Ep 4: Tips for Beginner Dominants (Conversations with a Dom Podcast)

In this episode of Conversations with a Dom, I discuss tips for those who are new to D/s and want to become the best Dominant they can be. This episode discusses consent, your Dom personality, where to find a submissive to date, and a whole lots more about the world of Dom/sub dynamics.

Audio transcript

[00:00:22] Hello, and welcome to another episode of conversations with a Dom with me, Chief, from KinkyEvents.co.uk. Today, we are going to be talking about the things you should know as a beginner Dominant. If you’re just getting started out in this lifestyle and you’re new to BDSM, you’re new to kink, and you’ve got no idea what you should be doing.

[00:00:42] What is a dominant meant to do? How are you meant to act? Is it meant to be inside the bedroom or outside the bedroom or both?

[00:00:49] It’s one of the reasons why I started my website KinkyEvents.co.uk because there wasn’t really a resource out there that I felt was not pornographic and was down to earth and was good advice as to what I should be doing. And that’s exactly why I wanted to do this podcast because I wanted to help a few of you guys.

Tip 1: Don’t Wait to Get Started 

[00:01:08] So tip number one, don’t wait to get started.

[00:01:11] I get quite a few people emailing me and they are overthinking it. They think they have to know absolutely everything about being a dominant before they can even bring it up with their partner or do anything they want to know everything about the subject. And I absolutely get that. I am very much like that.

[00:01:30] I like to be very well-educated on a subject if I’m going to do it. What I would say is just, don’t wait. You wouldn’t have to master sex and know everything about sex before you had sex for the first time.

[00:01:43] Experience of being a Dom comes from trying to be a Dom and failing a few times. And experience comes with experience. You just have to jump in and get started.

Tip 2: There Are Many Types of Dominant

[00:01:55] Number two, there are lots of different types of Dominant. 

[00:01:59] You don’t have to be this caricature of a dominant, which in a lot of movies depict BDSM and kink very poorly anyway. You don’t have to be the rich good-looking tall dark-haired stoic emotionally shut off non-talkative type to be a Dominant.

[00:02:21] You don’t have to enjoy inflicting pain on your submissive. You don’t have to be domineering and bossy. Those are not things to me, which make it a good Dom. And it’s certainly not my personality. I like to keep things a little bit more, more fun and more free.

[00:02:35] And I very much enjoy, I’ve talked about this before the psychological aspect of dominance for me the mental side of it is almost probably a bit more fun actually than the the physical side of it in some ways. The way you can tease someone mentally. 

[00:02:54] You’re out on a date and you can just wind them up. You can run a hand up their leg, you can whisper things to them. You can talk about what you’re going to do later. You can dress up sexually that those all play into the mental aspects of being a dominant and teasing someone. And you are teasing them. And therefore you are turning them on mentally and physically, but you’re turning them on by the things you are doing.

[00:03:21] And for me, that is that’s a power play almost. That’s me being in control of the situation. That’s that’s me giving it’s me helping them bring out their sexuality, getting them turned on. So that to me is the aspect of dominance that I like the most.

[00:03:38] I get people writing in and they’re like, oh, I, I had this me and my partner had just starting. I’m playing at being a Dom, I’m trying to be a Dom. And we were doing this scene and we were having sex and all of a sudden something funny happened and I started laughing and it broke the whole thing and I’m thinking.

[00:03:54] Yeah, I I laugh during sex the whole time. Funny things happen, but that doesn’t mean you’ve come out of your character of being a Dom. You’re allowed to laugh as a Dom. It’s not again what in porn and in 50 shades of gray, it’s it, that’s not nest. That is a type of dorm. Sure.

[00:04:10] But it’s not necessarily what I think is the most common. And I talk about the romance. Caregiving side of dominance and being a dominant, I guess that’s more because it’s more my style. So I almost think of it as being in a traditional relationship, giving a lot of intimacy, but having great sex and potentially doing kinkier things in bed than you would normally.

[00:04:32] And then you layer in this aspect of mental dominance, like teasing and potentially also a little bit of in my case a little bit wanting the other person to do things for me, give me massages and fetching me things or cooking me meals. So I lean slightly towards the more service oriented side of things outside the bedroom.

