Tom has an interview with Ms. Rika (of Uniquely Rika) that brought up some interesting issues for me. I’ll give some excerpts, though the whole thing is pretty interesting.
However, the problem arises when men who recognize an inner desire to submit mistakenly try to convert this fantasy into a full-time lifestyle, without regard to their partner’s personality. They turn to their wives or girlfriends and try to convince them to take on the role of Dominatrix. The problem is: their partners are seldomly whip-wielding, leather-clad, ego-centric bitches (if they were, the guy wouldn’t be the one initiating the lifestyle, would he?)!
…
If a man has a true inner desire to serve – and to be subservient to – a woman who openly recognizes and accepts her position of dominance, then he needs to commit himself to learning how to submit to her unique desires and needs. He needs to be taught how to serve the unique woman who has accepted his service.
So far so good. Later, she says,
Seriously, there is nobody who is “hopelessly vanilla”. The battle for a successful D/s dynamic is not about teaching the woman to be a fantasy dominatrix, it’s about teaching the man how to serve the unique needs of his partner! Once the dynamic of service-oriented D/s is properly established, everything else falls into place. His actions towards her are based in his intent of service and she accepts them from a position of dominance.
This happens because they’ve openly communicated and accepted the intents of their actions. The roles and games of playtime become gifts for the man… gifts his partner can feel comfortable giving whenever she wants, because she knows she’s playing a game in the context of her own generosity.
For me, this puts her in the realm of people who think that submissive men can live with vanilla partners by submitting to being, essentially, service-oriented vanillas. Then their happy female partners will give them treats like the occasional scene or actual dominance.
I just don’t agree. Ms. Rika herself says that she learned she loved to dominate men when she was 12. The sexuality of non-bdsm-inclined people is equally strong and complex.
Some women are going to be actively turned off by sexual submissiveness in a man. Others will accept “service” in good humor, but not be willing or able to give something back to meet the man’s needs.
I don’t know. I just feel pessimistic about the whole endeavor. What are you supposed to do if you’re married or partnered with a person you love, but your sexualities are really not very compatible? I have no idea, and maybe this type of advice is as good as it gets. “Stop trying to turn your wife into a leather-clad dominatrix” I can get on board with. “Find out what her needs are and where you can find common ground so that you can serve her” – sure, that’s a good idea. But how much of your sexuality are you willing to give up, and how far are you willing to ask your partner to bend to meet you?
19 responses so far ↓
axe // 19 February 2008 at 7:14 pm
8 years ago I was in a vanilla relationship with a woman who was probably the most vanilla woman on the planet. Yet I did love her, I knew she wouldn’t ever want to be the Domme I was hoping she would be, but since I loved her I felt that I would need to give that part of me up. In a way I felt giving up on my desires to be submissive was the ultimate form of submission since I knew being submissive would never please her.
That relationship ended (though not due to anything sexual) and I know I would have stayed with her. Since then I’ve decided I need to be in a D/s relationship. I wouldn’t have been 100% happy staying with my ex, but I would have stayed.
lorelin // 20 February 2008 at 12:36 am
I think what’s wrong there is that the desire for ‘whip-wielding, leather-clad, ego-centric bitches’ and ‘a true inner desire to serve’ are actually two different desires or kinks. Getting one of those needs met is not going to satisfy the other need. If the guy’s a masochist then giving massages isn’t necessarily going to do it for him (and he might even go to resent the ’service’ without any reciprocation). If he’s purely service-orientated it might just work, but …. I think it needs to be recognised that it’s still about his needs, whether it’s being whipped or service. It’s him who has the need to serve, not his partner who has the need to be served (and why is it always a man in these discussions – why not the other way round?). So in the sexual ‘tit for tat’, he still owes her one :).
I don’t know the answer either though. I’d hope that most people would be open to a bit of acting out – playing the role even if it’s not their kink. I’ve had a lot of success with that in vanilla relationships. It does oblige you to do the same for the other person, but that’s no great hardship. It’s so much easier to have somebody who is compatible in the first place, but I know some people only discover their kinks when they’re already in a committed, loving relationship. But if someone was selfish enough to refuse to compromise at all, sexually, then I don’t don’t think they would be someone I’d want to be with.
