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What Is Domination?

What Does the Dom Get Out of it?

I’ve often been asked if I can explain the appeal of sexual dominance. One reader said that despite her best efforts to describe to her husband what D/s is all about, he just “doesn’t get it”. I’m not sure I can put it into words that will bring home to a skeptic what the secret is. I can try to explain what goes on in my head, but while he may grasp it intellectually, it probably still won’t really mean anything. How would you explain to a gay man the sexual allure of women’s bodies? Whatever you say, it isn’t going to enable him to share your pleasure. Or even make him want to.

But ok, let’s try. The buzz, the rush of excitement comes from the exercise of power. It comes from the feeling of knowing that when you say “come here”, she will come. She won’t argue, she won’t ask why, or what I am going to do. She just knows from the tone of voice and the expression that I am in Dom mode. And that gives me a power over her. It’s not a power I can exercise over any woman. She has to be receptive, she has to be submissive by nature. And of course, she has to respond to me personally. She has to like me, find me attractive, interesting, sexy, whatever – and dominant.

The special feeling of excitement I get from exercising my power comes from the knowledge that this is a different kind of sexual interaction from what is considered normal, or vanilla. I don’t have to ask her if she likes what I’m doing, I don’t have to persuade her or cajole or bribe her into letting me do what I want. I don’t have to do some things she wants in return. All that has been put in abeyance, parked, if you like. It’s not that I don’t care what she likes or haven’t taken the trouble to find out. You need to have a very intimate knowledge of exactly what she likes, including, especially, all those things she isn’t quite sure that she likes, or only likes when she gets into subspace, or is ashamed of liking because they are “dirty” or risky or whatever. But the question of whether she will let me do what I want has been settled. She’s already agreed in advance; I’ve got carte blanche. Yes, there are limits; there are always limits. But that leaves a lot of space to work in.

So when I say, “come here”, she knows I am going to do with her as I please. And I know that she knows, and that she knows even though she might resist it won’t do her any good. But the excitement depends on more than this. There has to be a connection, the circuit has to be joined. I have to know that she is excited by this. The real pleasure for me comes from knowing that she wants to surrender. There’s no pleasure whatsoever in spanking a girl who hates it. That’s not domination, that’s abuse. The excitement for me comes from knowing that she can’t help herself, she wants this, she needs it, but at the same time she needs me to make her do it. I will then show her just how much she wants and needs it, even more than she’s prepared to admit.

And what are these things I want to do? Essentially, I want to impose myself physically, by spanking, tormenting her nipples, or whatever, or psychologically, by forcing her to do things she instinctively feels are shameful, such as making her expose herself, to me or to other men, submit to humiliating instructions (to kneel, or beg, or crawl), or simply let herself be used for my pleasure. The essence of sexual domination for me is in making a girl do things which girls are normally resistant to. If it’s something she can’t wait to do then it’s hardly domination. A girl might actually enjoy spanking; but I think for it to be a D/s act you have to spank her just that bit harder than she’s prepared for. Make her gasp, or squeal.

The pleasure is in getting inside her head, of feeling her responses, almost literally, at your fingertips, sensing her desire to be controlled, to be used, despite herself, and exploiting this to the limits.

What more can I say? Perhaps ultimately it’s something you can’t explain, only experience. I do think you know it when you feel it. You can’t mistake it for anything else. And once you’ve felt it, vanilla sex is, well, it’s nice, and fine if that’s your taste, but I like a stronger, more complex flavor.

***

When you try to explain D/s to vanilla men, what they think is, oh, I see, you just please yourself what you do. And they think, well that’s not a bad idea. Like, if you want to fuck a woman you just go ahead and do it, whether she wants it or not. If you want a blow-job you just tell her to get on with it or else. They think D/s is just about men having the balls to please themselves, and they are a little envious, thinking, I wish I had the nerve to behave like that to my woman. And then they think about what the likely response would be if they went home and tried it, and they go a bit pale and think better of it.

But in effect they have understood nothing. D/s has nothing to do with the Dom just pleasing himself, following his sexual urges. I have absolutely no interest in having sex with a woman who doesn’t want it. You might as well fuck a life-size Barbie doll. (Yes, I know there are some men who do just that. Truly, the world is a strange place.) When I have sex with my submissive, what I want is a response, like any normal human being. It’s the specific nature of the response that makes me a Dom.