[00:04:51] Or when we’re out, I’ll ask them to take off their underwear and come back to the table with it and give it to me. I put it in my pocket. And then we just, have the evening as normal, but we both know that has happened. And so that is in our subconscious so that we can both get amped up and then we get home and we have good sex.

[00:05:07] So again, that is my style of dominance for you. You might really enjoy giving someone pain. You might really enjoy the the thought of tying someone up and whipping them, that may be your thing. You may really get off on seeing someone. In pain or you may really get off on humiliating someone.

[00:05:26] And that’s fine. That is absolutely fine. Provided they have consented to it, which we will come on to, but that is your style of dominance. So don’t let anyone tell you that the way you are doing things is not being a dominant. As I said, there are many different styles and remember to keep your personality in it, otherwise it will come out as come off as inauthentic.

Tip 3: Consent is key

[00:05:47] So next up we talked about it very briefly there, but it’s one of the key things. Consent is a huge topic. Everything I talk about is underpinned by consent and everything you should be doing to someone and with someone you should have ideally fully discussed it with them beforehand.

[00:06:06] I use the sex menu, which is essentially a list of things. That the person is interested in, or a list of, sexual activities related to Dom and sub. And I get people potentially after I’ve met them a few times to fill it in so that they give a score for each one of those items to say, number one, I don’t want to do it at all.

[00:06:28] It’s a hard limit. Number two is it’s a soft limit. Although out to a sex, which is yeah, I, I have to have that. I love it. I absolutely have to have that in a relationship. And just having that thing in front of you, that is almost them giving you consent. You can see very clearly what they have consented to what they want you to explore with them and what they want you to do to them potentially, because. 

[00:06:56] I had one woman. I was having good email conversation with her. And she’d said that there’s dominant. Once he’d found out that she was a sub had told her to basically go to the supermarket and this was, they hadn’t even met yet. This was all over text, go to the supermarket, buy a cucumber.

[00:07:12] And at the checkout, shout something like. I’m going to take this home and have, come really hard with it, something like that. And I just thought that was absolutely absurd. And she thought it was absolutely absurd. There was no way she was going to do that. The person that who was saying they were dominant, I would argue is not a dominant.

[00:07:30] Sure. They maybe they’d got the fact that as a dominant, you can give commands to someone, but he’d not checked whether she was into that. One, yeah, he hadn’t checked that. Enjoyed being given commands because some people absolutely don’t. And number two, even if she had enjoyed giving commands, he hadn’t, he had no idea whether she was an exhibitionist.

[00:07:51] He had no idea whether that was appropriate. And also the whole thing about displaying your kinks in public is generally it’s frowned upon. I’ve seen photos. Pet play where the pet owner has it, where it has the collar and the leash. And they’re walking someone around a shopping mall and the guy, the sub in this case was dressed as a dog.

[00:08:15] And he’s crawling on all floors all fours on the floor, around the shopping mall. And to me, that’s not okay because yes, they have consented as a couple to do that, and they may enjoy pet play nothing wrong with. But the people who are witnessing it have not really consented to see it in public. So yeah, don’t do that.

[00:08:33] And it’s the same with the, asking someone to shout out in the middle of a seafood market. You don’t want to do that. The people around them, not consented to hear that. And even if it was acceptable to do that, the person had not checked that is something she wanted to do.

Tip 4: Aim for mutual benefit

[00:08:47] There must be a benefit to both people in a Dom sub relationship. It’s not all about the Dominant. And I think this is something that begin to Dom’s get wrong all the time. They think, oh, because I’m a dominant, I can get the submissive to do whatever I want. And it’s all about me. It’s all about my pleasure.

[00:09:04] And I don’t, I shouldn’t really care about the submissive feelings. That couldn’t be further from the truth. That couldn’t be further from the truth, even if you enjoy. Inflicting pain on someone. You are doing that because hopefully the person you are doing it to has not only consented it, but consented to it, but really enjoys it.

[00:09:24] They really enjoy receiving pain. So you’re both getting a benefit from it. You’re getting the pleasure of being controlling, giving that. And the person that you are doing it to is getting the pleasure of receiving that pain. But for most people, receiving pain is not pleasurable. It’s not a sexual turn-on.