Alexis // 20 February 2008 at 7:56 am
Why exactly can a man not simply say within the first few dates, “I’m interested in pursuing kink, including leather fashions, power dynamics and personal service. How about you?” Why do women who choose to comment on this subject begin with, “Don’t try to change your wife…” What the hell is this guy doing married to this individual whose tastes and interests were not previously determined?
Why is it never mentioned that the man’s choice to marry this unaware woman, knowing full well his own proclivities, is a lying, phony, self-serving bastard? Perhaps to himself, but certainly to her. I have no pity for these assholes and their sad, unacknowledged desires.
Mz. Carmen // 20 February 2008 at 1:44 pm
Case in point, My husband and myself. I am not submissive but I bottom to him. I love him with all my heart but he’s not submissive either. He loves me enough to acknowledge that I need to express my dominant sexuality. He understands that my happiness comes from that expression and thus he fully supports my search for a secondary partner.
I still would have stayed with him because of the mutual love we have for each other but in the long run denial of that sexual aspect of myself would eventually cause a problem.
devastatingyet // 20 February 2008 at 1:54 pm
The thing about having no sympathy for people in that situation is…well, it just doesn’t work for me. People are fuck-ups. Everyone I know is a fuck-up, including myself. If you’re going to care about someone, it means basically accepting their nature as a fuck-up. So I can’t deny sympathy to people who have married sexually incompatible spouses. It seems easy to do.
Tom Allen // 20 February 2008 at 3:15 pm
Why exactly can a man not simply say within the first few dates, “I’m interested in pursuing kink, including leather fashions, power dynamics and personal service. How about you?”
I must be nice to have this all figured out when you’re 24, but quite a few people – even though they claim “I knew I was dom/sub when I was 9″ – really don’t understand what they want until they’ve matured a bit. Many kinky folks don’t have the resources to help them understand. It’s only within the last five or ten years that the internet has become a commonplace tool for most of the Western world.
For example: Chastity devices? I didn’t even know about them until ten years ago, and a lot of men are finding out only now.
And for those that do manage to figure it out? It’s often difficult enough just to talk about vanilla sex, let alone kinkiness. Most people wait until they feel comfortable enough with a person before discussing kink, and by then you’ve invested six months into a relationship. Not a good excuse, but that’s the reality. Nobody wants to date a person for a month, and then risk having him/her blab to everyone “Yeah, I had to break it off because of the sick things that s/he wanted to do. Ugh.”
devastatingyet // 20 February 2008 at 3:38 pm
To build on what Tom said, a lot of people don’t have any idea that what they fantasize about when they masturbate is something that might be findable in the real world – or might be strongly related to something findable.
Dw3t-Hthr // 20 February 2008 at 5:39 pm
And not everyone is aware of how important stuff is, either.
I was partnered for five and a half years with someone who was painfully vanilla and had some issues figuring out what my kink actually meant in practice. (He says, after observing my interactions with my liege, that he gets it better now, but still doesn’t know what to do with it.)
And it took a couple of years of being in that relationship to realise that a) he wasn’t capable of handling even mild expressions of my kink and b) while I was capable of repressing the manifestations of my response-range so as not to traumatise him, it made me miserable. And he put in a good faith try to meet me on this, but he found it a horrible internal conflict that I would rather have spared him.
In the end, it wasn’t The Reason for our breakup tee-em, but it was one of the reasons that ending that relationship was the right thing for me to do.
lorelin // 21 February 2008 at 12:32 am
‘To build on what Tom said, a lot of people don’t have any idea that what they fantasize about when they masturbate is something that might be findable in the real world – or might be strongly related to something findable’
Exactly. And I think it’s the ‘related to’ that sometimes is missed – if fantasies tend to stray to the dark side, the ‘undoable’ (e.g. being kept chained in a dungeon for life), people might miss that they can be toned down and acted out (being kept chained in the basement for an hour or two). They think that the whole thing has to be kept for fantasy, and by the time it dawns on them that they can fulfil their fantasies in a milder form, they’ve already fallen in love/married/had a family.
