What People are Saying about The Heart of Dominance

"Absolutely the best, most grounded book I’ve read on the topic of consensual dominance and submission. If I’d had this book a quarter century ago, it would have saved me (and my partners!) untold frustration. Other books teach you how to tie a clove hitch or where to hit with a paddle, but “Heart of Dominance” gets to the core of consensual power imbalance. From the most nurturing of ageplay scenarios to the harshest of owner/property lifestyles, it explains the process by which the desires of two people, each with their own histories, needs and limits, can be transformed into the stuff of steamy and seamless erotic power play.”

- Janet W. Hardy, author and educator

"The world of erotic power dynamic play, usually referred to as dominance and submission, is often mired in lots of misguided and ego-based advice. Not this book. Here you have a balanced, grounded and realistic examination of the topic. No pontificating dictates. No directives from some mythological past. Instead, the author beautifully rolls out a clear explanation of what such play is and is not and how to make it hot, fun and safe. If you’re a seasoned player in this realm of kink, this book will likely further inspire your explorations. If you’re a newcomer interested in this topic, this would undoubtedly be one of the first books I suggest you read."

- Race Bannon, writer, speaker and activist

"Wow! I just learned a lot reading “The Heart of Dominance.” This is way more than a manual! The depth of information Mr. Fulmen offers to those interested in this path of interpersonal power will serve D/s players all the way from scene explorations, to 24/7 consensual lifestyle. I love his down to earth compassionate focus, explanations and practical advice. From forging and maintaining connection, attention to desire, safety, competence, transparency and the deep insights he shares clearly show his respect and understanding of D/s dynamics."

- Cleo Dubois, BDSM educator and ritualist

The Heart of Dominance

By Anton Fulmen

Copyright 2017 Anton Fulmen

All Rights Reserved

rev 1.2

Acknowledgements

I’ve been to a lot of classes and workshops on dominance. I’ve read a lot of books, followed a few blogs and gotten to observe some excellent role models. But where I’ve really learned the most has been alongside the people who’ve explored, experimented, played and danced the dance with me. Credit for the wisdom and experience in these pages goes to those who have been my partners: ann, jezzie, Pele, toy, Willow, Yv, and others with whom I shared time that was shorter but no less precious.

I also owe gratitude to all those who read my drafts and gave me the benefit of their perspective and ideas.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction

Part One: Foundation

Chapter 2: Understanding Dominance

Chapter 3: Understanding Consent

Technique: Safewords

Technique: Let Them See You Coming

Chapter 4: The Container

Technique: Contracts

Part Two: The Work of Dominance

Chapter 5: Finding Comfort

Chapter 6: Creating Safety

Chapter 7: Forging Connection

Technique: Paraphrasing Fantasies

Chapter 8: Taking Charge

Chapter 9: Seven Key Questions

Part Three: Flavors of Dominance

Chapter 10: Control

Technique: Trust Games

Technique: Remote Control

Chapter 11: Conquest

Technique: Abduction

Chapter 12: Service

Technique: Assignments & Rules

Chapter 13: Devaluation

Technique: Set Up to Fail

Technique: Reflection

Chapter 14: Nurture

Technique: Rewards

Technique: Journaling

Chapter 15: Objectification

Technique: Speech Control

Technique: Denial

Chapter 16: Conclusion

Resources

1. Introduction

What and Who This Book Is For

The book you are holding is a how-to guide to the concepts and skills at the heart of consensual dominance. If you are new to dominance, still figuring out just what it's all about or what you want it to mean to you, then this book will provide you with a solid foundation from which to start. If you already practice dominance and are interested in improving your ability to create deep and lasting power dynamics then you'll find many advanced concepts and concrete techniques to integrate into your own personal style.

What consensual dominance means here is any kind of intentional, mutually desired, mutually fulfilling exercise of power and control between partners. There are a lot of different kinds of connections that fit that broad definition, and the fundamental principles that this book explores can be applied to any of them. So it should be just as valuable whether you practice dominance in occasional intense evenings within an otherwise egalitarian relationship, in a full-time power exchange relationship, in long distance or online relationships, in pick-up play with strangers at BDSM clubs, or anywhere else.

This book also doesn't assume that you identify as "a dominant," or that you conform to any stereotype about what a person who dominates should look or act like. It looks at dominance as a practice—as something that any person can learn to do, rather than something that some people are—and it is meant for anyone with a desire to learn to practice dominance well. It is written to be accessible to absolute beginners, as well as to switches and primals and tops and mommies and daddies and bigs and masters and trainers and Goreans and heads-of-house and owners and label-defying powerfuckers. (And don't worry if you have no idea what any of those labels means—dominance has nothing to do with labels.)

If you have an interest in the bedrock principles of inspiring, deepening, maintaining and enjoying control over a person who dearly, desperately wants you to control them, then this book is for you.

The Reluctant Dominant

One thing this book does assume is that you want to dominate. If someone else has slipped this book under your pillow because they want you to dominate, but you aren't sure whether or not you're into the idea, then it may or may not be useful for you.

The book takes a broad view of dominance and will introduce you to many varied ways of doing it, as well as debunking some distasteful myths that sometimes turn people off of the idea. If you have any undiscovered or unexplored passion for dominance, this is a good place to feel out that latent interest.

On the other hand, many people simply have no interest in practicing consensual dominance. They might be perfectly capable of taking command in any number of situations, but they don't get excitement or fulfillment from commanding their partners. If you read this book and it all leaves you cold, that's okay. Not wanting to dominate doesn't make you less powerful or less capable or less anything, except maybe less of a match for someone who craves domination.

There are all kinds of things that make perfect sense to do for a partner's sake. If your partner loves Indian food, you can learn to cook a mean vindaloo even if you really prefer burgers. If your partner really, really, really wants you to dance with them, you can take dancing lessons and learn to do it and go out and dance with them just because it makes them happy. If your partner fantasizes about being tied up, the giving and loving thing to do is learn some ropework, even if you've no particular interest in it yourself.

But dominance is different. Often the very core of what a person is wanting from submission to you is to please you, or make you proud, or meet your expectations. What they need is directly connected to your passion for dominating them. They want to be subject to your desires. They want to feel used as a toy for your gratification. If you're making up rules that you don't enjoy having to enforce, issuing orders that you don't really care if they obey, or having them crawl around on all fours just to cater to their desire to be dominated—it will often be unsatisfying for them as well as for you.

My advice is to not practice dominance solely to please someone else (though certainly most of us do enjoy pleasing our partners). Don't let yourself be wheedled or pressured into practicing dominance. Don't do it because you want to impress someone. Don't do it because you're afraid your partner will leave you if you don't. Don't do it to avoid looking weak or because you think you should want it.

Instead, read this book with an eye toward the wide diversity of different styles and flavors in which dominance can be practiced, and look for a kind of dominance that speaks to you, one that you think might feed you, that you could get really invested in and really want to explore. Then try dominating in line with that true dominant drive.

If you don't find any such drive, again: that's perfectly okay. And in that case the most genuinely dominant thing to do is say "no thanks; this isn't for me."

Privilege, Oppression & Dominance

This book is also intended to be applicable for all people who wish to dominate regardless of their position in society. But that's trickier than applying to all styles of dominance.

Power relationships, most of them not of the consensual variety, suffuse the world we live in. Governments and corporations, religions and social traditions hold power over all of us, and we are all tangled into different positions within that intricate web of power. Our position in the web depends largely on demographic factors that are outside of our individual control: men generally hold more power than women, white people more than people of color, rich people more than poor people, cis people more than trans people, able-bodied people more than disabled people, etc., etc. It's a complicated and often grossly unfair mess.

The different positions that different people occupy within that mess give us very different perspectives on a lot of things, but especially on power. Power is likely to look different and feel different, in profound ways, to someone who has spent their entire life closer to the bottom of society's pecking order than it does to someone who's spent their life closer to the top. It is unrealistic to think that we can easily and cleanly set aside all that baggage when it comes to thinking about our intimate, individual, consensual dominance relationships.

So it's relevant that your author is white, cisgender, male, able-bodied and straight. I have sought out interviews with people who have different experiences of gender, orientation, ability and race, and have endeavored to write in a way that is welcoming to people from all over those spectrums. If you find that what I have to say nonetheless does not speak to you, the Resources section includes materials specifically by and for people who are coming from different positions of societal privilege.

What This Book Isn't

Dominance is often practiced as part of the larger realm of BDSM. That's a compound initialism that stands for Bondage and Discipline (B&D), Dominance and Submission (D/s), and Sadomasochism (SM). The world of BDSM is wondrously broad and fuzzy around the edges, and it doesn't really break down into three neatly delineated sections. Instead, think of BDSM as a nice big umbrella term for "all that kinky stuff." It includes everything from rope bondage and flogging to piercing and pony play, nipple clamps, watersports, blindfolds, wearing sexy rubber clothes and countless other related and semi-related practices, fetishes, passions and fashions.

Roughly, we can think of D/s as the aspect of BDSM having to do with power and control, and that is the tight focus of this book. It does not address how to tie knots (bondage), or how to throw a flogger (sadism or maybe discipline) or shine boots or shop for the perfect ball gag, because while those are all worthy and valuable skills none of them is essential to the art of wielding consensual power.

There's a common misconception that BDSM is a package deal: that if you're into any part of it you are somehow obliged to be into all of it. This is not so. In fact I doubt that anyone is attracted to every single one of the limitless varieties of BDSM play. Instead, think of BDSM as a buffet from which you may pick as much or as little of each dish as suits your appetite. Many of us who practice dominance do weave it together with other aspects of BDSM—like corporal punishment, fetish clothing, or the classic whips and chains—but others wield deep power in our relationships without ever picking up a paddle or owning a pair of leather pants.

Keeping our focus on dominance proper will allow us to dive deeper into an understanding of the fabulous alchemy of giving and taking power, and the skills that will allow us to create that alchemy consistently, powerfully, and ethically.

Part One: Foundation

If we're defining dominance broadly, and if it's practiced in such a wonderful variety of different ways by such a wonderful variety of different people, how much is there that we can say about dominance in general? How much of a common foundation exists beneath the surface differences of all those labels? Fortunately for the rest of this book, there's a lot.

The common core of dominance is the hot, complicated space between what someone wants to do on their own and what they want to do for you. Even the word "want" is complicated in that sentence, and later in the book we'll delve into the intricacies of submissive desire and the ways that people can have powerful needs to be dominated in ways that they absolutely do not enjoy.

The space in which dominance plays can extend in a wonderful variety of directions. It can mean taking someone down to where they beg permission to perform degrading acts they would normally find repugnant, but it also encompasses building them up to achieve heights of discipline and accomplishment that they would not have reached without firm encouragement. Some of us are very specific in which directions we prefer to take our dominance: interested only in degradation, or only in receiving service, or only in nurturing and guiding, or some other particular flavor of dominance. Others are more flexible, exploring different sorts of dominance at different times or with different partners. Regardless of the style, the essence of dominance is in the "because I said so" or the "do it for me." It's in the influence one person wields over the thoughts and actions of another.

The art of dominance is in learning how interpersonal power works, learning the skills necessary to wield it with confidence, and developing the judgment to wield it well—in ways that will be positive and fulfilling both for your partners and for yourself. These skills are largely introspective, emotional and interpersonal. They aren't flashy, but they run deep and mastering them can take a lifetime.

Conventions

One convention you may notice in this book is that dominance is always talked about as happening within a relationship. This isn't meant to imply that dominance only goes on in traditional, long-term romantic relationships. Every exercise of dominance, no matter how casual or quick or unorthodox, is a relationship in its own right. Consensual dominance is inherently intimate; it both requires and creates connection between you and the one you dominate, even if that's just for a quick moment of wordless service.

Another convention is that in this book I will discuss D/s relationships as being between two people: you and your submissive partner. This is not meant to exclude people who have multiple-partner D/s relationships. Every pair within a multi-partner relationship is a distinct relationship of its own and, particularly when it comes to D/s, each of those unique two-person relationships needs to be thought of, developed and sustained individually. As sexy as the thought may be, the stable of interchangeable submissives does not exist.

It is also not meant to exclude people who switch the direction of power in their relationships, and for the same reason. If sometimes you dominate your partner and sometimes they dominate you, then you have two dominance relationships, each of which might have very different flavors, boundaries and needs. If you enjoy switching, you can read this book with your own dominance in mind and then give it to your partner.

2. Understanding Dominance

"Knowledge is power.”

- Imam Ali

To master consensual dominance, we begin by understanding what dominance really is—the essence of how it works and why. I already said that consensual dominance is any kind of intentional, mutually desired, mutually fulfilling exercise of power and control between partners. But that's just a definition, and defining something isn't the same as understanding it.

Words, Words, Words

Some among us would take issue with my definition. Some of us make fine distinctions between different styles of power relationships, and would call only one of those specific styles "dominance." They'd give other titles to the other styles, perhaps "mastery" or "domestic discipline" or "true dominance." Titles like "true dominant" and "alpha dominant" are often bound up with status and ego, and plenty of people are keen to claim the higher-status title for themselves while excluding as many other people as possible. The trouble is, there's no broad consensus about exactly how to slice those differences. And, despite what some would have you believe, there is no BDSM Pope or Grand High Council of Domliness with the authority to anoint one set of definitions as the true one.

The words "master" and "slave" are particularly tricky. On one hand, they tend to be especially high-status titles within communities of people who practice dominance. Masters are often thought of as being somehow extra-dominant: more potent or more hard core or more real than mere dominants. And so there are constant chest thumping contests over who gets to claim to be a master and who doesn't. At the same time, "master" and "slave" carry the baggage of thousands of years of the very worst kind of nonconsensual dominance, so some people don't want to associate what we do with those words at all.

The result of this obsession with words and titles is endless bickering in any forum where dominance is discussed. I've been involved in online BDSM discussion forums since the ancient days of Usenet (ask your grandpa about it), and these arguments are exactly the same today as they were back then—they haven't changed or progressed one bit. Conversations about the substance of dominance often get derailed by challenges to this or that word that's being used. If a twenty-something raises their hand to ask for advice on training their slave, they will inevitably be jumped on by people who feel compelled to tell them that it's impossible for a person so young to be called a master. If someone wants to talk about ideas for long-distance punishments for their submissive, they will hear from people who would rather talk about how long-distance relationships should be referred to as just topping because they are not true dominance.

Please remember that all of those people's opinions are nothing more than that, and that the labels we put on things matter a lot less than the substance of the things themselves. Understanding what dominance means to you is important not so that you can figure out if you are a "true dominant" or not, but so that you can learn skills, find people and build relationships that will be fulfilling to you.

Understanding the nuances of my own drive for dominance has been an ongoing process of introspection and experimentation for me. I have a much deeper understanding of what dominance means to me now than I did fifteen years ago, or even three years ago, and that improved understanding of what I desire and how I work helps me seek and get what I want far more effectively. I don't believe that I'm finished, though. Even after a lifetime of fantasy and two decades of practice I continue to learn new things about my own reactions and capabilities, likes and dislikes around dominance. And it's likely that some of those capabilities and desires will continue change as I move through my life, thus requiring even more thought and practice.

It is valuable to figure out what dominance means to you as specifically as possible. What drives you to dominance? What rewards do you get from it? How do you want to be, and to be seen? Knowing what you want is the first key to getting it. To help in your exploration of these questions, I'll describe six flavors of dominance—ways of understanding some of the different kinds of passions among us without dividing us into "real" and "fake," or creating false hierarchies of who is more dominant or less dominant.

For connecting with others about dominance—whether it's sharing wisdom online, flirting with a potential partner or participating in a structured discussion group—we cannot rely on labels or titles to give us easy and instant understanding of what someone else's dominance looks like. Five different people who call themselves "Mistress" may have five different understandings of what that means, and five very different ways of practicing dominance. The same goes for five people who call themselves boys or kajira or service submissives. To really connect with another person about dominance, you're going to have to have a bit of a conversation with them, so you can share one another's understandings.

We all have a lot to gain from creating those connections. There is so much to be learned from those whose practices of dominance are different from our own. So instead of getting hung up on words and definitions, or trying to police exactly what does and does not count as dominance, the gracious and constructive thing to do is to accept whatever language a person uses to describe themselves and their practice, and seek to understand the meanings behind their words. You might find that you have a lot in common despite describing it with different words, or you might find that what they are doing really does bear little resemblance to what you call dominance. That's okay too; there's room in the pool for all of us.

Some Words as I Use Them Here

Dominance, its complement submission, and their combined abbreviation "D/s" mean any kind of intentional, consensual bossing around of one person by another.

Both sides of the slash refers to the slash in D/s. It means "both those with a passion for dominance and those with a passion for submission."

Kink means anything that your conservative Aunt Gertrude would think is weird and suspect of being sexual. D/s falls within kink, but not all kink is D/s.

Play means the fulfilling, enlivening, connecting, joyous practice of dominance and submission. Some of us think "play" sounds trivializing, like it's saying that D/s is kids' stuff or is all make believe. I think that play can be both important and very real, and that adults could stand to do more of it. Feel free to substitute "work" or "practice" if those suit you better.

A dynamic, in the realm of relationships and other social phenomena, means a way that people relate to one another in a specific context. So a D/s dynamic is all the ways in which you and your partner think and feel and act toward one another specifically in the context of your dominance of them.

A scene is a short period of intense focus on a D/s dynamic, or other sort of kinky play. It's the time between "Crawl into my bedroom and strip off your clothes!" and "That was great, want to get pizza?" (The Scene is also used to mean the entire community of publicly self-identified kink practitioners. Which meaning someone intends is usually clear from context.)

Enable and Inspire

"Under carefully controlled experimental circumstances, an animal will behave as it damned well pleases."

- The Harvard Law of Animal Behavior

The first lesson to learn on our path to competent dominance is this: we cannot make anyone do anything. I don't mean that just in the context of consensual dominance either. I mean that no one can ever truly make anyone do anything. This is wisdom that applies all over our lives, and you'll find it taught in places from Buddhism through Nonviolent Communication. We may be able to limit the options that someone has to choose from, or impose consequences on their choices, but the ultimate choice of what to do (or think, or feel) always remains firmly locked within that person's head.

If someone offers me a billion dollars to stand on one leg, the choice of whether to pick up my foot or not is still mine. If someone points a gun at my head and tells me to stand on one leg, the choice of whether to pick up my foot or not is still mine. If my partner has made a solemn vow to obey me in all things and has signed a contract in blood and has undergone decades of training and I order them to stand on one leg, they still have to make the decision to pick up their foot—every single time.

Many of us, and many of our partners, have fantasies that run directly counter to this basic truth. They dream of being taken by a force that somehow overrides their own will, of being relieved, permanently or temporarily, of the burden of choice. We dream of being able to "break" someone, or train someone, or find some secret dominant mojo that will let us say "kneel" and make our partner kneel. Not all of us have fantasies along these lines, but it's a very common theme.

There are many tactics that some of us use to try to bring those fantasies to life. We use conditioning to create certain habits of obedience in our partners, to the point where they will obey without thinking. We use hypnosis. We have our partner sign contracts stipulating that all of their decisions are ours to make. All of these tactics can work—with a partner who wants them to work. That's the trick: our partner has to decide to give up their decisions, and if they ever stop wanting to give them up, that decision making ability will quickly and automatically (though perhaps not painlessly) revert to them. So really, ultimately, they're still the ones making the continual decision to submit and keep submitting.

Tactics for usurping someone's personal decision making that do not depend on their active collaboration—things like military training or cult indoctrination—all require more effort and more control than 99.99% of us will ever have the resources for, or even want. They also have a tendency to fail in ugly ways if and when a person subjected to them decides that they really want their self-determination back.

So if it's impossible to truly make anyone do anything, then what the heck is it we do when we dominate? That's a key question for understanding dominance, and the answer is that the work of dominance is to enable or inspire submission. We don't make our partners submit; we create the opportunity for them to submit. Maybe that sounds like I'm just saying the same thing in a different way, but understanding the difference between making someone submit and enabling them to submit is crucially important to dominating well.

When you understand that, you will realize that our partners' desires are central to successful dominance. There is no generic dominant technique that is best for dominating all people, because dominance doesn't work independently of submission. Successful dominance requires understanding the submissive desires of each individual partner you connect with, and learning what they need in order for those desires to blossom.

Dancing

Think of it like a ballroom dance: dominance leads and submission follows. The leader guides the dance, but the follower isn't just being dragged limply around the floor; they have their own energy, creativity and flair to contribute within the steps the leader sets. Dance aficionados talk about the chemistry between partners, and wax enthusiastic about the great dances that happen when each partner inspires and feeds the other. Great dances of dominance and submission are the same. Their greatness comes out of the powerfully creative feedback loop of two partners both pouring energy and creativity into the dynamic and feeding one another's passions—egging each other on to go deeper and hotter.

This means that all great consensual dominance is mutual. We aren't bullying our partners into passive obedience (even if that's what it looks like on the surface); we are co-opting them, seducing them to become complicit in their own subjugation. Which works because they really, truly love being subjugated. Simultaneously, they are working to seduce, provoke, arouse or otherwise support us to greater heights (depths?) of dominance, because they are our complement as we are theirs.

Even in the most seemingly one-sided arrangements our partners are actively contributing to building the dynamic deeper, stronger and hotter. Even in dynamics that prize absolute and unthinking obedience, where the submissive isn't to move or speak except as specifically directed by the dominant, there's a tangible undercurrent of harnessed enthusiasm from the submissive. Both partners know that the submissive is deriving profound satisfaction from the control, and I see wonderfully subtle creative contributions coded into the tiniest of gestures: the burning glance that communicates "thank you for not allowing me to speak," the precise execution of an order that says "fuck yeah, give me another." Even in the most resistant, smart-ass dynamics, where the submissive is superficially pitted against the dominant, I see the dance of mutuality proceeding unimpaired on a deeper level. The submissive struggles just enough to provoke dominance—just enough to feed their partner—before yielding with tremendous satisfaction (whether blatant or veiled). The dominant storms and snarls and curses their naughty brat, but watch for their smile of satisfaction after just punishment has been delivered.

This is the "consensual" in consensual dominance. It doesn't just mean getting permission before we dominate; it means that consensus is an integral part of how our dominance works. I'll dig into that soon, but first I want to clear up some terribly common misunderstandings about dominance.

Human After All

Once upon a time, I watched two men assembling furniture in a kinky community space. One of the men was an Alpha Dominant, which I knew because he was talking about it loudly and at length. While they worked, he was explaining to his companion that anyone might learn to be a regular garden variety dominant, but Alpha Dominants had to be born that way—natural leaders, with command an intrinsic part of their very being. They were a kind of "dominant's dominant," with a voice that compelled obedience, and people were often uncomfortable in their presence due to the intensity of their dominant energy. It was a fairly developed model of what it was to be dominant, and he described it with the self-assurance of someone relating established fact.

What I couldn't help noticing, as I watched them, was that the Alpha Dominant was so preoccupied with his explanation of Alpha Dominance that the other man ended up (without, I think, meaning to) directing all of their work together. Their conversation going something like:

"Even before I knew I was an Alpha Dominant I always just naturally took charge. I've never been able to be a follower."

"Uh huh. Bring me that wrench, would you? Thanks."

I'm certainly no Alpha Dominant, myself. I've always craved control in my romantic and erotic relationships, but I don't believe I was born with any extraordinary ability to get it. I'm not always in charge and I don't have a magical voice that makes people feel compelled to obey me. Often I feel shy or hesitant, and in most areas of life I really prefer building consensus to bossing people around. I did not naturally know how to dominate—I cringe a bit to think back on my first fumbling attempts, and I still have moments of amazement that there are people who want to submit to me. I've been practicing and playing with consensual dominance for over twenty years now, though. I've gotten quite a bit better at it, and it has been my privilege to own, use and play with a wonderful variety of submissive partners.

In that time I've also encountered a whole slew of other models, theories and rules about dominance, many of which I've found to be overly restrictive or outright misleading. If you've investigated the idea of dominance enough to be reading this book, it's likely that you've run across at least a few such messages yourself. Internet know-it-alls, local "experienced players," potential partners, even fantasies like The Story of O or Fifty Shades of Grey push prescriptive models of what style of dominance is the best, what sort of person can dominate, and how they should think, feel or behave.

Those "shoulds" can be insidious. They can creep into our beliefs about dominance and about ourselves without us even realizing it, often picked up when we're new and exploring, or absorbed from sheer repetition when most of the voices we hear in our community are saying the same thing. I picked up a few "shoulds" myself in my early explorations of dominance, and as a result had a slower and rougher path to comfortable, competent dominance than I might have had otherwise.

Here are a few of the worst offenders. These are ideas that are widespread in BDSM communities, often expressed as sage wisdom or unquestionable fact. And I believe that they almost always do more harm than good.

An Alien World

Very few people are so lucky as to have grown up surrounded by examples of functional, real-world consensual dominance. Instead, most of us first saw models of dominance in fiction, in porn or online, and many of us spent years honing our fantasies of how we imagined dominance ought to work before we got the opportunity to test out how it actually does work. And—I think as a result—there's a widespread idea that dominance occupies a separate, fantastic world that is fresh and exotic and follows different rules than those of the mundane vanilla world.

This D/s fantasy world is supposed to have all kinds of arcane laws and customs, and people who practice dominance or submission are imagined to be almost like different species from run-of-the-mill vanilla humans—like some kind of black leather fairies with magical traits and powers. You might hear about how some people are natural dominants and some have true slave hearts, and how those qualities make them naturally and effortlessly suited for their roles in ways that people who aren't natural dominants or don't have slave hearts will never be. You might hear that a dominant always knows what their submissive is thinking, apparently through some sort of dominant telepathy. Or that a real slave wouldn't be jealous of their master having other partners because real slaves have no desires other than to serve.

These fantasies presented as truths can mislead in a few different ways. Look at any forum where dominance and submission are discussed and you're likely to see questions and confusion about what "dominants" (or "submissives") are like. Does a dominant need to always be in charge in every situation? Are dominants good at balancing their checkbooks? Are they patient? Are they honest? Do dominants like cheese? I've had someone declare that I was a submissive because of the way I shook their hand, and someone else decide that I must be a dominant because of the way I sat in a chair.

Some of these questions come from people who are simply trying to figure out if they are (or if their partner is) a dominant or just, you know, a person. Others are attempts to justify someone's boorish, overbearing or downright abusive behavior based on some special standard of how dominants must be expected to behave differently from mere humans. And all of it is revealed as absurd if you realize that there are no such things as dominants. There are just human beings who desire, enjoy and practice dominance, and those human beings come in as much variety as any other human beings.

Not that we shouldn't use the word "dominant" in conversation. It sure is less of a mouthful than "people who practice dominance." Just remember that it's only a shorthand, and that there's nobody here but us humans.

The same pattern appears around expectations of D/s relationships. I have seen many profiles on BDSM social sites that talk about how all the person's vanilla relationships have been messy, complicated failures and so they have decided to leave the vanilla world and come to the D/s world where everything is simple. There's a dominant and a submissive, the dominant says what to do, and the submissive does it. Ta-da! All of the conflict and sacrifices and hard feelings and difficult compromises of vanilla relationships just disappear.

Of course, you also may hear that to access this wonderful world of D/s requires that you be born an Alpha Dominant, or that you have the magical Voice of Control, or that you have to be trained and certified by some secret cabal before you can wear your official vest of dominance. And if you happen to be a regular old human being with no extraordinary powers, then hearing that can be very discouraging. It can be equally frustrating to look for submissives who you expect to be magical obedience fairies and find that they keep turning out to also be regular old human beings in disguise.

In reality there is only one world, and we are all living in it—kinky and vanilla together. No magical powers are needed for powerful and fulfilling dominance. D/s relationships follow more or less the same rules as vanilla ones with only a couple of extra complications added. And while there is a large and thriving BDSM community there is no central authority that gets to decide who is allowed to call themselves a dominant and who isn't.

Kneel, Bitch

Possibly the most common mistaken idea about dominance is that all there is to it is issuing orders and being obeyed. The most cartoonish example of this is the people whose first words to a potential submissive partner are something along the lines of "Kneel, bitch," issued with an expectation that anyone desiring of submission ought to be delighted to be given an order by any random stranger, and will fall to their knees at once.

A somewhat less blatant version is the person who understands that negotiation must come first and limits must be respected, but believes that once consent is obtained, from that point forward all they have to think about is doing whatever they want so long as they stay within the explicitly defined limits

Many people longing to submit have internalized this kind of philosophy as well. In their fantasies, having a partner who orders them around with no consideration for their needs is great! Of course, fantasy dominants always order you to do exactly what you secretly wanted to do anyway. The reality seldom works out so neatly.

The "Kneel, Bitch" idea is extremely popular in fiction, with The Story of O being the classic example. The dominant characters put O into extreme slavery with no consideration of her fulfillment or inquiry into her preferences, turn-ons or boundaries—and it all works out just great! The only problem with her original lover, Rene, is that he's too soft. The more dominant Sir Stephen takes her further into submission simply by being more cruel and uncompromising.

That belief in hardness as the key to dominance is a common part of "Kneel, Bitch" models of D/s. The idea is that any resistance or inconvenient needs or feelings from our partner can be swept aside by being sufficiently stern and commanding, and any consideration for our partner or accepting input from them tends to be seen as weakness. And to be fair, there is a big place in dominance for being stern and laying down the law. It can be both powerful and hot when used with discretion. The error is in believing it to be the only approach that we should ever have to employ.

"Kneel, Bitch" D/s can actually work all right when everything is easy and smooth. When both partners' desires are closely aligned and everyone is in the mood and there aren't any conflicting priorities to deal with, then perhaps we can do whatever we want and can command obedience by being a total hardass all the time. But unlike fantasy and fiction, reality is rarely perfectly smooth, and real people have needs and issues and conflicting priorities that can't be dealt with by simply ordering them to disappear. "Kneel, Bitch" D/s breaks down quickly and catastrophically when faced with those realities.

Imagine having a partner who feels a need for more attention than you feel like giving. Under the "Kneel, Bitch" understanding of dominance, the only response is something like "I am the dominant here! You are my submissive and you will be grateful for whatever attention I give you!" And maybe that would work for a while, but if their need for attention is important to them, it isn't just going to go away. It's going to fester. And the issue will come up over and over again, getting more bitter and resentful every time.

But if we've bought into the idea that dominance always means nothing but barking orders and getting what we want, then we may worry that compromising or being considerate of our partner's needs might be signs of weakness or failure to be sufficiently dominant.

If you look on the Internet you can find plenty of examples of smug and happy D/s couples bragging about their perfect relationships where the dominant partner does whatever they want and gets everything they want and the submissive partner never gives them any trouble. You may wonder what is wrong with you or wrong with your partner that the two of you don't have that. (Here's a secret: people on the Internet sometimes exaggerate the truth.)

I've seen people in this kind of mode react to any inconvenience from their partners with anger, or sullen pouting, or punishment, or quite often by dumping that partner and going to look for one that isn't defective. This becomes a cycle for some of us, where we are in constant search of a "real submissive" like the ones in our fantasies and on the forums. Every partner we find seems wonderful at first, but eventually reveals themselves to be a regular old, messy, complicated, needy human being. So we toss that one and go back to the search.

Beware of potential partners who have internalized "Kneel, Bitch" ideas as well. I have had the difficult experience of trying to dominate a partner who would, in an attempt to be a "good submissive," stuff down her own needs until they erupted in angry, violent tantrums. A tantrum would get worse and worse so long as I continued acting the part of the hardass dominant, and would only fade once I changed tactics and dealt with the underlying need that had been neglected. But afterwards she would scorn my weakness and insist that if I'd only been strong and unyielding for just a little longer surely I would have pushed through her resistance.

It wasn't much fun.

The Total Responsibility Trap

The total responsibility trap is the idea that we bear sole and total responsibility for the success or failure of our dynamics, be they hour-long scenes or lifetime relationships. It's almost a perfect mirror of the "Kneel, Bitch" philosophy, and it's just as problematic.

The idea sounds really good on the surface, though. It makes sense that greater power should come with greater responsibility, and responsibility is practically a fetish for a lot of us. Parental-style dynamics and owner/property dynamics are particularly prone to vesting all the responsibility in the dominant partner: after all, parents take responsibility for their children, and owners take responsibility for their valued possessions. We don't expect our cars to take care of themselves—if someone's car is filthy and full of clutter it's a reflection on the owner, not the car. And we don't expect children to take responsibility for their relationships—they get to throw tantrums and generally behave childishly, and it's the parent's job to be responsible and adult.

But our partners are not actually objects or children, even when they take on roles that evoke those things. D/s is a relationship between adults and relationships between adults work best when both people share responsibility for their success. That's a great truth of human experience, and D/s doesn't change it.

When we are assigned all of the responsibility for our dynamic, it puts our partner into the role of a passive observer with neither the motivation nor the status to actively contribute. They are not encouraged to engage their imagination and actively participate in the relationship, because that's our responsibility. Often, those of us stuck in the total responsibility trap won't even accept initiative from our partners, because contributions from the submissive end of the relationship imply that there might be something that the totally responsible dominant partner hadn't thought of already. So both partners miss out on the energy and inventiveness that the submissive partner could have brought to the dynamic.

Total responsibility also sets us up as the fall guy when things are not going well. I've seen people silently endure submitting to a scene that was doing nothing for them and then afterward fault their partner who should have known, or should have asked, or "should have" something else. But they never spoke up of their own initiative—never took responsibility for their own experience—because that was their dominant partner's job. They are given an unhealthy power to drop the relationship on the floor and say "It's your responsibility; you pick it up."

In one particularly dramatic example, I knew a couple where the submissive partner had a tendency to drink until he became obnoxious to everyone around him, and then continue to drink until he could no longer stand up. Because they both believed in Total Responsibility, his partner assumed responsibility for regulating his behavior: gave him rules about how many drinks he could have, kept an eye on him at parties and at bars, and cleaned up his messes both physical and social.

And that worked some of the time, but not when he really, really wanted a drink. He would get angry or sullen towards his partner for ruining his fun or being unreasonable. Sometimes he would sneak drinks when they weren't looking and then blame them for failing to enforce the rules. Not feeling ultimately responsible for his own behavior gave him a convenient scapegoat and an excuse to behave badly.

Notice how escaping the Total Responsibility Trap ties right back to the idea of inspiring submission. Thinking of dominance as making our partners obey us leads right into taking all the responsibility for the success of the dynamic onto ourselves, and looking at our partners as challenges to be overcome rather than as partners. Thinking of dominance as enabling our partners to submit shares the responsibility, and it puts our partners into the role of eager collaborators just waiting to be given the support they need to shine.

"Making" obscures your partner's internal drive to submit. "Enabling" highlights it.

The One True Way

This isn't one myth but rather a category of them; there are an awful lot of One True Ways. A One True Way is a dogmatic rule or package of rules about the correct or the superior way to dominate. There are little OTWs that are just one person's experience and preferences dressed up as absolute truth, and there are big OTWs that have become almost like myths or religions. They're often closely tied in with the bickering over language and titles that I've talked about previously.

As an example, one of the biggest OTWs is the Old Guard, which is a whole set of myths and legends around early gay leather culture. The details vary, but the usual themes are a lot like any other mythical golden age of the past: respect, structure, integrity, deference to authority, etc. People will often claim to be Old Guard or to be trained in the style of the Old Guard as a way of claiming special status for themselves or their beliefs. You might hear that you have to start as a bottom and earn your stripes before you can dominate, because that's the Old Guard way. You might hear that you ought to require your partner to always refer to themselves as "this boy" or "this girl" and never use the word "I," because that is proper Old Guard protocol.

Some folks go even further than the Old Guard, and claim to represent ancient traditions of dominance passed down from European (or occasionally Asian) secret societies predating the Old Guard by centuries. Then they'll tell you exactly what conditions your partner ought to meet before you put a collar on them and the correct collaring ceremony to use, or something along those lines. They might even believe it all. There are some of us who learned this or that OTW as fact, never questioned it, and are now preaching it with genuine conviction.

If you're curious about what early leather culture was really like, I can wholeheartedly recommend finding an original copy of The Leatherman's Handbook or the somewhat later Coming to Power, and reading the essays on the topic by community elders like Guy Baldwin, Jack Rinella or Gayle Rubin. But what that culture was really like is beside the point, which is that even if there actually was a single set of protocol that all leather folk followed back in the 1950's, there's no reason that those rules should dictate the way we dominate today.

The danger of any One True Way is that it'll pressure us away from the kind of dominance we'd really most enjoy and into the "correct" style, in order to be one of the cool kids or because we've been given the impression that it's the only way that dominance can be.

If you have one mentor or group or website that you are depending on to learn to dominate, I urge you to find at least one other source of wisdom. Hell, find as many as you can, and shamelessly pick the parts of each that speak to you and work for you. Integrating ideas from many different sources will help you develop your own personal style and set of skills that will fit your approach, your passions and your aptitudes much better than any One True Way ever could. You do not have to join anyone's club or follow anyone's protocols to be a real dominant or master or whatever you want to call yourself.

Acting Actually Dominant

There are some ways we can act that actually do a good job of conveying dominance in our daily lives. They don't look at all like being a swaggering Alpha Dominant though, because they aren't about controlling the people around us—they're about controlling ourselves.

Know what you want. We come off as more dominant when our actions are aligned with what we authentically desire in that moment. Sometimes that's easier said than done, but the introspective process of exploring our desires around dominance and deepening our comfort with them can help make the doing easier.

Use consent in all your dealings. Consent isn't just for when we're dominating, or even just for people who we're hoping to dominate. Showing respect for everyone's right to choose their own experience all the time, and standing up firmly for our own right to do the same, creates foundations of trust with everyone we deal with.

Wield power responsibly. There are a million ways that power crops up in our lives, most of which aren't directly related to consensual dominance. Society gives power to men, people with white skin, able-bodied people, straight people, etc. Wealth holds power over poverty. Age has power over youth. Just driving a car gives us the power of life and death over all of the people around us who aren't in cars. If you don't stop for the little old lady who's trying to get across the crosswalk, what does that tell people about how suited you are to hold power over them?

Have a full life. Having things (anything, really) that we're passionate about, that we're good at, that fulfill us gives us interesting things to share with others and also gives us an inimitable confidence. If I put all of my time and all of my ego into mastering dominance, whipping, needle play and so on, then when I'm flirting with a potential partner everything I am is riding on their agreeing to submit to me. But if I have my shift volunteering at the Humane Society the next day, plans to get out rock climbing that weekend, and am making progress in learning to play sax—then I can be easier, more relaxed and less desperate, and present as infinitely more appealing as someone to submit to.

Some of us are drawn to explore dominance in hopes that dominance will make us more interesting, but often it works the other way around: being interesting helps us to be better at dominance.

And Then There's Me

After setting out a bestiary of ill-conceived and overly prescriptive ideas about how dominance works, I am about to launch into a book that aspires to tell you how dominance works. I am aware of the potential for irony there.

I believe that what I have to share is different from the One True Ways and the other shoulds. I will not be pushing any moral "shoulds" beyond consent. Instead I attempt to describe what approaches I have seen succeed and fail and what skills I have seen help people to achieve their intentions with dominance. The things that I am presenting as necessary—as universally important whether you dominate as a daddy, a goddess or a drill sergeant—are fundamental skills of being human that can be approached in many different ways, no one of which is superior or correct. I don't segregate people into more-dominant and less-dominant categories.

Nonetheless, if this is the first book you've picked up about dominance, it'd be wise to read one or two others as well.

Understanding Dominance: In Summation

There are a lot of different ways to practice consensual dominance, and what's ultimately most important is what we enjoy and what inspires our partners' submission. If we can focus more on understanding ourselves and our partners and less on trying to conform to someone else's idea of a true dominant, we'll be able to create D/s dynamics that are more genuinely fulfilling for us.