[00:09:44] It’s not something they want to do. And therefore, a dominant who is infecting pain on a submissive who has not agreed to it and does not find that sexy or a turn on that to me. There’s a, there’s not a balance there in the benefits of both that both people are getting. So for me, that would be a bad situation to be in.

[00:10:06] And I also get submissives emailing me saying, Hey, my dominance just suggested this, that we do this particular thing. I’m not really into it. I don’t know what to do. And what you do is you say, no, I’m not into that thing. That’s not what I want this relationship to be about. If you’re a submissive listening to this, then don’t automatically assume if you’re new to it, that you have to do exactly what the dominant tells you at all times.

[00:10:33] Unless of course you have consented to that and that’s part of your dynamic. But in most cases, if you’ve just met someone and they suggest something totally outlandish that you have no desire to do, it does not make you a bad submissive because you don’t want. It does not make you a bad person.

[00:10:50] I see too many submissives going along with something that the Dom wants to do and they have no desire to do it. And then they feel a bit guilty afterwards.

[00:11:00] If you tell the dominant, no, you don’t want to do something and they get angry or they try and emotionally manipulate you into doing that thing or they pull away because you’ve said no. Then again, I would argue that is not that’s not really how a dominant should be acting. So all your subs out there, if you do start dating a dominant or going out with the dominant and it’s new to you, or this is new to you.

[00:11:24] Do make sure that you talk to them beforehand. Communication is absolutely everything in a BDSM relationship. You should trust that person fully. And you, when you have these kinds of discussions, you should be dropping the dynamic, drop the dynamic.

[00:11:37] And what I mean by that is DS is all about. The dominant is in control and the submissive submits her power to that person, to the dominant. So don’t have a conversation about your likes and your dislikes and your hard limits and your soft limits in that dynamic. You have to almost clear that you have to reset.

[00:11:57] You have to go to a neutral space, ideally, and have a conversation where you are equals 

[00:12:03] Some beginner dominance that I’ve seen, they don’t understand this. They don’t understand that they are one that it’s all about giving and taking. They have to give to the submissive because the submissive is the one who’s really in control because she is voluntarily, allowing you as the dominant to be in charge.

[00:12:22] I was actually looking on the dominance and submission page on Wikipedia. And I stumbled across this this paragraph, which I think sums up what I’m trying to say here.

[00:12:32] It says “the term power exchange refers to the empowerment of the dominant by the submissive surrender to his or her control power exchange is consensual. And in reality, it is the submissive that has the underlying control during the relationship exchange. The dominant is attempting to satisfy the submissives kinks and desires.”

[00:12:54] Now I found that really interesting because that is exactly how I view a Dom sub relationship. Notice how it says that it’s really the submissive who has the underlying control, because she is the one who has voluntarily put herself into that submissive role. It’s not that she is being forced into that submissive role.

[00:13:17] She has voluntarily chosen to in that moment, submit and therefore give the dominant power. Someone can’t dominate if you don’t let them, if you don’t choose to surrender to them, because if someone says, Hey, go and do that thing. And you’re like, no, then you’re not submitting to them.

[00:13:36] So the submissive is really the one in charge. She’s the one who is voluntarily submitting her power to someone else for a moment in time. And If you haven’t agreed to that, or you tried to dominate someone who, who doesn’t want to submit, then what are you doing? That’s not how. And the last paragraph there, it says the dominant is attempting to satisfy the submissives, kinks and desires.

[00:14:04] This I think is really key the role in my head, certainly of a caregiving romantic dominant. Again, just my style of dominance is I am trying to satisfy. I get, I take great pleasure in finding out what the person that I am interacting with. What their fantasies are, what do they love doing?

[00:14:22] What haven’t they tried that they would like to do? I really want to understand them as a person so that when I go into, when I’m teasing them or when I am having sex with them, I can almost call back all of that stuff. I can call it back and I can start putting those things that they’ve said they’re interested in into the scene.

[00:14:45] I can stop constructing scenes to give them what they want, because I want to see them have the maximum pleasure that they can. And that is, that turns me on, I like to give in that sense. And so that last sentence there, the dominant is attempting to satisfy the submissive kinks and desires to me is what being a dominant means to me.