Alexis // 21 February 2008 at 7:35 am
So, basically, because we “fuck up,” we don’t know what we want when we’re young or we don’t understand how important the lifestyle is going to be for us, we’re excused from the trials and tribulations of having to own up to our failures as human beings for the sake of people who don’t share, and who never had any possibility of sharing, our interests.
Whatever the reason for being in that place (man wanting wife to now get interested), it doesn’t change the facts. We weren’t honest with ourselves or with other people. And now people around us are going to suffer for it, if we’re not prepared to take the brunt ourselves.
So instead of making excuses for 24 year olds who “fuck up,” perhaps we might say to 24 year olds, DONT fuck up. DONT dismiss it. DONT fool yourself into thinking it won’t be important. BE up front when you are discussing it with people. BE honest. I wasn’t and it fucked up my marriage.
Tom, the response isn’t “ugh.” The response ought to be, “Mea culpa, and I’m honestly sorry and I hope I didn’t ruin her life.”
Alexis // 21 February 2008 at 7:39 am
Sorry, Tom, that last sentence didn’t come out right. Weird brain disconnect occurred. I hope you can get what I was aiming at.
Tom Allen // 21 February 2008 at 8:33 am
Alexis, let’s ignore the “ugh” part and get to my main point which was that sometimes we aren’t honest with ourselves simply because we don’t know ourselves. We fuck up , not from anything except from simply being immature and human. We may not understand our own inclinations, and if we do, we’re embarrassed, insecure, shy, or ashamed.
This ain’t an excuse, BTW, it’s just an observation. I totally agree that we should have compassion and responsibility for a partner who entered into an arrangement with us expecting… something different.
But you know the expression about suffering being optional. Our partners don’t have to “suffer” at all, except that some of us have this idea that things “should” remain unchanged throughout our relationships. But how is professing a kink any different than, say, someone who decides that they want to go back to school to pursue a different career? Or someone who after 20 years of childraising wants to start a career? Or someone who wants take a position with a company that’s far away?
Things change over the course of a relationship. The thing that makes it a “relation”ship is not how we enter into them, but how we deal with the issues as they come up.
devastatingyet // 21 February 2008 at 9:07 am
I had a boyfriend once who had just gotten out of a long marriage to the mother of his child. When they got married, they both had the understanding that she would stay at home and take care of their kids, if any, and the house. Then when their daughter was five or so, she told her husband that she wanted to go back to work.
His response was that, given their agreement when they married, she could do that, but only if she still maintained responsibility for the household. In return, she could keep whatever money she earned.
To me, the whole idea of expecting someone to honor that type of agreement for the rest of their lives is just…stupid. Unrealistic. People change. Situations change. You have to try to make it work for everyone or, if it can’t, part and go your separate ways.
If I married Jos and in five years he figured out that he’s not interested in submission at all, and just wants a vanilla relationship…well, I imagine that would be very difficult for us. But it would be up to us to work it out, or to figure out that it really was a deal-breaker. Blaming him for his imperfect self-knowledge and future-predicting abilities doesn’t really help.
hubby_m // 22 February 2008 at 2:39 pm
I agree with the person above who talked about people making changes in their life over time. If all anyone could expect out of marriage, sex, work, or anything, was what they had when they were 24, life would get pretty stale by age 25 or so.
In our situation, we started down a D/s path a few years ago, which was 10 years into our relationship. I was the one who introduced this and she has been a receptive, participating partner most of the time. Many of the changes to our sex life have been very fulfilling to both of us.
Sometimes we still hit rough patches where the D/s will just go away without any real cause and that’s a source of frustration for me. I feel it’s my job as a good husband to put these frustrations on the table. We’ve made this journey together and I think we should work out the issues together.
I have never expected my wife to be a whip wielding, leather clad dominatrix. I don’t submit like the stereotypical, sniveling worm. The though of either of those things is not very sexy to me, although that might be what is right for someone else. We have explored this lifestyle as it fits in our marriage and our individual personalities.
