GentleSpirit’s question on FetLife reads:

Is there any one trait that you look for in a submissive over others? Is it looks, personality, or something else?

A: They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. However, the way to my heart is through my eyes.

As a poet, I again and again discover how important it is to me that she can and will express herself in writing.

Her written voice gives me another window into her soul, one which oftentimes leaves her more vulnerable, more… exposed, than when speaking. Perhaps because she is less self-conscious without me watching her, no matter how encouragingly, as she is laying her beating heart out on a silver platter for me.

I am a quiet man and language doesn’t always come easy to me. Sometimes I need to pause between sentences to search for expressions and when listening, sometimes I find myself lost in reverie from a word or a phrase. Maybe I’m slow because sometimes speech seems too fast, too… flippant, to express the complex currents of emotion that have us so tightly in their grip.

Honesty and integrity, yes. Intelligence and humor, of course. And, naturally, a round, scrumptious butt. He he. All these are important qualities, and necessary for me.

But when I can see her heartbeat between the words, then she has my full attention. When I can see her breath between the sentences, then I know that she is for me.

When I can see her passion and her grace between the paragraphs, then I know that I am for her.

This question on FetLife reads:

Just wondering if it’s more arousing to a sadist to hurt someone who is willing to suffer and endure some pain but doesn’t actually enjoy the pain itself but, rather, enjoys that the enduring pleases the sadist?

Or do most sadists find more arousal in someone who loves to be hurt?

Which is the preference?

A: Maybe I haven’t grown into my domly shoes yet, but inflicting myself on someone who is only doing it to please me would make me feel like a thug, a bully, a… monster. (And not a monster of the sexy kind.)

Note that there are many bottoms that submit to pain in order to please their tops and I find it admirable and actually quite romantic. It is just that I must have entitlement-issues that prevent me from relaxing into it and accepting such a sacrifice.

To me, it would feel like I have been the recipient of pity-sex and it is hard for me to find the emotional connection there. Maybe it’s because I fundamentally need to please my victim as much as taking my pleasure from her too.

There is nothing more arousing than seeing lust burning behind a sheen of tears in her eyes. There is nothing more connecting than her falling to her knees in agony, sightless eyes staring into the ceiling, breath catching while she processes my latest kiss, and then hearing her finally whisper, “That was yummy.”

Believe it or not, but amongst the tears and the begging and the screaming, Dreamwalker is looking for approval.

This FetLife question reads thusly: As a D-type, how do you process making a consensual, willing partner really, truly suffer? Is there a point at which it becomes clear to you that your partner is in the “hate it zone?” Is this for you a sign to stop? Or is it more like a carrot dangling that says, “Charge! Now’s when the fun really starts!” How do you feel after?

A: With me, there are no hard, fast rules about practically anything. It depends on my mood and her mood whether I consider the “hate it zone” a sign to stop or a sign that the warm-up just ended and that she is fully receptive for the sadist in me to make love to her.

And that’s exactly what it is for us. The moments when GentleSpirit is in so much agony that she can’t even draw a breath to scream, or when her long, black hair is plastered to her face and she can’t even move her arms to cover herself up, or when I muffle her screams with my hand and her little hands shoot up to cover her own mouth over my hand because she cannot stop screaming, that’s when the sadist in me is making love to her.

There are no times when we are more intimate, connected more deeply, and more complete than during (and after) those times. It is making love primally, elementally, with our hearts and our souls, rather than with our minds.

So how do I process making a consensual, willing partner really, truly suffer?

Generally, I rely on my sensitivity to her responses to me, on my empathy with her to guide me. I have no wish to harm her and it is not even really about hurting her; in the end it is about connecting with her, of making love with her. And, yes, of pleasing her too in my own Safe, Sick, and Consensual way; her pleasure may not be immediately obvious while I touch her but it is most definitely there afterwards.

I once said this to a fellow sadist:

I think that might be the golden rule of thumb in assessing success for the likes of us; the lady may question her sanity at the time, but when everything is said and done, she should shyly, or not so shyly, ask when we can do it again. She may be glad that the ordeal is over, but the next day, or the next week, she should be thinking about it, reliving it, feeling her skin tingling for that particular touch, feeling her heart tingling for that particular emotion again.

She is the emotional engine in the relationship. It is through her emotions and her responses and her acceptance of me and my needs that we both draw strength from our relationship. And, believe it or not, my burning touch gives her emotional spa-days vital for her peace of mind and wellbeing.

GentleSpirit once told me:

I know you worry from time to time that I am just suffering through pain, but darling, oh how I crave it. I need it. When we make love, to me it is like a beautiful, delicious Indian spicy spicy curry. It burns, nose is running, eyes watering, tongue on fire, but you can’t stop eating it. You crave that burn. This is how it feels for me. I crave your burn.

But I don’t always process making this beautiful, magnificent woman suffer very well. On occasion after a more intense session I suffer top-drop laced with guilt, for instance. Interestingly enough, it is actually not guilt about what I have done but rather about what I could have done. A pre-emptive guilt about what I learn that I am capable of, if you will, even though I may never go there.

I’m not saying this to make myself sound gnarly; this is a truly frightening feeling for a thinking man, a man who can’t bear the thought of shying away from his own mirror-image in the morning.

It is like the sinking feeling you may feel after avoiding a crash on the freeway more or less by pure luck, when you continue driving unscathed with a clump in your throat but your mind is left at the spot of that close-call, shrinking in the rear view mirror behind you. You find yourself playing nightmare scenarios in your head of what could have been.

It is like being afforded a brief look behind the veil over Dorian Gray’s painting; when I am in that place I feel like I get glimpses of what I truly am and what I really look like and it can be… disconcerting.

