How Can I Be A Dom / Domme

So you want to be a Dom.

You’ve had a think about it, you’ve dreamed about it, and you’ve decided that it’s for you. Now lets take the theory into practice. There’s a distance between wanting to be a Dom and being a Dom, though, and it pays to be aware that there’s more involved than you might think.

How hard can it be?

Well its trickier than it sounds, there’s more to being a Dom than just telling people what to do, anyone can do that really. Being a Dom is not about being bossy, and nobody gets to tell everyone what to do all the time. In fact, it’s not even about telling all the subs what to do all the time. The very first mistake novice Doms are likely to make is in believing that D/s relationship dynamics are simple,

So you’re a Dom, you see someone who is a sub, as a Dom, your rightful place is telling that sub what to do, and as a sub, that person owes you respect, right?

Wrong.

For starters if you want respect, you have to do more than say “I’m a Dom, worship me!” In fact, saying “I’m a Dom, worship me!” is a good way to get roasted and laughed at by anyone who has any experience in real D/s relationships. What many novice Doms miss is that a D/s relationship is still a relationship. Yes it maybe temporary, and might only happen at something like a play munch, but still a relationship between the dominant and the submissive because both people have made that choice.

Believing that you can tell a submissive what to do before you have established some sort of relationship which gives you that authority is a bit like believing that any man can tell any woman to have sex with him, because, after all, men have sex with women, right? Men have sex with women, and Doms tell subs what to do but not all the time. Don’t assume that simply being a Dom grants you any authority over someone who is a submissive, this is a dick move and misguided as assuming that being a man grants you any presumption of sex over someone who is a woman, or in the case of Dommes the other way.

So I have heard “Submissives are submissive because they want to submit to a dom!” to many times from people. But that does not mean that any particular submissive wants to submit to you. Assuming that someone wants to submit to you simply because that person is “submissive” is exactly like assuming that a heterosexual woman would want to have sex with you simply because you’re a heterosexual man (or vice versa).

Respect is earned.

Believing that you’re entitled to it simply by virtue of the fact that you call yourself a “Dom” is a sure-fire way to be labelled a wannabe. You do not earn respect by walking up to every submissive you see and saying “Worship me!” Submissives, like all people, are human beings. Lets go back to basics when trying to date human beings, before you’ve established any kind of context or relationship, you will find that you have the best success if you treat them as people.

Isn’t that a funny thing, people like being treated as people, especially by strangers! launching straight into a D/s relationship with someone you’ve only just met is premature, and assuming that anyone who self-identifies as “submissive” owes anything to every person who self-identifies as “Dominant” is offensive.

Its a big turn-off

The people you see who have all the subs, the ones you run into in the BDSM community and at play parties who are successful at finding and keeping partners, the ones who other people naturally seem to defer to? They have those partners and they have that respect because they understand that you treat everyone, including submissives with respect until you’ve established a relationship that lets you assume the Dominant role.

When someone discovers an interest in BDSM, it can be easy to slip into a fantasy mindset. You have ideas about how you would like to be and what kinds of things you’d like to explore, you have fantasies, you have things you really want to do so it may be tempting to slot every submissive you encounter into your own fantasies. When you stop relating to people as people and start relating to them as fantasy objects, you can expect to have problems.

When I chat to subs online and tell them what to do, there’s no problem!

Online forums are very different from real-life sat in front of people. Online forums are more fantasy-oriented; in many cases, the submissive you’re talking to is seeing you as nothing more than a fantasy object, you’re seeing that submissive as a fantasy object, and you get along fine. But again even in online forums it can be a dick move to assume a power relationship that has not been established. Start a conversation with someone who identifies as “submissive” with “On your knees and worship me!” and you might just come across as an insensitive, or worse.

Power exchange relationships are relationships. Don’t assume that someone has granted you power just because you’re a dominant and that person is a submissive.

The next part to understand

As a dominant, it is not your job to do whatever you want. It’s your job to do whatever you want within the bounds of basic common sense and the most important thing within limits negotiated with your partner!.

Now I know basic common sense is subjective and changes with your knowledge of acceptable risk, your experience, and so on, all that, a lot of the stuff you read about in bad S&M fiction. So ordering your newfound submissive to have unprotected sex with a room full of strangers is not basic common sense. Digging that bullwhip you’ve never used, and trying it out on a person who’s never experienced any form of pain play before is not basic common sense. Dragging your new partner home and leaving your new partner tied to your bed for days is just stupid.

What you need to think about is it’s important to understand that it isn’t all about you.