off on cam, you should talk to a sex worker. I’d rather play video games or frankly do literally anything other than watch some random jerk off and pretend to care. If I’m looking for porn Archive of Our Own has me covered, thanks. Quick disclaimer here: I’m not saying all fanfiction is porn, I’m saying that there is some delightfully filthy fanfic out there and it’s way more fun than watching somebody do stuff he wanted to do anyway but expects you to pretend you ordered him to.

But even if I did have a personal connection with someone who wanted to play online, there’s still the problem that play is fundamentally physical for me. There’s something incredibly satisfying about giving someone a good flogging and I just can’t get that feeling by telling someone to hit themselves. I also really love hitting someone when or where they’re not expecting it and watching them yelp and squirm. It’s pretty hard to surprise people when you’re telling them what to do, and unless the person I’m playing with has a really good microphone I’m going to miss out on a lot of the little pain noises I love so much. While I’m complaining about tech, the video quality of most webcams/internet connections is not all that either. If I’m going to watch someone do things to themselves I wanna see, dammit.

There is an argument to be made that playing on cam is personalized porn, and that’s maybe not a terrible argument but it just doesn’t work for me. If we don’t have some sort of relationship already, then I don’t care to watch you on cam unless you’re smoking hot and have a really good camera setup so I can actually see what’s going on. Note that I wouldn’t expect some random stranger who I have no relationship with to want to watch me on cam either.

I also think I’m just too much of a control freak to really get into online play. If I’m going to play with someone, I want to hit them where I mean to, when I mean to, as hard as I mean to. With someone I trusted to follow orders that could maybe work, but not with some random stranger. It’s just not fun for me to hope the person I’m playing with will do what I told them to do and not, say, tap themselves with a cane and then move on to their favourite kink or nag me relentlessly until I “order” them to do the thing they really wanted to do (or more likely end the video call and block them).

TL;DR I feel both bored and used when people expect me to pretend I’m dominating them while they do what they wanted to do anyway. I imagine plenty of other women feel the same.

 

I recently read the most amazing trainwreck of a rant about how people who want to meet people in person at a munch are the absolute worst and are actively screwing over people who don’t want to go to munches, and it made me think, is there actually any advice out there about meeting other kinky people that doesn’t begin and end with “thou shalt go to a munch!”?

First of all, many people have very good reasons not to go to munches. I have some doubts that the author of that rant seriously can’t go to munches, but the thing is, they’re allowed to not want to. You are 100% allowed to to be physically/emotionally/financially able to go to a munch and still just not fucking want to.

That said, complaining about how hard it is to meet people when you’ve decided not to do something that’s really effective (turns out physically leaving your house and meeting people is a good way to, you know, meet people) is super fucking boring, so don’t do it. Actually, complaining about how you’ve been looking for ten whole minutes and still don’t have the perfect hot dominant girlfriend is boring in general, don’t do that even if you do go to in-person events.

On to the actual advice! I have a couple of posts about communicating with people on Fetlife in general, you should probably read those:

How to make friends on Fetlife for the hard of thinking

How to get responses on Fetlife

How to Fetlife

Those posts mostly cover how to not fuck it up once you’ve found someone you want to talk with, but they don’t go into much detail about how to find those people.

Something you’re going to need to figure out up front is whether you want to meet people in person or not. It’s totally okay to want an online only relationship, just be aware that a lot of kinky people aren’t interested in online-only and it may take longer to find someone. Then again, when physical location isn’t an issue you definitely have a larger pool of potential friends/play partners/partners. Online-only isn’t my thing, so I really have no idea how much of a hassle it is to find someone to be your online sub or dom.

If you want to meet someone in person, you’re (shockingly enough) going to want to focus on local groups. If there’s a personal ads group for your city, definitely join that. Even if you don’t want to post a personal ad right away or at all, you should keep an eye on that group in case somebody awesome posts an ad. Note: on Fetlife it’s really easy to mix up personals groups for cities or regions with the same name. We get poor confused Australians in the Victoria BC Personals group on the regular, so double check that you’re in the right group before posting or risk feeling very silly.

I also recommend joining local groups (see my post about how to Fetlife for exactly how to do that) to participate in or read discussions and see what’s going on in your community (if you’re potentially willing to go to an event that isn’t a munch, that is). My local groups don’t seem to have a ton of activity outside of reminders that an event is happening and post-event thank you threads, if yours are the same way that doesn’t mean you can’t try starting a discussion.

If you aren’t attached to meeting anyone in person or are actively looking for an online-only relationship, there are groups for that on Fetlife too. I also recommend joining interest based discussion groups, you can “meet” a lot of interesting people that way.