We get ourselves in trouble when we start believing that dominance is a way to avoid the complexities of people or relationships, or that dominance is some kind of magical force that we can exert over other people. We do better when we understand that everyone is human, and that dominance is something that we do collaboratively with our partners.

3. Understanding Consent

"Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment."

- Mahatma Gandhi

The heart of dominance is consent, for more reasons than may be immediately obvious. One of the first things that most of us learn as we begin to explore dominance is that consent is an ethical requirement for dominating someone: that we must have consent to dominate in order to not be evil. But what's less widely understood is that consent is also the fabric of which dominance is made.

The Ethical Basis

Consent is the main distinction between consensual dominance and abuse, it is the cornerstone of the ethical foundation of what we do, and it has three basic components. First, everyone involved has to understand what they are getting into. So no lies or surprises or sneaky manipulation to get someone to agree to something they otherwise wouldn't. Second, everyone has to have the ability to refuse without consequences. That means no guns to the head, obviously, but also no arm twisting or guilt-tripping or emotional blackmail. And third, everyone has to actively agree to take part.

So it's more than just not saying no; consent requires some kind of affirmative yes. And not just once at the beginning either. For consensual dominance, both partners reaffirm their consent in every moment of their interaction and consent may be withdrawn at any time.

The definition of consent is straightforward and widely agreed upon by BDSM communities around the world. Application of consent in practice can become complicated, however, especially when dominance is involved. Imagine someone screaming "No! No! Please stop!" as their partner punishes them, or fighting tooth and nail in resistance play. Imagine a Total Power Exchange couple signing a contract that takes away the submissive partner's right to end their servitude. Imagine planning a surprise scene that your partner will go into knowing nothing about. The substance of dominance is interpersonal power, and it complicates every aspect of consent. It can take a lot of care and expertise to navigate playing on the edges of consent, and we'll spend a great portion of this book talking about the different skills that support being able to do so successfully.

When it is done successfully, all of the conditions of consent remain true on the very fundamental level of the couple's interactions, no matter how things may appear on the surface. The submissive partner in the resistance play scene may be screaming "rape" and fighting with all their might, but they have a different way to express a genuine desire for the violation to stop. The person signing the contract has given away their right to end their servitude only in the context in which their partner has assumed responsibility for ensuring their welfare—and if ever they decide that their welfare is not being taken care of the contract becomes meaningless. When you plan a surprise experience for your partner, you do so only with intimate knowledge of their passions and limits, and with confidence in your ability to read their emotional state throughout the scene.

The Fuel of the Engine

It's common to think of consent as something that is ethically required for dominance, but separate from it. It's as if dominance were an amusement park full of thrilling rides and delicious sweets, and consent was the dull but mandatory ticket gate that we had to file through in order to get to the fun. But that's a tragically limited understanding. Consent isn't the gate into dominance; it is an integral part of dominance, and understanding dominance requires understanding that consent is more than just an ethical box that must be checked in order to stay on the side of the angels.

I talked before about how the work of dominance is inspiring submission. Another way to put that is that dominance is the inspiration and seduction of consent. Dominating someone means leading them to feel safe enough, connected enough, respectful enough or even worshipful enough to say "yes" to your control. And every new order obeyed, every service rendered, every humiliation eagerly endured is consent all over again. The consent that we're looking for isn't a tepid "well I guess you can," but a breathless "yes, please." And that enthusiastic, abandoned consent is the source of much of the heat and power of dominance.

Dominance is the exercise of interpersonal power. The most intimate and real power it is possible to have over another person comes from their not just agreeing, but wanting and needing to do for you what they would not do without your influence.

Submissive Desire

I have good news for you: people want us to control them. Not just a little bit either; there are people who go to bed every single night dreaming, aching, longing for someone to control them. That desire, along with our desire to dominate, is the foundation of enthusiastic consent. That desire is also profoundly theirs. It is inside of them, it stems from them, and it isn't our job to create it. (Nor could we, even if we wanted to.) Where it comes from is as big a question as where our desires to dominate come from—you could write a whole book on it.

For our purposes here, the important thing is that if someone doesn't have a root desire to submit then the only thing for us to do is respect that and not try to wheedle, bargain, trick or bully them into being something they're not. The foundation of our power over a partner is that they actively want us to have that power. Without that foundation, no dominance happens.

Submissive desire also comes in a lot of different flavors, just like desire to dominate, from longing for relief from the responsibilities of choice to wanting to please or to feel overpowered. So just because someone wants to submit or identifies themselves as "a submissive" doesn't mean that they necessarily want to submit in a way that's a good match for what you want out of dominance. And again: it isn't our job or within our power to change someone's root desire to match what we think a submissive ought to want. We can't change a humiliation slut into a prim and proper service submissive, or vice versa.

Very often, though, submissive desire is complicated. Wanting to submit is scary, vulnerable, forbidden. Often people feel deeply conflicted about their submissive desires, reluctant to express them or even think about their full depths. People will want to submit sometimes in some ways, and other times in other ways, and sometimes not at all. They'll have fantasies that they aren't sure they want to turn into realities. They'll be surprised by desires sparked by their connection with you, that they never even knew were in them. They'll try sneaky and sometimes problematic ways to get their desires met without having to admit them, even to themselves.

While it isn't our job to make a partner submit, or make them want to submit, it is our job to help our partners to be able to work through shame, resolve those conflicts, and feel safe sharing their submissive desires with us. We can't do it for them, but we can support them in their exploration of their dark desires.

I'll talk about techniques for doing just that when I get to the fundamental work of dominance. For now, just see that the kind of enthusiastic consent we need for consensual dominance has to be firmly grounded in both our desire and our partners' desire. We can't make their desire happen but we can help it to blossom.

Invite, Don't Push

The idea of grounding dominance in our partners' submissive desire points the way toward learning how to solicit consent. This is a sticky challenge, full of anxiety for many of us. We want to put our best foot forward and come across as sexily commanding. Forceful. Confident. In control. You know—dominant.

But presumptuously demanding submission from someone who hasn't already given their consent to be dominated puts us squarely into "Kneel, Bitch" territory. Engaging in a dominant way before consent has been given tends to come across as presumptuous and arrogant rather than attractively dominant.

This can create a dilemma, though. Sometimes being dominant can look like a choice between acting like a beggar or a douchebag. Either we can stand with hat in hand, asking "May I have permission to dominate you, please?", or we can come on strong, with "Submit to me, lowly peon!" Both are crappy options.

The third, better, option is to not ask for consent or demand consent, but to invite consent.

"If you'd like to fetch me a cup of coffee, I'd appreciate it."

"I'm curious about experimenting with being more dominant in bed. Think you might be into that?"

"I've enjoyed the submission you've given me so far, and if you're ready to try going deeper, I have some new ideas I'd be excited to try with you."

A good invitation has three parts.

First: a good invitation solicits their desire. Remember that mere permission isn't what we're looking for. We're looking for collaboration, for impassioned devotion. So when we set out to establish consent, that's what we ought to be asking for. If the object of our interest doesn't feel such desire then engaging in the dance of dominance and submission with them is impossible anyway. So instead of pleading for a prospective partner's permission to dominate them, we offer them permission to submit to us. We don't act like they have something we want and we're trying to get it from them; we act like our dominance is something valuable that we have and we're offering to share it with them... if they want it.

It's not "Are you willing to fetch me a cup of coffee?" It's "If you want to serve me, you may fetch me a cup of coffee."

Second: a good invitation offers our desire. We're going to meet them halfway here. Admitting desire is a vulnerable thing to do, and most people have an easier time stepping into that vulnerable place if we are willing to join them there. Demanding unilateral desire, like "I'll let you lick my boots if you really want to," is intimidating. Occasionally, with someone who swoons for dominance from a cold and unfeeling partner, that can actually work super well. But that's the exception. Usually including our own desire—like, "I absolutely adore having my boots cleaned by an eager tongue. Do you have an eager tongue?"—works much better to support someone in sharing their own (scary, submissive) desire.

Third: a good invitation can be declined without consequence. You know when someone invites you to their party and you can tell they're going to guilt-trip you forever if you don't come? Or when your boss invites you to a meeting over lunch and it's clear that saying no isn't really an option? If you do agree to that kind of pressured invitation, how do you feel about it? I'm going to bet that you don't feel excited and ready to participate with your whole heart.

To encourage submissive desire and create the best chance for deep and amazing D/s connection, we offer invitations that are easy to turn down. We don't want anyone to accept our invitation because they'd feel guilty if they didn't, or because we've pestered them into it, or because they felt rushed and flustered or for any reason other than because they really want what we're offering. We are never entitled to have anyone accept our dominance. If we accept that, and if we make it clear by our words and our tone and our actions that we accept it, our invitations will actually be more enticing than if we come in with expectations that we deserve a "yes."

Better yet, we can intentionally include an easy, face-saving alternative in our invitation. It's often easier to pick door #2 from a list of choices than it is to give a flat "no." So we can reduce pressure by proposing a safe option: one that's well within what our partner has already agreed on and that we know will be comfortable for them. "If you're ready to surrender your ass this weekend, we'll begin the next phase of your training. Otherwise, you can please me with your eager mouth as usual."

When to Get Consent

As we dominate, we're frequently getting, reaffirming and deepening consent. We get consent to do something new. We get consent to do something again. We get consent to do something old but in a new circumstance. We get consent for things that we already knew we had consent for, just because it's hot to hear our partners beg.

Sometimes there are judgment calls to be made about whether or not this is a moment to get more consent, or how detailed and explicit that consent ought to be. A good rule of thumb is this: if we're asking ourselves whether or not this would be a good time to get more consent, the answer is probably "yes."

Some of us get hung up on arguments about when we have to get consent. Do we have to get consent for a hug? Do we have to get consent before using endearments (calling someone "hon" or "cutie")? Do we have to get consent before flirting with a pushy, dominant edge? If we already have consent to fondle someone's right butt cheek, do we have to get separate consent to fondle their left one?

This is asking the wrong question. This is thinking about consent as an inconvenient requirement and missing its power as a tool for dominance. The right question is: When can getting consent help us to establish trust, create connection, and invite submission?

The first time to check our partners' consent is before it occurs to them that we ought to. If they have to be the ones to first bring consent into our interactions, then right from the start they're having to enforce boundaries and defend themselves from us. Even if it's just defending against us paying for dinner when they'd have felt more comfortable splitting the check, it sets an unfortunate precedent—it sets off alarms and creates a little hesitation to trust. If, on the other hand, we are the ones who first bring consent into our interactions, that tells our potential partner that we can be trusted to discover and respect their boundaries.

Ask before you hug someone, not because you have to but because you're laying foundations for strong connection. Check consent the first time that you do anything that could even possibly be construed as impinging on their territory: their body, their time, their attention, their personal space. And remember how to invite without pleading. Asking "Would it be okay with you if I paid for dinner?" might indeed come across as timid. "I had a wonderful time with you, and if you're comfortable with it, it'd be my honor to cover the check" is likely to land better.

The best times to check consent are the times when we are most confident that our partner has their wits about them and will be able to give us an answer that will still feel right to them later. Many of us have had the experience of having the most amazing idea ever when we were inebriated, only to wake up the next morning full of regret over having posted that picture on Facebook, bought that poodle lamp on eBay, or phoned our ex at 4:00am. We want our partners to remember our dominance years later as a wonderful experience, not as a stupid mistake. So when we're checking in on consent, we pay attention to whether or not our partner is in a good place to make decisions that they won't regret later.

Being in any sort of a chemically altered state is suspect, and so are things like being tired or rushed or in the midst of any kind of intense emotion. It's tempting to get a partner super turned on, or worked into a profoundly submissive mental state, and then get them to agree to things. But that has the same problem: Will they still be so keen on what they agreed to after they've sobered up?

One solution is to go ahead and flirt away while our partner is altered or on the edge of orgasm or totally zoned out into a submissive space, but to not act on anything they agree to in that state until we've reconfirmed later that, after sober reflection, they really do want all those sexy awful things they signed up for while they were flying. Done gently, this can be a valuable way to help someone work through inhibitions against asking for what they really do want. We just have to keep our own expectations managed, and not get disappointed if, after they've orgasmed and put their clothes back on, they decide they aren't ready to have our initials tattooed on their genitals after all.

When doing something again that we've already done before, it's easy to skimp on checking consent. But remember that consent is an ongoing thing; it lives and breathes in every moment of our connection with someone. Maybe they loved stripping for us last week, but they're feeling bad about their body tonight. Maybe they consented to having us masturbate them before, but since then they've had second thoughts. Even if they do want to do the thing again, why pass up an opportunity to invite them to say "yes" again? Reconfirming consent gets our partner to reconnect with their decision to submit to us and can strengthen our dynamic.

If our relationships go on long enough, many of them do reach a point where checking consent for every kiss begins to feel a bit silly. This doesn't happen with every relationship; some continue to find comfort, integrity and power in using lots of explicit consent for years or decades. But for many of us, explicit re-checking of consent is gradually replaced by rapport: a harmonious understanding of one another that lets us live partially within one another's personal space, rather than asking permission to enter each time. Outside of D/s relationships, relaxation of consent into rapport is widely assumed. Inside of D/s relationships though, we often want to create extraordinarily powerful trust so that we can take extraordinary levels of control—so it's valuable for us to check consent around rapport itself. "I love how close we're becoming, and I noticed that we're falling into just doing little things that we used to confirm consent for. That feels comfortable and intimate for me, but I thought I'd make sure: is it great for you too?"

We can also replace re-checking of consent with explicitly negotiated ongoing consent. That's inviting our partner not just to consent to wear the clothes we want them to wear tonight, but to surrender control of how they dress indefinitely. Ongoing consent has more formality to it than rapport, which is attractive to many of us and many of our partners, and it's also a good choice for "big things," for kinds of intimacy or control that are beyond what would be expected to become routine in a common, non-kinky relationship. It makes sense to let rapport gradually turn kissing our partner or petting their head into an assumed part of our relationship, but no matter how many times our partner has consented to have us slap them in the face or lend them out for sexual use by our friends, it'd be dangerously presumptuous to assume that we can now do those things whenever we want without checking in. If we want that authority, the wise thing to do is to explicitly solicit our partner's ongoing consent.

I suggest not rushing into ongoing consent too soon. Agreements like "your body is mine to play with whenever I choose" are incredibly sexy for many of us, but spending a little while giving more attention to checking and rechecking consent creates a stronger base of trust and mutual understanding between us and our partners. If we spend a good long while rechecking consent before each time that we use our partner's body as a toy, then we get to learn more about how they react at different times, in different situations, and to different kinds of use. So when we do get that ongoing power to toy with them whenever we like, we'll be ready to play their body masterfully.

Switching to doing something different is another opportunity to renew consent, and raises the curious question of "what's a difference?" This is another place where it's easy to get lost in hair-splitting details. If our partner has breathlessly begged for the honor of scrubbing our toilet, does that mean they're on board to clean the shower tile too? If they're keen on being called a pig, should we check back in before calling them a dog? How about calling them a worthless pig? That's pretty similar to pig, but maybe being told they're worthless shuts them down.

The truth is that there can be no comprehensive, objective rule for how-different-is-different. There are some good rules of thumb: using a new kind of implement is a difference, touching a distinctly different part of the body is a difference, any kind of penetration of anything by anything is a difference, control in a new realm of your partner's life (sex life vs. career) is a difference, control in a different context (at a restaurant vs. in the bedroom) is a difference. But ultimately we each need to use our judgment about when something might feel different for our partners. Usually that means that when we're first starting to dominate someone we err on the side of caution and recheck consent even for differences that seem very small. Then if we get the chance to know a partner better, our growing rapport gives us more confidence in what they will or won't feel differently about.

Many of us have assumptions about some acts being intrinsically more intimate than others. Like anal sex is "going further" than oral sex is going further than kissing, so if someone is enthusiastically engaged in anal sex with us then we assume they're also down to make out. Or we assume that if someone is bending over for us to spank them, then we also have consent to touch their genitals. Or if someone is begging us to tie them up, then they'll be happy to run and fetch us a drink once the ropes come off.

These assumptions are landmines, and it's imperative that we find them and dig them out of our thinking before they blow up in our faces. There is no universal hierarchy of what different people find less intimate or less difficult or less of a big deal. I know more than one person who is delighted to give their friends oral sex on command, but has strong limits around kissing on the mouth. So it's never safe to assume that our partner consenting to one thing means that they're implicitly consenting to something else.

Gray Areas

Many of us have some anxiety about gray areas of consent. Heck, lots of people who aren't practicing dominance also have anxiety about gray areas of consent. We worry that we'll mistakenly go too far, or misinterpret some signal and end up violating someone's consent without meaning to. There are plenty of stories about attempts at dominance that were intended to be sexy and exciting, but were actually received as violence.

Notice how inviting consent and insisting on enthusiastic consent combine to keep us clear of those gray areas. If we invite a partner to submit to us, with no pressure to accept, and we move forward with dominance only if they take up our invitation with active and enthusiastic submissive desire, then there's no gray area.

Technique: Safewords

A safeword is a pre-established signal used to communicate some message between us and our partner with zero ambiguity. Most often that message is "we need to stop right now," and if someone talks about or negotiates for a safeword without specifying a different meaning, that is what we must assume that it means: consent is (for the moment) revoked, we have exited all of our D/s containers, and now is the time to connect as two people who care about one another and figure out what's up.

Safewords have a few important virtues. The first, applicable to all kinds of dominance, is that saying "no we have to stop" to a lover in the middle of the act can be hard, and especially extra hard for a person in a submissive role. Having a specific, agreed-upon ritual can make it easier for them to say what really needs to be said. We can even order our partner to use their safeword when needed and praise them for obeying and giving us important information when they do, to make using the safeword into something good and submissive.

The second virtue of safewords, fairly specific to conquest-flavored dominance, is that they allow our partner to scream bloody murder and fight and cry and plead for us to stop, while maintaining a clear way to communicate "I'm actually serious we need to stop."

Choices of Safewords. The most common safewords are "red" (like the traffic light) and "safeword," but many people like to agree on different ones. Two common approaches are either to pick a word that there is no chance you would ever want to use in the heat of passion ("platypus," "rutabaga") or to pick a word that fits within the theme of your dynamic, so that you or your partner can call for a halt without breaking the mood ("mercy," "uncle").

Signals other than words can work as well. A safe-signal like a hand gesture, dropping something held or tapping out is especially appropriate if your partner is gagged, if they have difficulty using their words when submitting, or if the two of you want a signal that is less obvious to others around you.

Different Messages. Safewords can also be valuable for clearly communicating messages other than "full stop." The second most common message is something like "slow down" or "I'm not revoking consent but know that I'm having a really hard time with this," and the most common word chosen to communicate it is "yellow."

People will sometimes complete the traffic light and use "green" as an unambiguous way to communicate "I'm all good, let's go!" or will use a numbered scale from 1 to 10 to communicate the general intensity of the submissive partner's experience at that moment.

House Safewords. One safety feature offered by most public play venues (aka "dungeons") is that they will have a house safeword that, if called, will bring in help from the staff or the other participants. The house safeword is typically "red" or the word "safeword." This provides some assurance to our partners that they can enforce their boundaries even if we turn out to be the kind of abusive asshole who ignores a safeword. It's a good way to offer extra safety especially to new partners who we haven't yet had the opportunity to build a lot of trust. It also means that we might want to select a different safeword that our partner can use to let us know they need to stop, without calling in the cavalry.

We Can Safeword. Safewords are most often a tool for our partners to use, but some people find them useful on the other side as well. Some of us can sometimes feel a bit trapped by the expectations of the dominant role, and be reluctant to step out of that role even when we want to, for fear of disappointing our partners or failing to live up to some dominant ideal. For some of us, the ritual of a safeword can help us claim our right to be human—to have moments of uncertainty, to need support, or maybe to just want a cuddle tonight without having to wrestle our partner into it first.

Playing to the Safeword. Most commonly, people treat the calling of a safeword as an exceptional situation. Their goal is to play within the bounds of their container, and the safeword exists for times when they trip out of it by mistake or misunderstanding. But for some, a safeword is a challenge. Their goal is to push and push until the safeword is called, and safewording is the expected climax of their dynamic.

It is, as you might imagine, essential to share an understanding with your partner of which of these camps you're in. People on both sides of the slash fall on both sides. There are people wanting to submit who will be sorely disappointed if you do not push their boundaries until they safeword—to them, their submission hasn't been fully exercised. They are the minority, however. Most people will not appreciate being pushed to safeword on a regular basis. They may start to wonder if they are a "bad submissive" for having to safeword so much, or may begin to question your judgment and good intentions as a dominant.

Not a Panacea. Safewords are perhaps the most commonly used and commonly recommended technique in all of BDSM, and sometimes they are given too much credit. Some people have tremendous difficulty in calling a safeword, especially when in the midst of a deeply submissive experience, and even those who are able to usually find it at least a little disappointing and disconnecting to have to do so. Also, sometimes when the safeword is called significant damage has already been done. If your partner doesn't want anyone but you to see them naked, and you bring in your friend to see your naked submissive, and they safeword... well the safeword can't make your friend un-see them. It doesn't un-say that too humiliating name you called them, or take back the too-hard strike of the paddle.

So a safeword is a useful tool in many circumstances, but agreeing to a safeword is not a complete negotiation for dominance, and having a safeword in place does not replace our responsibility to pay attention to our partners and do our best to care for their welfare.

Paradoxical Desire

What if we or our partner don't want to avoid the gray areas? For some of our partners, their dearest fantasies are about being forced to do things they don't want to do: about having their desires be irrelevant and their consent violated. I call these paradoxical desires, and they can run the gamut from wanting to be like a robot who is only there to serve our needs all the way to dreaming of being kidnapped and tortured. The paradox is that they really, ultimately do have their own submissive desire to be subjected to these things that they don't desire.

Some people are perfectly happy to acknowledge their paradoxical desires when they're not engaged in getting them fulfilled. They can clearly describe to you just how they'd love to be kidnapped, negotiate a specific time for it to happen, set up a safeword with which to communicate if they need to tap out, and will actually be able to use that safeword in the moment when they need it. That's the easy case.

For other folks, explicitly arranging their kidnapping would ruin the experience for them. They'd know that they had asked for it and wouldn't get the feeling of dissociation from their desires and their consent that they crave. Some people will try to hint and nudge and provoke us into fulfilling their paradoxical desires without having to `fess up to exactly what those desires are. Or they may describe their fantasy in the abstract, but never explicitly consent to actually doing it, and then express disappointment when we don't do it to them anyway. Or they may insist that their only desire is to please us in any way we wish, silently cross their fingers, and hope hope hope that we'll do what they're secretly longing to have done to them (and sometimes blame us if we don't read their minds and do what they never told us they wanted). Or they go to a mental place during submission where they believe so deeply that their desires are not in play that they lose the ability to use a safeword or otherwise communicate to us how they're really feeling and what they really want.

Engaging with a partner on these terms is a form of what we call edge play. Edge play means that we're dancing along a line between something that's hot and something that's shitty: in this case, between fulfilling our partners' paradoxical desire and violating their consent. Picking up hints and nudges and clues from our partner that they secretly want us to dress them down in public, or call them dirty names, or tie them down and ravish them simply cannot be as clear and secure as if we heard them enthusiastically ask us for it. Almost everyone has fantasies that they love to talk or think or masturbate about but don't want to actually act out. There's always some risk that we've misinterpreted and we're about to do something that our partner really did not want to have happen to them.

Even if we aren't misinterpreting, these secret, dirty desires are often awfully specific in their details, or simply don't feel the same in reality as they did in our partner's head. Fantasy pain and fantasy fear feel very different from actual pain and actual fear. The characters in someone's fantasies always do just the right terrible things without having to be told, and even our own bodies and minds react differently in reality than they do in our fantasies.

If we play on edges for long enough, it's only a matter of time until we fall over one.

Insisting on enthusiastic consent doesn't immunize us from fantasies that don't work out the way we'd imagined they would, but it does help ensure that acting out that fantasy is something that we and our partner got ourselves into together. We both wanted it, we both asked for it, we share the responsibility for how it turned out and, if necessary, we can work together to recognize that it isn't working out, change course, and handle any fallout from our shared misadventure. In contrast, if we're coming from a place of "forcing" our partner to do something that they aren't admitting that they want, they are more likely to be inhibited from telling us that it isn't working out (their desire isn't supposed to matter, right?), and it's all too easy for the bad experience and its consequences to become all our fault.

So I'm not going to tell you not to engage with paradoxical desire, but I will encourage you to do so only with a clear eyed appreciation of the risks involved, both to yourself and especially to your partner. Think about what the consequences might be if you are wrong about how your partner will react to what you're planning, and have a backup plan for handling them.

Finally, sometimes what looks like a paradoxical desire is really a symptom of shame or shyness or a One True Way about how submissives aren't supposed to express their desires. If having their fantasy inflicted on them against their will is core to the heat and power of that fantasy, then our only options are to either play on that edge or to not engage that fantasy. But it's worth exploring whether there's something external to the fantasy that's inhibiting them from fully acknowledging it.

Maybe our partner who's dropping hints about wanting to submit has just learned somewhere that submissives aren't supposed to ask for what they want. In that case, making it perfectly clear to them that what we want from them is their enthusiastic consent might be enough to give them permission to stop dancing around directly acknowledging their desire, and to move us both out of the realm of paradoxical desire.

Technique: Let Them See You Coming

Many of us love to play with surprise, and for good reason. Information is power, and controlling information means holding power. Blindfolding our partner so they don't know what we're about to do to them, or taking them on a trip and not telling them where we're going, or catching them off guard with a surprise tackle and takedown are all highly effective ways of inspiring feelings of helplessness in them and putting ourselves in the driver's seat.

Some of our partners also particularly love surprise. The experience of waking up to a hand clamping over their mouth gives them a huge thrill; following their partner into the bedroom without knowing what's in store for them lets them experience deep trust.

The danger is that if our partner doesn't know what's going to happen to them until it happens, then we have no way to read their reactions to see how they're going to feel about it—until it's too late. More than half of all of the accidental consent violations I have ever heard of involved surprise. It can happen when we misread our partners' hints (that kidnapping fantasy they told us about really was just a fantasy), or are missing some important information ourselves (we have the living room all dungeoned-up for when they get home from work, and they walk in with the coworker who gave them a ride home). Also, some of our partners do not react well to surprise at all, or react to it unpredictably: they might go weak in the knees sometimes, but lock up or panic at others.

This all means that one simple and powerful tactic for reducing our risk of violating consent is to let our partner see us coming, and watch their reaction when they do. One example of doing this during impact play is the old tradition of making our partner kiss each implement before we hit them with it. It looks and feels sexy to do and it gives our partner a submissive gesture to make, but its deeper purpose is that it ensures that they have looked at and reacted to each tool that we're about to use. That kiss is an opportunity for them to revoke consent if they need to, and an opportunity for us to watch their reaction. Do they kiss the crop eagerly? That tells us something. Do they flinch and grimace before giving the cat the barest of pecks? That tells us something else, and we can adjust our plans accordingly.

Another example is learning to play with inevitability. Rather than waiting until after dinner to suddenly grab our partner by the hair and haul them into the bedroom, we can sit down at the beginning of dinner and say "Enjoy your meal, because I'm dragging you back to my lair as soon as you finish." It sacrifices the shock of surprise, but in return we get to enjoy the building tension throughout the meal, and our partner has plenty of time to raise objections, volunteer information we might not have considered, or get just get all worked up and excited to be taken.

The Dark Side

"How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?"

Winston thought. "By making him suffer," he said.

"Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own?"

- George Orwell, 1984

Some of us also have our own fantasies in which our partners' desire plays no part, or where the fantasy is specifically about inflicting something on someone who doesn't consent to it: fantasies where we don't really have partners, but victims. Just like with our partner's fantasies of being violated, these dark fantasies can run more or less deeply within us. Sometimes we're fully satisfied with a giggling "Oh no; please don't!" while doing something that we darn well know our partner really enjoys. And sometimes, for some of us, that doesn't get at what we're really wanting. We crave a deeper feeling that we're violating someone, overcoming their will rather than collaborating with them.

That kind of desire can be horrifying for an ethical person to hold. The good news is that there's nothing unethical about fantasies. The worst fantasy atrocity that you can possibly imagine still harms no one, and plenty of good people have (and possibly enjoy) atrocious fantasies and still go through their entire lives harming on one. The other good news is that there are people out there who would be delighted to play out practically any atrocious fantasy you may have: people who would get off hugely on pretending to be murdered, people who would get deeply into role pretending to be raped, people who would absolutely love to playact as your abused little child or tortured CIA black ops prisoner. In kinky communities play that simulates violating the submissive partner's consent is commonly referred to as consensual nonconsent.

The possibly difficult news is that, to not be a monster, consensual nonconsent does have to remain, ultimately, play-acting. There must be some way that the terrible things we do to them are ultimately built upon their desire—whether that's their own desire for the fantasy we're playing out, or just desire to please us by fulfilling our fantasy—and there must be some way for them to tap out of the dynamic if they ever really and truly stop wanting to be in it. If those two things aren't true then what we're doing is abuse, and no two ways about it. I'll talk later about how to create conceptual containers in which our dominance relationships can flourish, and nowhere is a strong container more essential than when playing with consensual nonconsent.

Some people believe that all dominance is a form of play-acting, and I don't think that's true. Dominance is as real as the shared desire between us and our partners. When both of our desires are engaged and aligned with our dominance, then it can be as real as anything in this world. But when we're playing contrary to our partner's desire, then it has to remain a piece of theater.

The vast majority of those of us with nonconsensual fantasies will go our whole lives without having any problem working within that limit. If you have a desire for genuinely nonconsensual acts that is causing you distress, or that you worry you might ever feel compelled to act on, please find a kink-friendly therapist to help you (see the resources section for the Kink Aware Professionals list). Being kink-friendly or kink-aware means that a professional understands alternative sexualities well enough to help you with the specific pieces that are problematic for you without demonizing your sexuality in general.

The Poisoned Gift

There's one more bind that inviting enthusiastic consent can release us from. There's a common idea in kinky communities; if you haven't heard it yet, you will eventually. It's called the Gift of Submission, and it goes something like this: the submissive partner is the one who holds the real power in D/s, because they are the one who sets the limits in which the dominant partner can play, and because they have the ultimate power to revoke their consent and end the dynamic at any time. Submission is a generous gift given for nothing in return, and we can only be grateful and strive to remain worthy of our partners' largesse—we are paupers, and our partners are running soup kitchens.

The Gift of Submission can be a comforting idea for some of us who feel more secure not being ultimately responsible for power in our relationships. If it feels good for you, then by all means subscribe to it. I hear from many of us (and many of our partners), however, who accept the dogma of the Gift of Submission only reluctantly. It feels limiting. It seems to trivialize our passions and the realities we strive to create. It puts power where neither of us want power to sit.

The logic of the Gift of Submission seems inescapable if and only if we ignore submissive desire. If we think of dominance as something that we make our partners do and that they only passively accept, and as being all about our payoff and our needs, then the Gift of Submission is truly inescapable. But if we center submissive desire, insist that our partners admit their own needs for the dance we do together, and seduce them into begging for the opportunity to submit to us, then the Gift of Submission is not so one-sided. Submission is something that our partners do as much for themselves as for our benefit.

Certainly our partners have the unquestionable power to set limits and end our D/s dynamics, but so do we. If we understand D/s as a mutually fulfilling dance that is serving both of our needs, then it's nonsensical to say that the nuclear option of ending the dynamic gives ultimate power to our partners. It's a power that we both share equally, and we both stand to lose something valuable if we have to exercise it.

So if the Gift of Submission does not appeal to you, then accept no gifts. Keep both yourself and your partner clearly in touch with your mutual payoff from your D/s dynamic and your mutual responsibility for making D/s hot and successful. And if a partner ever tells you that they hold all the real power because they can stop submitting, you can refuse to dominate them until they offer a suitably grovelling apology and acknowledge that they want to dance as much as you do.

Everyone Makes Mistakes

Any of us who practice dominance long enough are likely to eventually fuck up and violate a partner's consent. Maybe it'll be because of a miscommunication about what they wanted, maybe it'll be a technical error (a missed cane stroke that leaves a mark where they didn't want one), maybe we'll trip over a psychological landmine that neither of us knew was there, maybe we'll get overconfident and push too hard or too far.

I got cocky once, with a partner with whom I had a fantastic, edgy, boundary-pushing dynamic. I pushed too hard and I left her with permanent scars in a place where she had not consented to be marked. I count it as the single worst error of judgment I've ever made. I'm fortunate that she was willing to talk it through afterward, and we did a lot of hard talking, and I apologized and did what I could to make amends. I paid for attempts at scar removal, and when those didn't take, paid for a tattoo that covers the scars now. I also changed how I topped: got more serious about learning technique, more scrupulous about respecting boundaries.

None of that buys forgiveness, because forgiveness isn't something that can be bought, or that anyone is ever entitled to. We own up to our mistakes and do what we can to fix them and prevent them from happening again for our own integrity. Then those who were hurt by them get to make the decision of how or if they want to remain connected with us. My story ends as happily as could be hoped. My partner and I remained connected, kept doing our deliciously filthy D/s for a long time, and are still loving friends today.

While we can't always be perfect and never fuck up, there are things that we can do both before and after a violation of consent to lessen the impact, both on our partners and ourselves.

If we have consistently shown our partner that we value their consent and are doing our due diligence to keep our dominance of them lined up with their desires for submission, then it will be a lot easier for them to treat an accidental violation more like an accident and less like a violation. If we've shown a pattern of recklessness and disregard that we've just happened to get away with for a while, then a single fuckup is likely to prompt our partner to look back over all that risk taking and reevaluate whether they ever should have trusted us in the first place.

After a violation, the most important thing we can do is own our mistake. It can be awfully tempting to try to cover it up or explain it away or get defensive or even try to dominate our way out of it, like "How dare you imply that I could make a mistake, lowly worm!" That last option is possibly the worst. Remember that our dominance is founded on our partners' desire to submit to us, so trying to exercise dominance when we've just abused that desire to submit is a recipe for disaster.

Owning a mistake doesn't make us less dominant, or mean that we have to give up all our authority and the respect our partner has for us and grovel on the floor for forgiveness. It just means acknowledging that (a) we did it (b) it was wrong and (c) we're sorry, without trying to shift blame or make excuses or minimize the violation. Far from losing respect, I've found that learning to own my mistakes has let me sometimes come through a blunder with deeper respect and a stronger relationship than before. My partner has had any illusions that I'm infallible dispelled, and also has new confidence that when I inevitably do make mistakes I'll handle them well.

After owning our mistake, the next thing we can do is shut up and listen. When someone's been wronged, they get to decide how they feel about it, how big of a deal they think it is, and what they think ought to be done to fix it. If we jump straight into solutions, or right to "let's forgive and forget," then we're trespassing on their territory. Maybe we do have good ideas about how to move forward, and we can offer them later—after our partner has had all the time they need to say whatever they want to say. That may take a while. Sometimes people need time to figure out what they really feel and think about important things, and the best thing we can do is give them that time. If they don't want to talk about it for two days or two weeks or two months, don't pester them sooner than that.

It's possible that they will not want to resolve anything and will just want to be done with us. That can be horrible to hear, but it's their absolute right. (Heck, any partner has the right to walk away from any consensual relationship at any time; so why would this be different?) Continuing to insist that someone see us or talk with us or have a relationship with us when they're saying they don't want to isn't dominant, it's stalking. If a partner wants to walk away and we wish they wouldn't, the only thing to say is "I respect your decision. I would still love to try to work things out, so if you ever change your mind please don't hesitate to contact me."

It's also entirely possible that our partner will think that the violation was less of a big deal than we did, and we should listen to that too.

After hearing our partner out, then comes the time for trying to fix what can be fixed. Making a mistake does not make us slaves to our partners: we don't have to do absolutely anything they ask to atone for or fix a violation. But it's a good time to strongly consider doing whatever we reasonably can that they say will help them feel respected and cared for, and will help reestablish trust.

We also have our own interest in not repeating violations, so beyond what it takes to help our partner feel resolved it behooves us to learn from our mistake: do our own serious thinking about what caused the error and what changes we can put in place to not make the same kind of mistake again.

Understanding Consent: In Summation

We find our power in practicing dominance when we come to understand consent as not only an ethical requirement but also the source of our influence over our partners. We do not make our partners submit; their drive for submission must be rooted within themselves. Submissive desire can be complicated, though, and challenging to accept in oneself. So we have a big role to play in inviting our partners' desire to submit and creating a space in which it can blossom. Helping our partners to remain connected to their submissive desire makes consent clear and also creates the foundation for keeping us solidly in control.

4. The Container

A True Story: The Prom King

Many years ago, through a now-defunct online D/s forum, I knew a 24/7, Master/slave couple who were the King and Queen of the forum. They were prolific contributors, and greatly respected as embodying the ideal of a no-limits, Total Power Exchange relationship that so many lesser mortals on the forum fantasized about and craved.

She wrote eloquently and romantically about the "last choice she ever made" to become enslaved and about being utterly, genuinely unable to resist her Master's will—she was owned completely, and would have no choice but to do literally anything he commanded at any time. He dispensed gravelly wisdom, from a position of absolute confidence, about how true M/s could have no limits.

Then, without warning, both of them stopped posting or responding to messages, suddenly and completely disappearing from the forum.

Months later, through the grapevine, we other regulars learned that she had called the police. And had him arrested on charges of abuse.

Our Many-Faceted Lives

Though we may fantasize about it, nobody does nothing but dominate completely and exclusively one hundred percent of the time, just as none of our partners submit completely and exclusively one hundred percent of the time. We are all complex human beings with families, friends, hobbies, jobs, causes and lots of (often messy and conflicting) beliefs, feelings, values, needs and passions. Some of us are in relationships where we have the authority to control our partners at any time, and have rules that govern broad swaths of their day-to-day behavior, but even those folks have other priorities and interests and duties in their lives, and so do their partners.

Denying or suppressing all of those other pieces of our selves to try to embody the ideal dominant or treat our partners like idealized submissives tends to end poorly. If you think my little story up there might be a fluke, I invite you to look into the story of Delia Day, an even better known slave who ended up shooting and killing her partner. It is very rare that things go so far as death or arrest, of course, but recriminations, bitter breakups and lovers becoming enemies are all too common.

The risk isn't limited to Master/slave style relationships or long-term D/s either. A single evening of D/s where we force our vegan partner to swallow a bite of steak (because they said "You can do anything to me!" and we took them literally) could leave them feeling abused and wreck whatever relationship we had. Another vegan partner might find forced carnivorism edgily, degradingly hot, but would disown us forever for leaving them with a black eye that'd be visible at work the next day. Everybody's limits are different, but the one constant is that everything in this world has a limit.

The Container

Successful D/s relationships, whether short or long, are usually those that find some way to acknowledge both partners' full humanity and to fit peaceably among all our other passions and priorities. And the best way that I know of to achieve that harmony is to build a solid container.

The container is a metaphor for the understanding and agreement, shared between our partners and ourselves, of the border between the D/s dynamic we share and everything else in our lives. We define it through conversation with our partners and observation of our partners, building an understanding of what's important to them in their lives and what conditions support and invite their submission, and then making agreements that create a space for D/s in our lives together that's comfortable and appealing for both of us.

Within the container is where our dominance holds sway: we set the priorities, we exert control over our partner, and we expect their obedience. Outside of the container, our dominance does not apply. It isn't necessarily gone; it just doesn't extend into that particular moment, decision, or aspect of life. Imagine I have a full-time submissive and part of our container is that she has to be able to be there for her friends. If I'm happily telling her all of the things she's going to do tonight, and she says "Oh, no, Sara got in a car accident," I don't suddenly stop being her dominant, but I do adjust the evening's plans so that she gets to go take care of her friend—no ifs, ands or buts.

