The Power of a Dom/sub Relationship

Not long ago during a Sunday evening in lockdown my wife asked me a question.

“When was it that you first discovered you were into BDSM and that you wanted a D/s relationship?”

I thought about this for a while, trying to think about the events in my life that might have influenced me in the past.

I could think of many but at the same time I could not pin down one single occurrence or point in time that I could say swayed my sexual desires or my core beliefs into wanting to be part of a D/s relationship. 

After a while I concluded that it had always been part of me for as long as I could remember.

This was true. I discovered kink, BDSM, D/s, whatever you want to call it, long before I discovered sex or for that matter even knew what sex was.

Of course, I wouldn’t have known it as BDSM, and I’m not sure anyone had heard of a D/s relationship back then. But I remember lying in bed as a young boy in that half-awake half dream like reality with all kinds of fanciful thoughts going through my head that caused a strange and somewhat surprising feeling to occur around my groin. 

My wife smiled and nodded when I told her my answer. “That was the same for me as well.” She replied.  

We were sitting at our dining room table after just finishing our meal and we were now enjoying a glass of wine; me in shirt and trousers and she in just her underwear; just as I had instructed.

It always amazes me having these kinds of discussions with her and I find it kind of strange that we had never really had this conversation before as the D/s thing had always been a big part of our lives, almost since the days when we had first started dating.

But after several years of marriage, we had started to take each other for granted and we had recently hit a difficult spot in our relationship. The reasons as to why we were having this conversation now, was because of our recent rediscovery of the whole D/s thing, or, to put it more precisely, our recent reassessment of it; and it was now the very thing that was bringing us even closer together.

We met at work

We had met some twelve years earlier through our work. I knew when I first saw her that she would be perfect for me, even though, in truth, I knew next to nothing about her.

But she was very beautiful, intelligent and she had very strong, forthright character, the sort of personality I like in a woman; she was her own person.

 Maybe there was something happening between us, even back then, during the first weeks I knew her, perhaps subtle unconscious hints were dropped, or things were picked up on by the other person as we pursued our daily activities.

I always looked out for her and she, I later discovered, looked out for me.

Then, some two years down the line, and with the interventions of a very close and dear friend of ours, we got together and to my amazement I found I was dating her.

Discovering she was a submissive

But that is only half the story. I was soon to discover something, which to me, was even more amazing about my new girlfriend; something that would shatter all other expectations completely and was beyond my wildest dreams.

She was a submissive. 

I had been through other relationships and a couple of times tried to dabble in something that might resemble a BDSM type role play, but most of my other girlfriends didn’t seem to understand what was going on, or I never really had the confidence to affect what I would call a proper D/s dynamic. And the dating sites and chat groups all seemed a bit disingenuous to me.

But this was different, and it was certainly, for me, something that had been worth waiting for.  

The truth was that, before we met, my new girlfriend wasn’t completely sure if she was a submissive or not.

Like me, she had grown up with the view that the kinky thoughts that permeated her head each day were perhaps, unnatural, possibly even dangerous and were probably best repressed.

We had both questioned the arousals we got from these kinky thoughts and the need to touch ourselves whenever they occurred. In short, we had grown up thinking that we might both be weirdos. 

But not having been in a D/s dynamic for several years we had come to accept each other’s needs and sexual desires, we knew what it was we wanted and were trying to achieve, but anyone new to these ideals might not be so reassured, especially in our modern society of social media, where everyone has opinions and feels they know better and where so many like to point the finger.

But, through our discussions we began to realise the power of what we had between us and later rediscover that it was the D/s dynamic and the BDSM that has made our relationship so incredibly strong and has allowed it to keep on growing stronger.

Life gets in the way

Getting married and moving in together brought with it a whole new range of issues. We both have responsible jobs that impinge on our time and even when we are not working, the stress brought about by our careers would sometimes bleed into our personal lives.

We both worked long hours to keep up our high mortgage repayments and to keep on top of the rising energy bills that fell through our letter box. We went to the supermarket together, worried about the leak from our kitchen ceiling, and just like many couples we sometimes even quarrelled. 

But, then there were times when after a hard day at work I could see that she was stressed about something and all I needed to do was point to the sofa.

She would take a deep breath, swallow and obediently hitch her skirt up to her navel and lay across the arm in the most undignified position so I could spank her.

I did, with increasing intensity, beginning with soft, gentle slaps and building up to harder, more ferocious spanks and all the while hurling all kinds of derogatory comments at her – telling her what a filthy slut or bitch she was while her buttocks got all the more red and all the more sore. 

As the months and years passed by, such events became all the more scarce.

The evenings would find one of us too tired to want to do anything like a spanking scene; and if we did, it was not really structured and there was no real intent on my part on what I wanted to get out of these activities.

I found I was kind of regressing, with my sexual thoughts being locked inside my head, like they were back in my youth, before I discovered relationships and my wife, always a control freak, was not always behaving in what I would call a submissive kind of way.

Doing the research

It was during this period that my wife decided to do something and she began researching, looking at websites and discovering sites like Kinky Events and prompting me to take a look for myself.

During one difficult evening we had a quarrel which was followed as always, by a close and very tearful hugging session and she confessed to me, something that had for her, now become, an obsession, to be a true submissive toward me.

That is all she ever wanted. 