What I want is to assert control. Not the kind of control that is gained through brute force; it’s not her body that I ultimately want to control, but her mind. I want to get right inside her head. Of course, we can only know what’s in another person’s mind through paying attention to what their body does, what it says and doesn’t say, the way it moves, the expression on the face, etc. You can’t actually see into a person’s mind, though you may imagine for a brief moment that you are doing so. All you can do is observe them and make deductions from their behavior about what they are thinking and feeling.

So, what I want when I’m tying her up or whipping her or making her crawl on the floor is to get control of her mind, and to make this control manifest, both to myself and to her. I want visible and audible signs that she is in fact submitting. When I say, “On your knees” and she kneels, I can see that she acknowledges my authority, I can feel that the force of my personality is penetrating into her mind. And she, by kneeling, expresses in physical form her obedience to my will. She isn’t just saying, “I obey”, she’s showing both herself and me that it is so.

Each time I make her do something, I am asserting my control and requiring her to demonstrate that she accepts it. It doesn’t have to involve inflicting pain. I might simply order her to perform a certain act: “Show me your nipples.” Or I might deny her something; perhaps when we are together she needs my permission if she wants a glass of wine. For me there is marginally more satisfaction in denying than in allowing her request; it’s more controlling. (However, I might wish to reward her for being a good girl, or I might wish for the mood-change that drinking wine produces. So in practice I may more often say yes than no.)

To repeat, sometimes the control is exercised merely in words. “Who do you belong to, little girl?”

“I belong to you, Master.”

When she says that I get a tremendous surge of sexual energy, so much so that sometimes I literally feel quite giddy. It’s the way I’m wired. Feeling that control over her seems to directly stimulate that part of my brain that controls my cock. It’s like I’m mainlining into my cock.

I can’t explain why I am that way. Let’s just say for now that it is so. Feeling the power that I get from knowing she is obedient is like a huge surge of adrenalin. Or testosterone. Or something. There’s nothing remotely equal to it sexually. Once you’ve felt that, vanilla sex is like – well, it’s like having a drink of lemonade as opposed to a shot of Jack Daniels. Lemonade is pleasant, but it doesn’t hit the spot in the same way.

The pleasure in asserting control increases the more I feel I am overcoming her resistance. If I’m pinching her nipples, the harder I do it the closer we get to the point where it’s too much for her. She can take a lot of it, but everyone has their limit. I can pinch a lot harder than she can bear. So I get excited when I know that it is really hurting her. Why? Because I know she wants to submit to it even though it hurts. That’s the proof of how much I am in control, of how much she wants to please me, that she will try to obey, however bad it is. The more pain she accepts, the greater the evidence of her submission to my control.

The more I can push past her resistance the more aroused I become. The tighter I turn the screw and the closer I can get to her limit, the more power I feel. This is where experience and responsibility have to come in. I could hurt her far worse than she could bear. She knows that. She trusts that I won’t do so. She can never be 100% certain, which is why there is always a little edge to this kind of play. I think subs need that slight degree of uncertainty; they get excited by the thrilling but dangerous thought that things are, literally, beyond their control. That’s why a girl often likes to be tied up when she is beaten. That way she can at least flirt with the idea that she is completely at my mercy. And that just for once, I might have run clean out of mercy. Of course, that will never happen. Will it?

***

A guy who uses D/s simply as a way of getting unlimited physical pleasure from a woman is missing the point. I’m not one to undervalue the delights of a blow-job well performed. But there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s not about maximizing the amount of physical pleasure you get. It’s about achieving a particular, very special kind of pleasure, one that only D/s can deliver. I don’t think one can say this often enough: what it’s really all about is getting inside her head, not getting inside her knickers. There’s no pleasure quite like that of feeling that you have the power to control her, of finding which mental buttons to press and pressing them in the right order at the right time. When you spank her, sure it’s nice to wield the belt, like any kind of physical exercise, and it’s aesthetically pleasing to see her bottom grow pink or see the welts you have raised. But the real excitement is the feeling that comes from knowing you can make her submit to this, that even if it stings really, really hard she wants it. She wants not the pain itself, maybe, but the perverse pleasure of being made to endure it, even if she squeals or even if she cries. She wants to feel the mastery. And the Dom’s pleasure comes from knowing that. It comes from feeling her respond, feeling her bending to his will, the sense of power that gives him. When you experience this, it’s a perfect storm of both physical and mental sensations. You get an adrenalin rush, blood flows to your cock, and at the same time you feel her body and mind answering to yours. It’s that sense of having another person quivering defenseless at my fingertips that I crave.