For short-lived or simple dominance, a simple container ("You'll serve our guests as a maid at the party tonight, we won't do anything sexual, and let me know if you're uncomfortable at any point") may be all that's needed. For dominance that extends throughout more of our lives, or that rubs up against bigger things (like our or our partner's survival needs, big fears, pride, sense of identity, or core values), a more carefully discussed and defined container may be warranted. This container will almost certainly evolve over time.

Many of us also define multiple containers for different kinds of dominance, even with the same partner. Often that looks like tighter or more clearly defined containers for harder or scarier aspects of our D/s. A very common example is long term couples who have a "high protocol" mode for stricter D/s at times when both are focused on such, and a "low protocol" mode that allows them to interact more casually the rest of the time. Tighter containers are also common for specific kinds of interaction that are edgy either for us or our partner—like humiliation play that our partner can dive deeper down into if they feel safe knowing that it will only occur in private and never be shared with another. Or play where we give free rein to a brutal, ugly side of ourselves that we can fully access only when secure in the knowledge that it's for a time-limited scene.

Infinite Dimensions

The first kind of border that jumps to mind for many people is time—planning evenings or weekends in which to focus intensely on dominance and keeping our lives and relationships more egalitarian outside of those times. That is far from the only way to define your container, though, and others of us prefer to have at least some attention to dominance integrated throughout our days.

Here are a few examples of dimensions unrelated to time. It isn't meant to be an exhaustive list; there are as many ways to define edges to a container as there are facets of a human life.

Realm. Your D/s could apply to your sex life, or to your partner's wardrobe, or to your domestic sphere in general, without applying to other realms of your lives. Or the other way around: your D/s could apply to your lives in general, but not to specific realms like raising your children, or your partner's career.

Priorities. You can set some fixed priorities with your partner, like "I will always put your health and emotional wellbeing first." Sometimes it's important that the D/s itself be a high enough priority. You or your partner might only want to engage if you're confident that the other isn't thinking of it as a game to be casually set aside for "real life."

Privacy. You could agree that your D/s will be known only to the two of you, or that it will never be apparent to your families, or that no sign of it will appear on social media.

Expertise. Perhaps your partner is an expert in matters of finance and does not want to submit to another's decisions about money, or they are seeking to be trained in body service and very much want to be dominated by someone with the expertise to guide their development.

Mood. Perhaps you don't want your partner to go through the motions of submitting to you when submission feels like a chore, or maybe you don't want push yourself to dominate when you're feeling blue. You could agree "do it with your whole heart or not at all" or "fake it `til you make it."

Sincerity. This is a particularly subtle dimension, but deeply important for many. Some people will love to be called a dirty slut at any time, but only if they believe that you don't really mean it—that you're saying it only because you know it turns them on. For others, it is deeply important that you do mean it and that the contempt they hear behind your words is not entirely feigned. You can agree on how real the different beliefs and feelings that you express within the container of your D/s are meant to be.

Commitment. Many people require a certain degree of commitment in order to express their submission, or their dominance. That can be commitment to maintaining an egalitarian relationship bigger than the D/s, or it can be commitment to the dynamic itself.

Limits. A very common dimension, limits are a list of specific things that your partner will not consent to include within the container of your D/s. It is also possible for you to enumerate limits that you refuse to cross in dominance.

There is one bedrock dimension that is part of every container for consensual dominance, by definition, and that's consent itself. Consensual dominance is bounded by both our and our partner's enthusiastic desire for it to be happening, or it isn't consensual dominance any more. Beyond that, you can use whatever edges and boundaries make sense to you in your life. Most of us define our containers using multiple dimensions woven together, not just one.

More than Limits

A container defines the limits of the substance contained within, but also supports and even concentrates it. In defining our container, we don't simply list the things that we can't do, but create a shared understanding of the conditions that support us and our partner in doing what we do want to do together.

If we need a day off from micromanaging our partner to just binge-watch our favorite TV show every once in a while, then having that understood and agreed upon in our container lets us do it without feeling guilty that we aren't being a totally controlling dominant one hundred percent of the time—which in turn leaves us able to dominate with more focus and less resentment when we are within our container.

If our partner needs to know that all the horrible things we say about them during a scene won't be true once the scene ends, then having that understood and agreed upon in our container lets them sink into the experience of their degradation without a corner of their mind being preoccupied with worry.

The container is a hugely powerful tool for creating and enhancing safety in our relationships. A clear container lets both our partners and ourselves dive deeper and more confidently into our D/s desires and practice, with confidence that it isn't going to conflict with other parts of our lives and selves. That can help us to set those other priorities aside within the container, and be fully present for our D/s.

Clarity and Rapport

Clarity in the definition of our containers has obvious advantages. Explicit, verbal, possibly even written agreements reduce the risk of misunderstandings or differing assumptions between us and our partners, and they are less vulnerable to later reinterpretation.

On the other hand, it's impossible to explicitly account for every single little way in which our D/s might possibly rub up against any of the other facets of our life. There are just too many, including plenty that we haven't even thought of yet! So it's never enough to just legalistically follow the letter of an agreement: "Our agreement said I could do it!" is never an excuse for mistreating a partner. For successful and resilient dominance we always need to maintain a moment-to-moment connection with our partners, and pay attention to and prioritize their well-being. You'll find much more on how to do that in the following chapters on the fundamental skills of dominance.

Blindfolded Knife-Wrestling

Beyond any difficulty in creating a clear and explicit container, some of us simply don't want to. We are attracted to ambiguity, to danger, or to playing around with boundaries, or we want to pursue that ideal of a D/s dynamic that swallows up every other aspect of our and our partner's lives. We don't want our dominance to comfortably coexist with the rest of life, but to fuck with it—to jostle up against other priorities in edgy and uncomfortable ways.

If that sounds like you, then understand that you are playing at a higher risk of trespassing across a boundary that will be genuinely harmful to your partner. If you choose partners who share your excitement for undefined boundaries, then they will also be getting something that they value out of the deal and will be more likely to absorb that hurt without blaming you. And if you aren't going to define a clear container, then I recommend you go big on rapport. Get to know your partners well, start off gently and feel your way slowly toward deeper play. That will let you learn their responses, the places where they can tolerate being pushed in fucked-up sexy ways, and the serious for-real limits that will end your relationship if you don't respect them.

Technique: Contracts

Written contracts between dominant and submissive partners, often referred to as "slave contracts," have a long history in the practice of dominance. Some of us find the formality, structure and the sense of commitment and authority of a written contract to be highly appealing.

Some contracts are works of erotic fiction: props full of exciting ideas and hot fantasies that we and our partners do not actually intend to hold one another to. The advantage of that sort of contract is that we can let our imagination go wild in writing it, and don't have to get bogged down in details and practicalities. We can claim ownership of our partner's very soul, demand the right to sell them to any party we choose, or stipulate that they will receive thirty lashes every day for the rest of their lives—without having to worry about how realistic or genuinely desirable any of those things would be to put into actual practice.

The other sort of contract is formalized documentation of the container between us and our partner. It represents a personal commitment that we are making to one another, and its provisions are intended to be taken seriously. With this sort of contract it's wise to put content before style (or libido) in writing, and to carefully consider what it would be like to actually live out the rules that we are proposing, day in and day out.

And, of course, it's well worth making sure that we and our partner are on the same page about which sort of contract we're signing!

A Google search for "BDSM contract" will find you sample contracts of many different kinds. Rather than creating one more sample here, I'll take a look into the purpose behind some of the clauses that are commonly included in contracts.

Statement of Intent. Many contracts start with a general statement of intent that puts all the more specific clauses into context. This is a good place for some romance and poetry, even in a more pragmatic, detail-oriented contract.

Term. How long will this contract be in force? You can write a contract just for an evening, a weekend or an event if you like. Even many people in open-ended long-term relationships choose to write their contract for a specific term and to include a way to renew it. That incorporates an automatic provision for renewing and reevaluating the dynamic at some regular interval.

Submissive's Duties. The heart of most contracts is a description of the major duties and responsibilities to which our partner is committing. This can be as general or as specific as you like. Some of us find it erotic to write out (and later read) detailed descriptions of how our partners will be required to submit to us; others prefer a general statement of fealty and obedience and to work out the details outside of the contract.

Dominant's Duties. Very often, a contract will also require some duties of us, most commonly relating to taking care of our partner, making sure their needs are met and that they feel well used.

Major Limits. Along with duties, many contracts include a list of some of the major, known limits of the dynamic that are important either to you or to your partner. If you do include this clause, you may want to make it clear whether or not the list is intended to be exhaustive. Is anything not included on the list presumed to fall within your authority to command?

Forms of Address. One popular way to highlight the new roles that you and your partner are signing up for is to specify new ways that you will address one another. Requiring your partner to refer to you as "Master" or "Madam" or the like will provide a constant reminder that the contract is in force. You may want to spell out details about when formal titles are and are not to be used (should your partner call you "Goddess" in front of your mother?).

Rituals or Tokens. As with forms of address, rituals and tokens can help to make the contract feel real and keep it present in both of your minds. Many of us like to seal our contracts by collaring our partners, and the contract may include rules and expectations for how that collar is to be treated. When will your partner wear your collar? Will it lock and will they have a copy of the key (smart for emergencies)? What is the consequence if they remove it without permission?

Other rituals, like having your partner perform a daily devotional ceremony, or await permission before getting into bed, or always greet you in a specific manner, can serve a similar function.

Communication Mechanisms. Many people choose to include a section in their contract to formalize some channels for communication with their partners. Common options are to require your partner to keep a journal, to create a schedule of regular check-ins between the two of you, or to have a way for your partner to call for a "speak freely" conversation in which any rules about how they speak are lifted and they will not be punished for anything they say. I'll have much more to say about communication in the section on Forging Connection.

Safeword(s). Safewords are a communication tool that merits special mention, and many people choose to include a clause that specifies a safeword for their dynamic, along with an explicit understanding of what it means and how it is to be used.

Provision for Alteration. If your contract is going to last much longer than a week, there's an excellent chance that you'll eventually find something in it that needs changing. Either your relationship will change out from under the contract, or you'll find that some provision doesn't work out in reality as you'd imagined it would. Including a clause on how the contract can be modified will smooth the process of improving your contract and keeping it reflective of your actual needs.

Release. Few of us like to think about our dynamics ending, especially the open-ended ones that we're hoping will last forever. But many, many relationships do end, and the ending of dominance can add a whole extra level of complexity and hurt feelings to an already difficult situation. Spelling out agreements for how both you and your partner plan to handle their release, should it come to pass, can ease that process considerably.

Do you want to commit to having your romantic or intimate relationship as equals survive the end of your D/s dynamic, or is dominance the foundation of your connection to one another? Is there a way in which your partner can end the dynamic without being disobedient or otherwise "bad"? Can you end the dynamic without shame, or are you committing `till death do you part?

Keep it Living

Relationships are moving, changing, living things. It is unrealistic to expect to write a contract that locks down exactly how we and our partner will relate to one another and expect it to remain meaningful for more than a year at the outside. A contract that isn't reexamined, renegotiated and updated every so often tends to drift out of relevance. It becomes a snapshot or memento of how our relationship used to be, rather than a guide for how we're living it now.

It Isn't Legal

D/s contracts are often written in elaborately legalistic language. It's a style that is good for stating meanings very precisely, which is useful in a contract, and the official look of it is often appealing to those of us for whom contracts are sexy. But don't think for a moment that a D/s contract carries any actual legal weight whatsoever. No civilized country's legal system allows individuals to sign themselves into slavery. And that's, you know, probably a good thing.

Part Two: The Work of Dominance

With a core understanding of dominance and consent in place, let's start to look at the skills and qualities that support excellence in dominance. There are many different skills that can be applied to dominance, of course, and many of those are applicable mostly or entirely to particular styles of dominance: excellent posture and a keen ear for grammatical error might be key qualities for those among us whose dominance resembles a stern Victorian schoolmistress, but they are largely irrelevant for most biker daddies or primals.

There are three foundational skills, however, that are essential to every kind of dominance I know of: we find our comfort with practicing dominance, we create safety in our dynamics, and we connect with our submissive partners. Let's take them one at a time.

5. Finding Comfort

A True Story: Awakening

I was probably about twelve years old, lying in my bed, trying to masturbate. I had a fantasy in my head about one of my comic books, in which the male character was reprogramming the female character's mind so that she would have to obey him and crawl on her hands and knees and have all the sex with him that he wanted. But I knew that it was a bad fantasy, and I was worried about not being normal; so I was pushing it aside and trying to get off to a good fantasy instead. I don't remember the details now—probably something about kissing and being in love.

It didn't work.

It never worked, and eventually I stopped trying and accepted that my passion only responded to control and coercion, humiliation, cruelty and—well—dominance. I never imagined that there might be someone who wanted to receive that kind of treatment though, and I didn't yet have the Internet to clue me in. So fantasies had to stay fantasies and I spent my young years lonely and wondering how I would ever find fulfillment in a real relationship. It made me shy. I hid in books and fantasy worlds.

Until one night in my junior year of college, when I was making out with this girl in her dorm room. And she whispered in my ear. And I could have sworn that what she'd said was "Hit me."

Getting Down With Dominance

The first part of the fundamental work of consensual dominance is the internal work of developing our own comfort with exercising dominance. That includes both an ethical comfort with the idea of one person controlling—and perhaps humiliating, punishing, or otherwise roughly using—another, and also confidence in our ability and right to take control ourselves. It is accepting that dominance is an okay thing for a person to do, and also that you are the kind person who can do it.

Acceptance and confidence come by degrees, not all at once. It isn't necessary or likely that you be one hundred percent down with dominance and sure of yourself before you issue your first order, and even those among us who have been practicing dominance for decades sometimes find new levels of ethical understanding of what we do. I had been dominating quite comfortably for years when I met someone who wanted to play casually, wanted to be severely humiliated, and wanted to be kicked out the door at the end with no kind of aftercare whatsoever. And that threw me for a loop. Reconnection with my partner after humiliation or other cruelty was part of how I'd always assured myself that what I was doing was ethical, and I'd never thought through how to do without it.

I see some of us dominate without really being down with it, looking something like the neurotic Edward E. Gray from the movie version of Secretary: sometimes tentative and sometimes full of brittle bluster. It leads to inconsistency, anxiety and sometimes biting off more than we can chew in an attempt to prove something to others or to ourselves. It also leads to transgressing others' boundaries, because when we aren't comfortable ourselves, then we have a harder time reading the comfort of other people. If we don't have a clear understanding of what we think is right, then we have a harder time recognizing what is wrong.

The deeper our comfort with the idea of dominance in general, with the specific styles of dominance that we want to practice, and with ourselves occupying the dominant role, the more easily dominance will come to us. Being comfortable allows us to act and speak naturally and gracefully, it allows us to clearly communicate what we want and to hear rejection without getting defensive, it allows our creativity to flow freely, and it is infectious: being comfortable ourselves inspires comfort in those around us.

Conflict with Ourselves

A desire to dominate often creates conflicts within us. Conflicts with our sense of right and wrong ("Am I a tool of the patriarchy?"), conflicts with our other desires ("I want to support my beloved partner and I also want to degrade them."), conflicts with our fears and insecurities ("I want to be called a goddess, who will possibly take that seriously?"). Conflicts reveal themselves in different ways: as hesitation to ask for what we really want, as things that we'll do when turned on or intoxicated but will not want to talk about afterward, or as voices in our head that say the things we want aren't okay.

Those voices aren't always saying that our desires are evil or abusive either. Sometimes the judgment is that what we want is too weird or too silly or even that it isn't extreme enough, and sometimes the parts of our desires that we fear are goofy or sappy or dull can be even harder to come to terms with than the dark and scary ones. I've been guilty of staging an intense SM session with a partner when what I really wanted was to watch a movie with her curled up at my feet: I thought that watching a movie when I could be beating a bitch would make me boring or less impressive in her eyes. But dominance thrives when we ask for what we really want, not for what it's safe to want.

That doesn't mean that those voices are always wrong, though, or that the answer is to just ignore them. For one thing, simply deciding to ignore our conflicts rarely works. Most often it leads to building up a brittle facade that everything is okay, and brittle facades eventually crack. For another thing, that nagging mental voice might actually have a good point! Dominance treads in delicate territories, and it does have the potential to violate our own sense of right and wrong or to do damage to our other values and priorities. The goal is not to ignore the voices of warning but to resolve them—to understand the priorities behind the conflicts we feel, and find a path forward that is congruent with all of our needs and values.

My first experiences of dominance, though not consensual dominance, were with my father, who drove away everyone he ever loved with his relentless need for control. I have an early memory of him ordering me to get into the car and refusing to tell me where we were going or why. He wanted his children to do as he told them without having to know why, and saw having to explain himself as a challenge to his authority. Nowadays I think that sounds like it could be a pretty fun game to play with a partner who was into it, but it was a process for me to come to see the difference between consensual dominance and abusive control, and to develop confidence that I could play with the line between the two without slipping over.

For me, that line is drawn not only by active consent from my partner, but also by my own conviction that my domination is good for them. To feel okay about what I'm doing, I have to be confident that it is going to leave them fulfilled in their own desires, with memories of a positive experience and generally better off than if I hadn't dominated them. That means that I may choose not to do something with a partner even if I think it sounds hot and they want me to do it, because I judge it too likely that it will turn out to have been a bad thing for them in retrospect.

Your criteria for delineating right from wrong, and more generally for resolving conflicts with your dominant desires, may differ from mine. The important thing is that you have them, that you are able to elucidate them clearly, and that you really believe in them. Having a consistent ethical framework for our actions is a foundation for acting decisively and with confidence, and for avoiding actions that we will later regret. This is particularly important for dominance because dominance is full of temptation, and those actions we later regret can easily hurt the people we play with, destroying our most valued relationships as well as tarnishing our reputations in our communities.

There may be some parts of our desires around dominance that are more difficult for us to come to terms with than others. Perhaps being a nice, nurturing daddy is comfortable, but we can't see how it could be okay to actually go through with our other fantasies of extreme dehumanization. It's a legitimate choice to decide that some aspects of our desires can't be engaged in a way that we're okay with, and to leave them in the realm of fantasy.

If we have scary places that we do want to explore, it's wise to start small and walk down that road slowly and carefully. We can create boundaries to dip our toes into edgy experiences in a way that feels safe for both us and our partner. It's a time when putting a lot of thought into a strong container will pay off handsomely.

Part of me is super turned on by the idea of genuinely, intentionally selfish sex—using my partner as a masturbatory aid without giving the slightest attention to their pleasure, and having them thank me for making them useful when I'm done. At the same time, it's really important to me that my partners be sexually fulfilled by our relationship overall, and I hate the idea that I might come across as a lazy lover, or as thoughtlessly selfish. So when I do play with selfishness, there are two pieces that I always have in my container. First, that selfish use happens only occasionally, with plenty of mutually satisfying play in between. And second, that it always begins with a clear statement of intent, so that my partner knows I'm doing this to them with thoughtful care rather than just being a clod.

Another amazingly powerful help for resolving conflicts is finding a partner who is comfortably, happily, eagerly into whatever it is that we're feeling conflict over. This is especially powerful for those conflicts that taste like shame, or lead us to fear that our desires are silly or unattractive. Wanting to make our partner wear a diaper or wanting to roleplay being a vicious werewolf might be difficult not so much because they seem ethically wrong, but because we fear they are laughable. And if we're feeling pressure to live up to some kind of ideal of the big-bad dominant, it can feel shameful to acknowledge that really what we want is just to be called "Daddy" in bed from time to time.

The wonderful thing is that there are people out there who absolutely love to submit to each one of those things, and people who want whatever other "weird" desire we might feel conflict about. Finding those people and hearing their enthusiasm can do wonders for finding comfort around desires that had felt shameful.

Claiming Our Place

Many of us also wrestle with the kind of internalized voices that tell us that while the kind of dominance we want may be both ethical and awesome, we aren't the kind of person who can do it.

One True Way messages certainly reinforce these doubts, by creating exclusionary barriers and requirements for who can be a "real dom," or pushing theories about which gender or personality type is naturally suited to dominance.

Much of it goes deeper than that, though, bringing in attitudes and insecurities that we've picked up from our upbringings or from the larger culture.

Gender looms large. Depending on which currents of the culture we swim in we may have absorbed messages that it isn't appropriate for women to take dominant roles or that it is irreducibly violent and abusive for a man to be dominant. Or, you know, both.

Cultural messages about disability are tremendously stifling, often forcing those of us with mental or physical disabilities to fight just to claim our place as sexual beings, let alone to dominate. And race can be as toxic around the practice of dominance as it is everywhere else in society, whether we're a black man afraid of perpetuating the "thug" stereotype, a white man wrestling with the legacy of oppression around the word "Master," or an Asian woman facing ingrained cultural expectations of submissiveness.

And then there are the personal insecurities, unrelated to cultural hot buttons but no less potent for those of us who struggle with them. Perhaps we're too young or too old, or not attractive enough or not strong enough, or not rich enough or creative enough or experienced enough. Maybe we've learned that asking for what we want and getting our way makes us greedy, or that accepting service would mean we aren't self-reliant.

Take the sentence "I deserve to dominate" and roll it around in your head. Is there part of you that flinches away from that statement? Are there voices that object? Investigating those voices, understanding them, and making peace with them is one of the most effective things we can do to become better at dominance.

Being a member of the San Francisco Bay Area's crazy quilt of kinky communities has given me the privilege of knowing all kinds of people who practice dominance to the satisfaction of their partners and themselves: men and women and other, young and old, formally trained and self taught, extroverted and shy, thin and fat and in-between, marketing executives and baristas and teamsters. That experience has been a great help to me in making peace with my own perfectionist streak and the voice that tells me I'm not bold, intelligent, or creative enough to deserve to dominate. It also lets me say with certainty that dominance is not the exclusive province of any one kind of person.

I won't lie to you: things like money, health, good looks, a glib tongue and fitting into a popular age range make it considerably easier to find partners and get recognition in kinky communities, just as they do in other kinds of communities. But they aren't what makes a person good at dominance. Dominating well is a matter of desire, attention, confidence, and some skills that the vast majority of people are capable of learning.

The Value of Humility

Perhaps it's counterintuitive, but humility is one of the most useful virtues for developing confidence. If we are afraid that we do not deserve to dominate, for whatever reason, it can be tempting to overcompensate: to try to be the hardest, baddest domliest person in the room in order to deflect questioning from others and silence our own internal doubts. If we believe that no one will submit to someone inexperienced in dominance, then faking more experience, wisdom or resources than we actually have might seem like the only possible way to get started.

But puffing ourselves up does not lead to finding comfort in practicing dominance. What it tends to do is create bigger and bigger expectations, leaving us feeling even more insecure than before as we try to prop up the grand mirage we've created. The road to comfort and confidence begins with giving ourselves permission to be flawed and limited and human, and presenting ourselves exactly as we are, while also practicing dominance.

Own your mistakes, admit your doubts, and don't try to hide your vulnerability. It may mean that you get fewer first dates and fewer invitations to hardcore play parties, but you'll get more second dates and be invited back more often. The people who choose to submit to you will be submitting to you, not to a fantasy image of what you think you need to be, and few things are more inspiring of confidence than having someone see you in all your humanity and still get down on their knees.

One caveat: for humility to be true humility, and work its subtle magic, we must also be accepting of the flaws and humanity of others. If we are looking for someone to submit to us while accepting our inexperience or our average appearance or our hangups or whatever other imperfections we may have, we don't get to expect them to be an ideal submissive with a perfect body, no baggage and no responsibilities to distract them from kneeling worshipfully at our feet twenty-four hours a day.

6. Creating Safety

"A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally."

- Oscar Wilde

Safety is a universal prerequisite for submission. That might sound odd, given how often people are looking for some kind of thrill of danger in their submission: challenges that are difficult to meet, a cruel partner who might hurt them at any time, the threat of discipline for small infractions, the fearful anticipation of being dragged off to play without knowing what's in store for them. But on a deeper level, there's a kind of safety that every submissive I've ever known has needed in order to submit. And the scarier or more dangerous the play, the more profound that safety has to be.

Safety in submission comes from being confident that one's partner will see and accept them for who they truly are, will understand and meet their submissive needs, and will be competent to handle the control they surrender.

And that safety has to come first, chronologically speaking. Until someone feels safe expressing their submissive desires to us or around us, none of our other fabulous skills at dominance can be brought into play. In fact, until someone feels safe with us, any attempts at acting dominant over them are likely to be received as boorish at best or assaultive at worst.

I'm not talking about coddling our partners or keeping our play light and nonthreatening. By all means threaten, play hard, and take the risks that are worth it to both you and your partner. I'm saying that to get to that kind of play, our partners must first feel deep-down safe with us. I'll break down in more detail what that means and how to go about it.

Desire Is Vulnerability

Here's another great life truth that has special application to dominance: desire is vulnerability (I could also make an argument that all vulnerability stems from desire.) To want something is to face the threat of not getting it, or of having it taken away. Remember the awful bottom-dropping-out feeling when you realized that a great dream of yours might never be realized? Think about the incredible nervousness that most people feel when they ask someone they're crushing over for a date. Notice how much people fret over whether their desires are too much or too weird or too silly or too whatever.

Opening up to someone about our desires, about the depth and importance of them, is a little like handing them a stick that they could choose to use to beat us with. Our desires can be used as levers to pressure our behavior or toy with our feelings. Having our desires belittled or treated with disgust hurts us where we feel soft. That's why everyone learns, to a greater or lesser degree, to play it cool: to feign disinterest, to hide our desires behind social armor.

Desire—deep, tender, taboo desire—is also the stuff of which dominance is made. So to practice dominance we must learn to be masters of handling vulnerability. The rest of this chapter is devoted to dealing with the vulnerability of our partners, but first let's talk about our own vulnerability.

We dominants are very often called upon to be the ones driving our relationships with clearly and boldly expressed desire. That is actually a position of great vulnerability. It tends to be our job to say "I want you to suck my cock every morning before you are allowed to put on clothes," and face the risk of our partner thinking "Ugh, all that horndog ever wants is sex." Or to say "Now you will take ten from the crop!" and face the risk of our partner thinking "What a lightweight. I could take so much more."

This vulnerability can be daunting, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't acknowledge it. It isn't strong or dominant to be invulnerable. In fact there is a great strength to be found in vulnerability. We find that strength when we're able to share our desire with full awareness of how it opens us up. When we're comfortable and confident enough, sure enough of ourselves and our value, then we can hear "No," or even hear "Eww, that's gross," without being crushed. If we have that strength, then our confidence in opening up about our desires can serve as inspiration and permission for our partners to follow suit, and can lead to stronger connection and deeper dominance.

Safety In Being Seen

In the chapter on Understanding Consent, I talked about how submissive desire is often scary, conflicted and above all vulnerable, and how part of the work of dominance is helping our partners to accept and express those challenging desires. We do that by showing that it is safe for them to let us see their submission.

All desire is vulnerability, but some desires are more vulnerable than others. Being seen as submissive is taboo, "dirty," and widely mistaken for weakness—which means that admitting submissive desire is likely lead to people trying to take advantage of you and scorning you while they do it. Many people who hold submissive desires have had those desires buried under a lifetime of internalized shame. And even those who feel at peace with their own desires have learned as a practical matter to be very careful about how and to whom they expose those parts of themselves. That's why part of the work of dominance is to make it safe for people with submissive desires to let us see their submissive selves.

This revelation of submissive desire comes in layers. Go to any kinky event and you're likely to see someone casually introduce themselves as submissive to people they've just met. But that's a very superficial exposure of their desires. They haven't gone into depth about their desires, and they haven't really invited those new friends to look at them as submissive, to engage with their submissive nature. There's a common slogan in kink communities that perfectly illustrates the difference: "I may be a submissive, but I'm not your submissive." To dominate, we're going to need to get down into a deeper and more personal connection with someone's desire to submit. So don't think that we're done when someone is willing to say "Yes, I'm submissive." It's an ever-deepening process, and we can always go a bit deeper.

As an aside, notice how one of the main functions of kinky community is to provide a basic level of safety for folks to express their kinky natures: vanishingly few people would make that same "Hi, I'm Tom and I'm submissive" introduction when meeting their neighbors.

Establishing safety for our partners to let us see their submission is the first task of dominance. But it isn't like we do it once at the beginning, and then it's done and we can forget about it. We keep doing it, deeper bit by bit, for as long as we are engaged in a D/s connection with someone. Someone on a first kinky date might open up enough to invite us to connect with some of their easier submissive desires, while still holding back their darkest and most tender fantasies for when and if they are more sure of us. So we keep looking for new ways to enable our partners to open a little bit further, by searching for ways to give them greater confidence that we will accept their submissive desires—and, in doing so, accept them. We don't have to share every desire they have, or agree to fulfill every fantasy; we just have to see them accurately, without judgment and without expectations.

How to Create Safety In Being Seen

First check in with yourself. Are you really a safe person for someone with submissive desires to open up to? Do you believe that people who have more extreme kinks than your own are sick? Do you feel superior to people who have less extreme kinks? Do you think that submissiveness is a sign of weakness or pathology? How would you feel about people thinking of you as submissive?

Take the sentence "I wish I could be submissive" and roll it around in your head. If that's difficult or uncomfortable for you to sit with, you may have some attitudes or beliefs that are making it harder for people with submissive desires to feel safe sharing them with you. You don't have to actually wish you could be submissive, but if you feel yourself forcefully recoiling from the idea then try and uncover the judgments behind that reaction. You're probably applying those same judgments to people who you engage with as submissives, and they're probably noticing.

How do you think that submissives ought to relate to dominants? Frankly, if you have any ideas about how submissives in general and dominants in general ought to behave toward one another that may very well be an impediment. It may mean that you can't see someone as submissive without running your own script about how that means they ought to behave, and how you get to behave towards them. Give space for people to have submissive desires without that changing how you treat them and what you expect from them.

Learn to treat people as people, rather than as dominants or submissives until and unless you've explicitly entered into a D/s dynamic with them. And even once you are in such a dynamic, keep on listening to what submitting to you means to them. Set your expectations based on what both of you want and have agreed to, rather than any One True Way of how a submissive ought to be.

This can be especially challenging when our own deeply felt desires around dominance come into play. That's when we need to pay extra-close attention to hearing what the person in front of us is really telling us about themselves, rather than what we wish they were telling us about themselves. I have a great love of objectification and debasement in my dominance, and it's challenging for me to really hear when the smoking hot woman I've been flirting with tells me that she wants to be pampered and praised when she submits.

Seeing that woman accurately, and being safe for her to open up to, means fully accepting that that is what submission is for her. I don't get to project my own desires onto her. If I try to tell her that she's submitting wrong, or harbor a secret hope that once we start playing she'll "really submit" in the way that I want to be submitted to, or otherwise brush aside what she says she is and instead see her as the partner I want her to be, we are headed for trouble. Perhaps she and I are not well matched for a D/s relationship. If so, how nice to recognize that earlier rather than later.

The same principle applies to the power, depth and meaning of other people's desires. If someone is telling you that they have a desire to be taken over a partner's lap and spanked, listen not just to the fact that they want it, but to what it means for them to want it. A desire that sounds tame or routine to you may feel deeply, vulnerably submissive to them—and if you treat that desire lightly they will not feel safe with you. Hear and respect the power of their feeling, even if it seems outsized. You don't have to understand or share in the strength of their feelings; just accept them.

Pay special attention to feelings of privacy around submissive desires. Remember that submission is weird and sexual and "weak" and hugely stigmatized. Someone who has opened up to you about this frighteningly vulnerable desire is probably going to want you to be very careful about how you share what you know. And it's easiest to make a mistake with those things that are no big deal to you but meaningful to them: that little over-the-lap spanking that you thought of as a bit of light entertainment at the dungeon and tweeted about without thinking twice might represent an appalling breach of privacy for them. The best practice is to share nothing with anyone until you are absolutely certain that the person who shared it with you approves. Ask.

Once you have established some degree of D/s dynamic with a partner, you can reaffirm and deepen their feeling of safety with you by reflecting their submission back to them and showing them how much you cherish and enjoy it. Let them know that you see what they've shown you, and that you approve. You don't have to fawn all over them—you can show your appreciation in dominant ways. Tell them what they are to you, be that a fuckdoll or a cherished pet. Describe back to them the submissive desires that they've shared with you, without judgment, and they'll know that it's safe to share more. Be careful, though, to point out and reflect back to someone only the submission that they have given you permission to engage with; it can be creepy to have someone focus on submissive bits of yourself that you haven't agreed to share with them.

Imagine that someone has agreed to be in service to you for an evening at a party—fetching drinks, rubbing feet and being charming arm candy. Commenting with pleasure on the enthusiasm with which they snap to attention when summoned could acknowledge the submission that they have agreed to share, letting them know that you see the submission they are giving you and you approve of it. But even if their fetish dating profile lists "deep humiliation" as something they enjoy, unless they've opened up to you about that part of themselves and given their assent for you to engage with it, comments like "I bet you'd love being spat on by everyone at this party" would probably be counterproductive. Even if they really might love being spat on by everyone at the party, they might feel very threatened by having you pry into that desire before they've felt safe enough to share it with you.

And one final advanced dominant judo move: to create safety for someone else to be vulnerable with you, be vulnerable yourself. Match their sharing of their desires by sharing your own desires, fears and feelings in about the same measure. Tell them how invested you are in what you're doing together; share your insecurities; tell them what you really truly want right now, not what your ideal image of a dominant would want right now.

That means taking off the Mighty Dominant facade and showing them the human underneath, which may feel scary or counterintuitive when what you want to do is establish dominance. It works, though. What you're really doing is leading by example. You demonstrate courageous vulnerability yourself, and thereby encourage them to do the same. And you let them know that you are down in the sexy, dirty, scary game of D/s with them, rather than standing above it looking down.

Safety of Intent

The second piece of establishing safety is having good intent toward those who submit to you, and letting them know that you do: letting them know that their well-being and satisfaction are priorities to you. When you dominate someone, you are taking charge of their experience—an experience around which they likely have some powerful desires and big fears. To feel safe being taken on that journey with you, your partner needs to know that you care about their experience.

Certainly this begins with respecting their stated limits, but that's far from the whole story. Really having good intent requires more than not breaking rules or violating boundaries; it requires that you engage your brain and your empathy toward understanding your partner's limits and their needs, and that you sincerely try to do right by them.

That's a higher bar than just not meaning them harm. It means that you take an active and positive interest in making sure that the D/s you do together meets their needs so that they can have an experience that is not just un-harmful, but satisfying. Fulfilling. Hot. Ecstatic.

This means that, deep down, dominance isn't just about us getting what we want. Which gets interesting (and complicated)—because on the surface D/s is very much about us getting whatever we want.

I had a partner with whom I used to go out to dinner quite frequently. When we went out, I wouldn't ask her input or even tell her where we were going—I just took her to wherever I wanted to eat that evening. So on one level, it was absolutely true that I got whatever restaurant I wanted and that what she wanted for dinner wasn't important. But on a deeper level, she got a big, hot satisfaction out of giving up control (or even knowledge) of where she was being taken. And I knew it, and she knew I knew it. And that's why it worked.

If she'd thought I was just a selfish dolt who didn't care what she wanted, and that I wasn't appreciating her surrender or didn't care about how it fulfilled her needs, then she wouldn't have felt good or safe letting me take that control. Dominance doesn't always call for being traditionally nice, kind or considerate to your partner, but it does always call for consciously intending to use them well. And what "using them well" means in practice varies widely from one partner to another.

If you've done much reading or talking about BDSM, you've probably received plenty of messages about how you need to respect the limits and boundaries of your partners and be careful not to go too far. So I want to emphasize that that's only half of what I'm talking about here. Having a good intent toward your partner also means making it a priority to go far enough. Being safe in handing over your experience to someone else means being confident that they won't abuse you, of course—but it also means being confident that they will give you an experience that meets your needs.

A person with a strong desire to be of service will want some confidence that you understand that need, and that you sincerely intend to provide them with opportunities to serve. A person with a need for discipline is not going to feel safe submitting to someone who they don't trust to make a consistent practice of monitoring and correcting their behavior.

A complaint that I have heard over and over again from people who desire to submit is about entering into a scene or a relationship with a person who claims to intend to dominate them, and finding that instead of getting the control or humiliation or service that they crave, they get spanked a couple of times and then fucked. And that's it. Their submissive needs go unfulfilled, and they may feel angry, hurt, betrayed or otherwise ill-used.

Their unsatisfying partners didn't necessarily intend to use them poorly. They may have failed to understand the nature of their partner's needs, or might have been having a bad night—distracted, low energy, or emotionally off—and decided to bull ahead and try to dominate anyway. Or they might have been suffering under the "Kneel, Bitch" misconception that real dominants just do what they want with no consideration of their partners. But regardless of the underlying reasons, they did not establish trust in their intent to dominate, and their unsatisfied partner is unlikely to come back for more.

How to Create Safety of Intent

Do you see how, to be able do right by your partner, you first have to have an intimate insight into their submissive desires? You have to know what it means to use this particular person well. That's why safety in being seen comes first.

To extend that insight into safety in intent, start by seeking clarity on what your intent really is. What is your purpose in this scene, in this relationship or, most importantly, in this moment? There are probably several simultaneous answers to that question; we're complex creatures and we rarely have only a single priority on our minds. The relevant pieces of the puzzle are whether or not your partner's safety and well-being are a higher priority than using them for your own gratification, and whether your partner's satisfaction is at least on the list.

Certainly our own satisfaction has a place in our intent as well. One of the great joys of submissive partners is that often it works just fine for us to prioritize our own gratification above their comfort, convenience, whims or preferences. But we don't get to prioritize that gratification above their safety, above making sure that they're okay and fundamentally fulfilled.

If your partner says to you "I'm not okay; I need your help," I trust that you are going to set your fun on the back burner for the moment and help them. But will you be able to do it with an open heart and sincere good will? Or will it be a grudging attitude of "stupid sub with their stupid feelings ruining my fun?" Because that attitude will show through.

People in the midst of submission tend to be reluctant to ask for help or support or leniency in any case, out of fear that doing so would be un-pleasing, and that makes them correspondingly sensitive to any sign of disapproval from you. If they sense that you regard taking care of them when they really need it as a chore rather than a priority, they will feel less safe submitting to you.

And what about when the case is not so clear? Your partner hasn't explicitly said they aren't okay, they haven't safeworded and you aren't crossing any explicit limit, but you see signs that they aren't feeling good? Maybe you notice that their breathing is anxious and shallow, or that their body has turned tense, or maybe you just see in their eyes that they've gone to a bad place. What will you do then? Will you ignore those signals and carry on with your own agenda, because it's their responsibility to safeword and you'd rather get your way than take care of them?

No list of limits, or safeword, or any other cunning device will ever substitute for our responsibility to care for our partners. It's true that everyone in this world is responsible for their own needs and for communicating them, but it's also true that you are responsible for doing your best to do right by your partner. Use your empathy to perceive how they really are; don't use a list of limits as an excuse to shut your eyes, or rely on a safeword to tell you when to stop. When you demonstrate that you are paying attention to how they are and what they need, that creates safety in intent.

The other side of safety of intent is that our partners come with needs that they are looking to get satisfied—both directly submissive needs like "I need to feel powerless" or "I need firm guidance and lots of structure," and also related needs like "I need to be dominated by someone who I know loves me" or "I'm new and I don't know for sure how I'll react to all this. I need someone who's committed to help me through it if I freak out." To be safe dominant partners we have to understand their needs and actually intend to satisfy them.

