Intimacy and the D/s Relationship
When vanilla people and/or newbies ask me about BDSM, I often reply that BDSM has three main subdivisions.
- Anything having to do with restraint of movement, such as bondage, locking someone in a cage, and so forth.
- Anything having to do giving with other-than-common erotic stimulation, such as floggers, clamps, electricity, and so forth.
- D/s dynamics, such as collars, submissive/slave positions, contracts, and so forth.
No emotional rapport is required to do bondage. For example, I teach a lot of bondage classes, and it is very common for me to tie up someone that I have met for the first time right before the start of the class.
No emotional rapport is required to give stimulation. I’ve attended many presentations on flogging, whipping, and so forth in which the presenter met their demo bottom for the first time right before the start of the presentation.
As for D/s relationships, I find those very difficult to stay in unless my submissive/slave and I have a really high degree of emotional (and intellectual) rapport.
While there is a school of thought which says that there should be little to no rapport between a Dominant and their submissive. That it’s better to keep them at arm’s length so as to better preserve the nature of the D/s relationship. I suppose that works for some people sometimes (pretty much anything works for at least some people sometimes), but it certainly doesn’t work for me, nor does it seem to work for the overwhelming majority of people in D/s relationships that I have met during my decades in the BDSM scene.
I have been in three D/s relationships that lasted at least two years, and in all three cases we fell in love with each other. It was my repeated experience that such love did not undermine our D/s dynamic at all. In fact, it’s fair to say that our romantic love enhanced our D/s relationship.
I will note that some submissives/slaves do not want an intimate personal relationship with a deep emotional rapport. They want to be objectified, dehumanized, made less-than, and so forth. For example, one submissive I had wanted to be kept as a pet, and one does not have heart-to-heart conversations with one’s pet. While our BDSM play went really well, our non-BDSM time together was very frustrating for both of us. I was looking for a slave and a girlfriend; she was looking for an Owner but not a boyfriend. The relationship was troubled and didn’t last long.
I consider D/s to be the most intimate type of BDSM, and if people attempt it without sufficient intimacy, great distress can ensue. In his excellent book “People Skills” psychologist Robert Bolton observes that “proximity without intimacy is inevitably destructive.” My experience in D/s relationships is entirely consistent with his statement.
If one person would act as a Dominant towards another person, it is important to make a brutally accurate assessment of oneself to see if one has the emotional strength and stability to be such a Dominant. If your own personal life is something of a wreck, then it’s likely not a good time for you to take control of a substantial amount of another person’s life.
For example, some years ago I met a lady at a BDSM social event in November and we seemed to have an almost instant rapport. (This is not unusual among people who end up in D/s relationships. I know a woman who said, “I took one look at him and knew that he was my Master.” — and she was indeed correct.) However, at the time we met, she was committed to another Dominant until February and I was trying to cope with a recent and highly traumatic relationship breakup. No way did I, at that time, have the emotional strength and stability to be a Dominant towards anybody. We did, however, keep in touch, and by the time February arrived I was feeling much stronger and much more stable. I was once again in a position to be someone’s Dominant. We entered into a D/s relationship that lasted for years.
In many ways, a D/s relationship is comparable to ice cubes of water in a glass, with the submissive being the ice cubes and the Dominant being the glass. The implicit, and sometimes explicit, promise of the Dominant to the submissive is that it’s safe for the submissive to “melt” from being ice cubes into being liquid water, to surrender some of their boundaries, because the Dominant will “contain” them within the Dominant’s boundaries. The Dominant will extend their, so to speak, “force field” out far enough to contain the submissive within it. The Dominant may swirl the melted submissive around a bit, or possibly put a cap on the glass and shake them up, (often to the submissive’s delight), but all of this will take place within the boundaries established by the Dominant – the “glass.”
It can be disastrous to attempt a D/s relationship if both parties are not fully psychologically ready for such. I’ve known several cases in which a would-be Dominant wanted a submissive to deeply surrender to them, right down to the submissive being told what to wear, what to eat, how to wear their hair, and so forth. When these “Dominants” finally got into such a relationship, they found out they were not psychologically ready to assume such a role and they fled. The result was that the submissive, to return to the glass/water analogy, “splattered all over the floor” and was heavily traumatized. Being somebody’s Dominant is not a trivial thing.
It’s essential that the Dominant provide a – forgive the cliche – “safe space” for the submissive to be in. If the submissive does not feel welcome and safe when they kneel at their Dominant’s feet, then their D/s relationship needs serious work. This work may take many forms such as seeing a BDSM-knowledgeable therapist, attending support group meetings for dominants or submissives, online discussions, and so forth. Let me observe that a responsible Dominant in a functional D/s relationship will likely have little to no problem with their submissive attending a good-quality support group for submissives. (Most such support groups are great, but a few are toxic.) If they do have a problem with that then that is, at the least, a “yellow flag” regarding the relationship.
There is a D/s discussion group that meets monthly here in San Francisco that is open to both Dominants and submissives, and I have attended many, many of their meetings over the years. Highly clueful, highly experienced people, many of whom are in quite healthy, very functional D/s relationships attend. There is a great deal of useful knowledge and wisdom in that group. If something similar does not exist near you, then perhaps you can start one.
The D/s relationship has an emotionally vulnerable aspect, not only is the submissive emotionally vulnerable to the Dominant but the Dominant is also emotionally vulnerable to the submissive. Indeed, if a D/s relationship ends badly, the Dominant is often more traumatized than the submissive.
Because of this vulnerability, it is essential to build and maintain a high level of trust. People who are not trustworthy pretty much never end up in D/s relationships that last for any significant amount of time.
As for building this level of trust, I read a line in a novel one time that contained a level of trust that I really like: Trust is the residue of kept agreements.
If you make an agreement with your D/s partner it is crucial that you keep that agreement in both letter and spirit. This particularly applies to Dominants who have agreed to refrain from doing or attempting to do certain things. For example, if a Dominant agrees to not attempt anal sex with the submissive, and then spontaneously, with no prior discussion or agreement, tries to anally penetrate the submissive, then the overall relationship may be heavily damaged, quite possibly to the point of being destroyed. It is absolutely crucial that agreements be kept in both letter and spirit. Discussions can be, and are, commonly held regarding changing or removing a relationship agreement, but until both parties fully understand and agree that the relationship agreement has been changed or removed, the agreement stands.
In summary, I have been in D/s relationships that had a low degree of intimacy and I have been in D/s relationships that had a high degree of intimacy. The former were troubled, didn’t last long, and often ended badly. The latter were relatively untroubled, tended to last a long time, and while there was some pain when they ended, it was usually a “clean pain” with no residual trauma on either end. Indeed, I think the essence of an intimate D/s relationship can be summed up with this quote from a former slave of mine: “I love you, Master.”