That is one of the things I struggle with, no matter how much she assures me that she knows that I am a good man and that I would never harm her. After all, I am not a machine and I am not Superman; when she suffers and spills her tears for me and on me, how can I possibly guarantee that I won’t snap and feed deeper? How can I possibly promise that I will not feed more from her than she can afford to give?

Sigh. Nobody can.

After all, we are dancing on the edge of reason here; the deeper she sinks into the primal and the elemental, the deeper she draws me in as well. Is it reasonable to remain calm and collected and completely in my head while she loses herself for the benefit of us both? Doesn’t she deserve me to make the journey with her? To hold her hand in free-fall rather than dispassionately watching her descend from the safety of the ledge of reason?

I don’t want to push her off the ledge. I want to leap into the void and pull her along with me, holding hands as we descend.

Together.

This is my contribution to the ensuing discussion between dominants in response to the following question posed by GentleSpirit in the “Ask a Dominant Questions” on FetLife.

Q: I have read a lot about Dominants who choose to cut off contact with their submissive for a prolonged (days, week or more) period of time as a punishment. Personally I believe this to be emotionally abusive and cruel and unusual punishment. Are there any circumstances that you feel warrants this type of reaction, and if so, what would those circumstances be?

One of the fundamental things in this, the thing that we do, is the profound and soul-clenching intimacy and closeness and trust that we build together. Isn’t that what it is all about for us dominants? To reach into our submissives’ hearts and souls, to shape their sensations, their experience, their very feelings?

Many moons ago, I was taught, above all else, to leave my submissive better than I found her. That means being a rock for her to hold on to when she’s thrown around in the storm, be it in her life or in her emotions. That means being the one constant thing she can always, always, count on. That means being the steward of everything that she has surrendered to you.

Many say, “to each his own,” and, “everything in this lifestyle is a matter of preference.”

Yes, to each his own, and yes, everything is a matter of preference. But not all preferences should be catered to.

I am a lazy bastard and I do have a preference for skirting unpleasant tasks. And real, effective, constructive punishment, as opposed to the play punishments we all indulge in from time to time, is sincerely hard and sometimes unpleasant work.

Yes, it’s hard. Being a dominant is hard. Make no mistake about that; if it isn’t hard, you’re doing it wrong.

I’m sure that most of us can understand the occasional temptation to sometimes take the easy way out and impose a punishment that requires nothing from us. I know of dominants that view it as a vacation, even!

But a fundamental responsibility for us, the dominants in our relationships, is to exercise judgment and to do The Right Thing even if it might go against our own preferences. It is our privilege to use our submissives but we are also called on to sacrifice when necessary. And the hardest part is that there is no arbiter telling us when to do so; we need to figure that one out for ourselves.

Is cutting off contact really The Right Thing to do? Ever?

Cutting off contact for prolonged periods of time is detrimental to the submissive at a point in time when she needs leadership the most. Our submissives deserve to know, and much more importantly, need to know that we are not only their dominants on sunny days but especially during those rainy days when it may not be that much fun being the dominant in the relationship. How else can they ever feel safe with us? To feel safe enough to surrender everything?

Punishment without the purpose of promoting desired behavior is simply revenge. I wouldn’t treat my dog like that, much less a beautiful, vibrant, complex, magnificent woman.

The relationships we foster are stronger, closer, more intimate than the ones we see in the vanilla world. They don’t get there without both partners being present in it and for each other. As dominants, it behooves us to know our submissives better than they know themselves; how can we truly know them if we remove ourselves from entire aspects of them?

This is an excerpt from my private correspondence with a very dear friend of mine. She asked me why she craves to be hurt and used and this was my answer. Of course, there are as many reasons to want to be hurt as there are people; this answer is based on what I know about her. Still, the underlying currents are general enough that it may be interesting reading for others.

I had mentioned earlier in our correspondence that she probably felt like violent love-making that left her aching and bruised was an emotional spa-day for her. She expressed surprise that I had that insight into her feelings and that is where we come in:

A:

How could I not know that you consider the escape into pain and tender violence like a spa-day? It may leave your body sore and aching and bruised, but to your heart and your soul, this is a spa-day.

You get to put a sign on your brain, “Gone fishing,” and you get to forget for a little while about responsibilities and demands. The only demand put on you then is to be all the female you can be and it feels good, doesn’t it? It is the one demand you can meet without thinking because it is the one demand that requires you not to think. It is one demand you cannot possibly fail at because it is what you are.

In here, you get to strip off everything and simply be your primal, elemental self. Beautiful, passionate, graceful, receptive, warm, accepting, desired. You don’t have to do anything but simply be.

You are not even required to think. In fact, that is what feels best for you, isn’t it? You are free to feel and to connect with yourself emotionally. In some ways, in here, you feel more true to yourself than out there.

And don’t you dare feel selfish. You need this. You need the recharge that comes with diving into yourself and connecting with the primal female in you. That is where you nurture yourself; while you nurture your lover, you also nurture and nourish yourself. You become stronger from it. You perform your everyday roles better from it.

I was going to say that it is like demanding that you are human. But that is not it. Demanding that you are the female that you are is even baser than that. Most people say that we are all human first and men and women second. They do forget, though, that we were male and female long before we walked into the dawn of intelligence and language.

Males and females have walked hand-in-hand, together, in perfect symbiosis, since the beginning of time. I cannot imagine how hard it is to be a woman day-to-day. They say it has become easier but I am not entirely convinced of it. Some things may be easier than 100 years ago but some things are also harder. Add to that, that you are co-existing with a massively parallel supercomputer that won’t shut off when you want it to.

The male brain is designed like a battleship, with bulkheads separating areas within. I imagine it is beneficial to be able to shut things down and compartmentalize and focus when attacked in battle or when hunting. It also means, for instance, that when I put my head on the pillow at night, I am out like a light within two minutes. But it also means that I don’t have the capacity for emotional or verbal processing that women do.