[00:15:06] To me, not everyone, but to me. And I really enjoy doing that. I enjoy seeing someone who has never done a certain thing, but they’ve always fantasized it. And I am the one who can give it to them or enable them, or free them enough mentally to allow them to experience that thing. That gives me a real kick.

Tip 5: BDSM and kink can help you expand your sexuality

[00:15:27] There is a lot of shame and guilt around sex in society. And one of the reasons that I wanted to do this podcast is to normalize it. People have a hard enough time talking about vanilla sex so as soon as you bring up BDSM and kink, people are like, whoa, no what are you talking about? Let’s not talk about that. So I wanted to normalize it a bit more because come on, everyone likes sex. Let’s be honest. And I think a lot more of us are kinky than we realize and want to admit it.

[00:15:53] And there’s definitely a lot of shame and guilt around admitting that you enjoy sex. Society is not very good at telling you that, owning your desires and getting what you want is a good thing.

[00:16:05] It absolutely is, but society hasn’t really taught us that. So some women have fantasies or want to do things and they just they haven’t experienced it because they are worried about what people will think of them or they’re mentally stuck in there. So something else that I see as my role as a dominant again, this is just how I like to be a dominant, because they’re all types as we’ve discussed before.

[00:16:28] I really enjoy helping people achieve those fantasies, which maybe they haven’t done before, because they’d been to. Or it felt too much shame. So simply by me because I’m in control of the situation, I’m almost absolving the submissive or the other person of doing those things.

[00:16:50] I’m, it’s plausible deniability at the end of it. Let’s say they, they really didn’t like, I don’t know. Let’s take a really simple example, anal sex. Maybe they’ve often fantasized about it, but they’d been told not only is sex wrong, but anal sex that’s a whole other level. That is you would not go there. But they’ve fantasized about it and they really want to try it, but they can’t get their head into that mindset. Now, if you’re in a Dom sub relationship by them choosing to submit and give the power to me and we did have anal sex then afterwards, they can say it’s fine because he made me do it or he encouraged me. There’s this plausible deniability there. 

[00:17:32] And again, I’m not talking me forcing myself on them. I’m talking about this is very much consensually done and stopping if there’s anything wrong, of course, but that, what I’m trying to say is that if someone is there with you and encouraging you, you can do things which you think that you couldn’t do.

[00:17:51] They’re saying, look, this is what we’re doing today. And you do it. And afterwards you feel such a high. You’re like, wow. I didn’t know. I could do that. I’ve pushed myself so submitting to someone and being able as a dominant to help people experience things that they’ve not experienced before is for me a turn on and I think that’s when I read this, when it says the dominant is attempting to satisfy the submissive’s kinks and desires, that sums it up very nicely. And that’s exactly why communication is so bloody important in a DS relationship. You cannot start doming someone. If you don’t know what they want, you have to find out what your submissives,kinks and desires are before you start.

Tip 6: Don’t Dom too soon

[00:18:33] Which brings me to the next point. Don’t Don too early. Don’t come on too strong, straight away if you’re online and you’ve literally just had a few texts with someone during online dating and you start domming them about what are you doing? Don’t start doming someone on a first date either.

[00:18:49] As I said, get to know the person. You don’t need to prove that you are the world’s greatest Dom on a first date. In fact, I often, I don’t always bring it up when I’m going dating. I don’t bring up the fact that I’m a Dom. I will hint at it in my online profile, but I won’t specifically bring it up because it scares people off because they don’t necessarily understand what being a Dom means.

[00:19:10] And they just have this stereotype image. But yeah, because I like to get to know them and I like to take my time and if I feel that they would enjoy it, that’s when I start discussing it with them. 

Tip 7: Finding a submissive kinky partner

[00:19:20] So let’s talk a little bit as well about finding a partner is. It’s tricky if you’re a dominant, if you’re just trying to find a submissive.

[00:19:30] So I’m going to give you a few tips. Here are some of the things that I’ve found over the course of my dating life. For me where again, most dates is from regular dating apps.

[00:19:41] So just normal apps that you’d expect. I don’t use Tinder, but something like hinge we have in the UK. I think that’s great. I really like it because you have an opportunity to answer questions and in those answers you can hint at being kinky. And that helps the worst is when you go on a date and the person has an absolutely no idea, kinky, you really get on with them.

