What Does a “Proper” D/s Relationship Look Like?

Let’s start this post off with a long, rambling preamble, shall we?

I have a scratchpad of ideas for posts I want to write. Sometimes an idea is just a couple of words or a link to an article that I want to write about, and sometimes it’s a series of points and sub-points so complete that all I have to do is translate those thoughts into proper English and I’m done. One of the ideas I had sitting there for quite a while simply said “D/s and the whole ‘daddy’ thing; it’s not incest – yes it is!”

For a long time I didn’t have the drive to write it. Mostly because it’s not porn-related; I’ve gotten into a bad habit of writing posts that aren’t about porn, but this blog is supposed to be about porn (not just about sex). As careful readers will have noticed, however, I did finally write that post. What caused me to do it? Well… I met this woman on Ashley Madison and we started talking about rough sex and domination/submission, and I wrote out this long email with my thoughts on the subject. And then later that same day I was in a conversation on Yahoo Messenger with another girl I know who happens to be a submissive (and was complaining about “Doms” she had met in the online world – yes, those quotes were very intentional), and I repeated pretty much all of the same points to her.

Apparently I was up on a soapbox that day. Or just liked the sound of my own… typing.

I figured that I’d lay those points out in a blog post as well – even though it's still not related to porn – and hopefully get this all out of my system. Except then I realized I already had that other D/spost in my “to do” pile that I hadn’t written yet, so I decided to write that first.

But now here we are. So what is domination? And, for that matter, what is submission? And it should be noted that I’m mostly talking about male Doms and female subs, since the dynamics are different when the genders are reversed – a bit more on that later – and I have no idea how things work with female/female D/s and male/male D/s relationships.

First off, let me say what domination is not: it is not simply calling a girl “whore” and “bitch” and “slut.” I’m not saying names can’t or shouldn’t be used, and I don’t have a problem with these words at all – I think I’ve written before that I happen to like sluts – but if that’s all you’ve got, if your way of “dominating” a woman is to just call her names, then you’re a poor excuse for a Dom, bud. That’s just… it’s just lazy.

Here’s another thing domination is not: domination is not violence. Do Doms spank and slap and choke their subs, and pull their hair, and do other things? Definitely! But – and follow the nuance here – that is not how a Dom maintains control over his sub.

You see, domination (and submission) are more about a state of mind than about physical control. If a dominant man has to resort to physical acts to maintain his mental/emotional control over his submissive pet, then, in my mind, he’s not being dominant at all. That kind of lashing out is just impotence. It’s especially not domination if he falls into hitting out of frustration because his pet won’t listen; it’s just trying to maintain the illusion of control.

But if he gives a command and knows that it will be followed, not because he’s threatening to hit her but because she’s truly submissive to him, that is domination and submission.

Not that the physical/pain element has no place, but it’s not part of maintaining control. It can be used for training purposes, but there’s a nuance there: training is different than lashing out in frustration. (Actually, let me not even call that a “nuance,” it’s an important and distinct point.)

Hell, everyone loves a good spanking, or even a slap to the face (if you are careful enough not to leave a mark that could be seen by a spouse). Actually, maybe not everyone likes a slap to the face, that’s a bit extreme, but many do. Just keep in mind what the spanking is about.

Something I think a lot of would-be Doms don’t understand is that submission is not the default, it’s earned. If you just saunter into your fetish chatroom or your local dungeon or wherever it is that Doms go to find subs and start calling women bitches and whores, expecting them to all kneel down at your feet, you’re going to find a total and complete lack of a pile of women in front of you. But if you take your time and get to know a woman, earn her trust and respect, and show her that her submission really means something to you, you’re going to have a much better D/s relationship.

Do you like how I completely oversimplify a complex relationship into a trite piece of advice? That’s what blogging is all about, baby! But my point is that the submission part of a Dom/sub relationship is much more important than the domination part. If a Dom finds himself trying to maintain control then he’s doing it wrong; if, on the other hand, he values his sub’s submission and treats it as a responsibility, things are more likely to go well.

You can compare the difference between male Doms and female subs to the difference between straight men and straight women when it comes to sex. If I may overgeneralize: A guy can be good to go with pretty much no notice, for any halfway decently good looking woman. (Or even a not so good looking but very willing woman.) Hell, guys are even fine having sex with prostitutes or escorts, a concept that most women I know don’t even understand. A woman, on the other hand, generally needs to build up to sex, and is typically much more cautious about who she’ll get into bed with. Similarly, if a female sub gets into a relationship with a male Dom, she’s probably going to need to build up some trust with him before she’s willing to really submit to him. As I said, he’s going to have to earn her submission. Starting things off by just calling her a whore or a bitch and telling her to suck your cock isn’t really going to get things moving in the right direction, trust-wise. (And, again, everything else aside, it’s just lazy.)

When it comes to male subs and female Doms, however, things are very different. Just like a man can go to a prostitute or an escort whom he’s never met and have sex with a stranger, men are capable of doing the same thing with Dominatrixes; they can pay a strange woman to dominate them, and just instantly go with it. They don’t need the same kind of buildup of emotional trust; “here’s my money... now whip me!”

It’s a strange world.