Different designs for different purposes and roles. Neither superior and both with unavoidable drawbacks, but all in all really good designs.

In the beginning of our correspondence you asked me why you like it. You asked if it is the adrenaline or if you are just emotionally disfigured like I mentioned in one of my writings. I can’t say about the adrenaline. You may be an adrenaline junkie (although I doubt it), but in the great scheme of things, that rush is nothing to the rush you get from surrendering.

You are not emotionally disfigured, my dear. Not at all. You are beautifully and generously feminine. You may have been exposed to a stronger estrogen storm in the womb when your brain was formed than is normal; if you think about it, you may have noticed that the mental and emotional qualities that are traditionally feminine (like empathy, nurturing, relatedness, connection) are a little more pronounced in you than most other women. It doesn’t have to be much; even a little is a lot.

All of this is conjecture and speculation, since I don’t have a medical degree, but I have noticed that women that have similar longings as you, almost without exception have this extra edge of femininity that is above and beyond their “normal” sisters. I speculate that your brain is as spectacularly feminine as your body is and that means that while the good feminine aspects are enhanced, so are the side-effects. Your massively parallel supercomputer is just a little bit more massive and a little bit more super.

Note that even though it would be nice to be able to say it, I don’t think the super part affects intelligence, per se. It does affect the parts that, well, make you a woman. You are suffering from the side-effects of having an über-feminine brain, my dear.

He he.

Or much more simply put; you end up spending too much time in your head and not enough time in your heart and your body. As a woman, you give and give and give of yourself to your children and your loved ones and to society and somewhere along the lines, you forget to give to yourself.

It is actually not so much that you need a break from giving. You are practically limitless in the radiance you can provide to everyone around you. It is not that you don’t have enough to give. It is just that there is one person left out from your radiance; yourself.

It is about balance. You are bearing such heavy burdens as a mother and as a woman, and there are hardly any demands placed on you as a female, as a lover. And that is what you yearn for.

It is not rest that you long for; instead, you long for exercising all your emotional muscles. As a female, you are an emotional athlete that is prevented from exercising your entire body by day-to-day demands and tight schedules. As a female, you need time to reconnect with yourself, to nurture yourself, to give some of your own radiance back to yourself.

If the demands will not ease on your other roles in life, at least the burden should be balanced so that you can stand up straight. This is what strikes me as magical about you and your sisters; in all this overwhelm, what would straighten your back and lift your face towards the sky is not less but even more demands. More demands of you as a lover, as a female. In fact, you yearn to give of yourself. In all this, where you continuously give of yourself, you still yearn to give even more.

You intuitively know that by giving of you as a female, as a lover, you do in fact find the balance inside that you need, and through that balance, you find peace, reprieve, and a way to reconnect with yourself. You are a good mother but you are more. You are a good professional and provider, but you are so much more.

It is like your breasts are engorged with milk, and yet only one is nursed from, leaving the other painfully bursting. To stay with that simile, you need someone to nurse from that other breast, to release the pressure that is building up and threatening to harm you.

You need to feel like all of the woman that you are. To come home to yourself again. To be reminded of the lover in you. You need an emotional spa-day every once in a while. Or, as Paul Simon says in You Can Call Me Al, “I need a photo-opportunity.”

So why do you crave to be hurt? Frankly, I don’t think that you are actually craving the hurt itself. You are craving what it brings with it.

You said that you hate it when it’s happening, but as soon as it is over, you love it and want more and more and more. That makes perfect sense because of the way he hurts you. He doesn’t beat you up and leave you bleeding in the corner; he hurts you in a primal way that communicates directly to the primal female in you. When he takes you, she experiences his desire for you, for the female in you, for everything female in you. His desire and his passion bring you along on the journey that takes you both inside yourself.

His passionate (and not abusive) assault punches straight through the cobwebs of the day-to-day sediments of shoulds and oughts and to-dos. He gives no quarter, and the sheer force with which he does it helps you release your involuntary hold of everything intellectual and allows you to spread your emotional wings and fly.

Simply put, there is no way your brain can handle his assault, so it doesn’t try to. It shuts down and leaves the processing to your heart and your body. Exactly where you need to be, because that’s the spa. Your emotional spa is in your body.

So much of the female experience is to bring the external inside and experience them as emotions, and even as emotions about emotions. It is heartening to see that you aren’t cutting yourself off from feeding the cravings you feel, depriving yourself of experiencing the emotions you seek. Not being female nor submissive, I still have a fair idea how calming and fulfilling, even ecstatic, it can feel to be claimed and taken and used by someone devoted to you and worthy of your own devotion.

In the larger picture, the fact that he’s hurting you is immaterial. We don’t remember pain. We remember the fact that we felt pain, but we don’t remember the pain itself. That’s why you hate it when it happens, but you want more when it stops. All you remember when the pain stops is how freeing it was to not think and to just relax into being a radiant, beautiful, and incredibly desired female. So desired, in fact, that your lover needs to devour you and bite you and claw at you and, yes, reach inside you with his hand just to get to touch you as intimately as possible.

When a woman has experienced being that desired, how can she ever cease longing to return there again? When a woman has experienced the mindlessness of being purely and primally female, exercising all her emotional muscles the way she was designed to do, how can she ever forget how peaceful that made her feel?

You are not emotionally disfigured, my dear. You are put together exactly right. You are the archetype of the perfect female; you just need to be properly maintained like the purebred race-horse that you are. You need to let a Ferrari stretch its legs sometimes; only letting it putter around on bumpy dirt roads will clog its engine and wreak havoc on its suspension. It is designed to rev into the red; it is designed to scream and be driven hard and fast. That’s when it’s doing what it was designed to do.