It can be terribly tempting to dominate anyone who throws themselves at our feet, but to build this sort of safety we need to be choosy. We need to find out a bit about what kind of submission this person is wanting, what kind of needs they bring with them, and then look for a way that their needs can fit with the ways in which we'd enjoy using them.

So talk with prospective partners about what they need from the dominance they're seeking, and be honest and as specific as you can about how you would want to dominate them. Then, as the relationship evolves, continue seeking out their needs and communicating honestly about your own interests. The later sections on Flavors of Dominance provide a rough map for talking about different kinds of D/s desires and dynamics, and finding fits for needs directly related to dominance.

Avoid the trap of thinking that because this person is submissive you'll be able to override or train them out of a need that you don't want to meet. A hugely common example is taking someone who wants deep submission only in the context of a monogamous relationship, and thinking that once they're trained to obey you, they'll come to joyous acceptance of Daddy's prerogative to play with other girls. That kind of thinking is likely to lead to nothing but grief for both of you. We can train our partners' preferences and habits in all kinds of delightful ways, but a real need is nearly impossible to intentionally change.

Not that people's needs never change; they often do. There have been plenty of people who needed monogamy when they began their submission and later found that they were comfortable with or even desired to see their dominant partner connect with others. If that's going to happen though, it usually happens organically—after their comfort has deepened from seeing plenty of evidence that their partner truly, fully accepts and honors their need for monogamy and isn't trying to change it.

Our goal is to find a fit—a D/s arrangement that is fulfilling both for us and for our partner. It doesn't need to be a perfect fit, but it must be good enough that we both feel fed by the dynamic. And if we don't find that fit, then the best course is to have the integrity to admit that, and not try to dominate that person.

I know that can be harsh advice if the person we're talking about is someone who you already have a relationship with. But I've seen many people try to make themselves into something they didn't really want to be in order to become the dominant or the submissive that their partner wanted, and I've always seen it end in disappointment. Eventually, a role that doesn't feed our real needs wears us out. I believe that it's better to face a smaller disappointment earlier than let it grow into a bigger one later.

Finally, consider the kind of intent that you display in your interactions with other people, or even in the way you treat objects. If you want to demonstrate that you are safe to serve, be polite and appropriate with service staff wherever you go. If you want a potential submissive to feel safe becoming your possession, show them that you take excellent care of your other possessions. If you want someone to feel safe being in your power, deal fairly with everyone who is less powerful than you. If you can show good intent—compassion, dependability, generosity, thoughtfulness—throughout the way you live your life, you will make yourself an easy person to submit to.

Competence

The final component of providing safety is competence: giving your partner confidence that not only do you understand their submissive needs and mean to do right by them, but that you possess the skills necessary to do so. If that sends your mind leaping to your flogging technique, you aren't alone—but while flogging and caning and tying knots are closely associated with dominance, they are not core skills for being competent at dominance itself. Sometimes elaborate kinky technique can even be a distraction.

BDSM porn gets more amazing all the time, with skilled performers, higher and higher production values, an amazing panoply of specialized props, and each shoot striving to outdo the last in physical intensity and technical complexity. Not uncommonly, the premise of a shoot will involve D/s, with titles like "Training Slaves" or "Master Punishes His Naughty Submissive," and I'm afraid this might be giving people the impression that the way to actually train your partner to submit is to singletail clamps off their genitals while they're intricately bound in three hundred feet of rope and suspended by their ears with their feet on fire. But while that might make great television, it has little or nothing to do with actually training someone to serve and obey. Certainly, it is important to get the training and the practice to become competent before trying any of those kinky techniques, but many of us dominate with depth and power without ever picking up a flogger.

The skills most important to actual dominance do not make great television. At heart dominance is about interpersonal control, and interpersonal control is about relationships. The core skills of dominance are personal and relationship skills: how you handle yourself and how you connect with others.

Personal competence means having the thoughtfulness to consider the long-term consequences of your actions and the discipline to consistently behave in accordance with your principles and reasoned aims. It means having the emotional competence to neither fly off the handle nor retreat into a shell in challenging situations. It means owning your own feelings and knowing how to avoid dumping your baggage on others.

Interpersonal competence means being competent at expressing your needs and hearing the needs of others. It means being good at reading moods and taking social cues. It means knowing how to listen and how to make yourself understood, how to build and maintain relationships, how to speak difficult truths and how to show that you care.

A lack of these skills will shine through clearly in our everyday actions, and those who we might wish to dominate will notice and react negatively, possibly without even realizing it. If we are habitually late to dates and appointments, with excuses on our lips, how can they believe us to be organized and together enough to provide them with structure? If we lose our temper in bad traffic, how can they feel confident that we'll control our anger when we are dominating them? If they see us blindly trampling on someone else's boundaries at a party or a bar, they how can they feel safe letting us push or play with their own boundaries? If we are awkward or avoidant about having conversations that feel uncomfortable, how can they feel safe sharing things that are difficult for them?

And even if we're pretty good at these things, for dominance it's useful to be a master of them—because D/s dynamics tend to demand far more personal and interpersonal competence than the average relationship. In much of life, it's enough to know how to recognize emotional edges (our own and those of others) and steer clear of them, but when doing D/s we often want to push right up against those edges and intentionally play with them. In most friendships it's sufficient to understand that our crying friend would probably like to be comforted, but in D/s dynamics things are not always so simple.

A relationship where your partner surrenders control of how they dress or what they eat, of their finances or their career, perhaps even of when they get to use the bathroom, calls for a degree of organization and responsibility above and beyond basic competence.

So having excellent personal and interpersonal competence is what allows you to translate your good intent into effective dominance. To make decisions consciously, constructively and with awareness of their repercussions. To only make promises and threats that you really mean, and to follow through on them consistently. To have insight into your partner's internal state and to act with an awareness of how your words and actions will impact them. To set out expectations and commands clearly and confidently. To have the self-control, the sensitivity and the good judgment to only ever hurt your partner when and how you intend to.

How to Build Competence

The sort of core life competence we're talking about here is often envisioned as a kind of innate "moral fiber" that someone either has or doesn't, established early on by good or bad parenting or accumulated through some kind of osmosis over a long and challenging life. I don't think any of those are true.

I think that there are skills—specific, learnable, trainable skills—that we can work on to become better at being a more self-aware and reliable person, more socially apt, and a better intimate communicator, and thus a safer person to submit to. There isn't one magic bullet or comprehensive program (though many people will try to sell you one). Rather there are different skills that we can hone to improve emotional competence, responsibility and social presence.

Give some honest thought to where you're weaker and where you're stronger, and look for ways to improve the weak spots. Here are some ideas for disciplines that I have found helpful in developing different aspects of competence.

Emotional Competence

A great place to start is emotional competence. That's learning to recognize, talk about and take ownership of our own feelings. Emotional competence provides the bedrock foundation for being able to ask for what we want, to communicate clearly and cleanly, and to build relationships that are long on intimacy and trust and short on strife and manipulation.

There are many disciplines out there that teach emotional competence. One that many have found useful is called Nonviolent Communication, which may not sound like a great fit for relationships where one partner regularly ties the other one up and beats them. Don't be put off by the title, though: it's wonderfully applicable to many D/s dynamics. The NVC model is my favorite technique for teaching submissive partners how to speak their minds to me in a way that's both clear and scrupulously respectful.

It can also be helpful to find opportunities to talk about dominance and about our dynamics and relationships with people with whom we aren't trying to engage in D/s. Because D/s is taboo, it is often secret, and we can be left with no one who can listen to us, sympathize, or provide outside perspective. This is why it can be particularly helpful to have friends and confidants who are also interested in dominance, and so have a better understanding of where we're coming from. Discussion groups are perfect venues for finding this kind of non-sexual peer community, and exist both online and in person. Shop around until you find one that fits you.

And if you are facing the challenge of being out of touch with, or out of control of, your emotions, you may find it worthwhile to hire a professional. Many therapists and life coaches specialize in helping people improve their grasp on their emotions, thus making more decisions they can be proud of, and leading to more satisfying relationships. Look in the resources section for guidance in finding professionals who are knowledgeable about and accepting of BDSM.

Responsibility

By responsibility I mean being competent at following through: at doing what you said you were going to do, when you said you were going to do it. Even more than other pieces of personal competency, responsibility tends to be talked about in terms of morality or character: you may hear that some people are good, responsible people and some people are just plain irresponsible, lazy or scatterbrained.

The belief that you are constitutionally incapable of keeping your promises, or doing your fair share, or remembering that you haven't let your submissive orgasm for a week, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That kind of thinking doesn't offer a path to improvement. But if you think of being responsible as mostly a matter of prioritization and organization, well, those are habits that can be developed.

You can start that work with something as simple as a sticky note on your bathroom mirror that reads "What are my responsibilities today?" When you seen the note it's your reminder to pause for a moment, take stock of your priorities, and make a plan that will give you your best chance of accomplishing them.

Anyone who wants to dominate will also benefit from keeping a calendar. It's so easy, and so powerfully effective at improving your reliability, that there's just no reason not to. Whether paper or electronic, make sure it can be at your fingertips at all times, and record every commitment that you make.

If I tell a partner that they must complete a task by an appointed date, I add a note for that date into my calendar immediately. If I give a partner a rule that has no particular deadline, I still pick a day when I'm going to check back in to see how they're doing with the rule, and add a note to my calendar to make sure I remember to do it. An electronic calendar can give you a reminder an hour before your date is scheduled to begin, so that you can stop being habitually half an hour late.

Responsibility also includes facing your mistakes and doing what you can to fix them. I don't advise this out of selfless nobility, but because owning up to and dealing with a mistake is almost always better for you in the long run than trying to cover it up or ignore it. Unresolved screwups have a way of festering, and the excuses or lies or other contortions required to keep them under the rug end up causing far more pain and difficulty than facing them directly.

If you aren't already a believer in this principle, you can build confidence in it by practicing with small faults and fuckups—ones that don't risk too much hurt or humiliation to face head on. Pick one and try dealing with it in the most straightforward fashion possible. Pay attention to how well that works and how it feels to have the issue acknowledged and truly resolved, then try the same approach with a slightly bigger and scarier failing. Once you really appreciate how much better it works to own your faults, I think that doing so will become the obvious choice.

Interpersonal Awareness

You don't have to be the life of the party or a great orator or the kind of person who takes the lead in groups in order to be good at dominance. You do have to be socially competent in the sense of perceiving the cues that other people are giving you about their moods, their desires and most importantly about their boundaries; and knowing how to respond appropriately.

People with poor interpersonal awareness are often perceived by others as threatening not because they have malicious intent but because they might do harm accidentally, like a bull in an emotional china shop. If someone makes fun of you at a moment when you are feeling vulnerable, it hurts, right? It hurts even if they didn't realize you were feeling vulnerable and didn't mean to be hurtful.

So most people do not feel safe expressing the kind of deep vulnerability required for submission around someone who they do not trust to be interpersonally aware: who doesn't appear to recognize their boundaries, who stands too close, who keeps talking long after they stop giving encouraging responses, who makes a coarse joke in a tender moment.

Working to improve social awareness starts with deciding to be consciously aware of other people, and particularly of how they are reacting to you. When you're interacting with someone, make it a habit to intentionally ask yourself, "Do I know how this person is feeling right now? Do I know what they want? Can I tell how comfortable they are?"

If you aren't confident that the answer is "yes," focus your attention on finding out. Stop planning the next witty thing you're going to say, and just look at the person you're with. What expression do they have on their face? Are they smiling or not? Are they making eye contact with you, or are they looking around for a way to escape? Are they leaning towards you, to get closer and catch what you have to say? Or are they edging back, trying to gain a comfortable distance? If you stop talking and allow them to speak, what do they say?

Another way to work on your awareness is to realize that we are most likely to be oblivious to other people when we aren't comfortable ourselves. It's harder to find that spare attention to devote to how everyone else is feeling if you are worried about fitting in, or desperate to make a good impression. So you can improve others' comfort around you by getting comfortable yourself.

If you can, arrange to engage in D/s—particularly deep levels of D/s, or D/s with a new partner—in times and environments where you are comfortable and at ease. If there is a BDSM community that you are interested in being part of, work at becoming comfortable there.

And finally, don't be afraid to solicit feedback on how well you're doing and how other people perceive you. Friends and partners see us from the outside and can provide invaluable mirrors in which to see ourselves, but most won't volunteer any impressions that aren't flattering.

So ask. Make it clear that you really want their honest perspective to help your ability to socialize and connect with others, and that any constructive criticism would be doing you a service. Then, you know, actually listen to what they tell you.

Dominating on the Spectrum

Interpersonal awareness tends to be especially challenging for those of us who are on the autism spectrum, or when playing with partners who are on the spectrum. One friend of mine with Asperger's syndrome has been dominating for over a decade. He's put a great deal of effort into learning to read body language and to display it in ways that will communicate his own state to his neurotypical partners. That conscious learning and practice of cues has been partly successful, but he still also uses frequent, explicit, verbal checking in to maintain his understanding of his partners' needs, desires and feelings—and does a lot of verbal confirmation of nonverbal cues that he thinks he sees. He also plans dates and social engagements for environments where his senses will not be overloaded—museum dates, for instance, rather than meeting people in loud, dark bars with flashing lights—so that he'll be better able to focus on his partner.

Once a dynamic has been negotiated, he's found that dominance actually helps him to maintain interpersonal awareness in his relationships. He can tell his partners exactly how to communicate in ways that work well for him, and can use his dominance to create a framework of rules and protocols that make more of his and his partner's needs explicit, and reduce (though never eliminate) the amount of implicit cues that he needs to process.

Back to Humility

If all this talk about how competent a person must be to dominate well is starting to sound daunting, let me offer a reality check: no one is perfect, and dominance doesn't require perfection. There can be a lot of pressure on us to always appear competent and confident, ready and able for anything—but if we have the humility to be able to say "I'm not up for dominating you right now," or "I see that you're eager to go deeper into submission to me, but I'm not sure I'm ready to take you there," we'll be rewarded with stronger and more authentic D/s dynamics.

Everyone has weaknesses and limits to their competence. It's okay that you aren't perfect at dominance, so long as you recognize the limits of your competence and have the humility not to overstep them.

Creating Safety: In Summation

Accepting someone without judgment, intending to meet their needs, and being competent to put our good intent into action: those three aspects together form the stable foundation of safety upon which we can build a hot and powerful D/s dynamic. This foundation gets built first, before any power is exchanged; the deeper the power exchange is to go, the more rock-solid it has to be. It is built and maintained using a set of skills that you can consciously practice, just as you'd practice your flogging technique.

If your D/s dynamics tend to flow smoothly and effortlessly, chances are it's because you're already good at creating safety. If you find that you encounter a lot of resistance in your partners, or you frequently get safewords called on you, or that you are having difficulty getting the depth or longevity of D/s dynamic that you crave—then look closely at this for areas where you could improve.

7. Forging Connection

A True Story: Remote Control

We were living in different cities all summer, but her pussy and her sexuality were still my toys to play with. She had nightly devotions to perform: meditating on a mantra of obedience and working her pussy right up to the brink of orgasm before stopping, backing off, denying herself release. She got to cum only occasionally, when I wanted to give her a treat or on the few nights when I was in town to use her in person. Otherwise, she stayed frustrated for weeks at a time

Then, about halfway through the summer, she disobeyed and had an orgasm all for her own selfish self. Being a generally obedient toy, she immediately wrote me to `fess up, and she said "I was just feeling disconnected. It's really hard for me to do this at a distance, without regular physical intimacy or connection. I end up feeling rebellious, or even lonely, once in a while."

To submit, she needed to feel connected to me: to have a visceral sense that I was receiving her submission. I increased how much I communicated with her on a daily basis, and I started giving her special assignments to complete for me more or less weekly, and she obeyed happily for the rest of the summer.

Get Yourself Connected

Connection is another prerequisite for dominance that is universal in my experience. Dominance lives in the fascinating gray area between what someone wants to do on their own and what they'll do because you want them to do it. That merging of desires requires connection between us and our partners.

So the other fundamental work of dominance is creating connection, and specifically connecting with our partners as dominants to submissives. That's what makes our role unique—different from the connection our partners may have with friends, family and other kinds of partners. As connected as their relationships with those people may be, it's unlikely that they touch on the submissive aspect of our partners' personalities, at least not in a way that honors and values it. This is our job and our privilege as the ones who dominate them.

(When I talk about partners here remember that the kinds of partnership I mean aren't limited to the traditional notion of a romantic couple. It is entirely possible to have a deep connection with your serving boy as a serving boy without ever exchanging valentines.)

What Exactly Is Connection?

I feel a little bit hesitant to use "connection" for such an important piece of what how dominance works, because the word is so often used to convey a vague sense of warm and fuzzy goodness without really meaning anything. So let me tell you exactly what I mean by it.

Connection means being aware of another person's experience, and them being aware of yours. We are connected with someone in moments when each of us knows how the other is feeling and what is in one another's mind.

We can think of connection as existing along a spectrum from shallow to deep, with deeper connection implying a more profound and nuanced awareness. Being aware that our partner feels good is a shallow connection; a deeper connection might be being aware that they are luxuriating in the sunshine on their skin and excited about the opportunity to serve us later in the evening, but also feeling anxious about an upcoming visit from their mother.

Deep connection tends to feel profoundly comforting and validating for those experiencing it. From the outside it can look like telepathy, where two people just magically know what one another are thinking, feeling and needing. But as with emotional competence, there are concrete and learnable skills that support being good at forming connection. Connection is intimately related to safety as well. Everyone feels safer with someone who they understand, and feel understood by. And feeling safe is necessary for getting close enough to someone for connection to form. Safety and connection grow deeper hand in hand.

Just as creating safety doesn't necessarily mean playing it safe, building D/s connection doesn't necessarily mean warm fuzzies and sharing your favorite ice cream flavors. D/s has the potential for some radically different styles of connection, based on the radically different desires of the people involved.

Beyond its relationship to safety and its inherent desirability, connection is fundamental to dominance in a couple of ways. First, awareness of our partner's thoughts, feelings and needs is vital to knowing how to control them. If dominating a partner is like playing a musical instrument (and there are some striking similarities), then dominating without connection is like playing the cello while deaf.

Second, connection is what lets our partners feel that their suffering, service, humiliation and obedience are being received by us. Very few people enjoy scrubbing toilets, but some find satisfaction in being made to scrub toilets for a partner who will be pleased with a job well done, or impossible to satisfy, or perhaps sneeringly contemptuous of their eagerness to do such filthy, menial work. The details vary with different people's kinks and fantasies, but the common theme is that a big part of their payoff is in how we experience their submission. If they aren't connected with us, then they may as well go home and clean their own toilet. At least that way they get a clean toilet out of it.

Reading Our Partners

Most novices at dominance will have the frustrating experience of discovering that the same smack on the ass, grip on the hair or haughty command will inspire happy submission in our partner at one moment but growling irritation at another. Connection is the key to knowing which of those moments we're in. It isn't just knowing that our partner loves canes; it's following closely along with their experience of mixed dread and lust from this stroke of the cane that we are landing on their ass right now, by being able to read the signs in their breathing and the tension of their muscles and the timbre of the sounds they are making.

Reading our partner like that as we deliver a caning is how we know when they are approaching the limit of their endurance, without needing to hear a safeword—sometimes even knowing it before they consciously realize that they are nearing their edge. The same set of connection skills apply more broadly than impact play, of course. Connection lets us sense when our partner's protocols are chafing, or when they are eager to be humiliated, or when they are needing to hear that they are good. It provides the fast and sensitive feedback that enables us to know how our control is being received, and adjust accordingly.

Sharing Our Experience

The other half of the circle of connection is our partner feeling connected with us as the one dominating them. For most of our partners, our experience is crucial to their own. Much of their payoff comes from pleasing us or provoking us, from feeling our scorn or our affection. So part of the fundamental work of dominance is learning to share our thoughts, feelings and needs with our partner, especially as those things relate to them and their submission. Growl dirty words in their ear telling them what you want to do to them. Let your eyes and your face show what you really think of them.

It can be frightening to share our feelings and desires around dominance deeply, especially if we fear that the depth of our possessiveness or our cruelty or some particular fetish of ours will not be accepted by our partners—all the more so if we aren't fully accepting of it ourselves. It's okay if we need to work our way up to it—no need to bare all our ugliest demons on the first date—but so long as we aren't letting our partner see our real desires and feelings around dominating, we will be limited in how deeply connected we can be. And that withholding will breed awkwardness and discomfort in the dynamic.

When it all comes together, though, the mutual sharing of D/s creates a fantastic experience: a positive feedback loop, with each of us feeding from and magnifying the other's passion. We experience and enjoy our partner's submission, which encourages us to feel and act more dominant. They experience and enjoy us enjoying their submission, which encourages them to feel and act more submissive. By expressing and receiving one another's D/s desires, we build our connecting to greater and greater heights of intensity.

Our Dominant Attention

It's probably obvious how important paying attention is to reading our partners, but I think it may be less obvious just how powerful a tool our attention can be—on both sides of the connection cycle.

I've already talked about how vulnerable it is to be seen as submissive, but that's also core to what most of our partners crave. They want a safe, trusted person to give attention to their submissive side: to notice when they obey and when they misbehave, and to share in their experience of themselves as submissive beings. Very few people get excited about kneeling on the floor by themselves in their bedroom. They need our eyes on them, seeing them kneel, to give the act meaning and charge.

The eyes can be figurative as well as literal. My toy in the earlier example felt lonely and rebellious following orders to frustrate herself with no regular attention from me. All it took to turn that around and have her feeling happily submissive was an occasional reminder that I was thinking of her and appreciating her obedience. Even hundreds of miles away that was enough to reframe her experience of denying herself orgasm alone in her bedroom from lonely and frustrating to fulfillingly obedient.

Our simple attention can be a surprisingly compelling reward to give a partner for behaving well, and also the most effective way of correcting misbehavior. For all our love of discipline and punishment, in my experience my partners will correct most misbehavior the moment they see that I've noticed it—that I am paying attention.

Attention pays off in yet another way over the long term. Paying attention to our partners and learning their likes, dislikes, quirks and habits sets us on the path to knowing them more deeply, which enables us to better push their buttons. Also, most people are inspired to feel more submissive to someone who demonstrates knowledge of how they tick.

All put together, I think that attention is the single most powerful tool that we have at our disposal, and also that it is a facility that can be developed and wielded consciously.

How to Use Your Attention

What is foremost in your mind at this moment? That's what you're connected with right now. If what is foremost in our mind while we are dominating is anxiety about living up to some ideal of a True Dominant, or wanting to get off, or what a fantastic picture this is going to make for our kinky social media profile, then we'll have difficulty being deeply connected with our partner.

Similarly, if we are trying to dominate when our attention is occupied by work worries, or other partners or reaching the next level in that video game we're obsessed with, being deeply connected with our partner will again be difficult. But if we can really focus the full weight of our attention squarely and consistently on the partner who we are dominating right now, then we are halfway to powerful dominance already.

But no one has their full attention available to focus on a partner twenty-four hours a day. So a necessary part of learning to use our attention consciously is recognizing how much attention we have to spare at any given moment, and then dominating to our level of attention. Have intense D/s interactions at times when you will be able to be alert, undistracted and otherwise have your full attention available. Practice checking in with yourself before you start something deep with a partner. "Something deep" might be giving them an order you suspect might be challenging for them to obey, calling them out on a pattern of misbehavior, or putting them through a physically strenuous experience—anything that tests their submission.

Are you awake? Are you sober? Do you have any competing priorities yapping for attention in your head? Are there any foreseeable crises likely to erupt in the next few hours, like if you are on call for work or have a sick child at home? Those things don't mean that you shouldn't dominate at all, but it would be wise to scale the intensity of your D/s to the level of attention you have available. Don't push a partner right to the hairy edge of their obedience when you are preoccupied or feeling under the weather.

Sometimes we don't have the luxury of planning, though. Either we'll get ambushed by a distraction we hadn't anticipated, or the intense D/s interaction will come to us. Perhaps we're just about climb into bed after a long and tiring day, when our partner has a powerful reaction to an order that we hadn't expected to be challenging.

Anytime we notice ourselves thinking something along the lines of "Shit! I do not want to deal with this right now, but I have to!"—that's a signal to stop and take three or four deep breaths.

Then think about whether you really do have to handle the issue right now. It's easy for us to fall into the trap of believing that we need to be 100% ready to dominate all the time, but forcing ourselves to engage beyond the level of attention we have available often leads to handling the situation poorly, and quite possibly making things worse. We won't be working from a place of connectedness but from irritation and impatience, and doing the kind of slapdash work that we all do when we're trying to get an annoying necessity out of the way so that we can get back to what we really want to be paying attention to.

Instead, claim for yourself the right to be tired or distracted or just not interested in dominating right now, or otherwise be human. Practice saying "I don't have the attention that this requires right now," and then negotiating a time when you will be able to give it the attention it deserves. The second part is vital. Setting a specific time to get back to whatever the issue is demonstrates that we are not rebuffing our partner or sweeping an issue under the rug, but doing what we need to do in order to dominate them to the best of our abilities.

The Look

When you do have your full attention available, practice focusing it on your partner. You may hear people in BDSM community talk about "The Look"—a mysterious dominant gaze that some people have and that weakens knees and makes hearts flutter without a word being said. Here's how to do it.

First you need someone who is inclined to submit to you and already feels safe being seen by you, otherwise it's likely to come off as creepy rather than dominant. Then you look at them and devote your full attention to really seeing them. Don't think about what you want for dinner, or the next wise and witty thing you're going to say; concentrate just on seeing this person in front of you.

Notice what clothes they are wearing. Notice how they've styled their hair. Notice their expression and their body language. Now notice specifically everything that is submissive about them. Are they keeping their eyes downcast, or speaking with special respect, or walking a half-step behind you? Is their mouth slightly open? Have they dressed in a sexy or diminutive way for you? Are they wearing a token you gave them, or obeying some rule of deportment?

Just look at them with all your attention, and see if they don't notice and respond. People can usually tell when they're being looked at deeply, and will get at least a hint of what their examiner is thinking of them. All that comes across in your own expression and subtle body language as you look—so you are giving them a vision of their own submission reflected in your eyes.

Much of D/s connection is an extension of that simple look. It's about seeing the submission in your partner and letting them know that they are seen. Pay attention to when your partner submits, and also when they disobey or fail to submit. You may not have to reward or punish every little thing—that depends on the particular relationship—but don't let those little things slip by unnoticed. Just a quick glance that communicates "I saw that" can be sufficient to reinforce the reality and importance of your D/s dynamic.

Over Time

There's an aspect of connection that builds gradually. By paying attention to our partners consistently over time, we begin to learn the patterns of their thinking, desire, responses and behavior. By sharing our own desires and preferences and needs, we allow them to learn our own patterns, enabling deeper and smoother connection in a long-term dynamic—a kind of connection that simply isn't possible between people who've just met.

That depth doesn't happen automatically with time, though; it is built by paying attention to our partners, and being willing to see them as they are, rather than as we assume they are or think they ought to be. I've known couples who have lived together for years and remained utter mysteries to one another, either because they simply weren't paying attention or because each had such fixed ideas about what they thought the other was like that they were never able to see what they were really like.

This can be exacerbated in D/s relationships where one or both partners have stereotypical models of "submissives" or "dominants" that they try to stuff their partners (and sometimes themselves) into. If we are thinking that submissives, as a class, need physical punishment when they disobey, then our eyes aren't open to seeing how the actual human being in front of us responds to punishment.

There are also patterns of relating that develop between the unique interaction of any two people. A new partner often brings out a new side of us, which adds extra fascination to exploring connection. No matter how many other partners either of us have had previously, there is something new to discover about how the two of us fit together in this new dynamic.

Many of my partners have told me that they find themselves submitting to me differently than they've submitted to anyone before. As much as I'd like to think that's a result of my unique charm, I suspect that it has more to do with the nature of D/s itself. The submissive role is so inherently receptive that someone entering a relationship from the submissive side is likely to shape themselves to the individual dynamic. Listen to and learn from your partner's past experience, certainly, but keep your eyes and your mind open to the possibility that this connection will be different.

One pattern that is very common in D/s dynamics is for the person in the submissive role to have a great desire to please us, and corresponding difficulty expressing feelings, needs and reactions that they think we don't want to hear. This can be a serious barrier to connection, because connection can't flourish when one partner doesn't feel able to be fully honest. Often our partners need our active encouragement to be able to share the bad along with the good.

Each connection may bring out different traits on our end as well. So each D/s relationship that we develop is a chance to learn about ourselves as well as about our partners. Half of growing a connection over time is paying attention to how we ourselves are changing and reacting. How are you inspired to dominate this partner? How does that inspiration shift as your connection builds and your dynamic deepens?

Maintaining that self-connection with our genuine inspiration for dominating this particular partner, and allowing ourselves to be how we are with this partner instead of trying to force an artificial consistency, gives us the foundation for connecting with our partners and for guiding the dynamic with integrity—and for getting a lot more enjoyment out of it. Instead of locking yourself in to rules like "I never let my submissives sleep in my bed," let your growing connection guide you and let each relationship be its own evolving experience. If you feel a new desire to have this partner with you in your bed, it isn't un-dominant to change your mind.

How to Connect Over Time

The practice of dominating to our level of available attention that I described in the last section will go a long way toward building connection over time. We will be able to notice, learn and remember our partner's patterns better if we are engaging with our full attention. But there is more that can be done specifically to nurture long-term connection.

Connection time. Build dedicated connecting time into your schedules together: time just to talk and listen, when you aren't focused on training, or playing or getting off. Try to avoid spending the time relating the details of your day, or making plans for the week, or any of the other distractions that life is full of, but instead focus your conversation on sharing both of your feelings and needs. Your goal is to learn what's really important in your partner's mind, and for both of you to come away feeling that you've shared deeply and been heard.

That feeling has an intrinsic value beyond what you learn from your conversation, because feeling heard is a powerfully connecting thing in and of itself. This is the perfect place to make use of the skills and techniques from the section on emotional competence. If you have restrictive protocols about how your partner is allowed to relate to you, these might be good times to relax those rules and allow free expression.

Checking in. There are also plenty of ways to create space for sharing and connecting, other than sitting down and having an in-person conversation; different ones will work more or less well for different people. One popular idea is to have your partner keep a regular journal that you will read. This suffers from being one-way communication, so you will need to find a different way of sharing back with them, but it provides a distance that many people in submissive roles find useful in expressing themselves freely.

A friend of mine uses a novel variation on this idea. He requires his partner to call his phone at a set time each day and leave a voicemail that completely fills the three minutes allowed by the system. Unlike a written journal, this lets him hear the tone of her voice, and the stream of consciousness evoked by the requirement to keep talking sometimes brings out things that even she hadn't known she was going to say! He also tells me that the requirement to communicate every day, no matter what, gives him insight into and reassurance about her state of mind in times when their relationship is challenged. Even if she spent three minutes yelling "Fuck you, you bastard!" into the phone, she would still be doing so in accordance with his order to leave a message, and thereby signaling her continued investment in their dynamic.

Using what you learn. The final necessary piece of building connection over time is remembering and learning from what you notice. For those of us with less than excellent memories, this can be the most challenging part. Keeping a journal of your own can be invaluable for crystallizing what you've learned from a day, and having a record to jog your memory later. Taking the idea further, you can keep a notebook devoted specifically to your connection with a particular partner. Write down punishments and rewards you've delivered, rules you've set, moments of resistance or particularly noteworthy devotion, important things your submissive has shared with you, and all your "Aha!" moments when you learn something important about your dynamic. Then review your notes later to notice larger patterns that are less obvious in the moment.

Technique: Paraphrasing Fantasies

One kind of connection that's of particular interest to many of us is understanding our partner's erotic desires. Knowing all the secret details of what turns our partner on allows us to play them like an instrument.

Here's a simple technique that'll help you learn to push all your partner's buttons with confidence and grace. I call it fantasy paraphrasing, and it's a three step process.

Step #1. Get your partner to tell you one of their favorite kinky fantasies.

Putting their deepest and wettest desires into words—and then getting those words to come out of their mouths—is easy for some people, but a shy, challenging, stammering process for many. We can help our partners open up to us by building up a lot of safety around asking them to share. Being accepting of their sexual needs and wants in general, and never judging them for their passions or poking fun at their fantasies, will help tremendously. We can also choose a safe, comfortable, relaxed moment in which to ask (or tell, depending on our dynamic) them to share. We're more likely to get a deeper, yummier fantasy when they're safely curled into bed, in our arms, with the lights off, than if we ask across the table at Burger King. Possibly the most effective way to encourage a shy partner to share their fantasies is to model the same vulnerability we're asking of them by sharing a few juicy fantasies of our own.

When they are telling us their fantasies, the most effective thing we can do is listen, without butting in with our own ideas or making a lot of comments. If we do that, then we end up hearing less about what pushes their buttons and more about what pushes our own. We don't want to sit stone cold silent either, since that can seem uninterested or cold or downright weird. So we show interest and prompt them for more, but without steering the fantasy or injecting our own ideas into it. Lots of "Mmmm," and "That sounds hot," and "Tell me more" is good. Masturbating them while they whisper in your ear might be even better.

Step #2. Repackage the fantasy.

Getting a partner to share their fantasies with us is educational in and of itself, and it certainly isn't a new idea! But when all we do is hear a story, the understanding we get from it is limited because we don't get why it's sexy, which elements are core to our partner's fantasy and which are window dressing, or what the story really means. Very often meaning is crucial to fantasies, especially kinky ones. Say our partner tells us a hot story about being dressed in nothing but frilly lingerie underneath a long coat and being taken across town via public transit to a sexy dinner with friends. Are they fantasizing about all those strangers on the bus and the tantalizing risk that they might get caught and exposed? Or are they imagining having perfect confidence that only we and they know the secret, and they're getting off on that shared intimacy? Or maybe their attention is mainly on the lingerie itself—the feel of it against their skin. Is the sexy dinner with friends an important part of the fantasy, or just a convenient excuse to ride the bus in a teddy?

We could always just ask our partners those kinds of questions, but sometimes having your fantasies analyzed and dissected like that can feel like you're being judged, or even attacked. And often people aren't even sure themselves what it is about their fantasies that gets their motors running. A way to gently dig deeper into our partner's erotic inner workings and get around those difficulties is to paraphrase their fantasy back to them.

Step two is that we take the fantasy they told us and, on our own time, reimagine and repackage it. Think about all the elements that you guess make that fantasy sexy, and work some, most or all of them into a story of your own creation. Add maybe one or two flourishes of your own, but not too much. Your goal is to make it so that anyone who found the first fantasy hot would find this fantasy just as hot or hotter. Maybe instead of crossing town on the bus, your repackaged version has you and your partner boarding a plane to fly to a kinky conference in another town. After you're both seated, you surprise them by pulling a bag out of your carry-on and telling them to go to the bathroom and change into the frilly things inside. Suddenly they realize why you were so adamant they wear a long coat leaving the house!

Step #3. Get feedback.

Finally, create another safe and intimate moment like you did to hear their story. Get them good and turned on, and tell them yours. Writing these back and forth works too, by the way, which can work nicely if we're dominating at a distance.

Watch their reactions while you whisper in their ear, and ask them (maybe in a later moment) what was hot about your story and what wasn't. It's crucial to not have your ego invested in being right here—make it super clear to them that you want their honest reactions, and don't try to argue or justify if they say you missed the point, just learn from it.

You might find that your partner goes cold as soon as you get to the part about surprising them with the package of lingerie. They didn't think to include it in the story the first time, but in their fantasies they've always assumed that there was a drawn out, sensual, careful process of getting them primped and prettied up at home before putting on the coat and stepping out the door—and now that you bring it up they realize that that part is crucial. The thought of being sent off to wriggle into their lingerie in a cramped airplane bathroom kills it for them.

And maybe through that realization you get to learn that a core essence of this fantasy of theirs is about being cared for like a prized possession.

If we play this game enough, incorporating what we hear back from our partners and using it to guide new stories, we can start learning to reliably spin together fantasies that get our partners as wound up and eager as their own imagination. And having that level of understanding of their internal erotic world gives us a wonderful foundation for keeping them wrapped around our little fingers.

The Moment

The other facet of connection is connection in the moment, and it can be remarkably independent of long-term connection. No matter how much intimacy we have built with someone and how well we know one another, if our attention isn't fixed on them right now, then we aren't connected in this moment. Deep familiarity with our partners can even get in the way of this kind of immediate connection—if it leads us to get complacent and assume that we know their experience, instead of paying attention to what signals they are giving us right now.

By the same token, it's possible to experience moments of intense connection even with relative strangers. Those moments come when both people feel comfortable enough to share their thoughts, express their feelings and ask for what they really want; and when each holds the other's attention.

It's those moments of intense connection that great D/s is made of—whether between a long-term owner and pet, or with an anonymous submissive we've just seduced at a club. Immediate, moment-by-moment awareness of what our partners are feeling and wanting gives us confidence to demand more and go further. Our partners' immediate, moment-by-moment awareness of our needs and feelings allows them to open up and trust our intentions and our control to a greater degree than they otherwise could. Put together, it opens the door to experiences that leave both partners saying "Wow! I can't believe how incredible that was!" the next morning.

The feedback loop of feeding off one another's experience contracts and accelerates as well. Being so immediately connected to one another's feelings of dominance and of submission can ramp those feelings into overdrive within minutes. When we can tell how small and pliant our partner feels kneeling before us, it's easy to feel big and masterful ourselves. And when our partner immediately picks up on that, and we can immediately sense how they are getting off on it and feeling even smaller and more possessed... Well. It goes good places in a hurry.

How to Connect In the Moment

The trick to seamless connection in the moment is to share openly and listen attentively across as many channels of communication as we have available. Talking works, but so do body language, actions, touch and breath. Use your familiarity with your partner's patterns to know what buttons to push and what signs to look for, but be careful not to let familiarity become complacence. The power of connection comes from paying intense attention to our partner's experience right now.

Talk dirty with them. To connect with words, it is super useful to learn the art of talking dirty so that we can clearly convey our experience and our desires without breaking the mood of the moment. There are classes and books available on dirty talking, but the most effective tip I know is that your tongue will be tied if you aren't comfortable sharing what you really feel and really want in that moment. Work on self-acceptance, and glibness will follow.

A good stream of dirty talk is invaluable, both for letting our partner in on the story that's unfolding in our head, and also for checking their reactions to what we say. And if we can encourage them to talk back, then all the better. Think specifically about ways to solicit their experience that will reinforce the moment rather than interrupting it. There are lots of moments in a D/s dynamic where "Are you enjoying this, honey?" would be rather disruptive. I often like to phrase my check-ins as demands: "Tell me how much you love this, bitch." or "Ask me for another." I get my information less from the answer my partner gives than from the way they give it: the difference between an immediate, enthusiastic "Another, please, sir!" and one that comes out strained and hesitant.

Listen to their body. Beyond words, watch for tension in your partner's body and face. This is an excellent barometer of their general "okayness," whether they're accepting a beating or socializing at a party under strict protocol. Reach out and touch them lightly. If they melt into your hand, they're probably with you and ready for more of whatever you're doing. If they feel rigid or flinchy, that's a warning sign.

Check their eyes and their breath. Sharp shallow breaths and tight, high-pitched noises can signal strain or anger. (Or imminent orgasm, so watch for that.) A quick but powerful way to increase your connection in the moment is to have your partner breathe with you. Get to where they can see, hear and even feel your breathing. Tell them to breathe with you, and then take a few long, slow breaths, as deeply as you can. Slowing their breathing will encourage them to relax, and synchronizing with yours will encourage both of you to feel, well, in synch.

