A Little Training

There are as many ways to be D/s as there are stars in the sky. But sadly there are many (Doms mostly I am sorry to say) who think that they know it all.

This wasn’t the post I started this morning, but it is the post that I felt I needed to write after a conversation with a dear friend who had an OKCupid experience. Before I start digging into this I feel I need to say that I am NOT the arbiter of all things BDSM, or even D/s and this post (as are all my posts) is only my opinion. So take anything I say in that vein. Just remember that if you disagree with what I am about to say that I am going to point you back to those sentences.

Dating while kinky (I think I like that phrase and going to use DWK as an acronym henceforth) is a tricky and difficult thing. People tend to meet each other online these days, after all trolling the pub for a potential partner has always seemed riskier to me than meeting online. You have time online to get to know someone before finding out they they are a serial killer waiting to lock you in the back of their van. It comes with its own set of issues though. Do you announce yourself as kinky so that there are no surprises, or do you reveal that later on after you know you have clicked. I am a fan of being upfront to avoid that awkward moment when you show your kink and they run away screaming. But once again YMMV.

But let’s say you have worked all that out and you start chatting with someone. That person tells you that they are submissive. How do you proceed? Well if it were me it would be followed by a discussion of what being submissive meant to you. But others take a different approach. You know the approach I mean already don’t you? The approach where they immediately assume some things about what submission means. The first assumption is that submission means the same thing to everyone and that if your submission differs then you just haven’t been properly trained.

So they will use some lines to make you feel like you might not be doing it right and they can fix that. Lines like

Him: “Afraid or shy to show yourself truly naked?

Her: “Perhaps, It think it needs a lot of trust”

Him: “Trust is a bit like instinct. If it happens, it usually comes fast”

I do agree with her that anything D/s related needs a lot of trust, you are after all giving up control to another person. That has to require that you know you are safe in their care. But trying to rush that trust? Well to me that is a giant red flag of warning. Frankly it should take time, you should be careful and cautious and that applies to both people.

The next assumption tends to be about play and what people enjoy in their play. There are many types of play that Molly and I engage in that many others don’t enjoy and conversely there are types of play that other do that just aren’t for us. I have done occasional stunt arming for a few friends and they have specific needs and desires, I do my best to meet those needs and not force my notions of what they want on them. No one would ever want to let me use hitty things if I insisted that what I wanted was what they wanted, right? An exchange about safewords might serve to illustrate this point.

Her: “I trusted that No, Enough, and Too Much were sufficient to keep me safe”

Him: “Just that?, it sounds like you have never truly been forced or abused.”

Her: “No, and I am not sure that I would want to be. Not a definite no, just not a definite yes either.”

Him: “I guess you’d need to get in the mood… or be trained.”

Now while these are direct quotes they are not the full conversation and inflection and flirting can be difficult in a text based conversation, so maybe this isn’t as creepy as it sounds. But personally I would have to show him the red card for that move. To my mind he isn’t listening, or if he is it is selective listening. That (for me) isn’t the way forward (to use a Molly expression) and isn’t trying to learn what the lovely woman in this conversation needs. Sure she says that maybe that might be something she likes and that was his chance to have a discussion about why she might like it, not suggest that training could be the answer.

I know that DWK is hard for all of the players online and in real life. You have to be extra careful and extra clear in your communication or things can go horribly wrong. But the point of the game is to find someone that you can be with, maybe even love and learning how to communicate is the most important thing you have to do aa both a Dom and a sub. You will still get it wrong like you would any new skill you are trying to acquire and even after you have gotten good at it you still need to practice that skill to keep it in top form. D/s is about learning all of the time and the moment when you think you know it all is the moment it will come crashing down on your head.

I hope that what I have tried to express here isn’t that the guy involved in this conversation is a jerk, I want him to succeed in finding someone that makes him happy and that he makes that person happy in return.

But I can’t help but think he might need.

A little training.

Michael