Emotionally, you are that horse. You are that Ferrari. You need to be properly cared for and used. Every single ounce of you. That’s when you shine. That’s when you nurture yourself; when you are forced to be all the female that you are and let the woman take a break.

A: Hmm… my preferred method of erotic torture…
Where do I begin?

My personal preference is most definitely rough sex and passionate violence. Basically anything I can do to you with my own body; most frequently employed tools: fingers and teeth. I pull your hair and I bite and I pinch and I choke and I slap and I dig my fingers (and hands) into you.

To me, physical closeness is of utmost importance and that is how I express my desire and affection. In fact, I often exhibit an almost desperate craving for intimacy and connection and with the particular bent of mine, I could go straight through your skin just to get close to you. As such, it is an imperative to simply wrap you all around me.

I am a sadist and as such I am less concerned with your submission and obedience and more looking for your surrender, if that makes sense. I am less likely to tell you to kneel and more likely to simply dig into your collarbone and make your knees crumble involuntarily from pain.

For the longest time, I exclusively employed rapture-like violent emotional assault and I only used my teeth and my fingers. Only last year did I decide to start playing with toys like whips and rope and what-have-you, so I am taking every chance to get practice in the different implements and toys. Since I am a sadistic bastard, my greatest challenge seems to be to go light and easy. Not that I’ve had any complaints, really. Shrugs.

So I do have a toy bag nowadays with some interesting things but I find playing with paraphernalia to be more fun and a social thing than a way to connect and to make love. To me, making love is me and you and no distance whatsoever. To me, making love is me inside you.

The distance thing is a big deal for me. Granted, I’m looking into a fun remote-controlled TENS unit to be used in covertly in public, but that is a special case. Even though I find whips fascinating I only have one small flogger in my arsenal. I prefer canes for impact play because I can feel the impact in my hand and as such I feel more connected with you than when using a flogger or another type of whip.

Basically, the greater the level of closeness and intimacy in our interaction, the more likely I am to like it. Needle play is intimate and rope play is too. (I am new to ropes but I am learning.) One of these days I might venture into knife play but I am in no hurry for that. I love grasping breasts from behind wearing my vampire gloves and chomping down on your neck at the same time. The stainless steel ass-hook is kinda fun, especially if I can tie it to your hair.

I have several clamps but I hardly ever use them because I prefer to do the pinching myself. Besides, I have been told in a little and plaintive voice that my fingers are much worse than any clover clamps.

No toys in the world can cause the same connection and intimacy as your hands, your fingers, your teeth in touching your lover. True, toys can be fun and a change of pace, but they must not be used to create a distance between you.

Touch is critical. Connection is critical. Intimacy is critical.

I am not really concerned with the amount of pain that you can take. I do not get off on how much I have to strain myself to hit you hard. My own pleasure isn’t measured in how much sweat I worked up.

Rather, my pleasure is measured in the look in your eyes; in the tunnel-vision I see in your eyes that shows that I’m the only thing that exists for you right then and there, that nothing else matters, just me and what I am doing to you.

I know that many/most tops like to pack a wallop but to me it sounds like getting off on the logistics and mechanics of causing pain, rather than the effect of that pain. It’s like admiring the hammer you used to build a house rather than admiring the house itself. Just like the hammer, pain is only a tool to reach inside you and to shape your emotions and your experience.

I know that tears are scary for most men and that of course includes tops and doms. I do not have that problem. I have been aroused by girls’ and women’s tears since I was a little boy. For the longest time I thought I was a freak because of it but I have since then embraced it.

Tears are liquid emotion and so incredibly beautiful. Note that I do not expect tears and I hardly ever actually try for them but I do so appreciate them when they do appear. It is frankly one of the biggest rewards I can get. To me, your tears are precious.

Because of my need for physical closeness and intimacy, I tend to find ways into your body, be it fingers in your mouth or something else somewhere else. Vaginal fisting is a favorite of mine, for instance. I guess you can say that I have a penetration fetish.

I can play according to any rules we agree on but if left up to my own devices I am in your face and raw and invasive and my goal is to get into your heart and into your emotions and I do that through intense sensation. The more bewildered and off-balance and beside yourself I get you, the better. Of course, other days I just want to make you purr like a little kitten, so in the end, it all depends, I suppose.

A: I am a die-hard romantic too. A romantic sadist, no less. I even write poetry; how more gushy can you get? Recently sushi_wa even commented that she was beginning to wonder if I am more feminine than her. Perish the thought.

It has never occurred to me that it would be a bad thing to be romantic. I am sexist in that women are magical to me simply because they are women. I love the way they think and how connected they are with themselves and with others. I love how soft and warm they are in my arms. How could I not feel romantic in the presence of a vibrant, electric woman?

Of course I have my share of detractors, both male and female, that cannot make sense of me. Not that I mind. After all, you have not arrived until you have a healthy collection of people that dislike you. Unfortunately, I am told that some may be intimidated even though I am a big teddy bear; I am only gnarly on the inside, my outside is cuddly and friendly and quite goofy. Luckily, there are a few, scattered glorious individuals that are nearsighted enough to tolerate me, my quirks, and my shenanigans.

In fact, when I shed my masks and stopped worrying about people (read: women) liking me and just started being myself all the time, I started meeting the most incredible people. It does not matter if she is out of my league or if she is submissive or a switch or dominant or even a fellow sadist; when she accepts my touch, she is my female and we will figure out our dynamic together as we go along. She will come away bruised but when is ever a male savoring and taking his female, no matter how aggressive and invasive he is, not romantic?

I do not compartmentalize or turn aspects of me on or off; I am me all the time. And just like any human being, I express myself and what I feel in ways that feel right and appropriate from moment to moment. To me, it is about the connection between a man and a woman, not between a dom and a sub, or a sadist and a masochist.