Eyes offer another powerful intervention. It's hard not to fix your attention on something you're staring at. So make your partner look at you to keep their attention focused on you. If their eyes have a tendency to float closed, that's a hint that they're enjoying themselves (or possibly just really sleepy). If their eyes flick and flit away, then they may be feeling shy or otherwise avoidant.

Beware of Disconnects. Watch for moments when many channels of communication are cut off, like when your partner is bound, gagged, or under strict protocol. Some people also tend to become uncommunicative in moments when they are feeling their submission intensely. Those are good moments to make more intentional check-ins, to express more yourself, and to pay close attention to the channels your partner can still use to share with you.

Communication is also impaired whenever you are at a distance. It is easy to start feeling disconnected in a matter of a day or two of no contact. Disconnection happens when both parties feel worried about pestering the other or about seeming too eager or greedy, or otherwise convince themselves that contacting the other would be unwelcome. We can compensate by overcommunicating through whatever telecommunications are available. As the dominant partner, you may find that you need to give your partner lots of permission and reassurance that reaching out for connection isn't being presumptuous or needy. It may be useful to set up conditions or protocols under which a particularly bashful partner is required to initiate contact with you, thus leaving no room for doubt that reaching out is okay.

Another technique is to establish reminders of connection for one or both of you in the form of rituals or tokens. I find that bruises work quite well for separations of a week or two. Those kinds of reminders don't take the place of actual contact for long, though, before they start to feel hollow; for connection, actual connection works best.

Sometimes we can improve connection by removing ways in which we tend to miscommunicate. The friend with Asperger's who I mentioned before often has partners misread his facial expressions during play—they think he's bored or somehow fake when he's really fully into the moment with them. So blindfolding his partner can actually increase their connection. The blindfold removes the misleading visual information, and lets his partner focus on their other senses.

In general, we can promote connection in our D/s by consistently encouraging transparency and sharing from our partner. If we have a general policy of "be seen and not heard" or "always have a smile on your face and don't complain," it can be difficult for them to trust that we really want their honesty in the moments when we ask for or demand it. If constant protocol is your preference, or you like your partners to be like living dolls without opinions, then your challenge may be greater. In that sort of dynamic it's especially important to create come kind of consistently safe outlet for expression and connection, like a journal in which our partner can speak their mind. The important thing is that they know how to share their true thoughts, feelings and needs with us in a way that will be "good," even if what they have to share isn't exactly what we want to hear.

Forging Connection: In Summation

Connection is essential to dominance in both directions. We need to be aware of our partners' experience, so that we can push their buttons with confidence. We need them to be aware of our experience, because so often their fulfillment hinges on knowing how we feel about their submission—knowing that they have pleased us or provoked us, seeing that it matters to us when they disobey, feeling the intensity of our desire to control them. Connection is the channel through which we feed one another's passions.

We can develop two important sets of skills: one to build connection over a period of time, and another to maintain moment-by-moment connection while we dominate.

8. Taking Charge

A Fantasy: Rule #1

"I want to be yours."

"I'm delighted to hear that. I have a rule, though. One most important rule that anyone who wants to belong to me has to follow. Ready to hear the most important rule?"

"I think so."

"The most important rule is that, in all things related to your submission to me, you have to be as honest with me as you possibly can. Say this for me: 'Honesty is my first duty. I will always give my owner the truth.'"

"I will always give my owner the truth."

"No. Say the whole thing: 'Honesty is my first duty. I will always give my owner the truth.'"

"Honesty is my first duty. I will always give my owner the truth."

"Better. So if I ask you a question and you think you know what answer I'm hoping to hear, are you going to tell me what I want to hear or are you going to tell me the truth?"

"I'll tell you the truth."

"Repeat the whole rule back to me, word for word."

"Um... Honesty is my first duty. I will always give my owner the truth."

"Very good. And if there's an answer that you think a good submissive would give, are you going to tell me what a good submissive would say or are you going to tell me the truth?"

"Honesty is my first duty. I will always give my owner the truth."

"Now you're getting it. If there's something that I haven't asked about, but you have a hunch I might want to know, are you going to stay silent or are you going to tell me the truth?"

"Honesty is my first duty. I will always give my owner the truth." The recitation was already starting to take on the smooth cadence of a mantra.

"Perfect. Can you accept my rule number one, and obey it with all your heart?"

"Yes."

"Then tell me about what you want to get out of being mine."

Negotiation

Those three fundamental skills—finding comfort, creating safety and forging connection—underlie everything we do in the practice of dominance. With an understanding of them in place, we're ready to take a more concrete look at how to take charge of a partner: the process of getting from

"Hello. Nice to meet you."

to

"If I can't see my reflection in these boots tomorrow, I will whip you `til you can't sit for a week!"

In kinky culture, that process is commonly known as negotiation. It's most often thought of and talked about as something that happens between two people before the very first time they play together, but there are elements of negotiation involved every time we switch between different containers with our partners. The negotiation between partners with a strong rapport, for stepping into a kind of dominance that they've been doing together for years, might be as quick and simple as "Up for being my dog tonight?"—but it's still a negotiation at heart.

Even always-on containers that we don't switch in and out of can benefit from the occasional renegotiation, just to make sure that we and our partner are still on the same page.

Make Trust Your Foundation

The first thing to think about, before we even begin negotiating with someone, is how much reason we have to trust them. Just because someone agrees to something, or even begs for it, doesn't necessarily mean that they genuinely intend to do what they said they would, or are even able to do what they said they would. People negotiating for submission, especially those who are newer to the experience, are famous for having eyes bigger than their stomachs, as well as for being easily tempted to agree to what they think we want rather than what they really want.

Someone who's been nurturing a suppressed fantasy of being cuckolded for their entire adult life might come on as though they are one hundred percent certain that they definitely want to act it out with us in reality, only to take both us and themselves by surprise about how much they can't endure the experience when it actually happens. Someone who hasn't yet developed the impressive emotional maturity that's needed for extended submission might dive passionately into becoming our full-time, no-limits property for life, only to lose interest in it two weeks later. And occasionally, for whatever reason, people just intentionally lie.

People seeking education on how to submit will hear many warnings not to trust potential partners without good reason, but some of the same hazards apply to us as well. We may not be getting tied up and blindfolded by the person we are negotiating with, but we are at just as much risk from someone who lies about their STI status. We can reap just as much strife and heartache from someone who lies about their relationships status. We could end up with an unsatisfying relationship, or a scene that crashes and burns, with someone who misstates what kind of dominance they're up for.

Before you even begin negotiating with someone, do your best to set aside your excitement and desire just for a moment and consider how much you really know about them and how deeply you have reason to trust them. Do they really understand what they're getting into? Have they done something like it before? Does their negotiation sound realistic, or like a masturbatory fantasy? Do you have external verification that they're as experienced as they say they are? It isn't uncommon for people to overstate their experience, not because they're evil liars but simply because they're feeling insecure or want to impress you.

Then negotiate to your soberly considered level of trust. With that flirty stranger you just met at a convention, negotiate a light, short dynamic with a narrowly limited scope of what you will do to them—and see how that goes before gradually delving deeper. Or spend some time getting to know them as a person before moving into dominance at all.

It can be difficult to stick to this rule when our hypothetical flirty stranger is super hot and throwing themselves at you with promises to obey your every whim forever. But that kind of behavior—jumping into deep submission before establishing trust—is a strong warning sign that you're dealing with a person who doesn't really mean what they're saying, or doesn't really understand what they're asking for.

The importance of trust in negotiations for dominance is one of several reasons why establishing ourselves in a kinky community is so valuable. If we spend time making friends and getting to know our neighbors before seeking partners to dominate, then we're starting a few steps up from "flirty stranger." We'll know something about the people we might be negotiating with (and they'll know something about us), and thus we'll have reason for greater trust.

Don't be a Used Car Dealer

Negotiation for dominance shouldn't be like haggling over the price of a used car. Negotiations between parties who are each trying to get the best deal for themselves at the other party's expense are called adversarial negotiations, and they're the opposite of ethical and effective negotiation for dominance. In the kind of negotiation I'm talking about, we and our partners are working together toward the same goal: to create the D/s dynamic that will be hottest and most fulfilling for both of us.

True consent has to be as unpressured as possible. If we're negotiating to try and get the most of what we want without regard for what our prospective partner wants, then no matter how nice we are about it, or what excellent arguments we have for why they ought to agree to give us what we want, or how certain we are that as soon as they just try being spanked by us they'll realize that it was what they wanted all along—we are exerting pressure. It's the nature of trying to get what you want out of someone, and if we hold consent as a value then we'll avoid doing it simply because it's against our values.

It also happens to be a poor tactic. People can usually tell when someone is negotiating selfishly, and it erodes that sense of safety that is essential to submission. Apologies to all the trustworthy used car sellers out there—but, as a profession, no one trusts used car dealers. No one goes into that transaction feeling soft, vulnerable and open, putting all their money on the table and trusting the dealer to pick the car that's best for them. They go in guarded, suspicious, and ready for a fight—and if we negotiate like a used car dealer, then our prospective partners will be likely to do the same.

You can learn to get really good at salesmanship, if you want to. You may be able to fool people into thinking that you're on their team when you really aren't, and be good at talking people into doing things that they aren't really sure they want to do. But even the best trickery, "game," or high-pressure sales tactics won't work as well as genuinely caring about and working with the person you're negotiating with.

All of the people I know with the deepest, dirtiest, most powerful and longest lasting dominant dynamics got there by working together with their partners, not trying to work through, around or against them. And all the people I know who have the most strife and drama in their relationships, and the lousiest reputations, are the slickest salesmen—because eventually people tend to figure out that they've been sold.

Pressure can come into negotiations even unintentionally. People with submissive leanings tend to really, really want to please. Being all turned on, or already in a bit of a submissive headspace, or maybe a little high, can all drop inhibitions and magnify that effect, leading our partners to agree to things that they won't feel good about later.

People skilled at dominance learn to be conscious of pressure and to manage it carefully. For ideas on how to manage pressure in your negotiations, see the section on making invitations earlier in the book.

More Than Just the Facts

What negotiation for dominance should be is both thorough and enticing. It should ensure that we and our prospective partner have shared and heard all of the relevant information about our desires, hesitations, needs and limits, and that we have made agreements about all the relevant features of the dynamic we're setting out to create together. But that's only half the picture. Dominance is an emotional connection, not a business transaction. For most people, feelings, passions and erotic charge can't be clinically described, dispassionately agreed upon and then immediately switched on as per plan.

Emotional energy needs to be built up through flirting and anticipation. Juices must be gotten flowing.

We and our partners need to taste one another, metaphorically and sometimes even literally, and see what chemistry we find between us. This process of the heart and the libido is at least as important as the rational conversation about hard limits and safer sex and aftercare requirements.

Much negotiation advice around the BDSM community ignores these emotional aspects of negotiation, focusing exclusively on things like checklists, contracts, lists of limits and agreeing on safewords. The result can sound very businesslike. We're advised to schedule an official negotiation date, which should happen in a neutral setting (coffeeshops are traditional), be completely sober and not to let any hint of D/s connection develop between us before negotiations are concluded. If that works for you then certainly don't let me talk you out of it, but for many of us this dry approach does not engage our emotions. It might work for negotiating a superficial or technical arrangement—a flogging at a party or a simple service-only arrangement—but by itself it is not effective for exploring deeper, wetter, or more vulnerable connections.

The Silence of Shame and Fear

Negotiating rational, explicit, detailed agreements is rarely sufficient for successful negotiations for dominance, but it is an essential piece of those negotiations. It's also a piece that many of us are tempted to skip—because of shame and fear.

Most of our culture teaches a very strong message that sexy, passionate things must never be spoken about frankly and directly, and that doing so is mortifying or creepy or awkward. So most of us who haven't specifically worked on changing our attitudes and building skills for intentional intimate communication suffer from a powerful inhibition against explicit negotiation. Bound up with that ingrained shame is the fear of rejection. Asking for what we want directly opens us up to hearing rejection, and most of us think being "shot down" is a miserable experience to be avoided at all costs.

So often it feels harder and scarier and more awkward to talk about the ways that we want to dominate our partners than it is to hint and nudge, and maybe get a little drunk, and just kinda fumble our way into doing it and hope it goes over well. We learn all kinds of coy, sly, cowardly, shame-muffled ways of trying to finagle our way into getting our erotic needs met without ever having to exactly ask for them out loud.

Because few people want to admit to themselves that they're ashamed and afraid, we also learn excuses and justifications for why we avoid being upfront about our desires—it isn't spontaneous, or it isn't ladylike or it's awkward and uncool. Some of us convince ourselves that we have some kind of intuition or spiritual telepathy that makes negotiation unnecessary. If you think that negotiating your dominance directly and explicitly is hard or dorky, or that you're too suave to need to do it, it's worth some sincere introspection to examine how much you're really motivated by trying to find a shortcut around something that feels scary, vulnerable or shameful.

Think of other things that felt awkward and embarrassing before you put the work in to learn to do them well, like roller skating or playing guitar. Talking about our desires is an art, and like any art it requires practice. Frankly telling our partner what we want to do to them and making detailed agreements for what we'll do together can become a process that feels confident, sexy and profoundly dominant, and not awkward at all.

All kinds of people struggle with sexual shame and fear of rejection, not just kinky people—but it can work out even worse for us than it does for those with more normative desires. Someone who's trying to hint their way into penis-vagina sex or an egalitarian relationship can say "Hey, wanna go back to my place?" with a wink and a nudge, and have a decent chance that the object of their desire will get the gist of what they're proposing. But in our communities that play with everything from ice cubes to branding irons, "Wanna go back to my place?" can mean way too many things. If what you're wanting is to force your partner to wear a tutu while call them a dirty ballerina and push needles through their nipples... good luck hinting your way into that. We with exotic desires have to learn to have grownup conversations about those desires.

Skipping the explicit, specific aspect of negotiation creates a tremendously increased risk of miscommunication, mismatched expectations and boundary violations. Even if our partner is chirping "I'll do anything you tell me to!" and throwing themselves at our feet, the wise course—for the safety and well-being of us both—is to stop them there, and have a conversation about the parameters of "anything."

Heart & Mind

For many of us, negotiation works best when the two aspects of heart and mind flow closely together as part of the same process. We don't feel comfortable engaging emotionally without at least some degree of shared understanding and agreement, and we also don't know exactly what we want to agree to without getting at least a little taste of that chemistry and seeing what it inspires in us. So we feel our way deeper into understanding and intimacy, mixing explicit discussion of the dynamic we want to create with flirtatious tastes of actually doing it.

Practice Makes Better

If you've read all of this advice and negotiation still feels like an awkward, scary prospect, that's okay. Most of us were stiff and awkward and fumbling about negotiating our first several dominant relationships. Know that it doesn't have to stay that way forever. We can learn to get better at negotiation, and the first step is to give ourselves permission to be bad at it at first. It's easier to improve when we start from a position of admitting—both to ourselves and our partners—that we have something to learn, than it is from a position of insisting that we must be perfect and beating ourselves up whenever we discover that we aren't.

Rather than giving up on negotiation and retreating to winks and nudges and guessing games, let it be hard, and do it anyway. It'll get easier, and eventually it'll feel smoother and work better than all those sophomoric dating tricks ever did.

9. Seven Key Questions

Cover the Bases

From our foundation of trust, there are a few vitally important questions for our negotiations to answer. Whatever form our negotiations have taken, whether it's an official session where we walk down the list of questions or a mutual understanding built over months of flirting, it's worthwhile to pause before stepping into dominance of our partner and confirm for ourselves that we and our partner have shared answers to each of these questions.

What Do We Both Want?

What Are Our Risks?

What Are Our Relevant Limits And Likely Triggers?

How Will It Start And How Will It End?

How Will We Maintain Communication During?

Who Else Will Be Involved And How?

What Happens After?

Question One: What Do We Both Want?

I put this question first on purpose. Lots of advice on negotiation starts with talk of limits, activity checklists and safewords, but I think it's important to begin from desire.

Desire is, after all, the reason we're doing this in the first place. And it's also a thing that most people feel shy and vulnerable about expressing openly and clearly. The shame, fear and vulnerability I talked about in the last chapter make it tempting, both for us and for our partners, to be as vague and noncommittal about our desires as we can get away with, to avoid having to put our hearts right out there on the table. The more deeply and specifically we can each share what it is that we want out of our dynamic, the more likely we both are to get it. The goal of negotiation becomes discovering a way to mesh our and our partner's desires in a way that fulfills us both.

Simply because someone wants to submit does not mean that they want to submit in a way compatible with how we want to dominate. So in our negotiations, it is important to share an understanding of what each of us really wants out of the possible connection that we are exploring, with as much specificity as we can manage.

Of course, it's very likely that we might not yet know exactly what we want to share with one another, especially at the outset of our first negotiation. Few people are able to give a complete and coherent map of all their sexy desires. And even if we could, preferences and limits change, whether over the years or minute by minute. You'll discover that something you thought you'd love is just irritating in reality, you'll find yourself in a rare mood to try something that usually doesn't do it for you at all, or a new partner will bring out new variations on your desire. And you'll definitely keep discovering new things to try that you hadn't even thought of before.

It may be that you have to explore together with your partner and see where you end up. That's perfectly all right; just acknowledge the fact that you're exploring together, talk about both of your hopes or visions of where you might end up, and then seek agreement on a modest way to begin. What is something small that both of you are fairly certain you'd like to share tonight? Negotiate for that, and leave room for your dynamic to deepen later.

Sometimes my first negotiation with a new partner is something like "I want to bite you, moderately hard, right... here." And that's the scene: one bite. Then I get to see how they respond to my touch and to pain (biting is particularly nice because you can increase the pressure slowly and discover at what point they yip), and find out if I like how they taste—and we take that knowledge and intimacy into our second, slightly more involved, encounter. This lets us get a taste of playing with each other without all the work of a big, heavy negotiation of every possible limit and kind of play.

Getting to the Heart of Desire

You can negotiate your and your partner's desires purely on the level of physical actions. Like: they want to be treated roughly and forced to take an enema; you want to have them wear a leash, hear them call you "Sir," and see them crawl. Most of the negotiation checklist forms that you can find floating around are written on this level. They have checkboxes for an extensive list of mechanical activities, from "Flogging, Light" and "Collar & Leash," to "Caning, Severe" and "Branding, Permanent."

There's a more powerful approach available, however, and that's to dig beneath the surface of what actions you and your partner will take together and investigate what those actions mean and how they feel to each of you.

Knowing that your partner wants to be spanked is fine and good. Knowing finer details of the physical act (butt and backs of thighs are fair game, inner thighs unpleasantly ticklish, warmup bores them so please hit hard right away, etc.) is even better. But to make your dynamic really sizzle, to enable a remarkably deeper level of connection and control, find out why your partner wants to be spanked. What does it mean to them when you spank them? Does it mean that they've been bad? That they've been good? How do they want to feel about it before, during and after it happens?

Find you who you are to them when you spank them. I don't mean that they're going to literally hallucinate that you're someone else, but that you are filling some role in the drama of their submission. Do they imagine you as a vicious brute who overpowers them through sheer force, and beats them just to see them cry? Or are you a strict disciplinarian who has a right, indeed a duty, to spank them for their transgressions? Do they fantasize about you being angry when you spank them? Disappointed? Turned on?

These kinds of questions make or break kinky connections for many of us. The exact same number and force and cadence of swats on the butt might be an amazing experience if delivered with icy disappointment, but a grossed-out "red" if done from a place of obvious hard/wet erotic enthusiasm. Or the other way around! The only way to know how to tune your dynamic to take best advantage of your partner's deep desires is to negotiate the feelings and the meanings of your play.

And that stands for us as well. How does your fantasy bottom feel about the spanking you're giving them? Who do you want to be when you are doing it? Who are they to you, and what effect do you want it to have on them? If someone is having a giggly fun time being spanked by me, I'm honestly not going to be enjoying myself; I want to see my bottom endure something difficult out of devotion to me. I can also enjoy being the disappointed taskmaster who's only doing this for their own good, but only if they're going to be genuinely contrite afterward. And I absolutely will not be someone's out-of-control, violent brute. That's a huge turn-off for me.

Knowing those things about my desire, and negotiating them with potential partners, helps me find and create the dynamics that are really going to work best for me, much more that simply negotiating for "spanking."

Question Two: What Are Our Risks?

The games that we like to play carry risks; some more serious, some less, some from kinky practices that commonly accompany dominance, and some intrinsically from dominance itself. Genital contact has risks of STI transmission, bondage has risks of falls and nerve injury, taking sexy pictures has risks of those pictures showing up on Facebook—the list goes on. For meaningful informed consent, our negotiation has to cover the potential risks of the kinds of play we're talking about doing.

You might think that would mean that at least part of our conversation has to be awkward and difficult, but that's only true if we feel awkward, or maybe ashamed, about the risks of our play. If STIs aren't a shameful, taboo thing for us, then, while the cootie talk may still not be exactly sexy, it can at least be warm and lighthearted. And the same with whatever other risks our play entails.

We can practice talking about these things even when we aren't negotiating, just in kinky conversation and correspondence. Get used to talking about the risks of your play, whether that's STIs or leaving scars or triggering old traumas—just as you'd talk about any other thing, without stammering or beating around the bush. Having a community of other people who practice dominance, whether in person or online, is especially valuable here.

Getting truly comfortable with our risks lets us bring them up easily and naturally. The necessary talk can happen without having to be a big, anxiety-riddled ordeal that we'll be tempted to avoid.

The presence of risk in an activity doesn't mean that we can't go ahead and do that activity. It just calls for evaluating whether the payoff that both we and our partner would get is worth taking that risk. It's also a time to explore ways that we could mitigate the risks created by our dynamic, and to prepare ourselves with agreements for how we'll work together to handle the consequences should they come up.

Finally, remember that we are negotiating these risks with another person. Their perception of how risky things are may differ from ours, and their tolerance for risk may differ from ours. Rather than just telling them that something is safe and they shouldn't worry, explain the actual risks to them, encourage them to do their own research and their own thinking, and let them form their own judgment. That way, if an unfortunate incident does come to pass, it's at least something that you both understood and accepted.

Some Common Risks of Dominance

Outing. Outing is a general term for any time that someone's kinky activities are revealed in a manner that they did not desire, and it is an often underappreciated risk. It can happen when your partner runs into a coworker while wearing a collar, or from a slip of the tongue at a family picnic, or a photo posted online. The consequences vary from embarrassment to, in some cases, job loss, ending of marriages, or having children removed from the home.

Understand how serious this risk is both to you and to your partner and also how comfortable your partner is with the risk. Even if they aren't in a position to lose their job, for some people the embarrassment of being outed would be a severe consequence in and of itself.

Some things that you can do to reduce the risk of outing:

Be very careful what you put online. Social media sites can create the illusion of a safe space separated from your vanilla life, but even without any kind of nefarious hacking, it's pretty easy for your horny nephew to create a profile, flip through all the women in your town, and stumble across your picture. Keeping recognizable pictures off the Internet goes a long way.

Kinky communities across the world have a long tradition of using scene names, which are separate names that people adopt for use in kinky contexts. Consistently using a scene name helps prevent your legal name from getting connected to your kinky activities. Along the same lines, many people create separate email or social media accounts for their kinky correspondence. But beware: having a separate kinky email account is a risk of its own. Many people have accidentally outed themselves by sending an email from the wrong account, or leaving themselves logged in when another person used their computer.

Develop subtle or coded ways to express your D/s connection with your partner. This can be a fun, flirtatious game in and of itself. For example, the phrase "don't you think?" could be code for "that's an order," so when your family is deciding which board game to play on Thanksgiving afternoon and you say "Scrabble would be fun, don't you think?" your partner understands that they are voting for Scrabble whether they really want to play it or not.

Be thoughtful about marks on your partner's body that might be seen by others. Some kinds of play can leave marks for a very long time, or even permanently. Make sure you know how long the marks of your play are likely to last, and find out whether your partner has any upcoming medical appointments, beach trips or other circumstances where people will see parts of their body that would normally remain concealed.

If you really want to exercise some dominance in public, but the risk of being recognized is too intolerable, then travel is your friend. It doesn't have to be a big, expensive trip to a faraway land; just take a road trip to a town where you're confident neither of you knows anyone—and then bring your partner into the pet store to try on dog collars.

Babies and Other Sexually Transmitted Conditions. Not all dominance dynamics involve sexual contact, but many do, and if there's going to be any touching around anyone's genitals or anus, even with hands or implements, then a conversation about sexually transmitted infections is called for.

For many people, this is a particularly awkward conversation to have. There's so, so much shame and taboo around the subject. This means it's also a good place to show your leadership by getting educated, getting comfortable, and being able to initiate a frank and detailed talk about your status and your risks.

I strongly recommend doing more than a quick exchange of "I got tested and everything was negative." When were you last tested? What precisely were you tested for? What partners have you had since you were tested, what are their statuses, and what safer sex practices have you used with them? If it's relevant for the kind of sexual contact you intend to have, how would you handle it together should birth control fail? If one or the other of you did turn out to be carrying an STI, what are the risks of transmission from the kinds of activities in which you're planning to engage? What safer sex techniques can you use to manage those risks?

This is an area that is particularly prone to taboo-based distortions of risk. I've known more than a few people who take meticulous care to disinfect their floggers between using them on different partners' backs, but don't think twice about getting unprotected oral sex from those same partners. Why? Because oral sex is seen as tame and normal and therefore unthreatening, while flogging is exotic and technical and maybe a little scary. So the flogger is treated as riskier even though the real transmission risk is generally greater from the oral sex. (This equation is different for implements that break skin. Know the risks of the tools you use.)

If you are negotiating for more than a one-time thing, talk about what policies you both plan to follow going forward. How often will you test and for what? Will you tell one another if you have contact with a new partner? What would it mean for your relationship if one of you did become positive for some STI or another?

For many STI's, the worst symptoms by far are the social effects—the stigma and the strife and the broken relationships. Having understanding and agreement around these questions in advance can inoculate you against some of that heartbreak.

Assault and Abuse. This is, tragically, a risk inherent to all dating and intimate relationships, not just to those involving dominance. Dominance and associated kinky practices may make you and your partners especially vulnerable to certain kinds of abuse, however.

Being tied up, blindfolded or gagged clearly puts someone into an exceptionally vulnerable position, but dominance can also increase vulnerability without any sort of physical restraint. Especially for someone who is still figuring out their own limits, being in a submissive role or mindset can make it much harder to recognize the lines between being controlled, hurt and used in ways that they will remember with delight, and being bullied, battered and abused in ways that will be damaging to them—and if they do perceive a line being crossed, it can also be harder than usual for them to speak up and assert their boundaries. They become mentally and emotionally vulnerable.

Even if you know full well that you are not the kind of person who would ever abuse anyone, please acknowledge that a new partner of yours can't be so certain. Proactively arrange your courting and early domination of them so as to remove or reduce even the opportunity for abuse. Showing that you understand and care about their vulnerability will go a long way toward establishing the safety that is so essential to fostering submission.  Here are some things you can do.

Suggest public places to meet with new or potential partners.

Suggest public play spaces (if such are available to you) for your first several times dominating them.

Don't offer to pick them up in your car or drive them home. If appropriate, pay for a cab for them instead.

Suggest they arrange a safe call: a trusted friend who knows where they are going, knows when they ought to be back, and will take action if they don't check in by the agreed upon time.

Don't demand that they share their legal name, home address, or place of work before they volunteer those pieces of information. Those are all tools that can be used to stalk and harass.

Then let their comfort set the pace for dispensing with these precautions as the two of you get to know and trust one another.

There usually comes a point in a relationship where you know one another well enough that getting into a car together or playing in the privacy of a bedroom becomes normal and unthreatening. There remains a risk of abuse creeping into the relationship, however, through complacency, entitlement, or the pressure that those in submissive roles feel to be good and pleasing. Always remember that no matter how many times a partner has consented to be (or even begged to be) kissed or groped or slapped in the face or ordered to their knees—you cannot assume that you get to treat them that way in the future until and unless the two of you explicitly agree to ongoing consent. And even then, it's a good idea to check back in occasionally and confirm that they're still loving it.

An excellent tool for reducing the risk of abuse even in a long-established dynamic is what's sometimes called a Protect the Property Rule. It's common for those with strong submissive desires to find it easier to obey orders than to take care of themselves. So if you simply tell them they're allowed to set boundaries when something feels not okay for them, or that they have the right to do so, then they may still have considerable difficulty actually doing it. Instead, you can order them to set a boundary when anything feels abusive, damaging or not-okay. It might look something like this: "Your submission is valuable to me, and in order for me to keep getting the submission I want from you I need you to be healthy in mind and body, and enthusiastic about submitting to me. So my absolute highest priority order to you is that you tell me, right away, if anything in your life or anything in the orders I give you feels inconsistent with you being healthy, feeling good about yourself, or being able to give your submission with enthusiasm."

Finally, being the dominating partner does not immunize you from assault or abuse either. Most of these strategies for mitigating the risk to your partners can also apply to protecting yourself.

Love and Attachment These may seem like funny things to list as risks, and if building a loving relationship is your intent, then of course they aren't risks at all. Where they count as risks is in dynamics where your shared goal is to have a more casual play relationship, or a D/s relationship that may be deeply emotional in its own way but not involve romantic love.

The experience of submission has a marked tendency to create intense emotional attachment. It's a common experience, especially for people new to submission, to go into a D/s dynamic fully and sincerely intending for it to be a casual game that they occasionally play with someone who's just a friend, and then a month later find themselves swept up in feeling like they have found the greatest love their life will ever know. Some go so far as to compare it to a drug: it is possible for someone to get so addicted to our dominance that their judgment is compromised.

When negotiating for dominance in a relationship where you and your partner intend to place boundaries around how attached you'll be to one another, it's wise to talk about what you'll do if either one of you finds your feelings exploding out of your control. As the dominant partner, it's likely that you will be the one in the position of having to hold those boundaries with both firmness and compassion.

Question Three: What Are Our Relevant Limits and Likely Triggers?

I put this question third on purpose. When we ask our partners "What are your limits?" without first establishing a context of what kinds of things we both want to do together and what risks are involved in doing those things, it can be difficult for them to focus in on the relevant limits. We'll tend to hear back lists of the scariest things they can imagine, like "no involving children" or "no amputations," which aren't all that useful because there was no chance we were going to do those things anyway.

It's more useful to think about limits after you have established a pretty good idea of what the two of you want from your dynamic and what significant risks might apply. Now you and your partner can think about limits to those activities that are actually likely to come up. If you are negotiating a domestic service arrangement and your partner is allergic to certain household cleaners, or simply loathes scrubbing bathtubs and does not consent to doing so—those are relevant limits. If you are negotiating sexual contact for an evening of play, and you prefer to reserve kissing on the mouth for long-term relationships, that is a relevant limit. First negotiating the general shape of what you and your partner might do together allows you to better focus on those relevant limits.

However, there is a trade-off here. There can be something sexy about starting with a blank slate and then negotiating limits. It gives more of an illusion of having nearly unlimited power: we've just got this list of five or ten (or zero) limits, and we can do absolutely anything else we want to our partner! And it also supports a sense of mystery, which some people like to play with: since we've only talked about what we won't do, our partner gets to wonder about what we're actually going to do. And if the mystery is worth it to you, then maybe you want to base your negotiations off of a list of limits.

But don't lose sight of the fact that your sense of boundless power is an illusion. There are always going to be lots of things that aren't on your partner's official list of hard limits that they aren't really consenting for you to do to them, because it is impossible for anyone to generate a list of literally all the things that would be unacceptable to have happen to them. I've seen more than a few people attempt to negotiate out all their limits, and then the dominant partner (in an earnest attempt to be clever and devilishly sexy and hardcore and all the things that their partner wants them to be) springs something out of left field—hot sauce in the eyeballs, fucking with a picture of their grandma watching, showing up with a leash at their work in the middle of a Monday—that the submissive partner just never thought to include in their list of hard limits. And then the dynamic falls apart and there are hard feelings and recriminations and "I can't believe you'd do that!" and "You didn't say it was a limit!"

It is unethical (and likely to be unsuccessful) to rely on a prenegotiated list of limits as a substitute for maintaining a genuine connection with your partner, understanding how they're feeling, and really truly caring about their experience. "You didn't say it was a limit" is not a defense for dominance that leaves your partner feeling shitty, traumatized, or even just bored. So even if your negotiation is just telling them to list their limits and claiming the power to do anything that isn't forbidden by the list, in reality it's still your responsibility to somehow find out what will make for a safe and satisfying experience for your partner, and to stay connected with them so that you're able to tell if they're going to a bad place—even if no official limit has been crossed.

So the first thing I'll usually do when it comes time for serious negotiating is to make it explicitly clear that nothing is going to happen except what we've specifically agreed will happen. And we start from there. My partner doesn't have to tell me that blood is a limit—because until I've determined that bleeding for me is something they're eager to do, I'm not going to make them bleed. It has less melodrama than "I'm an Extreme Sadist Master and who knows what terrible things I will do to you once you've submitted yourself to my merciless clutches!" But it creates a much more stable foundation for exploring the depths of our perversion together—and when we work up to the extreme sadist games I can be way more confident that we're in synch and that I know how to push my partner's buttons in all the right ways.

A trigger is a related concept to a limit, but not quite the same thing. The term originates in the psychology of trauma, to describe circumstances (acts, words, smells, kinds of people, etc.) that trigger traumatic memories or post-traumatic stress reactions. It has come to be applied more broadly, to any circumstance that sets off any sort of powerful, involuntary mental or emotional reaction. Someone might say that being called "boy" triggers memories of their abusive father, but they also might say that having their hair petted is a trigger for dropping them into an age-regressed "little space."

A trigger might also be a limit, but it isn't necessarily. Your partner might be delighted for you to pet their hair, so long as you understand that they will then be feeling and acting like a five-year-old for the next hour and you're prepared to go with that. Setting off truly traumatic triggers, even with your partner's consent, is serious business and should not be done lightly—if at all. A limit shared by many of us on the dominant side, myself included, is that we do not wish to act as pseudo-therapists for our partners and, as part of that, do not consent to be part of anyone intentionally reliving their traumas as part of our dynamic.

Question Four: How Will It Start and How Will It End?

How to get a dynamic jumpstarted—to make the switch from interacting as equals to interacting as dominant and submissive—is very often the most challenging and awkward part of dominance. A clear agreement on exactly when and how it will happen can make the whole experience feel smoother. Endings are also vitally important, and often aren't given as much attention as they deserve

Some of us like to use rituals or tokens to make the beginning and ending of our dominant dynamics crystal-clear. Perhaps your partner kneels and asks to be of service to mark the beginning, and kneels again and asks to be released to mark the end. Undoubtedly the most classic token is a collar—the agreement begins when the collar goes on and ends when it comes off. Those of us in ongoing relationships will sometimes even establish multiple different rituals or tokens to indicate different kinds of dominance: a formal collar for when formal obedience is expected, a dog collar for when your partner is to be used like an animal, etc.

Having a clear agreement about how you will both know that your dynamic is or is not in force can head off all kinds of misunderstandings, and even unintentional consent violations. A common sort of violation, and source of damaged relationships and hurt feelings, is when partners agree to some D/s treatment (like one calling the other "pet" or having free rein to fondle their body), but then the dominant partner continues that treatment after the submissive partner believes their agreement to be ended.

There is also always the possibility of the dynamic ending earlier than expected. True consent can always be revoked, and all kinds of emergencies can pop up that interfere with the best laid plans. Having "emergency landing" agreements laid out in advance can make such sudden ends much less confusing and stressful. This is the time to discuss safewords and exactly what it means when one is called, and to make sure that you and your partner are on the same page about what you'll do if the babysitter calls with an emergency, or an earthquake hits in the middle of your evening together (more of a concern in my neighborhood than yours, perhaps). What sorts of emergencies and distractions will you handle within the container of your dominance, and what sorts will call for stepping outside of that dynamic?

Long-term dynamics, where our partner may become emotionally or materially dependent upon us, call for more thorough consideration of endings.

What will happen financially? If our partner has been dependent on us to support them, or to make the budgets and understand the taxes and generally manage the money, they can be left in the lurch by a sudden breakup. Some of us who take financial responsibility for our partners set aside a sum of money that will become theirs upon the ending of the relationship, to ease their transition back into financial independence.

What will happen emotionally? The end of the intense emotional connection of a long-term D/s relationship can be equally devastating. Some of us negotiate a process that we and our partners agree to follow for ending the relationship. For example, we might agree that we will engage in couple's counseling for at least three months before ending our dynamic. No process can make the ending of a relationship we'd hoped would last forever easy. Going through the steps can create an emotional buffer that makes it less hard than it would have been otherwise, though, and sometimes having those steps to follow together can help both us and our partners feel like we're still working together at least a little bit.

Question Five: How Will We Maintain Communication During?

In the section on forging connection I talked about the importance of keeping in touch with your partner while you dominate them. No pre-negotiation, no matter how thorough, can ever replace ongoing, in-the-moment communication.

There will be times when you or your partner will find yourselves reacting to something differently than you'd imagined way back when you were negotiating, or you'll suddenly realize that you've forgotten whether they said they needed to leave the dungeon at ten or if it was that they needed to be home by ten.

That goes double for ongoing relationships. There's a popular little fantasy that it's possible to negotiate a meticulously detailed, etched in stone, signed in blood, formal contract that will provide a perfect and unchanging structure for a fifty-year long relationship—replacing all those difficult and messy relationship conversations that less enlightened vanilla people have to keep having. I'm afraid that it doesn't really work that way. Effective and meaningful contracts for long-term dominance are almost always living documents. They aren't the end of negotiation, but instead are records of an ongoing process of communication, reevaluation, and modification within an evolving relationship.

So whether we're talking about a half-hour scene or a half-century relationship, ongoing communication is almost always essential to successful dominance. The challenge is that D/s has a natural tendency to shut down communication. People in the midst of submission very, very often find themselves less able to speak their minds than they normally are: afraid of saying the wrong thing, powerfully driven to say whatever they think you want to hear, or even finding it difficult-to-impossible to speak at all. And sometimes it isn't much easier on our side either. We can find ourselves a bit stuck a role that doesn't have a lot of room for things like expressing uncertainty or requesting reassurance.

To counter balance this tendency toward shutting down full and honest communication, it's important to include strategies, rules and encouragements for ongoing communication as part of your negotiations. Especially with a new partner, it's wise to assume that they will have difficulty initiating any communication while submitting, and tremendous difficulty telling you anything that they think might displease you or that runs counter to the dynamic that exists between you. A bratty partner might have no problem mouthing off when you aren't spanking them hard enough, but still feel unable to tell you when they're feeling small and tired and just not up for taking a spanking tonight.

There are many different tactics you can use within your negotiations to ease those inhibitions, each of which will be more or less suited to different sorts of dynamics. You can negotiate periodic breaks in your dynamic for real-talk conversation, or have a special phrase or ritual that invokes a moment when you set aside your D/s roles and check in. You can have your partner keep a submissive's journal, or create code words for them to express the truth in way that doesn't feel like it's being bad. One common code is to use "If it pleases you" to mean "I'm not safewording, but I really don't want to do that."

I like to outright order my partners to tell me how they're really feeling, to make it rule number one, and then reinforce throughout the scene or relationship that sharing their actual feelings, reactions and experiences with me is an act of obedience and a way that they can please me—even when their experience of the moment is that they're not turned on at all and they think I'm being a dumbass.

Beyond the specifics of the rules or agreements that you make for communicating during your domination of your partner, there's a significant benefit simply to the act of talking about it—of giving it priority and making it abundantly clear to your partner that you really, seriously want to be kept informed of what's going on in their head while you dominate them. All details aside, if you get that message across you'll be on the right track.

