Words of wisdom from the_robot_devil https://fetlife.com/users/953909/posts/3624481 Note·on Mar 11,
Words of wisdom from the_robot_devil https://fetlife.com/users/953909/posts/3624481 Note·on Mar 11, 2016 So you’ve realized that you’re submissive. I see ads in the FL classifieds groups all the time from newbie male subs who just say “I’m submissive and looking for a dominant!” but their profile has no further information at all about what they’re looking for. But there are a million different ways of doing D/s - so just being a sub and finding a dominant of your preferred gender is not going to guarantee kinky compatibility. As such, I’ve counselled a number of submissive guys who’ve hit on me to actually figure out what their ideal D/s relationship would look like before approaching me. But since they’re new, I don’t think they even know how to figure that stuff out. So here are a bunch of things I think a sub should figure out about themselves before they start actively looking for a dominant. This is coming from a cishet, F/m perspective so the advice may not apply as well to other arrangements (I think it would. But I can’t guarantee). Probably most of what I’m about to say could be flipped around and used as advice for newbie dominants, too, but again, no guarantees. Basically I’m writing this out of my own self interest: I want there to be more submissive men out there who have their shit together and know what they want. If this note helps other people, too, then so much the better, but…yeah. Oh and also I am operating from the basic premise that submission means giving up control to someone else/doing what someone else wants. Which is a suuuuper general description, which is why it’s important that you narrow it down how that would manifest for you in particular! It’s probably a good start to ask yourself: how do I want to feel? When you picture being with your (hypothetical) dominant, do you feel treasured by them, like a loved pet? Scared of them? Inferior to them? Useful to them? Some combination of these things? Something else entirely? A D/s relationship will go a lot better if you’re both on the same page with what you each want to be feeling. (Personally, I adore my subs but also like to see a little touch of fear on occasion. I’ve learned the hard way that I don’t get along well with submissive men who want to feel scared all the time, or who want to feel like I’m an actual higher being than they are, or anything like that. Or anyone who wants the yelling bitchy thing, which just makes my head hurt.) Sexual? Nonsexual? Romantic? Some subs are happy serving a dominant nonsexually - just doing domestic chores and whatnot - and might even prefer not to involve sex. Others really need there to be a sexual component or a kinky play component. Some people want something casual and others want to be in a long-term, loving relationship with someone who just happens to be the boss of them in some way. All of these options exist and more, so just saying “I want a dominant!” doesn’t really cover it. Get specific. How much control do you want to give up? Do you only want to give up control in the bedroom? Or maybe you like the idea of being under someone else’s authority all the time? Would you want to be super micromanaged every step of the way (“Make me a cup of tea. Put the bag in the mug first and pour the water over it, and let it steep for five minutes. Then pour in about two tablespoons of milk”) or do you want to be given the end result and you can choose to get there however you want (“Hey, make me a cup of tea, would you? With milk in it.”)? Or maybe you’re not actually about being told what to do at all! Which brings me to… Obedience or service? Do you picture yourself waiting around for orders and then doing as you’re told, or are you more interested in anticipatory service where you learn what your dominant wants and do it before they even need to ask? (I’ve found that my favourite is when someone anticipates what I want but asks me before doing it. I don’t always want the same things at the same times, so if he just does stuff then I’m going to start feeling like I have to keep a schedule so his efforts don’t go to waste - that’ll feel like pressure and I won’t like it. But I do love the part where he pays attention to my personality and habits and tries to predict what I need instead of just waiting for orders. I know some dominants who just want obedience, though, and some who just want anticipatory service…whichever thing you like, there will be someone who’s into it!) Active or passive? To me, submission just means my sub doing what I want, within our negotiated limits - whatever my wants may be. Sometimes I want to sit back and have things done for me, and other times I want to be active and doing things to my sub. But I’ve encountered subs who feel like submission means being passive all the time, and if I asked them even to get on top in bed they saw it as some big breach of the D/s dynamic. And then there are other subs who feel like submission is all about serving the other person, so the dominant should relax and be tended to. Figure out what feels best to you or else you could have some weird clashes like I did. Punishment? Funishment? Or neither? Nobody’s perfect; at some point you will fuck up with your dominant. Some subs even like to fuck up on purpose so their dominant can make a big show of giving them a spanking for being bad…but both of them are actually enjoying it. This is known in some circles as funishment. There are other D/s couples where