Why make an artificial distinction between the dominant in you and the man? Being dominant is not about being boorish and demanding submission; it is about giving her a context in which she feels safe enough to express herself and to simply be herself. She is submissive; just let her be herself by being yourself.

Long before she offers her submission, she will already submit to you in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Unfortunately, if you wait for her to hit you over the head with her submission, she has already gone too far out on her limb and probably feels abandoned. If you pay attention to her, she will tell you everything that is going on without ever saying a word.

Try to think of it from the woman’s point of view. Romance is so much more than grand gestures; it is also about being seen and heard and cherished and desired. And few women will balk at aggression in a man that is rooted in his desire for her. That is of course predicated on her interest in you.

Many a lady will feel reticent about offering something that she feels should be taken. It is so precious to her that she needs to know that you will not drop the ball. She should not have to prove herself to you; if anything, you should prove yourself to her.

It is about being sensitive to the moments when the absence of “No” means “Yes.” Try to think a little less and to trust your instincts more; the male in you will communicate with and understand the female in her much better than you can imagine.

A: Submission is a gift but not in the way you may first think. It is a gift you give to yourself.

I often use the phrase “gift of submission” in poetry and lyrical prose because it is a well-received romantic cliché that evokes a sense of demure grace, innocent in its devotion. It conveys purity of heart in the submissive and honor in the one whom she has chosen to receive her gift.

In poetry, metaphors and similes are a saving grace when conveying visceral emotions and experiences. Still, I want to show that what goes on behind the scenes is even more beautiful than a simple romantic cliché. What goes on when a beautiful, vibrant, electric woman submits is so much more profound than the giving of a gift, no matter how precious.

Yes, a submissive may feel that submitting to her dominant is like giving him the precious gift of her will, of her, to command and to use. Especially since she will not submit to just anybody, but to that one, special person that has proven to be worthy of that gift.

Expanding on that line of thought, it follows then that the dominant worthy if her submission is gifting her with his dominance. Just like her attention and her submission is a gift, he is giving her his attention and care. He is trading safety and his trustworthiness for her compliancy and loyalty. It becomes a transaction.

There is nothing wrong with treating the mutual gifting of submission and dominance as a transaction. The whole term Power Exchange implies a transaction of personal power. It is given and taken and given back in a feedback loop of sorts. The submissive gives her power to her dominant who becomes a prism through which both hers and his power are focused back on her.

Viewing submission as a gift actually makes a lot of sense, considering that the submissive can at any time withdraw her consent, her gift if you will, and the cascade-effect will cease. And this mechanism is often used to prove that submissives have much more power in relationships than they may think. If the submissive does not want to play, there simply is no play.

Yes, I am focusing purely on the forces within a consensual dominant and submissive interaction. Co-dependency and domestic abuse can compel the stablest and strongest minds to stay in diseased relationships. An abusive relationship is to a D/s relationship like rape is to making love.

Having said that, it bothers me to think that a magnificent submissive woman is somehow giving me a gift when she is really being the most true to herself. She has been brought up in a society that says that women who are submissive are weak and are betraying the ideals that have gone far, albeit not yet far enough, to give women equal respect and opportunities to those that men enjoy.

She has had to struggle against the stream to take ownership of her own desires; she has endured self-doubt and pain and possibly shame to get to the point where she can admit that she is submissive. The journey of self-discovery has been hard on some and easier on others, but the large majority of submissives have had to travel that path. Her submission is hard-earned and she did not venture on that journey for anybody but herself. The fruits of her labor are hers to enjoy.

Some say that being submissive is a female survival strategy to ensure that her mate will stay with her by pleasing him and adding value to his everyday life. I do not have the requisite degrees to argue for or against that idea, but I cannot imagine that I am the only one who feels that when a woman submits to me, she is doing it for herself and not as a gift to me or as a bribe for my attention.

And that is exactly the way I want it. I cannot imagine it any other way.

It is so easy to get tangled up in defining submission in terms of acts that the submissive performs for her dominant, and acts that she submits to being performed on her by him. But that is only what is visible on the surface. The dynamic in the relationship between a dominant and a submissive is much more complex than the acts performed and so are the motivations that drive a woman to submission.

Submission is a strategy, a tool if you will, to disconnect the submissive from her critical mind for a while, to gain respite when the buzzing of ideas and thoughts and to-dos becomes deafening and the act of making a simple decision becomes overwhelming because she cannot stop thinking of different outcomes and consequences, and cannot choose between them.

It is about not having to make decisions, even if only for a while. It is like donning an intellectual blindfold where the submissive trusts her dominant to lead her to her inner core, where she can open up and be vulnerable without having to struggle with her own doubts and insecurities. Submitting is a way to not even be able to displease simply because she is not allowed to.

Submission is a tactic to quiet the submissive’s mind. It is a vehicle to quiet the buzzing of thoughts and ideas swarming within her awareness. That quieting is the moment of focus, the moment between heartbeats that the athlete waits for to make the jump, the moment of clarity that allows you to step on the bridge of suspended disbelief and to make it safely from here to there.

Through the intellectual blindfold of submission, her awareness descends into the darkness of her emotional womb and she find parts of herself that are warmer, more primal, more feminine, even. Submitting is not a feminine act in itself, but it is a path for a feminine being to connect with the elemental feminine deep inside, and that is what the draw is for many women. I imagine the same is more or less true for male submissives, although I confess I have not thought much on that side of the coin; I am too captivated by the elemental feminine.

When a submissive’s dominant takes her wrist just so, and whispers in her ear just so, that is where it all becomes real. That is the key to surrender, to letting go, to release her critical mind like a balloon leaving a child’s hand, soaring up into the blue void. That is when she can melt and flow her emotions all over him, covering it all to perceive everything. And for a while not to think, to just be, to feel, to be all of the primal female that she is.

