Yes, just as your mail comes a day late and you don’t put the garbage out if you normally have a Monday morning pickup, I too am a lazy bitch who takes the Memorial Day holiday off. Seeing as I spent the weekend at a three-day playparty, however, I think I can still consider myself qualified. And so it is that without further ceremony or ado I present to you This Week’s Question!
Dear Delilah–
I’ve had it pointed out to me that I am “almost certainly a closet sub.” While I will frankly admit the idea of being a submissive has an appeal, I’m ridiculously new to the “scene” and want to separate the facts from the fictions. Here’s the rub: have no desire to be stomped on, beaten, flogged, verbally abused, manacled, humiliated, or any of the other stereotypical “passions” –I simply want to approach the idea of being dominated in a sexual sense and see where it takes me as a person. Is there a primer?
–Dale
One of the common mistakes that people make when they start to be interested in kink is to believe that if they are kinky, that means they must want to do all those crazy things they see on the Internet. Dale, I don’t even want to do all the crazy things I see on the Internet, and I do some of them in videos that I sell. Seeing as you’re not looking to make a profession out of it, there’s no reason for you to do anything sexually that you don’t want to do, ever.
That being said: the first step is to think about what you do want to do. I see a long list here of things you’re not interested in, and yes, many of them are associated with being a submissive, and many of them are especially associated with being a male submissive in the Internet sense. By which I mean: often the desires of a particular sexuality (particularly female dominance and male submission) are depicted in particular ways by the sex industry, and all the other possibilities for it are kept relatively invisible. (The above links are provided to give different perspectives.)
What this means is that you probably haven’t seen the kind of submission that you’re interested in depicted anywhere. And you may not know exactly what it looks like.
I have a couple of recommendations for you. One is paying attention to your fantasies (an old Dan Savage trick). What images come to you when you’re jerking off? Or even, when you daydream about sexual submission, what does it look like? It sounds like you’re not interested in the more pain-intense varieties, nor in the more humiliation-intense ones. Perhaps you want to be tied up and have a woman “take” you sexually. Perhaps you want to be given orders. Maybe you are drawn to service – whether that means bringing her paper and slippers or fucking her just the way she likes it for an hour. Is it about giving up control? About worship of the dominant? About obedience? About lying back and letting someone else do the work?
Once you get a sense of what that looks like, you need to have someone to try it out with. I don’t have good information about what your circumstances are in that department from your letter, but if you have a current partner, it’s probably worthwhile to propose it to her in a non-threatening manner. If not, the next time you’re dating someone, you should probably present this as an idea when you begin to become sexual. Also: who is it that’s telling you that you’re probably a closet submissive? If it’s your partner…well, that may be more than a hint. 🙂
Which brings me to one more thing I want to touch on here. Make sure that this isn’t about somebody else projecting their fantasies onto you. Where are you getting these messages from, and do they make sense to you? It sounds like you’re open to exploring it, but be wary of basing your identity on something that other people have said about you.
Finally, though: don’t worry too much. Explore the fantasies and have fun. If it doesn’t turn your crank, you’ll find that out soon enough, and no harm done.
Leave a comment