[00:20:02] And then two, three days, then you bring it up and they’re horrified and they never want to speak to you again. So I do like to hint at being non-vanilla in my profiles. And I often use the word non-vanilla and put it in because it’s not really people who know what it means, know what it means, people who don’t.

[00:20:19] And therefore it’s a good conversation starter as well on a date when they ask, Hey, what does that mean? Or I saw you putnon-vanilla. I’m in to that too. So regular dating apps, you’ll find a lot more people. And as I said, some people don’t know that they’re kinky and it takes you as a person to bring it out of them.

[00:20:36] And they’re not going to be on kinky dating apps. They’re going to be on regular dating apps. So in terms of number of dates, you’re going to get more from regular dating apps, but you have the downside of the person potentially not being kinky and therefore, getting on with them really well and then finding you don’t work sexually. 

[00:20:51] The next level up, we have the kinky dating apps. I’ve been on Feeld. I use Feeld occasionally and I used to use OkCupid as well, which is more of a traditional dating site, but since match.com bought it, they’ve turned it into a Tinder swipey thing, which isn’t really great, but it used to be great cause you used to be able to look through everyone’s profiles, find profiles and answer questions. Your likes and dislikes, and you could fill out all the sex ones essentially. And that would give you a really good read when you read other people’s answers as to whether they were into the same things as you.

[00:21:22] So I wouldn’t necessarily recommend OkCupid now, but it’s worth giving it a shot because you can put a full long profile and it tends to be kink friendly. Feeld is most certainly kink friendly. Feeld was an app that was designed as a Tinder, but for threesomes originally. So it was about couples finding a third person, but it’s now moved more into a traditional dating app that caters for kinky people. Trouble with that is there’s not a wide pool of people on it.

[00:21:51] And, as a single guy on there, it can be difficult to find people if you’re a single girl then I would go for it. There’s probably a lot of guys on there who would want to meet you

[00:22:01] Next up we’ve got regular events. I, when I say regular events, they’re events where maybe a sex theme.

[00:22:06] I quite often go to talks around sex or I did before the pandemic, when they were actually going on and I’ll go to these talks and yeah, you generally people at those kinds of talks there they’re open-minded and there, as there are talk about sex or psychology it’s easy to get talking to them afterwards.

[00:22:23] And if you, if there’s a spark then yeah, awesome. Out on a date.

[00:22:27] And then the finally we’re getting into more things like play parties and munches. So play parties are as they sound. They’re adult parties. Go listen to my episode on sex parties to find out more, but there are so many of them going on.

[00:22:41] You’ve got the big ones, like Torture Garden, which I’m going to for Halloween coming up. And then you’ve got the smaller ones. Like I’m going to Pleasure Island this weekend. There’s a smaller number of people so that decreases the odds of meeting someone that you get on with personality wise or physically, but you will know that they’re into kink at least. So that’s a good starting point.

[00:23:01] And the same with Munches are where they’re just normal social gatherings where everyone’s dressed and nothing sex happens, but the people there are all into kink. So again, that could be a good place to find people. 

[00:23:13] There are also things like speed dating that caters specifically to people who are into kink. I’ve seen D/s speed dating in London as well. There’s always events to go to, to find kinky people. But even if you go to those events again, don’t try and dominate someone straightaway. It’s not how it should be done. Get to know them.

Wrapping up my tips for a beginner dominant

[00:23:33] So I think that’s it. I’ve given quite a few tips there.

[00:23:36] I hope you found it useful. Of course, do not hesitate to head over to the website. Go to KinkyEvents.co.uk. I write about these kinds of things all the time. You can sign up for my free guide on nine steps to kinkier sex and healthier D/s dynamics.

[00:23:53] That’s a free book, which gives you some more of these tips. We talked about sex menu. You can head over to KinkyEvents.co.uk and find a sex menu there, which you can download and fill in with your partner to help get an understanding of what they’re into. And that can really help your dominance and submission.

[00:24:07] And for those people who want to take it to the next level, I also have my book called Sensational Scenes. It gives you my theory of how I craft play scenes to really give someone an amazing physical and mental experience.

[00:24:18] And I go through how I structured scenes to do that. So that is also available on my website, kinkevents.co.uk. Join me again for the next episode. Until next time. Lots of love and spanks, and I’ll see you soon.