As much as submission is conveyed through acts and demeanor, deep down it is about how profoundly affected she is by him. It is about how they connect and how easily and completely she lets go in his presence. It is about together creating an emotional context in which she feels safe enough and supported enough to retreat into her body and be unconcerned with the external world. To lose sight of everything else and focus all her attention inwards on how she is affected by him.

It is not some cockamamie dominant fantasy about the submissive focusing solely on his pleasure. No, she enjoys his use of her but her attention is on herself. Her view of him is through the effects he has on her. Just like you cannot see the wind but through the rustling of the leaves on the trees, she experiences his touch through ripples of the pond of her awareness and body.

That is what submission is about; it is about experiencing and feeling. It is about the submissive diving deep into herself to connect with her inner radiant core. It is not about forgetting herself or her needs or diminishing herself; good heavens, no. It is about celebrating what she is and what she is capable of so strongly and deeply that she cannot be burdened by simple things like thinking or making decisions or worrying about where to go from here.

It is about her taking her dominant’s hand and letting him guide her through experiences and feelings too profound to walk the path by herself. And while he is focused on leading her and guiding her and ensuring her safety, she rewards him and connects with him by narrating her journey through her reactions, through her responsiveness, through the grace with which she follows.

He is leading so that she can follow and focus on her feelings and everything she can possibly experience. She delegates responsibility of her body and her mind to him so that her heart and her soul can take flight.

No matter how romantic the notion, submission is not a gift. It is an expression of a capacity for deep inner beauty and the strength and courage and willingness to be open and vulnerable. It is a way to achieve an unprecedented level of connection and intimacy with another human being who is not your opposite but your perfect complement.

And it is awfully sexy.

A: This is a loaded question with no clear-cut answers. You may have to rethink some of the things you are used to, dealing with sadists. Dominants and sadists may look and act similarly, and often you may not see much of a difference, but at least in my definition of the labels, there are some subtle differences that may throw you off.

Note that men are just as unique and complicated as women are, with the added complication that we suck at expressing our emotions. Women are emotional communication athletes; men may change your tire and carry heavy luggage, but you have to do the heavy lifting where you excel.

Most guys you run into will have streaks of dominance and sadism and it is about which is more pronounced. Personally, I can be your domly dom-dom, but what satisfies me in the end of the night is not your obedience and your submissiveness, but your emotional and physical responses to me. Echoing the princess by day/slut by night thing, I am a dominant by day and sadist by night. Awfully over-simplified, but still fairly accurate.

I doubt you will see much of the male chase of the female that you are used to from a sadist. A dominant might chase because he is more or less a caricature of an alpha male, taking the “normal” a step further. Personally, I think a sadist is less of a caricature of an alpha male, and more of something else. If a dominant is a king, then a sadist would be a magician, or a bishop. If a dominant is a knight, then a sadist is a priest. If a dominant is the tribal chief, then the sadist is the shaman. If a dominant is a sculptor, then a sadist is a poet.

A sadist is less likely to thrill much at the chase and instead savor the cat-and-mouse play after he has you. He will hurt you. He will hurt you physically and perhaps emotionally, and his thrill is in your being helpless to resist, and your being helpless to resist coming back for more. The thrill is not in the hunt and the kill, but in the profound connection and intimacy between the torturer and the tortured.

I do not pursue women. Women come to me. It is not as arrogant as it sounds, though. I will feed off you and I will take from you and I cannot bear the thought of converting somebody, anybody, to this. You have to approach me standing on your own two feet, and you have to convince me that you not only understand but that you crave being fed on as much as I crave feeding on you.

I seek symbiosis. I seek those that will not crumble when I sink my teeth into them. I seek strength, magnificence, and emotional force powerful enough to be shared, to enclose me, to wrap itself around me.

A sadist feeds off your response to him. It is in your response to his touch or his presence that he sees himself. It is only when you respond to him that he feels truly alive. He is less likely to be enamored with your submission and obedience, and instead relish your capacity to surrender, to feel, and to communicate those feelings to him.

Do not make the mistake of faking it, though. Part of his make-up is a strong ability to empathize. His empathy is his sex-organ, if you will. He uses his empathy to penetrate your emotions and to sink deeper and deeper into you; it also means that he will sense when something is off-kilter.

The sadist needs you to feel so strongly and shine so brightly that his own heart resonates with yours. That is when you have him. You connect with a sadist by making him feel, and you do that by feeling so strongly that he is caught in the maelstrom of your emotions.

A: It is all about surrender.

Look beyond the mechanics, look past the logistics, look behind the curtain; for most of us, what we do is about more than physical pleasure, about more than endorphins, and adrenaline, and testosterone, and oxytocin.

It is about connecting with another human being in ways that are almost impossible to find elsewhere. It is about connecting with yourself. It is about truth and beauty. It is about trust, it is about intimacy, it is about surrendering to each other and ourselves.

What do I get? I get a warm, vibrant, electric woman placing herself, her body and her mind, in my hands. Like a pool of still calm water, her skin ripples in waves with my touch. Her responsiveness guiding me, her reactions narrates the journey I guide her through.

What do I get? I get a shining, radiant being, every bit as formidable as I am, to dance with, to create with, to journey with. Not my opposite but my perfect complement. Where I am hard, she is soft; where I push, she yields, where I am lost in my head, she is lost in her body.

What do I get? I get a panting, incoherent, wild-eyed female mewling like a cat in heat. An elemental female so deeply in her womb of need that only one thing exists for her: me, the male hovering over her. A female animal with only one thought in her foggy mind; to be used, to be taken, to be mounted.