No matter what kind of relationship you’re looking for, if you’re looking online you need to have a good profile. If you’re a submissive man, Ferns happens to have written a whole book on the subject. Full disclosure: I haven’t read it myself but it’s Ferns, it’s obviously going to be good. There’s also a Profile Advice group on Fetlife if you’d like direct feedback on your profile, and there are undoubtedly tons of people offering profile advice on the internets. Google is your friend here.

You’re also going to want to be able to write coherently if you want to meet people online. Having something interesting to say is more important than having perfect spelling and grammar, but that’s not a free pass not to try. Sending someone a message full of misspellings and/or typos is like showing up to meet someone for coffee in raggedy old sweats with bedhead, it’s just not going to go well. You don’t have to be a great writer or anything, you just need to be able to express yourself. Participating in discussions is a great way to practice that, by the way 😉

Yet another reason to participate in discussions on Fetlife is that your latest activity shows up on your profile. If someone I don’t already know messages me, I practically always look at their profile just to see what’s there. If they’re a guy and their latest activity feed is nothing but “loves” on pictures of mostly-naked women or crass comments on those pictures about where they’d like to put their dicks, that makes me much more likely to decide they’re the kind of douchebag I want nothing to do with. It’s even worse if they haven’t filled in their profile either. Guys, if you have time to click “love” on fifty photos, you have time to fill in your fucking profile.

Something to be prepared for if you want to meet people in person is that it’s extremely common to want to meet at a munch both for safety and for convenience, so if you don’t want to go to the munch you’re likely to need to be able to explain that in a way that doesn’t make you sound like an abusive dirtbag who was kicked out of the local kink group for being an abusive dirtbag. Refusing to meet at a munch is often seen as a red flag, but you can mitigate it by suggesting an alternative public place to meet and explaining why munches aren’t for you. Be aware that some people will meet you at a munch or not at all. That’s their right, whining about it will only make you look like a douchebag who they were right not to stay in contact with.

Speaking of meeting up, do not ask people to meet you in private unless you want them to think you’re a serial killer. It’s totally fine to ask to meet in a park or public square or anywhere else you don’t have to directly interact with too many people if social anxiety is an issue for you, but nothing says “probably a serial killer!” like asking someone to come to a stranger’s house alone.

Readers, what did I miss? I bet there’s something 🙂

 

It makes me sad to see people online wondering if they’re a good enough dom/sub/top/bottom/etc because they don’t want to perv as hard as they can as often as they can. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with going hard, it’s just not the only choice.

Not all doms want to micromanage their subs.

Not all doms want everything done for them.

Not all doms want complete control of everything.

Not all doms want to play really hard (sensual domination, it’s a thing).

Not all doms want to play every chance they get.

Not all doms like giving orders for the sake of giving orders.

Not all doms like high-protocol d/s.

You are a perfectly good top/dom/master/etc if you just want a light-hearted scene now and then and for your bottom/sub/slave/etc to do nice things for you sometimes. You really and truly do not have to play really hard every weekend and have strict rules for your sub about eye contact and using the furniture and slave positions or whatever to be a “real” dom.

The exact same thing goes for subs too.

Not all subs want to be micromanaged.

Not all subs want to do huge amounts of service.

Not all subs want to give up control of absolutely everything.

Not all subs want to play every chance they get.

Not all subs want to be ordered around for the sake of being ordered around.

Not all subs like high-protocol d/s.

I think things are easier for low-key doms because at least we can tell people it’s not service unless the master wants it where low-key s-types are a lot more vulnerable to jerks telling them they aren’t real subs if they don’t ____. If you’re a low-key sub you have just as much right as a low-key dom not to do things that don’t work for you and to hold out for a compatible partner.

It is absolutely 100% okay for you as a sub to ask a potential dom how things would work in her ideal relationship and to tell her that isn’t going to work for you but you wish her luck finding her ideal sub. Telling someone up front that you aren’t compatible is not rude or entitled, it’s an act of service that could save her weeks if not months of feeling like there’s something wrong with her because she nothing she does makes you happy.

In general I see this idea in kinky circles that more intense is always better and it’s just not true. More intense is better for people who like more intensity, but not everyone actually wants that even if they think they’re supposed to. The myth that more intense is always better goes especially poorly with the myth that there are dozens of male subs for every dominant woman, together those myths put huge pressure on submissive guys to lie to themselves and to their partners about how much d/s they’re actually interested in.

You are kinky enough the way you are, readers. If somebody says or implies you aren’t kinky enough that’s their problem, not yours.