You'll still probably have to reinforce the message throughout your dynamic, though. Just saying "tell me if you have any problems" once at the beginning and then counting on your partner to speak up when they need to is asking for trouble. The wise among us heavily emphasize communication during initial negotiations and also regularly check in with their partner throughout their experience together.

Question Six: Who Else Will Be Involved, and How?

What I mean by "involved" here is a broad spectrum that runs from lending your partner to another person to serve, down through even hinting to another person that your partner submits to you. In between are all kinds and degrees of involvement: inviting a friend to step over and help spank your partner at a kinky party, telling your partner to apologize for disobedience while on a crowded bus, posting pictures of your partner naked and kneeling onto a kinky website, having your partner wear a collar where other people can see, etc.

The experience of submission can be utterly changed by the context of who is involved and exactly how they are involved. Many people who melt at the thought of being their partner's private fuckdoll would be flatly horrified to have that relationship even hinted at to anyone else ever. On the opposite side of the fence, some are unexcited by the prospect of submission without an audience to appreciate it. And, of course, we may have our own preferences, needs and practical considerations around privacy and involving others as well.

The first time I ever took a partner out in public on a collar and leash, we first drove to a city four hours from where we lived, and we went to a neighborhood well known for its tolerance of wacky shenanigans. We talked about it first, agreeing that we were both confident we wouldn't see anyone who would recognize us, and sharing an understanding of what sorts of showing off in front of strangers would and would not be hot and fun. She wore a skimpy dress and basked in the appreciative looks and envious comments; I took pride in displaying her training and obedience for eyes beyond our own. It was a delightful, sexy, liberating experience, in a way that it couldn't have been in a place where we were fretting that we might bump into classmates or coworkers.

Fine distinctions can matter a great deal. Your partner may be happy with everyone knowing that they engage in submission, but only want kinky community friends to hear any more details than that, and need you to never tell another soul about how much they're into feet. And even though they're okay with kinky friends hearing about their submission, they still don't feel good actually practicing it in front of anyone other than a few specific close friends or, perhaps, total strangers who they're sure they'll never see again.

Another kind of distinction to feel out is how closely the two of you will dance along the boundaries that you do draw. Some of us don't want others to see our dynamic but love, love, love the tantalizing possibility that we might get "caught." There are ways to push the boundaries that take genuine risks, and ways that create only an impression of risk. You can have your partner wear a piece of jewelry with a symbol that (you hope) only people within kinky communities will recognize as kinky. You can send them a text in the middle of their work day, ordering them to slip away to the bathroom and masturbate. You can have coded, hinting conversations at the family picnic. But first, establish how much pushing is mutually desired.

In your negotiations, be sure that you've explored those distinctions and reached a clear understanding of how you and your partner are agreeing to share your dynamic beyond the two of you. Until you've talked about it, the only responsible default is to not share even the tiniest scrap of your dynamic (or negotiations toward a dynamic) with another living soul, and to never assume that ways your partner has agreed to submit to you can be transferred to anyone else: having the right to spank your partner is not the same as having the right to let someone else spank your partner. Remember how sensitive and vulnerable submission can be. The smallest suggestion of a threat that you're going to expose that vulnerability to unapproved people can be traumatic.

There's also murky territory regarding our ethical duty to obtain consent from the other people who we are involving. I judged that I didn't need to get the consent of passersby to see me lead my partner on a leash. I wouldn't pull down a partner's pants and spank them in the middle of a park, though, out of consideration for others present who didn't agree to witness what might reasonably appear to be a violent act. Exactly where is the line where consent begins to apply? That is a question for your conscience to answer.

Finally, consider negotiating agreements for how you will handle information about your dynamic long after it ends. Many people have different ideas of how to consider the privacy of an ex than they do for a current partner. Will you tell future partners about your dynamic? What details should always be kept completely secret? What happens to all those sexy pictures you have of one another? It's easier to make those agreements at the beginning than it is mid-breakup.

Question Seven: What Happens After?

Another key point of negotiation is what will happen after an intense D/s experience ends—whether that's a one-off scene, or an evening of special focus within an ongoing relationship. Many of us have had the awkward experience of unbuckling a collar and realizing that we have absolutely no idea what to do next. We'd been so intensely focused on all the details of planning, preparing and leading our partner through a journey of submission that we hadn't thought beyond the end of that journey at all.

Even if we have thought about what to do after, if we haven't negotiated a shared understanding with our partner it's all too possible to have wildly different assumptions. I once wrapped up a humiliation-heavy first date and blithely moved into my usual, natural next phase of praising her for how well she'd done and reassuring her that I valued her as a person and a friend. She instantly went from gooey surrender to cold irritation and told me I was ruining it for her: what she craved was being dismissed with contempt and left to wallow in her degradation for a couple of days.

Aftercare is kinky culture's technical term for what partners do together immediately following a scene or other intense experience. Often it's envisioned as consisting of cuddling, warm blankets and warm loving connection and reassurance. As my example suggests, though, that isn't what everyone is looking for, so the best practice is to find out beforehand.

It's also legitimate for us to have our own needs or preferences for how to follow up an intense experience of dominance. More than a few of us find ourselves needing reassurance that we are good people and good partners, after having said and done a bunch of villainous-seeming things. Some of us absolutely do not want to dispense cuddles immediately after dominating someone, and that is perfectly okay—so long as we negotiate our dominance with partners for whom cuddly aftercare is not a requirement.

Chances are good that one or both of you won't be entirely sure what you're going to want immediately following your experience, especially if you're trying something or someone new. Even if you are confident that you do know, it's possible to be surprised—dominance is a powerful thing and sometimes brings up unexpected reactions and emotions, even in those of us who've been doing it for years. It can be a good practice to talk through both of your best predictions of what you might need, and then arrange to just have a comfortably long span of free time available after your dynamic winds down. Then you can use that time to stay connected and deal with whatever unexpected reactions and aftercare needs do come up. Taking a new partner into uncharted waters of submission when you have another date lined up later the same evening, or an early flight to catch the next morning, is a disaster waiting to happen.

Feelings can develop and perspectives evolve after a night of sleep, or even a week of sleeps. Some of us like to include a planned check in as part of our negotiations: a scheduled time, the day or the week after dominating a partner, to reconnect and see how the experience is settling in.

Beyond immediate aftercare, there are important bigger-picture questions about what this D/s experience means for you, for your partner, and for the two of you. Is it the beginning of a lifetime exploration, or a one-night stand? Does submitting to you for this one evening mean that your partner is becoming submissive to you in general, or does it mean that next weekend is their turn to hold the leash? If you already have an intimate relationship between you, is dominance changing it? For some power-kinked people D/s is a necessary component of love, while for others love and D/s cannot coexist in the same relationship. It would be a tragedy to discover that you and your partner are on opposite sides of that line after you've already become attached to one another.

Seven Key Questions: In Summation

Negotiations for dominance can take lots of different forms, but regardless of whether it's a months-long seduction in a chat room or a spontaneous "Wanna play?" with a friend, we can ask ourselves whether or not we and our partner share a clear understanding on these seven important points. If we do, then we can be confident that we're ready to take control. If there are any questions, we can know to pause and get them cleared up before we start giving orders.

Part Three: Flavors of Dominance

Beyond the fundamental basics, we practice dominance in many different ways. To get a handle on that broad territory, I'm going to divide it into six primary flavors of dominance.

Control

Conquest

Devaluation

Nurture

Objectification

Service

I can't swear that this is an entirely comprehensive model, but I believe most of what we do under the banner of dominance can be described as some mixture of these six elements.

The idea of mixing flavors is important here. I'm not saying that there are only six kinds of dominance and that you have to pick one from the list. I'm saying that these are six basic ingredients that you get to blend together in different proportions to create your own custom dominance recipe.

Just like not very many of us want a diet of nothing but spoonfuls of sugar or oil or pure cocoa unmixed with any other flavor, not very many of us practice only one flavor of dominance utterly unadulterated by any of the others. Many of us have one or two favorites that form the major flavors of our dominance, and we may have one or two that we want absolutely nothing to do with. Some of us like to emphasize different flavors in different contexts or with different partners: our long-term relationship dynamic could be mostly about service and nurturance, but we might love doing conquest-heavy scenes.

The classic Master/slave relationship is heavy on control and service. Parental or pet ownership dynamics tend to emphasize nurture along with control. Consensual nonconsent and dynamics with bratty or smartass partners center conquest, and Owner/property often has a large helping of objectification and sometimes devaluation. Not everyone uses those relationship labels in the same way, though, and certainly everyone likes their dominance spiced at least a little differently. Talking about dominance in terms of its six basic flavors, rather than in terms of idealized relationship styles, is a way to avoid that confusion and to avoid squabbles over what qualifies as a "true Master" or "real Dominant."

An understanding of these different flavors is valuable for self-understanding and developing our dominance in the directions most rewarding for each of us, for facilitating clearer and more constructive conversation with others who are interested in dominance, and also for aiding in assessment of potential partners. Simply knowing that someone is "a submissive" is woefully inadequate for understanding whether or not they will be an appropriate partner for the style in which we want to dominate. Understanding that we require devaluation, can take or leave service, and have no interest in nurture lets us probe for those interests and decide to pursue or not accordingly. It is by no means a checklist, because different people can and do have very different interests and preferences even within one of these flavors, but it will go a long way toward narrowing things down.

10. Control

A Fantasy: Sam & King

"King! Heel!" Sam believed that people who yelled at their dogs only betrayed their own lack of control, so their command wasn't loud, but it was sharp—pitched to cut through the noise of the dungeon floor and instantly activate the big puppyboy's training.

King whined, looking longingly across the room to the other dogs he wanted to go and romp with, but he fell obediently into line a half-step behind as Sam threaded their way across the floor to the social area and waiting friends.

Sam didn't have any particular need for their dog's services right then, but they also believed that it was good for any dog's training to learn that the world moved according to your schedule and not his. So they'd keep King at heel at least long enough to firmly establish that playtime started only when they decided it would.

Besides which, Sam always enjoyed having their beloved hound at their feet, even if he wasn't doing anything in particular. They scritched him behind the ear, while chatting briefly with the hostess, and got an affectionate nuzzle in return.

"Sit, King. Stay boy." Seeing the person they wanted to talk to pinned at the back of a particularly dense knot of partygoers, Sam parked King by a couch so they could press their way through to her without the awkwardness of a two-hundred-pound dog trained to insist on being precisely positioned at their left heel.

As they caught up and made plans with their old friend, Sam kept half an eye back on King—not from any worry that he'd misbehave, but just to appreciate the sight of him: muscular, powerful and sitting with such patience and focused attentiveness. His head tracked his owner wherever they went in the space, and his posture—upright, alert and ready to move—made just sitting there into an active, and very sexy, display of obedience. Other people could keep their mischievous kittens and hyperactive lap puppies; Sam was a big-dog person and always had been.

Sam smiled, and decided it was time for their good dog to go and have his fun. From across the room they gave the hand sign for release, and enjoyed seeing the surprise of the other people sitting on and around the couch—as the big dog that had been sitting silent and still for a quarter hour suddenly jumped up and scampered across the room in response to a command that none of them could see.

The Taste of Control

Control is the flavor of dominance that's directly concerned with taking charge and making decisions for our partner. All dominance involves taking control in some way, but in dynamics where other flavors predominate the control may be less detailed, less ritualized, and mostly a means to some other end.

More of the control flavor becomes manifest as the control becomes an end in and of itself: where what's hot and engaging is the feeling of being in charge, the experience of making the decisions, or the satisfaction of getting our way. It's making our partner memorize formal positions to adopt on our signal, less because the positions convey any material benefit than for the joy of watching our partner respond with instant, disciplined precision when we snap our fingers. It's the intimacy that can be created by prescribing daily rituals and seeing them enacted each new day. It's the sense of security from seeing our partner regularly prove that they are not only loyal, but actually obedient to us.

For those of us who are most comfortable in leadership roles a large part of the virtue of control-flavored dominance may simply be that it's a way to be appreciated for doing what we're naturally good at... to a degree that would probably be distinctly unappreciated by a partner who didn't wish to be controlled!

People who are big on control from the submissive side often get feelings of peace or relief from being freed from the need to make decisions, feelings of security from being given a way to know clearly and explicitly what their partner expects of them, or a powerful sense of being held in an embrace by their partner's control.

Inspiring that feeling of being controlled is a major part of control-flavored dominance, and often the most powerful tool that we have to inspire actual, practical control. It is inspired differently for different people. Some find it from being given structure and consistent expectations, some from being outwitted and kept off-balance. For some it's as simple as a firm hand around their throat. So we explore with our partners to find out what inspires them to feel held in our control, and then use that knowledge to get them into a place where they feel eager for us to control them in the ways we want to.

The Right to Rule

Dominance where the focus is on us being in control, making our partner's decisions for them, raises the question of how important it is that our decisions be good decisions, or at least better decisions than our partner could have made for themselves. Different people among us answer this question differently.

The ultimate basis of consensual dominance is desire, not ability. We want to be in charge and our partners want us to be in charge of them, and for some of us that's all that's important. If we're dominating a partner who's a professional sommelier, we'll still pick the wine at the restaurant, because the point isn't getting the best wine, the point is enjoying having us make the decisions. If we're driving the car and we take a wrong turn and end up on the highway on-ramp and have to drive five miles to the next exit so we can turn around, and then we come back on the highway only to realize that there isn't an off-ramp anywhere near that treacherous on-ramp where we mistakenly got on and so we're stuck going three more miles in the opposite direction and then slogging our way back over surface streets... well, we're no more embarrassed than anybody else would be.

Many of us, though, feel some degree of investment in being good leaders, in being the one who knows best, in being right. The fantasy ideal of dominant control that we're trying to embody always knows exactly what to do and never makes mistakes. And maybe our fantasy ideal of submission is someone who's an empty vessel just waiting around to receive our guidance. Out here in reality, though, no one is right all the time, and our partners are often smart, capable people with lots of wisdom and expertise of their own. So if our idea is that we're in control because we are best qualified to be in control, then what happens when our partner knows better than we do? And what happens when we're wrong?

An ability to admit our mistakes, laugh at ourselves, and forgive ourselves is invaluable here—as is having the humility and the foresight to never pretend to be that all-knowing fantasy dominant. Our partners are often eager to lap up that kind of pretense—they have big, hot fantasies of superdominants as much as we do—and often it isn't hard to convince them that we're infallible. What that does, though, is put us up on a pedestal that cannot last forever. Eventually we're going to make a bad decision—and if we've built our dynamic on a foundation of being right all the time, then our first bad decision is likely to trigger a crisis.

We can also work on the skills that support being a genuinely good leader: some of the ones laid out in the section on competence are a great start. Those skills can make our bad decisions less frequent and less bad. They can allow us to honestly claim to be, while not perfect, at least pretty good at leadership.

Another priceless skill we can learn is delegation. Many of our partners love to be useful to us, and they are often a whole lot more useful for their planning skills or their money management expertise or their excellent sense of direction than they are as human footstools. If we acknowledge our partner's intelligence and expertise and give them ways to contribute their ideas or even (gasp!) correct us from a submissive place, then we can worry less about being knocked off our pedestal when they know better than we do.

Learning to delegate, finding comfort in accepting corrections from our partners, and letting go of the fantasy of being right all the time are all necessary for personal growth and developing a realistic and resilient confidence in ourselves. However, they are also hard and humbling work.

Rather than do that work, some of us fall into a pattern (consciously or unconsciously) of seeking partners who are much younger, much less experienced and much less worldly than we are: people we imagine will be easy to impress and easy to control.

It's a tempting tactic, but has some big downsides. Accepting control is a skill of its own, one that requires maturity and experience in order to do really well. Our partners in control-centered relationships need impulse control, self-awareness and excellent intimate communication, and must be as good at owning their feelings and their needs as we are at owning ours. Choosing wide-eyed innocents as your partners means giving up expertise in those crucial skills of submission, as well as depriving you of all the things you could have learned from a partner nearer to your own place in life.

The Dictator vs. The Final Word

I want to show you two contrasting models of exercising control.

The first model is the Dictator, and I think this is the one you're more likely to have encountered in fantasies of D/s. The Dictator issues commands with zero input from their partner. They conceive of what they want to happen, work out all the details in their head, and deliver a complete order that leaves no room for discussion. Their partner need not know the reasoning or purpose behind their orders, or understand any bigger picture: theirs is not to reason why.

The second model is the Final Word. The Final Word has conversations with their partner about what it is they want and how to best achieve it. They explain their desires and their priorities, and get suggestions or feedback from their partner, and then they make the final decision about what will be done. Even after the decision has been made, they invite feedback from their partner about how it's working out, and remain open to adjusting their orders based on new information.

For many of us the Dictator is a closer fit for our fantasies of dominance, but often the Final Word is more effective in reality.

The old saw that "two heads are better than one" is accurate, especially when the other head is attached to the body that's carrying out our orders. Our partners often have a better perspective than we do on what challenges and complications stand in the way of accomplishing our orders—or what hidden opportunities may exist for going above and beyond what we thought we could expect. Not hearing that perspective means that we're controlling based on limited information.

When the Dictator comes on all strong and domly and says "Drop what you're doing and go to the bedroom to await my pleasure," they may be unaware that their partner is waiting on an important work call. Maybe they would have given the same order even if they did know or maybe they wouldn't have, but their partner can't know which—so they're in the position of having to decide whether to impudently speak up, which tends to spoil the drama of the moment, or to obey while leaving the Dictator in ignorance. If their partner does speak up, the Dictator can sometimes feel backed into a corner by not wanting to appear inconsistent—even if they wouldn't have issued the order had they been aware of the full situation. And if they don't speak up, then, when the phone rings the Dictator has to make some awkward decisions mid-scene that would have been way more gracefully handled in advance.

The Final Word would start with something more like, "I want to play with you. Anything I should know about before I take you into the bedroom for a couple of hours?" Then their partner has a graceful, obedient way to fill them in and they can decide (assuming it's within the bounds of their container) whether they're interested enough in play to make their partner miss a work call.

The Final Word is still in control, it's just a more collaborative kind of control.

We don't have to pick to be either the Dictator or the Final Word all the time. We can be the Dictator in moments when we're confident that we have a full understanding of the situation and know exactly what we want to happen, and the Final Word when the situation is less cut-and-dried.

The Burden of Command

An essential thing to understand about taking control is that if we want to keep it, we have to use it.

Think of your relationship (or your scene, or your partner's life) like a plane in flight: somebody has to be flying it. Egalitarian relationships aim to take more or less equal turns at the stick, but when we set out to create a control-flavored D/s dynamic we are telling our partners that they can sit back and enjoy the ride while we fly the plane.

A partner who enjoys being controlled might be delighted with that arrangement, happy for us to fly them to whatever destination we want and thrilled with whatever loops and rolls we want to pull along the way. But if we let go of the stick—if we stop making the decisions, giving them orders, and holding them accountable—then the plane will start to drift aimlessly, or maybe dip towards the mountains, and pressure will begin to grow on our partner to grab for the controls. And the more often they have to grab the controls, the less they're going to trust us to do the flying.

If I tell my partner that I'm going to take total control of all of their decisions for the weekend, but on Saturday night I just can't decide I want for dinner and I say "I dunno, what do you want?"—then my partner will probably feel less controlled. And feeling less controlled is almost certain to make them less inclined to do what I tell them for the rest of the weekend.

If I take control of my partner's diet, then I'd better know how and when and how much I want them to eat, and I'd better be ready to sort out ambiguous situations (is ketchup a vegetable?) and to handle situations where their cravings or appetite or circumstances come into conflict with my meal plan. If there are too many times when I don't want to decide, or make lazy, thoughtless or inconsistent decisions, then it will start to affect not only my partner's sense of having their diet under control, but their sense of being controlled by me in any other ways.

The truth is that all people make a lot of complex decisions, compromises and tradeoffs every day of their lives. While "total control" is a common fantasy, taking control of even one aspect of someone's life (clothing, sex, health, budget) requires a significant amount of attention, time and effort. Controlling every single detail of someone's life is a massive undertaking, and for most people turns out to feel quite tedious.

Some control-flavored dynamics involve less consistent decision-making on our part, and are more about making one-off demands. Rather than "I will make all your decisions tonight," the deal is more like "you will do whatever I tell you to tonight." We don't assume responsibility for flying the plane so much as we claim the right to yank the controls at will. And yet the same principle applies. If we make an agreement that we can order our partner to do anything at all, but then we rarely do give them orders or give them only a limited range of orders, then over time their sense of being available for us to command is likely to wither down to match the scope of control that we actually exercise on a regular basis.

Scope of Control

The container that we set around our control-flavored D/s is as much for our sanity as it is for our partners' comfort. By explicitly setting boundaries on what we will control and what we will not, we can choose how much of our attention to commit to controlling our partner and focus it on the areas where control is most rewarding to us. Handing control back at one of these agreed-upon boundaries creates a much smoother and happier transition than the "grabbing the stick" sensation that our partner feels when we drop control that we'd agreed to maintain.

Creating our container for control-flavored dominance is a great place to practice humility, especially at first. Take small bites of control, and let each one settle in and become habit before taking more. And learn to stop when you're full! When the satisfaction we get from our control is balanced out by the effort of managing more of our partner's life, that's as good as it gets. Taking on more to match some One True Way image of the all-controlling dominant, or because our eyes are bigger than our stomach, will just ruin a good thing.

Some different ways to build that container:

Take control of all your partner's decisions, but only for an evening.

Take control of only one small aspect of your partner's life.

Have a few levels of control spelled out, so that you can easily switch between them.

Create a simple ritual by which you mark handing control back to your partner.

Another powerful tool for managing the burden of command is delegation. It's far easier to be a big-picture visionary who says "I want you to eat healthier. Do some research and present me with a sustainable diet plan," than it is to plan our partner's every meal ourselves!

Of course those of us who enjoy control tend to get off on managing details (and our counterparts tend to get off on having details managed), so being too high-level in our control may be unsatisfying for us or for our partner. Look for the middle ground that works for your dynamic.

The Controlling Submissive

It is not at all uncommon to encounter people who have a deep and genuine desire to submit to control-flavored dominance, while also being powerfully controlling people themselves: the kind of people who make decisions quickly and with great confidence, who never back down from a fight, or who have a strong need for everything (and everyone) around them to be strictly under control.

If you think about it, this shouldn't be surprising. The compulsion to be in control and the enjoyment of being in control are really very different things. Having to be in charge while fighting to win all the time can be an exhausting burden. Is it any wonder that someone who's learned that losing control is unacceptable might turn to submission as a way to make it okay for them to relax and let someone else handle the control for a while?

They're rarely able to let go of it easily, though—so these controlling submissives are often particularly challenging to dominate.

I've encountered three archetypes of controlling submissive often enough to recognize them when I see them: the Sprinter, the Scrapper and the Control Freak. Understand that these are descriptions of roles or patterns that people sometimes step into, not descriptions of people themselves. It's not that your partner is a Scrapper, it's that sometimes they behave in ways that fit the Scrapper model well enough that it provides a useful lens through which to understand them in that moment.

Sprinters think fast, and they always know what they want. They aren't going to carefully weigh all the options; they see one choice that seems good and they go for it! They aren't intentionally controlling, but they usually end up in the driver's seat. Why? Because people tend to follow a clear vision, and the sprinter is usually the first person to present one.

A sprinter may be more than happy to submit to our decisions instead of theirs, but they have a tendency to take the bit in their teeth unless we make our decision right now. If you are a more contemplative person, it's easy to get steamrolled, or to feel pressured into making hasty judgments just to keep up.

A possible way to handle a submissive partner with this streak to their personality is to make patience into part of their submission. When you aren't yet sure which way you want to go, and they're already tugging you down a path of their choosing, don't hesitate to have your first order be "Stop. Wait patiently. I will tell you when I've made my decision." Having some specific ritualized way to wait, or having something else to focus on while they wait, can sometimes help your sprinter keep from boiling over while you consider your options.

Scrappers are fighters. Sometimes identifying as "strong submissives," "alpha submissives," or "not a doormat," these are folks who take great pride in their strength of will and combative nature. They've learned to see life as a series of battles, and losing as a shameful thing. They may turn interactions into fights unnecessarily, because fighting is the kind of interaction they're most comfortable with. In submission, they're often seeking someone who can best them, or "handle" them. They have a tendency to see D/s as a contest of wills, either because that's really what fulfills them or because their pride in their strength and their internalized shame about wanting to submit require them to put up a worthy struggle before accepting another's control.

If the idea of diving into that contest of wills appeals to you, turn to the section on Conquest for further discussion. If you'd rather have control without making it a battle, it can sometimes work wonders to reframe the challenge. Tell them that it isn't your job to force them to submit; it's their job to submit well enough to earn your dominance. Frame submission as an accomplishment rather than a defeat, give them difficult and demanding orders to struggle with and triumph over, and get them to turn that fierce will toward strengthening your dynamic rather than challenging it.

Control Freaks need the world around them to be tightly under control. They have a tendency to see their tastes and preferences as being objectively correct. They take it personally when other people make different choices than they would. They try to control everyone and everything around them not because they necessarily want to, but because they think they have to. The world is full of things that are wrong and broken, and if they, personally, don't hold it together, it's all going to hell in a handbasket!

I've seen two common patterns with people who have control freak tendencies yet wish to submit. The first is a perverse desire to have their rigid control torn away from them and be plunged into the out-of-control state that they fear so terribly, which leads us right back to Conquest flavored dominance or perhaps Devaluation, and which is almost always contained within short-term scenes.

The second pattern is a longing for someone else to take over responsibility for making sure that Everything is Under Control: to create a structured world that they can be slotted into and controlled as part of rather than having to maintain and control themselves. And sometimes that means that the only way to build a successful D/s dynamic with them is to be at least as big a control freak as they are. If you tend to not sweat the little things, then this might not be the submissive for you.

On the other side of things, it's worth noting that you don't have to be a controlling person to have a drive to practice control-flavored dominance, or to be really good at it. There are many laid-back, easygoing people who dominate very successfully without believing that they necessarily know the best way for everything to be done, or feeling compelled to manage everyone around them. They dominate because it's sexy or fun or fulfilling, not because they think the world will fall apart without them at the helm.

Setting a Baseline

One final, and very important, thing to do in any control dynamic is to set a baseline of what sort of behavior we'd expect from our partner even if we weren't dominating them. Remember that consensual dominance occurs inside a container of consent. So unless the boundaries of that container extend to "our whole relationship will end if we exit this dynamic," then any agreement that's framed as obedience to our control is at some level optional. When we take a break from our D/s dynamic for whatever reason, that agreement goes away.

So if, for example, it's really important to you to have some kind of communication with your partner every day—not as a show of control but just to feel connected and respected as their partner—and you set it up as a rule that they are required to send you a text message at least once a day, then when your dynamic hits a rough patch, and you take a break or renegotiate, and the text messages stop, you can find yourself in an awkward situation. It's difficult, in one of those already difficult moments, to ask your partner to continue to give you the communication that's important to you without it coming across as pushing your D/s control outside of the container where it's welcome.

If you're finding that you have to dominate a partner into doing things that you believe any decent egalitarian partners ought to do for one another, that's a warning sign. In extreme cases it can get to a point where our partner feels like they have a mile long list of rules to obey, and we feel like we're getting no more respect or obedience than we would with no D/s at all.

The way out of the trap is to bring it up directly: "I love controlling you and seeing your obedience, but I don't believe that it should take an act of submission for you to put your dirty clothes in the hamper. When I find them all over the bed I don't just feel disappointed as your dominant, I feel disrespected as your partner."

Even in very expansive containers where nearly all of our relationship is framed in terms of control and obedience, it can be very valuable to get agreement on a distinction between obedience that can relax a bit in hard times, and baseline behavior that we require in order for us to feel like we're being treated with at least as much consideration as we'd expect in an egalitarian relationship.

Technique: Trust Games

One edgy and powerful thing that we can tap into through dominance is trust. Putting our partner into a position where they have to trust us gives them an opportunity to experience vulnerability, and following through on their trust builds intimacy—and paves the way for even deeper trust. Plus, for many of us it's incredibly sexy.

Here are four different approaches to playing with trust in dominance:

Positions of Vulnerability. The most straightforward way to play with trust is to put our partner into a vulnerable position, then bring them through it unscathed. Bondage often has a taste of this kind of trust play, with the bottom being made literally, physically helpless. We can also tap into it by leading our partner through experiences that are new to them or where they feel unsure of themselves, whether that's skydiving or baking—anything that takes them out of their zone of comfort and confidence so that they have to rely on our guidance.

Limiting Information. This is a really easy technique to implement: we just don't tell our partner what we're planning to do with them. Not knowing what's going on, what's about to happen or why inspires a powerful feeling of loss of control in just about anybody. Limiting their information instantly drops them into a position where they have to put their trust in someone who does know what's going on (that's us).

This can range from simple things like blindfolding them at the beginning of playtime and not telling them what implements we're planning to use on them, to epic schemes like "Take the week of the sixteenth off from your work, make no plans, and be waiting naked in your living room at eight o'clock on Saturday morning."

But keeping our partner in ignorance is as risky as it is easy to do. I've talked about the practical value of making decisions collaboratively with our partners, and the technique of intentionally letting them see us coming. In limiting their information we give up those advantages and tread the murky edges of consent. We can moderate that risk by being careful and conservative with what we do with a partner who isn't fully informed, keeping everything well within the territory of what we know they consistently like to receive from us.

Mindfucks. A mindfuck is where we set up a situation that appears to be something that it is not. Usually, it appears to be something more dangerous or damaging than it really is. A very common example is showing our partner a razor-sharp knife, then blindfolding them and switching to an entirely dull knife to run over their skin.

We might convince them that we are renting them out to a random stranger on the street (who is actually a trusted confederate). We might heat a branding iron to cherry red, then turn them around and press an ice cube into their butt.

Mindfucks are a curiously double-edged kind of trust game. On one hand, we're teaching our partner that they can trust us to not really harm them, even if it looks like we're about to. On the other hand, we're also teaching them that they can't trust us to follow through on what we threaten/promise we're going to do to them.

This means that truly outrageous mindfucks ("I'm going to cut off your head!") can quickly lose their impact with a particular partner, unless that partner has a really strong capacity for suspension of disbelief. They remember the time that the broken glass we made them crawl through turned out to be potato chips, and the time that the poison we made them drink was really just Kool Aid—and they can guess that the guillotine is fake. So mindfucks can be more sustainable when they are just on the edge of plausibility—when our partner can have at least a tiny bit of doubt in their mind that maybe we really would carve our name into their thigh.

Inevitability. This is simultaneously the simplest trust game and also the most difficult to implement. We just make sure that what we say is going to happen always happens, at least in the context of our D/s dynamic. It's kind of the opposite of a mindfuck: instead of teaching our partner to trust that we won't do anything too horrible to them no matter what we say, we teach them that we will always do exactly what we say we're going to do to them.

Inevitability works especially well with things that our partner isn't confident we'll be able to make happen, because then when those things do happen their confidence in us grows. My favorite example is telling a partner that I'm going to fuck them with a sharp knife, and they won't be cut. Because I've learned how to do that, and most people assume it's impossible.

The other half of ensuring inevitability is having the humility and the discipline to never promise anything we aren't entirely sure we can deliver. We have to get good at qualifying things that we aren't sure we can follow through on ("We will probably have a big scene this weekend, unless work interferes.") and acknowledging our limitations ("I can't notice every single time you slip on this rule, so your job is to be at least good enough at it that I don't."). And then when we say, without any qualifications, "I am going to make you scream tonight," our partner gets the experience of knowing with deep certainty that, whatever else happens tonight, they are going to end up screaming.

Be Careful With Trust

All of these trust games carry a serious risk, because if they don't turn out well, they will damage our partner's trust in us even more than they would have built it up had they succeeded. Trust games often play right up against the edges of consent, because meaningful consent requires that our partners know what they're consenting to, and trust games often involve keeping our partner in the dark or outright misleading them. To stay on the right side of those edges, be certain that you have your partner's enthusiastic consent to trust you, and that you have a clear and confident sense of the general territory in which you have their consent to operate. There's a huge difference between being blindfolded and having your partner pick up a mysterious implement to beat you with, and being blindfolded and having your partner bring in a mysterious stranger to have sex with you.

So it's wise to proceed with care and humility. If we're going to order our partner to take a week off work and then kidnap them onto a vacation that we've planned and packed for—we'd best be damn sure that it's a vacation they'll actually enjoy and that we didn't forget to pack their medication.

Technique: Remote Control

Distance doesn't have to be a barrier to a D/s dynamic. Controlling a partner from afar can provide a means of keeping an intimate connection when we're apart, and provide a consistency of control that is crucial for some of us on both sides of the slash. The techniques of remote control are valuable any time that our in-person time with a partner is limited, whether that's because our relationship is long-distance or because of busy schedules.

For most partners, it will become more and more difficult to maintain their feeling of being controlled the longer they go without contact from us and reinforcement of our dominance. So setting up long-term rules and walking away tends to work less well than regularly checking in, sending new commands, and generally reminding our partner that we're paying attention.

A few ideas for remote control:

Daily Reports. Something as simple as requiring our partner to send us a "good morning" text message every morning can provide connection and a daily taste of obedience. More ambitious versions could include regular journal-style accounts of their life, or status reports on their adherence to rules or progress on assignments.

Rituals. Whether it's having our partner kneel and kiss their collar each night before climbing into bed, or study their list of rules each day, rituals can be a wonderful way for our partners to connect with their submission on a regular basis. However, they can also go stale if the meaning of the ritual leaks out and it becomes a rote chore to be performed. Checking in with our partners about their rituals, or occasionally changing them up, can help prevent this from happening.

Text Message Triggers. Establishing command triggers that we can occasionally send to our partner. Like "at the earliest possible opportunity, slip into a bathroom and masturbate for exactly three minutes," or "Tweet the last erotic thought you had, right now."

The value of pre-establishing a trigger is that commands issued at a distance—when we don't know exactly what our partner is doing, where they are or who they're with—often require either a conversation or a lot conditional clauses. "You aren't allowed to eat any more today, unless you have a work dinner that you can't get out of, but if you do have a work dinner then later I want you to..." Establishing the trigger allows us to hash out all that detail in advance and then send a concise message to set it into motion: "Starve."

Prohibitions. Denying our partner some little thing can be a regular reminder of their submission.

You may no longer use swear words.

You may not stand to pee.

Never wear underwear.

Call me and ask permission before eating any sweets.

Accounts. Having our partner track merits or demerits for how well they are behaving while apart from us, and present them to us for reward or punishment when we're reunited, maintains connection and a sense that we are in control even when not present. A favorite version of mine is to have them draw tally marks on their own flesh in permanent marker: a visible reminder of their success in obedience whenever they take off their clothing.

Sending Pictures. An obvious way of getting some connection back from our partner, and also a direct demonstration that they actually are obeying us, is to have them send pictures. Ideally these are pictures of their obedience to our other remote control commands, like pictures of our collar around their throat, words of devotion written on their body, or a clamp on a nipple.

11. Conquest

A Fantasy: Mar & Liz

Liz had that look on her face—eyes a smidge too wide and placid, right corner of her mouth turned up from a not-entirely-successful attempt at suppressing a smirk. To most people it would have looked perfectly innocent, but Mar knew her lover all too well. The only time the little brat looked innocent was when she was up to something.

Mar wondered what it would be this time. Her favorite flogger thrown up a tree? Googly eyes glued to all her cocks? Her bedroom redecorated in a My Little Pony theme? Unlikely that Liz would repeat herself exactly; she was as creative as she was naughty. Mar would just have to wait and see what fresh mischief she'd cooked up to deserve her punishment this time.

Or... on second thought, maybe she wouldn't wait. Mar could change things up just as well as Liz could; it was part of what made them so good together.

Mar reached out her left hand to cup the side of Liz's face. That hand was to support her girl's jaw, improve her own aim, and give just a bit of a warning as her right came around in a savage arc to slap the smirk straight off of Liz's face. She watched the familiar tangled mess of shock, pain, indignation and arousal wash across Liz's features, and made sure the girl didn't go down too hard as her knees crumpled.

"But I didn't dooo anything!" Liz whined from the floor at Mar's feet.

Mar answered with a solid kick into the meat of Liz's thigh. "Bullshit."

Squealing denials, Liz scrambled away from her lover's advancing boots, trying to both move away and ward off kicks in a way that was ineffectual at both. She made no attempt to get back on her feet, though, which told Mar that she wasn't looking for too vicious a beating. She'd learned early on that trying to get up once Mar had put her down was a good way to really piss Mar off.

"If you haven't done something yet, you were thinkin' about doing it. And either way I'm gonna thrash you until you tell me what it was." With carefully placed kicks to her thighs, ass and back, Mar herded Liz toward a corner of the room containing fewer breakable appliances.

"Nooooo! Nononono. No fair! I'm good. I'll be good! If I tell you now will you stop?"

Mar's eyes narrowed. "That'd depend on what it was you did, you sneaky little shit."

"Uh." A rapid calculation flashed across Liz's face. "Um. I didn't do it!"

Mar sighed, gave her one last kick into the corner, and began undoing her belt. Somehow, it always ended with the belt.

The Taste of Conquest

Conquest is the flavor of dominance that's about the struggle for power and the victory of the dominant partner over the submissive partner. That victory can come in different forms, from physical combat to mental challenges to contests of willpower.

Those of us interested in the dominant side of conquest often enjoy the thrill of the chase or the chance to cut loose and be rough and ruthless—and, of course, we like to win. Those attracted to the submissive side often love the feeling of struggle as well, and sometimes are seeking an escape from responsibility (once they are defeated, all the dirty sexy things that happen to them aren't their fault). It is also a way for the submissive partner to feel deeply and undeniably wanted; their partner wants them so badly that they will chase them down and fight to claim them.

There are also plenty of people attracted to conquest both from the dominant and the submissive perspective, and who enjoy contests where the outcome is genuinely in doubt and either partner could end up winning and taking control.

The Field of Battle

Here's a secret about conquest, just between you and me: the real goal of conquest-flavored D/s is not to defeat your partner, but to inspire a feeling of surrender within them. We might have them trussed up like a turkey with our boot on their neck, but if they don't feel like we've beaten them, then neither of us is going to be satisfied. Conversely, if having a sharp knife pressed up against their throat triggers that feeling of being vanquished and at our mercy—even though they know perfectly well that we aren't really going to cut their throat—then we've got them right where they want to be... and hopefully where we want them to be as well.

What makes someone feel deliciously defeated varies from person to person, flowing from individual passions and fantasies. So the first step in our conquest is to understand what kind of battlefield we're on. Common options include:

Restraint: our partner surrenders when they are held down, or when we get them tied.

Brutality: our partner surrenders when they feel sufficiently bruised & battered.

Threat: our partner surrenders when they feel threatened with some unacceptable loss, like when we put a knife to their throat or get their finger bent back near the point of breaking.

Wit: our partner surrenders when they feel outwitted or socially inferior.

Intellect: our partner surrenders when proven wrong or intellectually inferior.

Will: our partner surrenders when we stare them down, or demonstrate that we are more determined than they are.

If we and our partner have mismatched expectations for our shared battlefield, problems are likely to arise. We hold the knife to our partner's throat, but to them conquest means being outwitted, not being threatened. So they call our bluff. Now what?

We get to have our own preferences as well, of course. If what gives you the heady feeling of victory is talking someone into a corner, and your partner or prospective partner just wants to be beaten to a pulp, then you may simply be a poor match for one another.