And at that moment, when I mount her, when her body parts for me, when I sink into her to join her in the primal fog, I get the one thing I need the most.

I get to be me.

A: Would you believe that I express affection and love by inflicting pain? That making her scream and surrender to the torrents of emotion that well inside herself is an act of caring and cherishing?

It’s not nearly as selfless as it sounds, though; I am aroused when she cringes and fights to stay put during my onslaught. If she tries to get away it provokes a feline urge to play with my prey. That urge, in itself, is not to hurt her but to amuse myself with her, at her expense. Cruel or not? I am not so sure that it is significant.

It is primarily soothing to me, though. If you are or have been a smoker, you know how antsy and knotted you feel when you are past due for another fix; imagine the rush of relaxation that flows over you and into you after a few drags. That’s how it feels, breathing in her pain. And it doesn’t have to be elaborate or prolonged; surreptitiously pinching her nipple in public and locking eyes with her and watching her expression shift from playful to concerned to agony to biting her lip to stifle a cry, can be more than enough.

And imagine her pushing her breast into your hand instead of trying to pull away. Imagine her thus wordlessly asking for more, accepting you whole-heartedly, swimming against the stream of instinct telling her to pull away from the pain. How can anybody be left cold by such acceptance?

I like to think of my drive as constructive rather than destructive. If nothing else, then at least my drive is for the appreciation of beauty than to soil it. My drive is to commune with her, to connect with her, to own her expression of how I impact her. To cherish her, to show my appreciation of everything that is her by compelling her to let go in her mind and her heart, so that she is free to feel and perceive everything that she is capable of. To control her experience and to allow her to soar even though she is in my grip.

I think in terms of a sadist in that I analyze her and evaluate her and attempt to predict her reaction to my controlling her body, and through it, her mind. As a sadist I don’t think so much in terms of leading her and compelling her to perform for me; I think about how to assume control of her emotions and take from her, use her, devour her.

A: Women are supposed to be confusing. You will always be confused by women because confusion and un-confusion are both cognitive constructs, and perceiving a woman with your mind alone is the biggest mistake you can make.

That is probably the biggest single insight I ever had about women; don’t look at them with your mind and try to understand, instead look at them with your heart and feel with them. So much of what a woman is and who she is, is in her heart and her soul. That’s where the identity, the center of awareness of the being you are looking for is.

She streams her awareness through cognitive shapes to interact with the physical world, but those shapes are too few, too clumsy, too cumbersome to truly represent her. It is a perfectly fine representation, just like a compressed mp3 recording can be enjoyed perfectly fine, but it doesn’t convey the true breadth and depth of her, it does not give a true fidelity to what she is. It is like talking to her on video conference; you can see her and you can hear her and you can interact with her, but you cannot touch her, you cannot smell her, you cannot taste her.

It is a lossy process, a one-way street. It shaves off things that won’t fit, to extrude pieces of herself enough to present but never really, truly who she is. Being a one-way street, you cannot really go the other way; if you want to connect with her, and not the image she presents to the world, the one that is confusing and hard to understand, you will have to go to the source; her heart. Because that’s where she is. That’s where you can actually touch her and connect with her and affect her. That’s where her awareness yields to your touch and you see ripples in her being from your very presence.

Women are simple. Ever the communicators and brave souls, willing, yearning, to be vulnerable, to be touched, to be understood, they do everything in their power to make themselves available for just that. And all you have to do is to look past the mask. Don’t try to understand her with your mind because that’s not where she is. Not really. Just go find her, seek her out; you will find her sitting on a stone and waiting to be found. Gingerly place your hand on her heart and you will realize that there is no need to understand, only to accept, only to connect, only to commune.

A: As a sadist, being aroused by tears appears to come with the territory. My lover crying in response to my touch is one of the most beautiful things she can do for me. Kissing and licking the tears trickling down her face—tears that belong to me—is such an intimate act of connection, of communion.

I grew up pretty sheltered and even though I read The Joy of Sex cover-to-cover many times, it still baffled me that I would get a raging hard-on every time my second girlfriend cried. I had never seen anything more beautiful and more feminine.

I felt like a monster every time I would “accidentally” hurt her or make her cry from frustration. It was a relief for me when I discovered that she would cry from coming too hard too; that was something I went for with gusto because it was something positive I could do to get what I craved.

Tears are drops of liquid emotion and my lover’s emotional response is all that I am after. Prying open my lover’s heart and soul, to make her spread her emotional wings around me and warm me with the radiance of her response, is what I crave. It is what I need.

Maybe being a sadist means that I am emotionally disfigured, I’ll leave that for others to decide. But I consider myself blessed. I get to experience something beautiful, a connection so profound that it is almost spiritual; the intimacy between the torturer and the tortured.

Am I abusive? Narcissistic? Truth be told; I don’t know. I don’t think I am, but if I was, I would deny it. Some say that denying that you are a narcissist in fact proves that you are. However, I while ago I made a comment elsewhere that may say what I think of my species in a nutshell:

I like to say that what we sadists lack in sympathy, we make up for in empathy. I would go so far as to say that a sadist could be the most attentive and sensitive lover, should he venture into the taboo areas of romance and tenderness. Few will have better insight into your emotions and what makes you tick because that simply comes with the territory.

Who, after all, has greater motivation to dive into your heart and soul and solve the puzzle of what makes you tick but your torturer?

A: I usually do not have the patience to be touched per se. I am very affectionate and touchy-feely, but I primarily seem to think in terms of doing unto rather than being done unto.

I always thought that it’s the control freak in me but a wise young lady pointed out to me that maybe it’s because I don’t like to be passive in receiving and I think she may have a point. Smart little fox, that one.