Reading more about kink and BDSM has made us both think about ourselves from an almost psychoanalytical point of view.

• Why were we both so much craving a D/s dynamic and what was it we really wanted from it?
• Why was it I got so much pleasure out of dominating her?
• What was it that was so arousing whenever I spanked her or humiliated her?
• What was it she got from this dynamic why did she crave so much the role of the submissive? 

I frequently asked myself these questions. Why would anyone want to cause pain or humiliation to someone they love?

After all, she is the only person I have ever met who I can say is the focus of my complete and unconditional love. In short, she means everything to me, and I don’t want to even imagine life without her.

The answer to this question can be summed up by two simple points.

It’s all consensual and negotiated

The first is that she wants me to do these things; and I know this because she has told me.

We have established a dialogue between us and we both know what it is the other person likes or wants. Herein lies the most important part of any D/s or BDSM relationship – communication.

I can’t stress enough how important communication is for anyone new to BDSM.

Without this dialogue the motives for me spanking my wife would be highly questionable.

I use the word “Want” because in a proper D/s dynamic the relationship that exists between a dominant and their submissive must be one of fulfilling the wants and desires of the other person – be they the dominant or submissive.

For a submissive to simply agree to being subject to something that might bestow a certain amount of pain and/or humiliation to satisfy the cravings of their dominant, is not enough. (Read more about 7 ways to spot a Fake Dom and 10 signs you’re dealing with a bad Dominant).

The submissive must buy into this dynamic completely.

They must give their full consent and want or even crave this feeling of pain, humiliation, whatever it is they are being subject to.

Neither must the submissive feel pressurised into doing something they do not want to do; it must be agreed upon and consented, in writing, if necessary. 

Even punishments, which are a bit more intense than something like a simple spanking scene are also agreed upon, true, she might be in the dark as to what awaits her and the actual punishment might cause her a certain amount of discomfort, but she is free to call it off at any given moment by the utterance of one very simple word, her safe word.

Whether she is being flogged or made to write lines while being tied to a chair in full view of the window in just her underwear, all these things she has given her consent to, and she can end it at any time.

But in all our years she has never, yet backed out of any of her ordeals, no matter how difficult they might be for her. 

The power that lies in any D/s dynamic is that agreed consent and the total feeling of trust my submissive has placed in me and the fact that she is allowing me to take total charge.

It’s a two way give and take dynamic

And that leads me to the second point.

As a dominant, I am buying into this as much as she is, as the submissive.

I am not only catering to the needs of my submissive, I am also taking complete control of the situation and she, as the submissive is wanting me to do this and myself, as the dominant, also wants to do this.

It is a two-way process with equal contributions from each side. I am agreeing to take part in these activities as much as she is.

The consent and trust are both key to any D/s dynamic and as an act it satisfies both our needs sexually; that is why it is so powerful.

No matter what she is doing, or being made to do, the trust she has placed in me gives me that feeling of excitement that radiates deep from inside my chest and permeates all the way down toward my groin. In short it turns me on and for my submissive, – well, if there was any doubt, all I must do is run my fingers between her legs and feel her wetness; then, I am sure.

Building a deeply intimate Dom/sub relationship

 Our reassessment of D/s and BDSM has allowed us to formalise the scenes between us and the deeper understanding we now have, has allowed us to bring the D/s dynamic more into our everyday lives, or at least in the best way we can.

We have each constructed our own sex menus, which we continually review, and we have focused more on our core desires and established what each of us wants from a D/s dynamic or BDSM scene.

As the dominant I have thought more about what my intent is, before we begin a scene, and each scene is constructed around these ideals of intent and the 5 big scene themes.

We have established rules for my submissive, again, these are regularly reviewed, changed or added to and as a result our D/s dynamic has moved from being more than just a sexual experience and into something which is now starting to blend into our everyday lives. 

My submissive wife speaks about the feeling of mindfulness she sometimes gets from being part of a scene; whether she is being tied up, being subject to pain or some beautiful humiliation.

What we are after from our D/s relationship or our BDSM role plays, is not great sex, although, that is good too, but something much deeper. It’s that feeling that can only normally be obtained through mindfulness, deep meditation or maybe even some spiritual connection.

For people who are not into BDSM or don’t understand the D/s dynamic, this may be hard to swallow. But, both myself and my submissive feel a kind of truthfulness in our involvement with these activities, a kind of acceptance with who we really are, we, like so many people who are part of this scene, have had to face the truth about ourselves and overcome what many might see as taboo. 

Of course, not everyone in a D/s kind of relationship need to be so romantically involved as my submissive wife and myself. Even so, a connection still needs to be made, even if it is just for a short period in time.

Many people who are into D/s or BDSM, might just be after a brief sexual experience, maybe just a night of fun. For many, BDSM, might be seen as nothing more than sexual foreplay or something to be enjoyed after sex.

That is fine, provided the consent is given.

But for my wife and myself, the D/s dynamic has become a way of life. It is as if we have transcended the need to use D/s as just a means to obtain sexual pleasure and we are now striving to bring it more and more into our daily existence.

As a result of this, both myself, as the dominant, and my wife, as the submissive, have become more confident in the way we approach our D/s lifestyle.

What is most exciting is the constant rediscovery and the wonder of where it will lead us next.