Rules of Engagement

To remain in the realm of consensual dominance, conquest must happen within a container of ultimate consent. All the tactics employed, and the type and degree of force used by both partners, have to be agreeable to both partners. For some of us this is not a problem. Our ideal dynamics are kind of like games or sporting events, and establishing rules for fair and friendly competition feels natural. Wrestling provides a perfect example: it's a violently combative sport, but with clear rules in place to ensure fairness, to reduce the risk of injury, and to judge who is the winner. Some of our conquest dynamics are a lot like wrestling matches. Some of them are literally wrestling matches, using all the standard rules (with a few sexy exceptions).

If the kind of contest you're attracted to doesn't come with a handy pre-written rulebook, here are some things to think about.

First establish how much ruthlessness is in-bounds. If your partner defies you, are you going to grab them by the throat? If they keep defying you are you going to tighten your grip? If still they keep defying you are you going to squeeze `till their vision goes dark? If they still keep defying you are you going to hold your grip until they pass out? Are you going to threaten to break their fingers, or send naked pictures of them to their parents, or kill their cat? Might you actually do it?

Many of us who play with conquest love the concept or the threat of ruthlessness, but desire relatively little of it in reality. We are, after all, fundamentally partners in the act with the people we're doing this with. We want them to come through the experience happy, healthy and whole, and a lot of genuinely ruthless ways of conquering someone have unacceptably far-reaching consequences. Often it is more effective to make a big, villainous show about how ruthless we are than it is to actually threaten, much less follow through on, any extreme measures. If our partner is continuing to up the ante and pushing us into fighting harder and harder for dominance, there is a good chance that we're misunderstanding what it is that triggers their surrender.

Also, ruthlessness goes both ways. We get to set boundaries around what kinds and degrees of resistance and misbehavior we want to handle within our conquest dynamics, and what's just plain annoying, or outright hurtful. Would your partner humiliating you in public be grounds for a sexy comeuppance, or an unpleasant relationship conversation? Are you prepared to deal with them trying to gouge your eyes out during a takedown scene?

Finally, this is also the time to be on the same page about whether our victory is preordained, or whether if they fight hard enough there is some chance that our partner will win and take the dominant role. If so, would that be an occasional "flip" for variety, or is our dynamic going to be a frequently switching struggle for power?

Second what is the forfeit? Once they're down, what kinds of things do we get to do with them? Conquest dynamics are a particularly good place to pre-negotiate in detail, because a person who's just had their surrender response triggered is often not in a place to be able to make the best decisions about what they do and do not want done with them. What they're feeling at that moment is "Take me! I'm yours!"—but the next morning, when their brain is back in default mode, they may have other thoughts.

Third how long until the next rebellion? With conquest-flavored D/s, it's usually just a matter of time before our partner's feeling of surrender wears off and they come looking to be taken down again, and if we also have a passion for conquest then that's exactly how we want it! But there's a difference between establishing dominance once a year or once a day, and people's preferences fall all over that range.

Some people are even looking to conquer or be conquered only once per relationship, to form the foundation of a different flavor of dominance that follows the conquest. Misunderstandings on this point can lead to tremendous frustration, with one partner wondering why the other one won't stop picking fights now that the battle is over.

Provocation

A part of many people's conquest-flavored dynamics is provocation of us by our partners. Commonly associated with the labels "brat" or "smart ass masochist" (SAM), this is the kind of dynamic where our partner intentionally disobeys, disrespects, taunts, plays pranks, or otherwise misbehaves in order to elicit the punishment they crave.

Provocation is a peculiar kind of D/s play, because it gives primary control to the nominally submissive partner. Our partner chooses when to provoke, and we obediently dispense some kind of chastisement until they decide that they've had all they want and they choose to become temporarily remorseful. If we also get a payoff from having an excuse to sternly dispense richly-deserved punishment, then well and good—everybody wins. But if what we want is obedience, or even simple respect, then this dynamic can be frustrating.

The key is to recognize that acting stereotypically "dominant" in response to provoking behavior encourages that behavior. This is opposite of the common understanding of punishment, where the idea is that you spank someone to reduce the likelihood that they will repeat whatever behavior brought on the spanking. Our provoking partners want to be spanked. Spanking them when they provoke us will ensure that they continue trying to provoke us.

So if you enjoy the provocation dynamic, then go to town! Lay into your partner about what an irredeemable brat they are and how you're going to show them the error of their ways. Haul them over your lap and vent your irritation on their backside, and make sure they're good and sorry before you stop. You'll both have a great time.

If you don't enjoy being provoked, then don't feed the dynamic. Instead of responding with dominance, respond as a human being who has the right to have your own boundaries and expect those boundaries to be respected. Sit them down for a serious talk where you explain what it is about the way they're treating you that you aren't enjoying, and ask them to treat you differently. In short, don't give them the conquest that they're looking for. This is an especially appropriate situation for us to establish a safeword for our own use, to signal with complete clarity that we do not want to play right now.

You may, of course, have some kinds of provocation that you enjoy and some that you don't, so you can adopt both of these two approaches at different times. Respond with dominance to provocations that you find fun and sexy and want to keep within your container, and exit the container and respond as a hurt partner to provocations that you genuinely want your partner to stop. When you do, it's invaluable to be able to explain to your partner why this particular provocation didn't feel good. Was it a bad time? Was it a particular word they used or thing they did? It's going to be terribly frustrating for them if we sometimes respond with playing and sometimes with hurt feelings and they never know which they're going to get.

Anger

Intimately connected to provocation is the dangerous emotion of anger. Some of us like opportunities to bring anger into our dominance, and it's perhaps even more common that our partners want to trigger and experience our anger.

Anger is an emotion that does not fit comfortably with consensual dominance, however. It is an out-of-control emotion, in more ways than one. First, anger is a response to things not going our way. We don't get angry when we're in control and everything is going according to plan; we get angry when we're thwarted or feel impotent. Second, a person in the throes of anger tends to make less sound decisions and be easier to manipulate than they would be otherwise.

Many of us have a blanket rule that we don't dominate when angry. If we notice that we're feeling anger, we find a way to put the situation on pause and take some time to cool off, figure out what the anger was about, and get back into control of ourselves. Some of us even give our partners a rule that if they perceive anger in the way we're dominating them, they are required to tell us so. Some of us opt to roleplay anger, without actually feeling it, because that suits our fantasies or our partners' fantasies.

If you do want to play genuinely angry, recognize that it's a significant risk factor both for violating your partner's boundaries and for making decisions that you yourself will later wish you hadn't. One way of reducing that risk is to make a deal with your partner that things said or done in anger don't count later—so can call them a useless failure of a submissive who you regret ever offering a collar... and still have them collared in the morning.

Another approach that some of us take is to play when we are angry, but not angry with the partner with whom we are playing. That can make the anger less personal, and somewhat less dangerous to bring out to play.

Technique: Abduction

Abduction is a very common fantasy, especially among people drawn to conquest. To be snatched out of their safe and comfortable world by anonymous captors with who-knows-what sort of unsavory intentions is just about the hottest thing they can imagine happening to them. It is also, however, a very high-risk thing to arrange.

The aspect that is most problematic, while also being key to many people's payoff from abduction, is anonymity. It just isn't the same to get "abducted" by your partner, who you would have gone along with anyway, as it is to get carried away by a mysterious stranger. But if our partner is jumped by someone who they really do not know is us, then they are faced with the nasty choice of either assuming that it isn't us and resisting like they'd resist an attacker, or assuming that it is us and resisting like they'd resist a lover. There can be terrible consequences if they guess wrong in either direction.

So the main way to reduce the risk of a consensual abduction is to arrange a way to moderate anonymity. You might make it so that your partner absolutely knows that their abductor is you, that they mostly know that it's you, or that they find out that it's you at the last second. Here are some options.

Scheduled Abduction. Plan with your partner what day this is going to go down. The odds of a random abductor trying to kidnap them on the exact day you'd planned are vanishingly small, but they can still maintain a sexy suspension of disbelief that it might be a real abduction.

Signal. Your partner doesn't know when their abduction will come, but you have some signal that you can give them right beforehand. You send a text, watching from the shadows, and as soon as they check their phone you spring. This preserves the sense of surprise, and some people will absolutely love the tension of going about their days knowing that their doom could come at any time.

Forgo Anonymity. Or you can just scrap anonymity altogether. Walk right up and take `em. You can still preserve a mystery about where you are taking them and what you're going to do with them once you get there.

What Do You Do Once You've Got `Em?

If we're going to all the trouble of kidnapping someone, we might want to do something different than what we'd do to them on any regular Tuesday night! Some things that tend to go really well with the feeling of an abduction are disorientation and uncertainty.

Blindfolding is such an integral part of the abduction fantasy that it's practically mandatory! A sack or pillowcase thrown over their head is most traditional.

Move them around, by an unfamiliar path to an unfamiliar location. You can simulate the unfamiliar location if you have to—just drive them all over town (blindfolded) and then end up back at your house, but do something to make it unfamiliar. Plastic sheeting laid out over the floor will feel both different and disconcerting.

Involving others is another common component of abduction fantasies: the idea of being at the mercy of an unknown number of faceless strangers. Extra helpers can also help tremendously with the logistics of capturing, restraining and transporting your partner. Make your plans carefully in advance—if you can avoid speaking, then anonymity can be better preserved. It goes without saying that you ought to be certain that bringing in these particular confederates fits within your container.

And, of course, abducting someone where a bystander might see us adds a whole extra layer of risk, just like any kind of violent-appearing public play. You're advised to plan your abductions for private places. Have your partner give you a key to their home so that you can "break in" for their kidnapping, or abduct them from a kink community party or other gathering where everyone present can be in on the secret. Many people love the idea of something like snatching their partner (or being snatched) into a van in a darkened parking lot. If you're going to go that route, be extraordinarily careful about who might be watching. Someone who happens to glance out a window at the wrong moment and calls 911 will not just ruin your night but seriously complicate your life.

Finally, think through how the abduction is going to end. Once you're done with whatever torments you have in mind will you dump your partner, battered and bruised, along the side of a road (within reasonable walking distance of home, of course)? Or will you pull the hood off and have all their friends gathered `round and the candles lit for their surprise birthday party? How the abduction is resolved will have a huge impact on how our partners experience it.

12. Service

A Fantasy: Cindy & Zen

Cindy was painting her nails, and making an entirely calculated show of it. She'd had Zen set up the camp chair and folding table in a place where zie couldn't help but notice as zie scrambled around breaking camp: cleaning the breakfast dishes, striking the tent, packing up hir grossly overstuffed frame pack and Cindy's dainty daypack. She worked carefully and unhurriedly, applying each layer to each nail as though it was the most important thing she had to do all day, and she knew Zen was loving it.

At first she'd had some concern that letting Zen take her into the wilderness, where zie was in hir element and Cindy was decidedly not, would shift power into hir hands—something that neither of them wanted. But it was turning out to be the best idea ever. She still knew what she wanted, after all, and the details of how to accomplish what she wanted were, as always, Zen's problem to work out.

It had been wickedly fun to keep adding to the list of things that she simply had to have on their trip, just to get to watch her devoted servant stoically shoulder the burden. And she really was enjoying getting to experience all of the natural splendor while doing practically none of the work. And Zen, of course, was in seventh heaven getting to show off how strong and competent zie was, and having so many things to do to serve her. On the other hand, it wouldn't do to let her servant feel too competent. That led to cockiness, attitude and, if left unmanaged, sloppy service.

"Zen, attend me!" Cindy called out, and was gratified to see how promptly zie dropped the sleeping bag zie had been stuffing into its sack and scurried over to stand at attention before her.

"How may I serve you, Ma'am?"

"I don't want to risk smudging my top coat." She held out her still unpainted right hand. "You do this hand while the other dries."

"Yes, Ma'am." Zen went smoothly to hir knees in the dirt by the little table.

"And I want my hands to match." Cindy waved the immaculately, expertly polished nails of her left hand in front of her servant's face. "So you'll have to do as good a job as I did. Or I will not be satisfied."

Zen really was an excellent servant: hir voice quavered hardly at all as zie made hir formal reply. "Yes, Ma'am. Of... of course, Ma'am."

The Taste of Service

Service is the flavor of dominance that is about our partners expending effort for our benefit. This kind of effort ranges all over the map. Domestic service (cooking and cleaning), hospitality service (waiting tables, serving tea), body service (massage and other pampering) and sexual service are some of the most common themes, but you can also find submissive servants acting as everything from mechanics to executive assistants to personal trainers for their partners.

No Such Thing As a Free Lunch

This sounds like a fantastic deal for us, and inspires a lot of joking like "I should be a dominant, then I'd never have to clean my own bathroom again!" The truth is that service dominance really can be a fantastic deal, but it's rarely so easy as having someone show up, clean our bathroom and leave without expecting anything in return. And people who enter into dominance solely as a way to get free housework tend to be disappointed.

Every successful service dynamic is actually mutually fulfilling in some way, even if what the servant is getting out of it isn't immediately obvious. The key to building and maintaining strong service dominance is understanding the nature of the fulfillment that our partner gets from serving us, and making sure that they're getting enough of whatever that is to keep them happy—while serving us in a way that gives us lots of what we're looking for.

Maybe it seems obvious that what we'd be looking for out of a service dynamic is clean laundry, backrubs, or our taxes done for us. And certainly those tangible, direct benefits of service can be both useful and delightful. But when you consider all the time, thought and effort that we put into building and maintaining the service dynamic, it'd usually have been overall easier to have done the work ourselves, or hired a professional. People who enjoy service-flavored dominance generally do so because there is something about being served that feeds us, beyond simply getting free labor.

Our approach to service D/s should be guided by a clear understanding of what we want to get out of it. If we're going to have a partner cooking us dinner, is our top priority getting the tastiest meal or the healthiest one? Is it seeing our partner perform their duty naked and with sexy grace? Is it having an opportunity to find fault and administer punishment? Is it simply having the knowledge that our partner is our servant and will obediently perform menial chores at our command? Probably the full picture of the rewards that each of us gets from receiving service will include a mix of these, along with other pleasures I haven't even thought of.

Submissive servants will have similarly diverse mixes of motivation to serve, though some of them may not want to admit it. Service-flavored submission naturally lends itself to Gift of Submission fantasies that the servant is purely giving to their partner without getting anything back. But think of it this way: someone who really, purely wanted nothing but to serve would probably be off volunteering at a soup kitchen rather than going to all the work of building a D/s relationship. They've sought out a dominant partner because they are looking for some special character of service, or something that they hope to earn through service.

That distinction between payoffs that are inherent to the service and ones that are earned through the service is important. Payoffs that come from the nature of the service itself can be fed by the way in which we receive our partners' service. Ones that are earned mean that we implicitly owe them something outside of the service itself.

Here are some common payoffs that people might get from providing service. Look for some combination of these in your partners, and think about how well each one matches up with your own payoffs from receiving service.

Having a Job in the Relationship. Some people are happiest and most comfortable when they have a well-defined job to do. Their payoff comes from knowing their place and having a clearly defined structure that lets them know exactly what to do in order to be "doing a good job." We can feed them with clarity and consistency: by setting very specific expectations for what we want to have done and how and when they should do it, and then noticing how well they do and praising or correcting them appropriately.

Feeling Competent. Many people love opportunities to show off how good they are at things. Their payoff comes from getting to employ their skill, knowledge or dedication and be recognized for doing well. Especially for people whose daily lives are full of complex jobs, hard battles and partial successes, it can be wonderfully relieving to do a simple task well and get a pat of unqualified approval on the head in return. We can feed them with approval and opportunities to shine. Give them tasks that they can do a good job with, set them up for success, and then be liberal in your praise. This person may not want to be chastised about their service at all, which doesn't mean we can never do it, but does mean that we should do it with awareness that our partner will take it hard.

Feeling Subordinate: Many people associate serving someone with being beneath that person, and so for such people their drive toward service is a way to experience being in a subordinate role. We can feed them with superiority and demeaning tasks. Give them jobs to do that you wouldn't want to do yourself—menial, unpleasant, boring or stupidly simple jobs—and really rub it in for them how this work is beneath you. This particular motivation for service is closely akin to devaluation-flavored D/s, and your partner might be disappointed if you are too grateful for their service. They want to feel you over them, and you can enhance that by being imperious, dismissive, and difficult to please.

Looking Good Doing It. Some people love the look and feel of service, particularly formal service. Their payoff comes from the beauty of the crisply starched maid's uniform, the elegance of the tea service placed in the precisely correct position before each guest, or the rigid dignity of the lieutenant saluting their commanding officer. We can feed them with pageantry and formality. Give them ways to serve with grace and beauty, tap into existing models of formally correct service like military discipline or the Japanese tea ceremony, discipline them in strict and formal ways for tiny infractions, and aim for an air of aristocratic formality and grace when being served.

Getting to Know You. There's a unique kind of intimacy available to a personal servant. They get to learn all the minute details of our routines and our preferences. For some, building that intimacy with their partner is a big part of their motivation toward service. In cooking for us, they learn all our favorite foods and precisely how much salt we like in our soup. In acting as our secretaries, they get an excuse to be on top of our schedules and know our travels and our business. And those things help them to feel close to us, connected to us and secure as partners. We can feed people with this kind of payoff through transparency and intimacy. If your guilty pleasure is that you'd honestly rather have an Egg McMuffin for breakfast while watching cat videos on the couch than eat home-cooked eggs benedict at a formal table setting with your servant standing at rigid attention behind you, they'll love getting to know that and running out to get your Egg McMuffin in the morning.

Getting Things Done Right. There's a marked overlap between people who are attracted to service and people who have strong ideas about the correct way that things ought to be done. Some of these folks we can feed best by giving them wide latitude. Tell them your big-picture goals for their service, and then get out of the way and let them organize the details. Then notice those details, and let them know that you are pleased and impressed with how all of the spices in the kitchen have been checked for freshness, segregated into sections by cuisine, and then alphabetized within each cuisine. Others are better fed by a partner who will get down into the details with them and match or exceed their perfectionism. They are tired, and perhaps a bit contemptuous, of all those people who don't seem to care or even notice if the lettuce isn't put into the produce drawer in the refrigerator. And they will swoon for a partner who not only tells them to put it there, but also orders them to set the humidity control at exactly "3."

A theme across all of those different drives toward service is the importance of noticing our partner's service. This goes straight back to the fundamental work of forging connection through our attention. The vast majority of submissive servants don't just enjoy doing chores; they want to be serving you, and to be connected to you through their service to you. So whether you're giving them a savage dressing down for having burned the toast or heaping praise on the beautiful new paddle they made you, the key is that you show them you noticed.

The hardest dynamics to do this with are the ones where our partner being beneath our notice is part of the point. You are the majestic queen and they are the lowly scullion; it would be inappropriate for you to pay too much attention to them while they clean your dishes. But even in those cases, look for subtle ways to let them know that you're ignoring them on purpose—while still being engaged in the dynamic that you are creating with them. Cindy in the introductory story, ostentatiously not paying attention to her servant, sets a good example.

Earned Rewards of Service

Sometimes part or all of our partner's desired payoff from providing service is not the service itself, but something that they expect to earn through their service. This can be fine and dandy if it's understood and agreeable to both parties. I, personally, love arrangements where a partner has to serve me in some way in order to earn the privilege of being played with by me. The idea that being controlled and/or tortured by me is a reward that needs to be worked for is entirely delicious.

Things can get sticky, though, when our partner is not conscious enough of their motivations, or not a skilled enough communicator, to make it clear to us what they're expecting to get in return for their service. We can end up in a situation where our partner thinks we owe them something that we didn't intend to sign up for.

Some people learn, somewhere along the line, that service is a way (maybe the only way) that they can earn attention or love or sex or commitment. The stereotypical Nice Guy, who leaps to do favors for women he's attracted to and then feels cheated when they don't have sex with him in payment, is one example. Another is the stereotypical apron-string mother who insists on cooking and cleaning for her grown children whether they want it or not, and then lays down the guilt trip when they don't visit as often as she'd like.

In the D/s context, we may encounter someone who says "All I want to do is serve you," but really, truly, wants us to spank them, or fuck them, or love them, or be in a long-term relationship with them. They'll give us great, enthusiastic service—for a little while—and then they'll come around with the bill. Usually they aren't doing this with conscious intent to deceive; it's one of those subconscious manipulation strategies that we all pick up without realizing it.

When negotiating service in a relationship, it is always worthwhile to talk through with our partner what it is that they expect to get out of the deal. Ask them to describe how service looks in their fantasies. Ask them how they want to feel while they're serving. Ask them what they imagine will happen after they're done mowing your lawn and washing your car. Ask them how they imagine serving you will change your relationship. Bringing their payoffs out in the open lets us know how to make sure they're getting what they need to feel fulfilled in their service to us, and also lets us decide whether we want to sign on for providing those things.

Deserving to Be Spanked

An especially noteworthy form of external reward for service is when our partners are looking to be rewarded for bad service. Some people's service fantasies revolve around naughty, lazy or incompetent servants being punished by their dissatisfied masters.

"Burned the toast again!? That's a birching for you, you incompetent wretch!"

This can be a delightful game to play, so long as it's the game we wanted to be playing and so long as we don't actually care too much about whatever service our partner is performing for us. It isn't really a service dynamic at all. It's more of a conquest or devaluation flavor of dominance, dressed up as failed service.

As you might imagine, the trouble comes when we and our partners have different assumptions around whether the goal is for them to serve well or to serve poorly. Asking those questions about how they want to feel while serving, and what they imagine will happen afterward, helps to figure out which way they lean.

It's also valuable to be clear and sincere about our own desired outcome right from the beginning. If our initial instructions for service are full of dramatic threats (promises) about the horrible (wonderful) things we're going to do to (for) our partners should they fail to meet our exacting standards of service, then it isn't unreasonable for them to interpret all that bluster as winking instructions for them to fuck up their service so that we can get on to the spanking. If we want quality service, it's better to lead by telling them how important good service is to us and how much we'll appreciate their best efforts to succeed.

If we know that a partner likes being spanked (or whatever other form of kinky play), and we want good service, we can make spanking into a reward for meeting our expectations—instead of a reward for screwing up. If we know that a partner craves being punished for screwing up, and we want good service, we can set up a clear distinction between play service and real service. For play service, we create some tasks where the outcome isn't too important to us, and use those as a place where our partner can burn the toast, literally or metaphorically, and we can take them to task for it just the way they wish we would.

After All I've Done for You!

Even for servants who have been getting inherent rewards from service, it can be very tempting, when the relationship hits a hard patch of some sort, to retroactively decide that all that service they have rendered is a debt that must be repaid. I don't mean to cast aspersions on the integrity of submissive servants: this is the same temptation that any of us has to cry "After all I've done for you!" as a way to blackmail a partner during an argument. It's just that servants have a much easier case to make than most. The rewards that they've been giving us are tangible and undeniable, while the ones that they've been getting from us are often invisible, unconventional, and very easy to conveniently forget.

One thing we can do to guard against this prospect is to not accept "All I want to do is serve you." Dig deeper with your partner, explore their motivations for wanting to serve, and get their payoffs out in the open. Reframe it from being something that they do all for you, to something that you do together to meet needs that you both have. If there is something external to the service itself that they want as a payoff, you can agree to it (or not) on purpose. And if you do agree to it, you can make sure they're getting enough of it.

It's also valuable to check in, from time to time, and explicitly confirm that their needs are being met. Not only will they be less likely to feel unappreciated, but if there comes a time when they do, then they'll at least have a checkpoint that they can think back to. "I'm feeling angry now, but last month I said I was really fulfilled by my opportunities to serve in this relationship." instead of "I've done that rotten bastard's yardwork for years, and they haven't given me jack shit for it!"

Technique: Assignments & Rules

Assignments and rules are how we exert control over our partners beyond the present moment. The difference between the two is that an assignment is some task that we set for our partner to accomplish ("return these books to the library," "learn to speak Russian") while a rule is a general guide to behavior ("never look me in the eye," "always wear your collar when you leave the house"). The two have a lot more commonalities than differences, though. As compared to a right-here, right-now order ("kneel!"), they both benefit from more forethought so we can set our partner up to obey successfully.

If you have a rule or assignment that you want your partner to fail at, see Technique: Set Up to Fail.

Clarity. Programmers have their own expletive specifically for shouting at programs that are stubbornly refusing to do what their makers intended them to do. It's abbreviated DWIM, and it stands for "Do What I Mean!" The joke, or course, is that computers do not and cannot do what you mean—all they can do is what you tell them. So if your program isn't doing what you mean, it can only be because you did not clearly communicate your desire.

Most people are a lot better than a computer at interpreting ambiguous instructions, but they still have their limits. And most of us aren't as good at clearly communicating our desires as we think we are. It's all so obvious inside our heads!

There are a few simple ways to enhance clarity in our rules and assignments. We can encourage questions after we've given our instructions. We can have our partner repeat the instructions back to us in their own words. Having them parrot our exact words back to us only proves they heard; rephrasing it in their own words confirms that they understood. We can put our instructions in writing, which also helps both them and us remember the details of the instructions later. We can develop the instructions collaboratively, a la the Final Word. That way they have seen our thought process from the beginning, understand all the reasoning behind their orders, and can ask for clarification along the way.

Also, notice that the less initiative we want our partner to take, the more clarity we need in our instructions. If we're happy setting a big-picture goal and having our partner handle the details, then we only need to be clear about the goal. If we prefer our partners to obey robotically, then we need to think through all of the steps involved—very carefully—just like a programmer.

Importance. How important is this rule to you, really? Is it a whim that sounds really cool right now, but that you're likely to forget about tomorrow? Or something so important you'd end the relationship over failure to obey?

You can think about it in terms of the greatest negative consequence you'd want your partner to suffer in order to obey this particular rule. Say I gave my partner an assignment to find purple polka-dotted panties for the party this weekend, and she's running all over town trying to find a pair. Do I want her to give up whenever it starts to feel frustrating? Do I want her to miss that yoga class she likes? Do I want her to be late for work? Do I want her to miss her review meeting and her chance of promotion? Do I want her to shank the woman who just picked up the last pair?

The future is a famously unpredictable thing, and even the simplest-seeming assignment can turn out to be a much bigger, harder or more unpleasant task than we'd imagined it would be when we told our partner to go do it. If we've told them how important the assignment is to us, then they can judge when to give up on it while still obeying us. If we don't then they're put in a position of balancing their submission to us against whatever unexpected havoc our assignment is creating in their life.

Supervision. Once we've given an assignment or created a rule, it becomes a burden for us as well. If we forget about it or stop caring about it or just don't notice whether or not our partner is following our instructions, that tends to erode our dominance of them in a big way.

So to keep our dynamics strong and hot, it is our responsibility to supervise the execution of all our assignments and rules. We can write down all the rules and assignments we've decreed. (I know I already said that, but it's worth saying twice.) We can set ourselves reminders to follow up on how our partners are doing with their orders.  We can explicitly remove rules that we no longer really care about, rather than letting them just kind of fade away. If our partner has been faithfully obeying a rule that we're going to remove, it may be a great time to acknowledge that and give them praise or a treat for their good service.

Some assignments or rules create more work for us than others. If our partner isn't allowed to eat anything without our explicit permission, then, unless we want them to starve, we have to be available and responsive multiple times every single day. When you come up with a new rule or assignment, give some sober thought to how much work it will mean for you and if you really want to sign on for that effort.

13. Devaluation

A Fantasy: Darren & Greg

Never before had Greg wished so badly for an attached garage. He'd rushed home from work to prepare for his date with Darren, only to find the devious bastard's truck already parked smack in front of his house—two hours early!

Greg was never allowed to wear clothing in Darren's presence without explicit permission, and Darren brooked no excuses. That was only part of the reason why Greg loved him; and if Greg knew the man at all, he was sitting comfortably in the living room right now with a direct line of sight to the door—probably sipping scotch and reading a book. So now Greg was racking his brain for any way to get into his house without being clothed while also not being naked on his front stoop, which was, of course, impossible.

Resigned to his fate, Greg left the safety of his car, edged past the silent truck like it was some kind of sleeping guardian beast, and opened his front door as quietly as he could, feeling like an intruder in his own home. He scanned the living room with wary eyes, but—miracle of miracles—found it empty. Maybe... maybe Darren just parked there while he ran an errand?

Greg shut the door and started disrobing as quickly as he could. Shoes, trousers and briefs made a pile by the door while hope began to blossom. And he had half the buttons of his shirt undone before a rich, amused voice from the kitchen doorway drawled, "Well look at that. A pig in a shirt."

Greg winced and dropped to his knees where he belonged, while Darren sauntered over to him.

"Don't believe I've ever seen anything quite so ridiculous-looking as a pig in a shirt. I've told you how I feel about animals dressing up like people, haven't I? `Specially filthy pigs like you?"

Cheeks heating with shame, Greg nodded. He had been told.

"And you haven't gotten to thinking you're a person again, have you?"

Greg shook his head. He knew he was just a pig, and he felt horribly embarrassed, half-dressed in a shirt and socks. But trying to take them off now would just make things worse. Doing anything now would just make things worse.

Darren was standing directly over him now, and Greg was looking directly at his boots. "Sure about that, pig? `Cause from where I'm standing, it looks like you aren't fully clear on the concept."

Greg nodded emphatically.

"Well. We'd best have one more training session just to make sure. Get that shirt off, pig, and we'll get started."

The Taste of Devaluation

Devaluation is the flavor of dominance around our partner getting to feel lesser than, lowered in worth or dignity, while we get to feel correspondingly superior, or to savor the proof of our power from seeing what humiliating things they will do at our command. Nobody really uses the word "devaluation" for this kind of dominance; the most common words we use are "degradation" or "humiliation." I'm calling it devaluation because some people make strong distinctions between humiliation and degradation, and I want to talk about both at once.

As with all the confusion over other labels around dominance, there is no broad consensus on a distinction between humiliation and degradation. Many of us use the terms interchangeably, or just use the one that sounds sexier to us, while some of us have specific definitions that suit our style. Personally, I think of humiliation as the lighter, gentler end of a spectrum and degradation as the heavier, darker end.

By my definition, humiliation is blushing cheeks, goofiness, giggling and feeling silly and small. It is often played for humor value, or to take the starch out of a partner who's taking themselves a bit too seriously, and it can be a great way to create a lighthearted and playful mood—a bit like an icebreaker activity at a team-building event. Imagine making your partner wear a pair of underwear on their head while making dinner, or sing "I'm a Little Teapot" while you beat them at a kinky party. The aim is embarrassment, without feeling seriously devalued.

Degradation, on the other hand, might look like making our partner wet themselves, or telling them they have to wear a bag over their head when we fuck them so that we don't have to look at their ugly face. The aim is more toward tears, deep catharsis and a significant lowering of our partner's feeling of worth, and we get to tap into more serious cruelty or contempt.

These are directions on a spectrum, not two binary choices. There is a middle ground where humiliation gets gradually heavier and darker and bleeds into degradation. Distinguishing humiliation from degradation is useful because many people on both sides of the slash are powerfully attracted to one and cannot stand the other, and that includes people who go weak in the knees for vicious degradation but would never consent to being made to look silly. On the other hand, I'm writing about them together as ends of the same spectrum because there are a lot of similarities in how to play along that entire spectrum.

The Push Zone

What we're hoping to achieve with devaluation is to create experiences where shame burns sweetly for our partner. Everyone has a realm of things that do not bother them at all, and a realm of things that they find repugnant or beneath their dignity. Some people have a border zone in between those two: experiences that they simultaneously loathe and yet in some way crave being subjected to. That's the push zone, and it is the key to devaluation-flavored dominance.

Successfully taking a partner into their push zone is a kind of emotional alchemy. It can transmute powerfully negative emotions like shame and self-loathing into intense excitement, passion or even peaceful relief. Some of our partners have difficulty even describing what it is that they feel in the midst of devaluation, or what it is that they get out of it. Concepts like "fun" or "liking it" are inadequate. They aren't having fun when they're devalued, and they don't like what's happening to them or what they're made to do, but it gives them some ineffable reward that leaves them feeling better off for having gone through the experience. Or maybe it just leaves them incredibly aroused, for reasons that they may or may not be able to explain.

That alchemy is also the key to why many of us are attracted to devaluation flavored dominance. The rush of power from degrading or humiliating someone isn't just that we can make them lick the soles of our boots—any bully can do that. It's that we can make them lick our boots and feel pathetically grateful for the privilege.

Everyone's push zone is different. Everyone's sense of self-worth and sense of social propriety are built a little differently, so what's no big deal to one person might induce panic attacks in someone else. Those examples of humiliating and degrading activities that I gave in the last section? I'm sure there's someone out there for whom being made to sing in public would be deeply degrading rather than light humiliation, and also someone for whom wetting themselves in public would be great adult baby fun and not degrading at all. For some it's highly specific: someone might go wild with shame and arousal over being mocked for having a small penis (whether or not they actually have a small penis), but have no interest in being devalued in any other way. For some it's a more general reaction to being devalued, and we can have more flexibility in how we take advantage of it.

So devaluation play calls for giving lots of attention to communication and connection—discussing and carefully exploring our partner's unique inner landscape of shame and perverse attraction, in order to understand what takes them down to their lowest and keeps them coming back for more. During your negotiations, pay special attention to listening for any triggers or limits they have around the kind of devaluation play you plan to do with them.

This kind of negotiation is an excellent place to use the Paraphrasing Fantasies technique to develop a deep understanding of our partner's desires around devaluation. Remembering that reality is often pretty different from fantasy, it can be especially valuable to find out about real life experiences they've had being humiliated or degraded before, both the good ones and the bad ones, and try to understand what made the good ones good and the bad ones bad.

These conversations about the details of their capacity for devaluation are bringing up our partners' most shameful desires, so we ought to be prepared for them to be difficult conversations for our partners. If someone clams up when we raise the topic of devaluation, the wise thing to do is not to press them too hard on it, but instead turn our attention back to creating safety, building enough trust that they might become able to share this particularly tender submissive piece of themselves.

A Delicate Balance

As well as being highly individual, the alchemy of devaluation is also often quite delicate. In order to process these powerfully negative emotions into something dark, juicy and ultimately positive, it's common for our partners to need to be in the right kind of mood or to have enough energy or to have time to mentally prepare for the experience. And if those conditions aren't met, and the emotional transmutation doesn't work, then the experience can quickly become just plain awful, or even traumatizing.

Our partner might love being made to wear a dunce cap and get pointed and laughed at sometimes, but find it intolerable on days when they're feeling bad about their body. Being disparagingly called a slut might send them over the moon if we do it when they're already turned on, but only piss them off any other time. There may be times when even they don't know why being devalued does or does not work for them in that moment.

Devaluation is a particularly good kind of play to let your partner see coming long before it happens, and to be especially careful about reconfirming consent before you repeat something that you've done before. I've already written about the risk inherent in taking your partner by surprise, and the intense, delicate and sometimes outright ugly emotions that devaluation invokes make that risk greater and the consequences more severe. Springing it on a partner, or assuming that what worked well once will work the same way again, can be catastrophic.

Even carefully negotiated ongoing consent can remain delicate and risky when playing with devaluation. It may be worth it to us and our partner to negotiate for us to have the ongoing right to belittle them or treat them like livestock or the like, but we cannot assume that their having given ongoing consent means that it'll always go smoothly. We need to be prepared to help them through an unexpectedly intense reaction, and keep telegraphing devaluation far enough in advance for them to prepare.

Making our partner anticipate their upcoming debasement can be the best part. Often the hottest aspect of devaluation isn't the shameful act itself, whatever that act may be, but the awareness that our partner is willing to allow themselves to be subjected to it. It isn't spitting on someone that turns me on; it's sharing with my partner the awareness that they are the kind of pathetic piece of trash who'll thank me for spitting in their face. I can draw out and savor that awareness by letting my partner know what's coming, while simultaneously giving them time to prepare themselves for their devaluation and wallow in their own anticipation.

The ending of devaluation calls for careful attention as well. Many people will need lots of closeness, affection, and reassurance that we really do value them immediately after their trip down into the depths. That reconnection is essential for them to put their devaluation into context and to recover from it safely. Not everyone wants to be cuddled and coddled after devaluation, but unless a partner knows their reactions well enough to be able to tell us otherwise, it's the smart assumption.

Finally, the experience of being devalued changes drastically based on who witnesses or knows about it. For some people being humiliated in public is the entire point, while for others it would be intolerable for anyone but their partner to know what degrading things they get off on in private. Negotiate privacy boundaries with great care. If anything about your devaluation play is to be shared with anyone, be sure you're clear on exactly what details are to be shared with exactly whom.

Good-Bad vs. Bad-Bad

Because devaluation taps into such dark places, we may have a hard time discerning whether our partner is having a good bad time, or a just plain bad time. If our partner is a sobbing wreck on the floor, does that mean they're getting exactly the cathartic experience they needed or does it mean they desperately need to exit the container and be reassured of their value as a person? They might not even be entirely sure themselves.

One thing that's always true: everyone has the capacity for genuinely bad bad experiences with devaluation. People seeking devaluation sometimes advertise as though they love any and all degradation, which can give the impression that there are special people for whom being treated like shit is always a good thing. It's a sexy fantasy, but don't believe it. There are special people who have the ability to enjoy being treated like shit under the right circumstances, but they're still human beings who have feelings and are also capable of being just plain hurt, in a not-fun kind of way. So even with a partner who's telling us that they're a worthless worm that loves any kind of abuse, we still need to be paying attention to whether they're absorbing our abuse and transforming it into fulfillment, or just feeling abused.

Gauging the difference between good-bad and bad-bad in the moment when it's happening is largely a matter of rapport: knowing this particular partner, their signs of distress, and their signs of readiness to continue. To get to the point where we can have that rapport, it's wise to build up devaluation play gradually. If our partner is excited and also repulsed by the idea of piss play, then maybe we start by having them kneel in the bathroom and just watch us piss, while we watch how they react. Then we give them a day or two for the experience to sink in, and then get them to tell us how it felt in the moment and how they're feeling about it now.

In the moment itself, when we're in the midst of playing with devaluation and our partner is showing signs of difficulty or distress, it's vital to be able to check in with them, both so that we can hear how they're doing and also to prompt them to figure out how they're doing for themselves. Remember, though, that many people who seek devaluation don't actually enjoy it while it's happening, so questions like "Do you like this?" or "Do you want more?" may be hard for them to answer. A question like "Can you keep going?" or "Do you need to stop?" can be easier to process for someone who's in a state of simultaneously hating what's happening and eager for it to continue.

Technique: Set Up to Fail

One common theme in devaluation is failure or worthlessness. To play with this concept we have three choices: we can pretend that our partner has failed, we can wait for them to fail at something on their own, or we can set them up to fail at a time and in a manner of our choosing. Different people on both sides of the slash will have very different reactions to those options.

Roleplaying failure is the simplest option, and often the gentlest. We can dress our partner up like a schoolboy and berate him for getting 'F's on his report card, simulating a sense of humiliating failure in a way that has nothing to do with his actual competence.

Having their nose cruelly rubbed into something that they genuinely failed at is excessively harsh for most people, but for some it's the only way to go. For those of us who are strongly attached to reality, a simulated failure can be unsatisfying, and for some of our partners finding atonement for their actual failures is the whole point.

The option that takes the most thinking through is setting our partner up to fail. As with the other two choices, creating failure will strike different people differently. Some will just get pissed when they can see that they've been set up with no real chance of success, but for others it is liberating. Knowing that they can't succeed lets them sink into feeling the taste of failure without getting defensive about their deeper worth or preoccupied fretting about how they could have done better.

So we set them an impossible task. Usually it's good to have it be something that isn't too arduous and doesn't take too long, because working for a long time at something you know you're bound to fail at tends to get old. Usually it's good to choose a task the successful completion of which isn't genuinely important to us, for obvious reasons.