the sub gets an actual punishment when he disappoints his dominant - maybe a spanking, maybe writing an essay all about what he did wrong, maybe scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush, whatever - but it’s something he doesn’t enjoy and it’s genuinely meant to fix his behaviour or help him feel absolved for fucking up. And then you get other couples where, if the sub disappoints the dominant, they just talk it out without anything resembling punishment at all. Figure out which of these scenarios works best for you, because if you go around telling people you want to be punished when you fuck up but you actually want funishment, you’re going to end up pissing off a dominant off in a big way. Similarly, if you find a dominant who likes to find excuses to “funish” you but you’re not that type of sub and just sincerely want to do a good job and not make her mad, you’re gonna end up feeling like a failure. (Just on a side note, I think it’s fairly common for newbie masochists to assume that pain has to be a punishment for something, and that’s why they get into the whole funishment thing. And hey, if you get off on the cycle of “screwing up” to get “punished,” then find a compatible partner and go for it! But you don’t have to deliberately fuck up in order to get the pain you crave. Being all “hey wanna hit my ass/slap my face/smack me in the dick a whole bunch because we both think it’s fun?” is also an option. I’m just saying.) What activities are you into? Honestly, I think all the other stuff I’ve listed is more important to compatibility than the actual activities you wanna do. But the activities part is still important. You should probably go Google “BDSM checklist” to find a big-ass list of the types of things dominants and submissives might do together, and see which things catch your fancy. But WHY do you like the activities you like? I’m a sadist. I like provoking reactions, plus I get an amazing catharsis from doing impact play - if I can go full-out until I’m exhausted. I aim to bring the other person to a catharsis state, too. But some of the guys I’ve played with were in it to see how much they could take, not for any sense of release (their bodies just…didn’t work that way) and their big thing was being stoic to prove to themselves how tough they were. Playing with them didn’t quite give me what I needed. Others let me hurt them as a service to me, or to feel like I was in control of them, but didn’t actually enjoy the pain itself that much. Or didn’t have too huge a capacity for it, so that I never got to really wail on them and get to my happy place. Playing with them was usually fun, but just kinda…missing something. Only when I finally found a heavy player who got catharsis from it did I realize how important the why of it is. My goals were aligned with his. I beat the living shit out of him until the bones in my arms rang and both of us were high as kites on endorphins and adrenaline and we finally collapsed together in a big ball of happy exhaustion and it was THE ACTUAL BEST THING EVER. All beatings before that one were just a pale shadow of what S/M could be, for me. If you like the idea of being physically hurt - figure out why. If you like the idea of being humiliated - figure out why. If you like the idea of orgasm denial - figure out why. If you like the idea of crossdressing - figure out why. etc. (In case I wasn’t clear, I’m not talking about origin stories here. A lot of the time there’s no big psychological reason why we have a kink, anyway. I mean: figure out what you like about doing a particular thing. Figure out what the goal of the interaction is, for you.) And then find a dominant who’s coming from a complementary headspace. What are your limits? Don’t tell me you don’t have any - that doesn’t make you look like a good submissive, it just makes you look like you have no idea that there’s a world outside your own specific fantasies of what BDSM is. By this point, if you’ve actually been acting on my suggestions, you’ve looked at a BDSM checklist and probably seen a shit-ton of things you definitely know you would never want to do. Those are your hard limits. You will also have seen some things that you might do under the right circumstances but they seem pretty scary. Those are your soft limits. Know them. List them. Defend them. Sooooo those are the major points that come to mind when I think about the various different ways of having a D/s relationship. If other stuff occurs to me I might add it in later. In an ideal world, I’d want a submissive dude’s personal ad to go something like Hi there, I’m a submissive looking for [specific type and intensity of relationship and whether it includes sex, play, domestic chores, or what] with a dominant. I’m into [kink activities]. I like [main activity I’m interested in] because ____. Generally I guess I just want to feel ___ in a relationship. I [am obedient/like to learn your needs and anticipate them/both]. Here are some things I’m good at/would like to do for you/might make me appealing to you. Here are some of my limits. In my vanilla life, I enjoy [hobbies] and my friends would describe me as [whatever]. I hope to hear from you! That gives me something to work with. That tells me whether a guy and I might be compatible. But when a submissive dude just says “sub seeks domme!” with no other info, I honestly never bother replying anymore. Those guys never know what they want and I’m not up for being someone’s experiment. Learn what you want so I can hit on you plz kthx. -- source link