From what I have been given to understand, my nipples are nowhere near as sensitive as a woman’s. But then, I have known female nipples that were insensitive to any kind of pleasure. My nipples are sensitive but not really in a good way. I once got a gentle love-bite on one without warning and I jumped straight up. She never tried anything on my nipples again. He he.

Teasing nipples and blowing in ears and running a feather across skin may be all well and good, but there are ways a woman can touch a man that is nothing like he can do to her, using her femininity and her body to do so. Find ways to contrast your body against his, how much smaller your hands are to his, how much softer your skin is to his.

Also, remember that he is a man and that he thinks and reacts differently from you. His skin is not as sensitive as yours and he may be slightly more single-mindedly wired for the act of penetration. Use that to your advantage.

Instead of running a feather across his skin, use your hair; honestly, which do you think he likes better? If your hair is long, drag it like a curtain from his chest to his thighs, crossing his crotch. If he is flaccid, it is an incredible feeling of being caressed by femininity, and if he is erect he will feel like he’s penetrating your hair. It can be an unbelievable feeling.

If his nipples will not give him pleasure, graze your nipples across the hairs of his chest. Graze your nipples across his lips and rub your breasts against his shoulders. If it feels good to you, let him know for goodness sakes.

If you are moving down with your face level with his crotch, why not straddle one of his legs and let your breasts straddle him too? Make him feel them on both sides of his thigh, for instance, and he will realize that breasts are even heavier than they look.

If you are straddling him while, say, grazing your nipples against his chest hair, instead of straddling his hips, do so to one of his thighs and rub your pussy against it. It feels good to you and it is an amazing tease to him.

You know how many women seem to have a direct connection between their nipples and their clits? Well, many men have a similar connection between their fingers and their cocks. Give his finger a little blowjob while locking your eyes with his. Don’t just suck on it but give it the whole blowjob experience, including deepthroating if you can. And if you are rubbing your pussy against his thigh at the same time, you are giving him one fucking good experience. Pun intended.

And if he’s getting jittery, like he’s impatient to take over and just do something, arrange yourself such that you give him something to do. It may be as easy as getting him to play with your butt or even just trace your curves in general to settle him down for more of your ministrations. Us guys can be a little too action oriented at times.

A: I’m an ass man who loves breasts.

I’m not sure how to accurately explain the ass man thing. Visually, I am attracted to every part of a woman that conveys femininity; soft skin, hair, delicate features, curves, and so on.

For instance, I enjoy breasts (not for size but in shape and how soft they appear) but I cannot remember the last time I did a double-take for a pair of breasts. Or hair. Or skin. Or features, and that includes a pretty face. I register prettiness as well as the next guy, but it does not make my eyes stay on a woman longer.

However, I do double-takes on a defined waist and a generous lower body. Often. When a woman fills out her jeans with curvy hips and a round butt or when you can see a jiggle through the fabric of her skirt, I am transfixed.

Some ass men go for the lower body to the exclusion of everything else, so I feel the need to explain that I am an ass man who loves breasts. I can spend forever playing with breasts and nipples and I can get lost in a nicely shaped cleavage, but it is the waist, the hips, and spankable cheeks that rock my boat.

Not too seldom I hear women complain about their asses and I want to exclaim, “Hey, lady, you don’t have enough!” Chances are that if a woman thinks her butt is too big, I will think it is perfect. I don’t see cellulite and saddlebags; I only see womanly curves and I want me some of that, thank you very much.

I suppose that is what ass man means to me. Note though, that I am also a brain man, a soft-skin man, a delicate-and-feminine-hands man, a warm-and-generous-heart man, a someone-I-respect man, a sensitive-nipples man, and so on. The best butt in the world cannot make up for lacking conversation, for example.

A: My hands? I have never really thought about my hands. They are normal men’s hands, I suppose. I work at a computer all day so they are not particularly calloused or rough. Several women have said that they like my hands, but I have never understood what, exactly, made them special. Each one has five fingers and they are not very small but not very large, either.

My hands are quite sensitive and touch is a primary sense for me. I like to say that I see a woman with my hands. I like softness and I tend to prefer a woman being bare-legged than wearing pantyhose because hose tend to be rough in texture, not at all soft like her own skin. In the same vein, a Cashmere sweater, or even better, a Cashmere sweater dress, is pure Kryptonite for me; my hands will not leave that soft Cashmere until you pry them lose. I mean it; put Cashmere over soft breasts and my brain simply goes kaput.

My fingers really enjoy the inside of a woman; I will penetrate her anywhere and anyway I can. I like fingering because although the penis glans is extremely sensitive, it does not convey detail. You can feel a woman’s warmth and wetness and softness, and it will short-circuit your brain, but you cannot tell what she feels like inside. My fingers allow me to explore her and marvel in her body, inside and out. I cannot believe that people cannot find the g-spot; they must not have done much exploring. There is a whole world to explore inside a woman.

When I am excited my hands will often travel up to a woman’s throat, to grip her and ensure she cannot get away. I do not feel a need to choke her, but the symbolic dominance of having her vulnerable throat in my hands feels incredibly good. They also enjoy the give of breasts and have been guilty of pulling and twisting nipples very enthusiastically. I am an ass-man who loves breasts, so I am pretty much all over the place.

Spanking? You bet your ass! (He he, couldn’t resist. True, though.)

In the theme of softness, I am mesmerized by a woman’s hair, and my hands will find their way into it, petting it and, yes, pulling it. It is so satisfying to control a woman’s head by her hair when you kiss her. I doesn’t matter that she wouldn’t pull away, I am not about to take any chances. Besides, it is so satisfying.

I guess I am generally very touchy-feely with a woman. All of her is soft and smooth and I just cannot get enough of that. To absentmindedly trace her neck and collar bones, to graze her cheek with my knuckles, to stroke her hair, to hold her wrist or her hand…