Even better than a task that is always impossible is one where we get to decide the success or failure—a rigged game like the one in Darren & Greg's story. That way, we can decide when the failure occurs and when the devaluation begins. Challenges that depend on our judgment or satisfaction are perfect for this. If our partner's job is to clean the living room to our satisfaction, there will always be some speck of dust that we can find. If our partner's job is to please us sexually, we can simply decide when to be pleased.

Technique: Reflection

A subtle but powerful technique for many kinds of D/s dynamic is reflecting the way we see our partner back to them. In the section on forging connection I talked about the power of seeing our partners as submissive. Now let's talk about a more concrete way to put that into practice.

A huge part of submission (and dominance, for that matter) is about identity, and a huge part of identity is wrapped up in how we are seen by the people around us, especially the ones who are important to us. So we can help our partners sink deeper into their submissive identity by telling them about it, frequently and graphically. Narrate for them the submissive things they are doing or enduring, tell them what those things mean, how you feel about them, and how you want them to feel about them.

If you are making a partner lick your boots, don't just sit there silently. Point out that they are licking your boots, and what it means. Notice the difference between "What a good boy! I love what an eager bootlicker you are. You know only the best puppies get to lick my boots." and "Look at you down there, licking my boots like some kind of dog. You're pathetic, you know that? This is how I treat you because this is all you're good for." The meaning and feeling that we assign to an act changes it dramatically.

And don't just say something once and figure you've gotten the point across. The impact and persuasive power of a message is increased with repetition. So elaborate on your theme, get into details, and remind them over and over. For some of us it may feel awkward to say something that's already been said, but if our partner is into it they'll love hearing it over and over again.

To enhance the effect even more, it may work to not just say it yourself but to also make them say it, reinforcing the reality of their submissive role in their own voice. As a bonus, if you can get them to use their own words rather than simply parroting yours then you'll gain invaluable information about what kind of language echoes in their mind. Reflecting that specific language back to them is likely to be especially powerful. If you say "Tell me what a sissy you are." and they reply "I'm such a nasty sissy" then remember the phrase "nasty sissy." It's the language of your partner's own fantasies.

An advanced technique is to arrange to talk about our partner to a third party (or parties) in such a way that our partner can hear. That effect of our identities being shaped by how others see us is multiplied when it isn't just one but multiple people sharing an opinion of us. It's an especially powerful technique for devaluation or objectification dynamics: having our partner not be worth speaking to directly makes it all the juicier.

Just be certain that the third party will be on-message. If we're wanting to reflect what an excellent and devoted job our service submissive is doing preparing dinner for our friends, and one of those friends starts taunting them about how humiliating it must be to be doing all the work... Well, that would be counterproductive at best. Prep everyone who's going to be involved not just on what's going to happen and what you want them to do, but on what mood you're trying to create and how you want them to help you get your partner to feel.

14. Nurture

A Fantasy: Anne & Josh

Mommy! Mommy!" Josh came pelting up the stairs, brimming with excitement and dropping into little-space before he'd even got his tie off, "I did it! I got the promotion!"

Anne met him at the top with an affectionate smile. "Of course you did. You're my clever boy," she tousled his hair while he caught his breath, "and I'm very proud of you. Now get those school clothes off; your onesie is laid out on the bed."

"Yes, Mommy." Josh's eyes shone as he bounced off to get changed into clothing more appropriate for Mommy's little boy.

She really was proud of him. Josh had been a very different sight the first time he came to see her: stressed, ashamed, and so very alone. He was one of those men who'd learned that he had to be big and strong all the time, never to show weakness, and never to ask anyone to take care of him. It had taken Anne two sessions to get him to cry, and three after that to get past the crying. But look at him now: fumbling his buttons in a gleeful rush to get on to play time.

Having the power to inspire that kind of change in someone was a rush Anne would never get tired of. It never ceased to amaze her how far a little maternal approval could go toward getting them to try harder, break out of their ruts, and accomplish more. Sometimes she helped with goal-setting and accountability too, but the biggest part was always simply knowing that Mommy believed in them, and wanting to make her proud.

She went over to her vanity to select a hairbrush, since Josh was one of those dirty little boys for whom a spanking was a reward rather than a punishment, and chuckled to herself. She really ought to start marketing herself as an Executive Coach.

The Taste of Nurture

Nurture is the flavor of dominance that's about taking care of our partners, supporting their development, and generally dominating them for their own good. People with a taste for the dominant side of nurture might be people who are caretakers by nature, who love to be needed or relied upon, or who enjoy having a person as a "project" My Fair Lady-style. There's a lot of opportunity for feeling big, looked up to, or patronizing in providing nurture. People looking for nurture on the submissive side might want to be coddled by a loving authority figure, but they also might be wanting a caring but demanding disciplinarian who requires them to be the very best that they can be.

Nurture is sometimes thought of as the light and fluffy side of dominance, but taking care of someone can give us profound power over them. In the same way that accepting service can lead to our becoming dependent on our servant, nurture can be used to encourage a submissive partner to become dependent on our guidance and care to a degree that is not to be taken lightly. Besides which, it's possible to be every bit as harsh, demanding or sadistic "for your own good" as it is otherwise.

Doting Parent or Benevolent Dictator

Nurture can take different forms, involving different degrees of control.

Support. The simplest and possibly purest form of nurture is supporting our partner's happiness. Commonly emphasized in age play or pet ownership dynamics, this kind of support means providing largely unconditional positive regard, encouragement, confidence in our partner's abilities, or a shoulder to cry on. It's to be hoped that this kind of support is part of all intimate relationships, of course, but dominance gives it a more parental feeling. Rather than comradely support from an equal, it is the enfolding support of a bigger, more powerful entity for a smaller and more vulnerable one.

Accountability. Providing accountability means that our partner is still deciding on their own priorities and choosing their own goals for their development and self-improvement, but we are taking on some kind of an enforcement role. For example, our partner might have a goal of becoming more physically fit. We would talk with them to clarify a set of measurable goals that supported their own priority, and then we would hold them accountable to those goals. We'd decide what the consequences were for failure, or rewards for exemplary performance. We'd take charge of deciding when exceptions or leniency would be allowed.

Accountability lets us provide discipline, and get to dole out rewards and punishments and stern talking-tos, without taking responsibility for deciding what direction our partner's development should take. By the same token, it makes it much less likely that we will get cast as the bad guy when our partner is feeling surly about their commitments. It leaves the ultimate responsibility for knowing what's good for our partner where it most naturally belongs: with our partner.

Guidance. Providing guidance means that we are assuming the responsibility of deciding what's best for our partner. We set the priorities and the goals for their happiness and growth.

There's a gray area in between accountability and guidance, of course. Perhaps our partner gives us a list of areas in which they would like to improve and we set the priorities among them, or they give us a list of things that they would find rewarding and we decide which rewards they get and when. Perhaps we dictate how much time each week our partner will dedicate to exercise, but they are free to choose the type of exercise that they think will be best for them.

We need to get clear on whether we're taking charge of guiding our partner's development in a specific area (manners, financial responsibility, time management), or guiding their development as a person in general. The former is much more tractable, while the latter has an intense appeal for some of us, particularly those with a strong parental streak in our dominance. The vast majority of dynamics will create containers that leave at least a few specific areas (career direction and family relations are common ones) outside our direction.

Helping Them to Hurt Themselves

A special case that deserves special attention is the unusual and deliciously warped combination of nurture with devaluation. These two flavors are most often in opposition to one another, but when our partner has within them a desire to be guided, developed and perversely nurtured into some kind of degraded role, then we have the opportunity to nurture them downward.

We can employ the same techniques of nurturance, but twisted around to nurture the part of them that craves degradation. Give them sweet praise and stickers for sucking more cocks in a night than they ever have before, or have them keep a cute little journal of how much piss they can drink in one sitting. Accepting the praise and compliments and rewards will make a degrading experience even more degrading and, if we're doing it right, an even hotter experience for our partner.

To make this kind of play especially intense, we can save our kind and gentle treatment of them almost exclusively for encouraging their debasement, while treating them formally or dismissively the rest of the time, making their capacity for devaluation into their sole value. This is not an approach I'd recommend for a full-time romantic partner, but it can create amazingly deep D/s with partners who aren't depending on you for support in the non-degradation parts of their lives.

Dependence

For many of us who are attracted to nurture, having our partners be dependent upon us is a big part of the draw. And it can be very easy to let that slip into dangerous territory. That could be emotional dependence, where we are the person our partner comes to for soothing and support to the point where they'd have a hard time coping without us. It could be material dependence, where we support our partner to the point where they may lose some of their ability to support themselves.

These dangerous paths are more likely to be an issue in dominance that occurs within an ongoing and heavily invested partnership, but even regular scene-based dominance can encourage serious emotional dependence.

It's so easy to go too far with dependence, because it feels really good for everyone involved. Going too far with objectification or devaluation tends to run into resistance from our partners—it goes past what feels good for them. But having someone who's always there to wipe away your tears, or someone who gives you a rent-free room and an allowance to buy pretty things with—that feels great!

Until it stops.

Or until we make some demand on our partner that they don't really want to consent to, but are afraid that if they don't their source of support will be taken away. That's the subtle danger of taking care of our partners too much. We might, without meaning to, compromise their ability to give meaningful consent, or put them in a position where the end of the relationship would be far more devastating than any breakup ought to be.

So encouraging or allowing our partners to become dependent on our care tiptoes toward a line that is very hard to see. One way to gauge where we stand is to get our partner to imagine what losing us would be like for them—emotionally and practically—and look for the difference between a response like "that would be awful but I'd be okay," and one more like "I don't know how I'd go on with life."

Certainly nurture-flavored relationships play with more dependence than would be expected in an egalitarian relationship, but how much is too much? That is a judgment call that you and your partner need to make.

You Can't Fix Someone Else

There's also an outer limit where nurture can encourage bad behavior in our partners. If we treat someone entirely like an infant, we can expect their behavior to become more and more infantile. If we take responsibility for all of someone's problems, we can expect them to have more and more problems. We can support someone, we can guide their development, we can encourage their growth—but we can't do it all for them.

When dominance starts to resemble therapy, that's a big warning sign. Trying to use our dominance to fix our partner—to break their addictions, treat their mental illnesses, or resolve their traumas—can be very tempting. What would be a better sign of our power to shape them? Imagine how grateful and devoted to us the new, better version of them will be!

Sounds great, but doesn't work. It's a grand rule of human nature, and D/s relationships don't get to break it: we humans can only ever fix ourselves. Even trained therapists can't fix their clients, but only facilitate their self-healing, and an essential part of how they do that is by maintaining a degree of professional distance (also called a container, by the way). Trying to do therapy in the context of a sexy D/s relationship is a recipe for codependence, enablement, and ultimately heartbreak.

Am I making this sound awful enough? I'm trying to, because it's a terrible, terrible relationship idea that many dominance-inclined people are especially vulnerable to. We tend to be "fixers" by nature, to want to own everything about our partners, and to be reluctant to back down from a challenge.

So build a good container. Within the container, your partner is your little subbie and you'll take care of them in whatever manner you do. Outside of the container, they remain a grown-ass adult who holds the ultimate responsible for owning their own feelings and dealing with their own issues.

The Tremendous Power of Your Approval

I've been talking a lot about what we can't do in nurture. Maybe I should reassure you that we can do a whole hell of a lot, quite easily.

For most people, and especially those inclined toward the submissive side of nurture, simply hearing approval from an authority figure is powerful support and motivation. All we have to do is get ourselves into that "authority figure" slot in our partner's head and then say "I believe you can succeed," and they will work so much harder and accomplish more than they ever thought possible.

Providing accountability or expectations adds another level of remarkable effectiveness. Usually we don't even have to threaten harsh consequences or do much active management of our partner—simply knowing that someone else is paying attention to what they do, and will notice whether or not they succeed, will make a huge difference in most people's behavior.

And we really can guide a willing partner's growth to a significant degree. We can't fix them, or do the work of growing for them, or fundamentally change who they are, but we can choose which aspects of themselves that they will set their attention to developing and shepherd them along the way.

How to Be the Worst Dominant

In the section on creating safety I talked about how our partners' need for safety often extends not only to knowing that we aren't going to go too far, but also knowing that we're going to go far enough—that we're actually going to follow through with the dominance that they need. Just about the worst way to fail at that is to commit to some kind of nurture when we don't have a real and serious intention to take care of our partner in the ways that we're signing up for.

To tell someone "I'll take care of you," when what we really want is to control them, or just to get in their pants, is a supremely shitty thing to do. Trying to disguise our use of them as nurturing them is even worse. The infamous example is an experienced dominant offering to mentor a fresh eager young submissive, and then having that "mentoring" consist mostly of being used as arm candy and a sex toy. If you want someone to be your arm candy and sex toy that's great—so do I—but negotiate for that. Don't take advantage of someone looking for guidance and care.

So if we have any hint that a potential partner wants some kind of caretaking as part of our dominance, the ethical thing to do is to suss that out in our negotiations with them and then have a serious check-in with ourselves about whether or not we're really up for providing it—and if we aren't, being clear and upfront about telling them that. Maybe we will be able to negotiate something mutually satisfying around it and maybe we won't, but either way is better than letting someone believe that we're going to take care of them in a way that we really can't or won't.

Technique: Rewards

Much more has been written in BDSM literature about punishment than about rewards, but if you really want to change someone's behavior, rewards usually work better. Rewards also fit very well in many dynamics where punishments would be out of place or outside the bounds of consent.

Usually the most motivating thing about rewarding our partners is the simple fact that we gave them a reward, independent of what that reward might be! The main reward is our attention and approval, and the cookie or the gold star is primarily a symbolic way of communicating that approval. But we can make our rewards even more effective and/or more fun to give with some careful thought about what sort of symbols we choose.

Don't Spoil Them. Generally, rewards are best when they're small and are given infrequently enough to be special. If your rewards are too extravagant, it can feel like you're sucking up. If you give them every day, then they cease to be rewards and become just the normal state of the relationship.

Certainly if your partner has pleased you in an extraordinary way then an extraordinary reward may be in order, but those should require going significantly above and beyond the call of duty.

Something You Have Control Over. It works better to reward your partner with something they can't easily get elsewhere. You could even choose to take control over something for the purpose of being able to dole it out as a reward. Even sitting on the couch watching a movie becomes a reward if they aren't allowed on the furniture without your permission.

...But Not Something You Want Total Control Over. Depending on how much you value consistency, making something into a reward can give your partner some degree of control over it. If they behave in a way deserving of a reward, they ought to get it. If they don't, then they shouldn't. So if you want your partner on the couch or on the floor purely at your whim, then using furniture privileges as a reward would be nonideal.

More Dominance, Not Less. Giving your partner some extra dominant attention in a way that they especially enjoy can make a great reward. Excusing them from duties or going easy on them ("You've been so good, tonight I'll do the dishes") usually sends the wrong message. It suggests that their submission to you is something to be gotten out of.

Something You'll Enjoy Giving. Think hard before offering a reward that you won't enjoy. Like telling your partner that if they are extra good you'll grit your teeth and take them to that movie that they want to see, and that you're going to loathe every minute of. It creates a competition between you, where if your partner earns the reward they "win" and you have to do something you didn't want to. In some dynamics that may feel perfectly appropriate, but in many it will leave a bad taste.

Some Ideas. Gold star stickers. A handwritten card or letter of praise from you. Being allowed to sleep in your bed. Extra time or attention from you. Their favorite food for dinner. A spanking just the way they like it. A system of reward "points" that can be accumulated and turned in for a bigger reward.

Random Reward. One of the interesting conclusions of behavioral psychology is that rewards are most effective at encouraging a behavior when they are intermittent. If a pigeon gets a treat every time it pecks the button, it'll peck the button more often. But if pecking the button only gets the pigeon a treat sometimes, then it'll peck that button like crazy. Anyone who's ever looked inside a casino can confirm that the same basic idea works on humans too. So if you want your rewards to be extra-effective, don't be completely consistent about them. Tell your partner that if they're extra good then they might get a reward, and mentally (or actually) roll a die each time to decide if you'll give them one or not.

Technique: Journaling

A technique that many of us use for encouraging introspection in our partners, improving communication between us, and tracking their progress in submission is to assign them to keep a submissive's journal. Most often the journal is the property of our partner, but is regularly read by us.

Some advice for using a submissive's journal:

Provide Guidance. Often if you just tell someone to keep a journal, what you get is a recital of the details of each day. If that isn't what you want, then decide what would be most valuable for you to read, and guide your partner appropriately. That could be something like "write your thoughts on submission for the day," or even sending them a specific prompt for each day.

Make Them Fill Space. Writing, and particularly introspective writing, often benefits from a strong push start. If you tell someone to write all their thoughts, they might only jot down a few uninspired sentences. But if you tell them they have to fill at least a page with their thoughts, they'll get to the good stuff two-thirds of the way through.

Use It. Once you have them writing a journal, be sure you actually do read it! Read it regularly, and discuss what you find there with your partner, if only so that they know you really are paying attention and that you care what they write.

Free Speech. If you want to maximize the journal's potential for improving your communication, then let your partner know that you will never hold anything that they write there against them. Even if it's something that you didn't want to hear, remember that they are obeying you and offering you their vulnerability by writing it down for you to read, and try to take it in that spirit.

Alternate Expressions. Writing isn't the only way to express oneself, and it isn't the best way for everybody. Depending on your partner, consider journal alternatives where they could record an audio or video message, or draw their thoughts instead of writing them.

15. Objectification

A Fantasy: David & his plaything

David's phone chirped, but it was the special ring that he'd assigned for when his plaything called him, so he ignored it until he had nothing better to do. He knew his plaything would wait patiently, and even appreciate the reminder that it waited on his pleasure.

When he did check the message, it was exactly what he'd expected.

"Your plaything is in need of maintenance, Master. It humbly apologizes for the inconvenience."

David smiled as he composed his reply.

The very deepest part of his plaything's submission to him was the total sacrifice of its sexuality. It's not that it stopped feeling desire or pleasure, but that its pleasure and desire no longer mattered. He used it exactly when and how and because it felt good for him. If being used also felt good for the plaything then that was fine, and if it didn't feel good then that was also fine. When he wasn't using it, it was forbidden any kind of sexual gratification at all. Though he did allow it to watch porn, mostly because the resulting frustration amused the hell out of him.

It had taken him a while to really wrap his brain around what it was that his plaything got out of this. It wasn't pleasure, exactly, but more like comfort: a deep sense of relief and fulfillment in the wonderfully, beautifully twisted little thing's soul. Not mattering felt right to it.

But it was never quite able to fully let go of its need to orgasm.

It would be fine for a few weeks, happy to be a useful sex doll for its owner. But inexorably the urge would grow, and it would start to feel sulky and guilty and resentful and eventually rebellious.

Fortunately, they'd discovered a solution that relieved the need while also pleasing him. They learned, quite by accident, that if his plaything had a burstingly full bladder, it was still capable of being made to orgasm, but that orgasm was severely muted—hardly an orgasm at all. It was just enough to release the pressure, for a little while, without being a significant source of enjoyment.

So they'd invented maintenance.

"I have important things to do tonight," David wrote back "Drink three glasses of water tomorrow evening, beginning at six, and be at my door at seven."

The Taste of Objectification

Objectification is the flavor of dominance that's about making our partner into an object rather than a subject. This certainly includes the very literal case of using them as a footstool or serving platter or something, but it can go far deeper than that. The essence of objectification isn't that someone pretends to be inanimate, it's that they are treated in the way that you'd treat an object: as a means to an end rather than as a person with ends of their own.

Objectification in Society

Most of the objectification that goes on in this world isn't the consensual, mutually fulfilling, mutually desired kind that we aim to play with. This is a place where consensual dominance rubs right up against big and nasty issues of privilege and oppression in our society, and being aware of and understanding that friction is essential to playing consensually with objectification.

Society dishes out objectification largely along lines of social privilege, treating people as objects for the ways in which they occupy less privileged positions. This means that if you are playing with a partner who occupies a less privileged position that you do not share, it's likely that they live with a daily experience of objectification that you do not, and of which you may not even be aware. That experience of having strangers on the street grab at your body because you're a woman, or being treated as a disposable fucking machine by people who see you as nothing but a Big Black Cock to use in their fantasies, or having most of the people who even notice you sexually be amputee fetishists who are interested in you solely for your missing leg, is bound to have an effect on how someone who is a woman or a person of color or disabled receives an order like "You will be nothing but a sex toy for me tonight."

Exactly how a person deals with their experience of societal objectification varies by the individual. Most people, I'm sure, just plain hate it and want it to stop. But our partners are not most people.

Some of those desiring of submission are perversely attracted to exactly the kinds of objectification that they suffer out in the world, and want a safe space and a safe person with whom to explore those depths. I've known women who have both firmly held feminist sensibilities and also powerfully erotic bimbofication fantasies where they get to be, within a safe container, transformed into brainless, hyper-feminized sex dolls.

Others are hot for objectification, but want to steer clear of the specific ways in which they have been subjected to it nonconsensually. Still others are attracted to the kinds of objectification they don't get subjected to out in the world. The converse of the woman craving bimbofication is the man looking to be sissified—dressed and treated in an exaggeratedly frilly, sexualized and feminized way—in order to experience the kind of objectification generally directed at women.

Many or most of our partners want to know that we have some understanding of their experience of objectification, and that when we consensually objectify them we are doing so with awareness of what we are doing and what it means.

So, find out. Getting a bit of education about privilege and oppression can help us navigate the thorny path of objectification play more skillfully in general, and talking with our partners about their individual experience of objectification and what it's meant to them can build safety, and may sometimes open doors to some fantastically deep, dark, delicious submission.

Objectification and Service

There is a taste of objectification inherent in service: not just submissive service, but service in general. When you walk into a restaurant, part of your waiter's job is to put their own wants and preferences and self on the back burner and be there to take care of your needs. That's at least a little bit objectifying.

You, the diner, have some control over how objectifying it is. You can reduce the objectification by emphasizing your server's humanity: asking them how they're doing, saying please and thank you, or getting to know their name. Or you can ratchet it up by treating them like a device that exists just to satisfy your whims: making imperious demands, keeping them waiting while you dither over the menu, snapping your fingers at them for attention.

We have the same options with a submissive servant. The only difference is that increasing the objectification might actually be a good thing. Might. Many people enjoy providing service but do not like feeling objectified, and with them we can use all the same good manners we use when receiving service that we're paying for. Humanize them as they serve and they'll be happier, more eager servants.

But if you do have a partner who's enthusiastic to be objectified in their service, then you can turn it around. Treat them like they are their function. Don't chat with them while they serve, or share jokes, or call them by name—just tell them what needs to be done and then judge them by how well they do it. Don't ask them for their preferences on things, engage with their feelings, or seek their approval—use them according to your preferences and to gratify your own feelings.

When you interact with them, focus on their function and your pleasure (or displeasure) with it.

"The perfect servant is invisible. I don't want to even notice you're here."

"Tonight you are a massage robot. You will rub where and how I direct until I'm done with you, and then you'll go into your cage and shut down."

"I like the extra pepper in the soup, boy. Make it this way from now on."

"You can cry on your own time; now get back to work."

Functional or impersonal titles like "maid," or "boy," or "butler" can enhance the effect. If you are using them as a footstool, then only call them "footstool" while you're doing it.

Objectification and Devaluation

Objectification also very often goes hand in hand with devaluation, but not always. It's certainly possible for someone to be a highly valued servant or a treasured possession.

"What a fantastic sex toy you are. I love how well trained you've become, how perfectly customized to please me. Using you is so much better than sex with a person could ever be."

With lots of praise and encouragement, our partner can be deeply objectified but not at all humiliated or degraded. We can even bring out love and respect for them within the objectification container, in the way that we might love and respect an irreplaceable family heirloom.

Objectification of this sort can often be framed in terms of pleasing. Many people with submissive passions resonate with phrases like "I only want to please you," or "I want to do what you want me to do," and while they might not appreciate the word "objectification," what they're essentially asking for is to be objectified: to set aside their desires and agenda, and be useful in serving our pleasure. We can use the techniques of objectification with them, even if not framing it as objectification. We emphasize the focus toward our wants, rather than the focus away from their wants.

Animal play sometimes incorporates a taste of this sort of objectification as well, depending on how much you humanize your pets. You lavish attention and care on the maintenance and training of your prize stallion, and if you take him out in public it's with the intention that onlookers will be impressed by what a magnificent animal he is, not so that anyone can look down on him. But at the same time you still don't consult him on his preferences, or treat him like an individual with his own hopes and dreams.

If we do want to use flavors of both objectification and devaluation in our dynamic, the two can complement one another perfectly. Take the step beyond focusing on your partner’s functionality and put the focus directly on your disregard for or denial of their humanity.

"Hush. Important people are talking."

"I can't believe you actually thought you were a person. What a stupid fuck hole you are."

"Slaves don't get preferences."

Shelf Stability

One of the most wonderful qualities of actual objects is their infinite patience. Unfortunately, this is also one of the hardest qualities for an objectified person to emulate. Many of our partners have fantasies about being kept in a cage and only brought out when their owner wants to use them, or being used purely as a human ATM by an imperious goddess who gives them no other attention. But in their fantasies they can fast-forward through the boring parts. In reality those stretches of being left on the shelf without attention from us tend to get old really, really fast.

So one of the most challenging things to do with an objectified partner is to put it down and walk away.

There are some things we can do to help our property remain shelf-stable.

Acknowledge that it's a challenge. Give them praise (in whatever form praise takes in your relationship) for accomplishing a big thing if they can display the patience of an object.

Give them a regular set of rituals or maintenance routines to perform, so that they have something to do.

Give them a specific date or time when they can expect to get your attention again.

Check in, at least in little ways. Just a text message can be all the support they need to stay in the right headspace.

Work your way up gradually from extremely short periods of disuse to longer ones, with plenty of connection and checking in between them.

And, like anything else, be aware of the possibility that this may be an idea that would be best left in fantasy—with this particular partner, at least.

Wanting to Not Matter

The only reason why objectification exists as a flavor of consensual dominance is that there are some wonderful, wonderful people out there who want to be objectified. At first glance, this seems like a paradox: if they desire to be treated with no consideration for their desires, and then they are treated with no consideration for their desires, are their desires not being considered after all?

Well, yes, they are.

An object cannot give meaningful consent, so ultimately a consensual D/s relationship has to be between subjects, not objects. Having a container that defines a clear and agreed-upon line between the times, places, ways and degrees in which our partners are human beings who we interact with consensually, and the times, places, ways and degrees in which they are things to be used for our amusement is what gives us a secure foundation for going deep into objectification. It will go a long way toward heading off tragic misunderstandings.

One option for building our objectification container is to allow exactly one of our partner's desires to remain relevant within it: the desire to be objectified. Instead of ignoring their subjectivity entirely we can check in with things like "Look how content you are down there. You love being my footstool, don't you?" This doesn't work for everyone. For some of us on both sides of the slash, being constantly reminded that the footstool is only a footstool because it wants to be takes us out of the objectification experience that we're seeking. But for some of us it's perfect. The focus on the desire to be objectified can even add a devaluation flavor, in a desirable way.

That Which We Own Owns Us

A final thought on objectification: is owning this object genuinely fulfilling your desires? Sometimes partners come to us with detailed objectification fantasies that are really all about how they want to be used. They have a burning desire for someone to use them as a toilet, and in their fantasy they are forced (forced!) to do this with no regard for their desires. But in reality they have tons of highly specific ideas about exactly how they will be used and exactly how their user will behave when using them.

Sometimes their fantasy is scripted enough and specific enough that there's little or no space left for our preferences. And really, on a deeper level, we are the one being objectified.

That can be just fine, if there are things you're getting out of it, if their fantasy is fun for you, or if the relationship is serving your needs in other ways that make it worthwhile. Just remember whose agenda is actually being served, and it's a good idea to make sure that (outside of the container) your partner stays cognizant of it too. Keeping a clear picture of whose true desires are really being served helps avoid the draining situation where you feel like you're being used as a fantasy fulfillment machine while your partner expects you to be grateful for all the use you've gotten out of them.

Technique: Speech Control

Taking control of how, when or if your partner speaks can be a powerfully effective way to exercise dominance. For many people, a large part of their sense of personal power and agency is connected to their voice. Silence that voice, and they'll tend to feel small and weak. Make it speak your words instead of theirs, and they'll tend to feel controlled and objectified.

Here are some ideas.

Silence. The simplest and, in some ways, the most extreme kind of speech control is total silence. Being silenced has a huge impact on some verbally inclined people. Some will become incredibly agitated with the need to speak; some will find a deep peace they never would have expected; and some will even dissociate, "going away" inside their heads. There's no way to know for sure how someone will react until you try it, so it's wise to keep an eye out for a more dramatic reaction than you might have expected.

When Spoken To. "Speak when spoken to" leaves open more of a communication channel than total silence, and has associations with traditional systems of discipline that are appealing to many of us.

Multiple Choice. "The only things you are permitted to say are 'Yes, daddy' and 'Thank you, daddy.' You may make no other sounds. Also, it is rude not to answer when daddy asks you a question.

"Now, you could have ice cream tonight, or you could have the cattle prod. But I bet you'd rather have the cattle prod, wouldn't you?"

Clever use of multiple choice can let you have a seemingly natural conversation where you are actually determining all the responses. It can also be played for a surprising amount of humor value.

Self-Reference. Change how your partner speaks about themselves. Take away their name and their "I" to encourage them to relinquish their sense of identity. Popular variations are to make them speak in the third person, to make them use some submissive name or title for themselves, or to embrace the pronoun "it."

Forms of Address. From the simple "Call me 'Master'," to complex rules like "never use the imperative mood when you speak to me," controlling how your partner addresses you can reinforce an attitude of respect and also force them to think more carefully and be more conscious when speaking to you.

Tones. Beyond controlling words, you can control tone of voice. Making someone use uptalk (where they raise their tone at the end of each sentence, making all their statements sound like questions) can be elegantly humiliating and ideal for bimbofication. Or demanding a loud, crisp response to your questions could add a sense of discipline to your dynamic.

When you have someone under speech control, it's important to maintain a genuine connection with them via other means. A safeword to break out of the speech control can be valuable here, and so can paying extra attention to their body language, breathing and other nonverbal signals. If you're letting them speak, but limiting what they can say, pay attention to how they say the things they're allowed to say. The difference between an immediate, loud, excited "Thank you, Mistress!" and one that's strained, whispered, or comes only after a five-second pause can tell you a lot about where your partner is really at.

Technique: Denial

A potent way to exercise power is to deny someone something that they want. The most obvious example is denying sexual stimulation or release, but it could be other pleasures or preferences as well: food, favorite TV shows, Internet time.

The big trick to making denial work, stretching it out, and keeping it hot, is keeping the denial active and present in the moment. If you simply tell your partner that they aren't allowed to orgasm and then never mention it again, they are likely to quickly begin feeling bored or irritated with the restriction. Most people who are capable of remaining enthusiastic in denial don't want to just not masturbate for weeks on end—if that was all they wanted they could do it perfectly well on their own. They want to feel your influence actively preventing them from masturbating.

Show Your Awareness. Regularly remind them that you know full well how frustrated they are. Talk to them about how much pleasure it gives you, or how disappointed you would be if they indulged. Let them know that their denial isn't for nothing.

Have them regularly report their success or slips, then acknowledge their reports. You can take it farther and track progress over time, or issue grades for how well they've done.

Tease Them. Tease and denial go together like scotch and dark chocolate. If your cuckold isn't allowed to have sex with you, undress in front of him, rub up against him, and talk to him about how horny you are for a real man. But make sure he understands that you're doing it all on purpose. Your intent is critical here; your partner wants to know that their denial is something that they are doing with you and for you.

If they aren't allowed to eat sweets, make them order dessert and leave it untouched in front of them while you conspicuously enjoy yours. If they aren't allowed to have political opinions, get into discussions of politics with other people right in front of them. If they aren't allowed to orgasm, make them watch porn.

Control the Ending. If and when the denial ends, you have an opportunity for hotness and depth of connection in how you end it. If you tell them they aren't allowed to cum until Monday, and Sunday comes and goes with no word from you, they're likely to feel an anticlimax.

Don't just let their denial expire or fizzle out; take control of how it ends and make that an active part of your play as well. Have them cum for you or with you, or give them specific instructions about how they must do it the first time. If they haven't been allowed to read, give them a book (maybe even one about submission) and tell them to read it. Manage their release to complete the experience for both of you, and to maintain the sense of you being in control.

16. Conclusion

Perfect is the enemy of good.

- Voltaire

My hope is that this book has given you a roadmap for building a strong foundation for the practice of consensual dominance, beginning with an understanding of the nature of dominance and its integral connection to consent. The book is titled The Heart of Dominance, and just in case I didn't hammer the point quite hard enough let me say it one more time: the heart of dominance is consent. The skills and qualities that make us good at dominance are the skills and qualities that inspire someone to say "Fuck yes: I want to do what you tell me to!"

Foremost among those skills and qualities are three subtle, unassuming fundamentals: feeling comfort with ourselves and our desires, creating the safe emotional space in which submission can flourish, and the ability to connect deeply with our partners.

Built atop the three fundamentals are all of the many different styles of dominant practice, from Gorean masters to English schoolmistresses. Trying to categorize us into crisply defined categories of dominants is a fool's errand—our styles and passions and preferences are just too individualistic—but useful distinctions can be drawn between broad flavors of dominance. Understanding which flavors we are drawn to and which don't interest us can help us focus our development of skills beyond the fundamentals, and find friends, community and partners of like mind.

There's more to learn about dominance, of course. There's always more to learn. But these core pieces are enough to get well started on the path. If you're hungering for more, see the resources section where I've recommended resources for further learning around specific flavors or skills or for specific sorts of people.

But How?

If all of what you've read here seems like an overwhelming amount to think about and integrate and actually put into practice in the heat of the moment, come back to the virtues of humility and practice. I don't manage to hold all of these ideas in my awareness all at once all the time, and I'm the one who wrote them down. I do find that holding them all gets easier with practice.

Coming from a place of humility—claiming the right to be imperfect and still dominate—enables us to begin from whatever level of skill and experience we have and play and learn and grow. Resist the urge to oversell your abilities. Acknowledge your limitations. Don't let pride keep you from asking questions and seeking mentoring from others. Look for partners who are excited to explore and learn along with you, rather than ones looking for some fantasy dominant who always knows everything and never farts.

Then pick one thing from this book that jumped out at you as being useful, and focus on that one idea. If you have a partner or partners to practice with, put it into practice. If you don't, think about it, write about it, and find other people interested in dominance with whom to talk about it. The truly foundational skills of self-acceptance, safety and connection are things that you can practice throughout all kinds of relationships in your life.

Focus your attention on one skill or concept until it becomes second nature—until you can keep doing it without needing to give it the focus of your attention. Then pick another. That's how we get better at this: one piece at a time.

Play!

Finally, as serious business as dominance can be, as grim as it can sometimes appear, as much responsibility as we often carry—let's not forget that we're doing it for pleasure. Don't let the powerful emotions, the high expectations or the strictly enforced rules make you forget that dominance is play. Serious play. Real play. Powerful play. But play nonetheless.

Staying playful at heart lets us try things with less fear of failure and helps us to stay true to our genuine desires, rather than being pressured into conforming to some external ideal. It gives us the terribly important ability of being able to laugh at ourselves.

So play. Make it fun, whatever fun looks like to you and your partner. Try things out, experiment, and keep what works. If you're dominating 24/7 and it isn't really fun for you, try doing it just on weekends, or every other week. If all the rules and structure you've created are no longer bringing you joy, throw them out and make new ones. If you'd rather not dominate tonight—if you'd rather relate as equals, if you'd rather submit, or if you'd rather be alone with a book—then claim the right to do that without being judged less dominant for it. Pay more attention to doing what feels good than to doing it like the dominants you see in porn, or doing it like this book told you to, and you'll go far.

I wish you joy and fulfillment in your practice of dominance.

Resources

A Few Other Perspectives on Dominance

The Master's Manual, by Jack Rinella, is a classic. Its perspective is from gay male Leather culture, but worth reading for anyone interested in dominance.

Erotic Slavehood, by Christina Abernathy, is a guide for a service flavored, protocol heavy style of dominance from a female dominant perspective.

Despite the title using the word "topping," The New Topping Book, by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy, has a lot to say that's relevant to dominance. Easton and Hardy's perspective leans strongly toward a scene-based, fantasy roleplay style of D/s.

Hell on Wheels, by Raven Kaldera, is an anthology of experiences of people who practice dominance with physical disabilities, and Mastering Mind, by Del Tashin & Raven Kaldera, is an anthology of experiences of people who dominate with mental illness or neurological dysfunction. Both are full of proof that it can be done, and ideas and inspirations for how to do it.

Double Edge, by Raven Kaldera, examines the intersection of transgender and BDSM in general.

The S&M Feminist, by Clarisse Thorn, is a collection of the author's essays and stories examining the integration of a feminist sensibility and a kinky sexuality.

The Other Side of the Slash

Conquer Me, by Kacie Cunningham, is written from the perspective of a woman submitting to a man, but the counsel it has to offer is valuable for anyone interested in submission, or in understanding those who submit.

Coming Out & Navigating Community

Playing Well With Others, by Lee Harrington & Mollena Williams, is a comprehensive guide to coming out into kinky community, attending community events and finding partners. We dominance-inclined folks can pay special attention to their advice on Top's Disease.

When Someone You Love is Kinky, by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt, is written specifically to be given to friends, loves, relatives, etc. who you want to come out to about being kinky. It can help make awkward conversations less awkward.

FetLife.com is, as of this writing, the de facto hub of kinky community on the Internet. It has a group for every imaginable sort of kink, which you can join to have discussions with people who share your interests. It's also a good way to find in-person communities: use the "Places" feature to find the town nearest you, and it will show you upcoming events and related groups associated with that town.

BDSM Techniques

There are so many books, classes, blogs, videos, intensives, coaches, websites, etc., available to teach so many different kinky techniques that I can't even choose which to list. My best advice is to find a group of people who are into what you're into, and ask them where they learned how to do it. The Society for Human Sexuality also maintains a good list of resources that includes a range of kink educational books.

Helping Professionals

The Kink Aware Professionals Directory, maintained by the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, lists professionals in fields from counseling to law to web design who are informed and accepting of the diversity of consensual adult sexuality. Most of their members are located in the U.S. and Canada.

Health Care Without Shame, by Charles Moser, contains guidance for kinky folk to navigate getting health care, and also advice aimed at health care providers themselves. So you can get it to read yourself, and also hand it to your doctor (or other provider) if you need them to understand those bruises on your partner.

San Francisco Sex Information operates a phone and email switchboard staffed by volunteers trained to provide nonjudgmental counseling and information on all kinds of concerns about human sexuality. They are accepting of and knowledgeable about kink, and will give you straight answers on anything from STD risks to zoophilia.

Legal Help & Activism

The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom is the lobbying organization for kinky folks. They provide legal and political resources for people being persecuted or discriminated against because of their alternative sexual practices. They also fight for our collective rights, and could use your donation.

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About the Author

Anton Fulmen lives with his partner in Oakland, California.

More of his writing can be found at www.consensualdominance.com.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Part One: Foundation

2. Understanding Dominance

3. Understanding Consent

4. The Container

Part Two: The Work of Dominance

5. Finding Comfort

6. Creating Safety

7. Forging Connection

8. Taking Charge

9. Seven Key Questions

Part Three: Flavors of Dominance

10. Control

11. Conquest

12. Service

13. Devaluation

14. Nurture

15. Objectification

16. Conclusion