If I have a problem, I will bring it up and try to work towards a solution. Sometimes a solution is reached simply by letting the other person know your feelings, and sometimes a solution is reached by some sort of compromise. Either way, just because I’m a bottom, doesn’t mean that I have no opinions and that my view of the relationship is not as important as hers.
Sorry to type so much. I hope I didn’t wander off too much to obscure my point as it relates to the topic.
Ms. Rika // 27 February 2008 at 12:57 pm
Aaaagh!!!! Please delete my last post! I used greater than signs and ended up in HTML hell!!!! :)
I’ll repost here:
I’m so glad such a nice conversation stemmed up from the interview! I’d like to go back and address some of the excellent points the original post highlighted.
“…how much of your sexuality are you willing to give up, and how far are you willing to ask your partner to bend to meet you?”
This is not a D/s question at all. This is a foundation relationship question that every couple needs to answer; D/s or not. Finding an EXACT match in your sexual appetites is extremely rare. Luckily, it’s not always a prerequsiite to a happy relationship. You always run the risk one partner’s sexual preferences may turn off the other partner. It’s terrific if you can determine the answer to this question before you get married…but not everyone does – and, in some cases, marriages end because of it (directly or indirectly). I don’t believe anything I ever said or written – D/s or otherwise – changes that! All relationships either compromise or eventually end.
My approach to D/s starts with the assumption that you’re in a relationship already and you have these desires and are asking what’s your BEST CHANCE of making it work (i.e., being happy in the relationship)? Where does that compromise exist when it comes to D/s? I wrote the book to provide a system that helps couples communicate effectively, understand the intent of their actions, and moves them towards the compromise that will work for the unique needs of the partnership. I believe it does that.
“For me, this puts her in the realm of people who think that submissive men can live with vanilla partners by submitting to being, essentially, service-oriented vanillas. Then their happy female partners will give them treats like the occasional scene or actual dominance.”
Not what I’m saying…or believe. Submissive men can, and do, live with vanilla partners…all the time. They may not be happy about it. I’m not condoning that. What I’m suggesting, rather than being a “service-oriented vanilla”, is that you understand the inner-need that makes you happy. It is not usually the activities that define the pleasure of submission, but rather the intent of the actions COUPLED WITH the intent of the partner receiving the action.
Meaning: It is not enough to serve someone who doesn’t receive your service from a position of dominance.
It doesn’t work if the woman doesn’t know the man is submitting (sometimes called stealth submission). I doubt anyone would be happy for very long living in their own little make-believe world this way. I’m not a fan (and I talk against it in the book) of the stealth submission approach.
It’s also not even enough if awoman knows you’re serving her, but doesn’t accept it from a position of dominance (…that’s his little game and it makes him happy to think he’s serving me…but I don’t care one way or the other). That doesn’t work either.
It is equally ineffective to do kinky things without the intent of dominance! How many times have you heard men complain that something is missing when they visit pro-dommes? Certainly it’s not the activities! If the money constitutes the main reason she accepts his submission, he won’t be satisfied. Good pros know this and will convince the man her main intent it’s not really the money and that he is, in some way, special to her. The point is, it’s not the actions that define satisfiaction in submission.
My approach defines the roles of both the dominant and submissive partner. As I said, his role is to serve her needs…Her role is to accept his service from a position of dominance. There are several pages describing what that all this means, but in a nutshell, it means she is an active player in the exchange, is aware of and demanding of proper service and agrees to give him feedback and correction, as necessary. In no way is she not involved.
Please notice, I have not mentioned any specific activities…whether ‘her needs’ include tying him up like a turkey and having him suck her heels or just getting hour-long back rubs and bubble baths every night…it’s irrelvant the roles still hold IF the intent is there.
So it’s definitely not service-oriented vanilla. There is a defined and agreed to power exchange where both parties take on defined roles with real responsibilities. Yes, the actions are dictated by her happiness and actions that are for ONLY him are relegated to playtime – if she is willing to do so (which, going back to the first point about compromise, is no worse than if there was no D/s in their relationship).
All of this said, I do want to point out: One problem I face when dealing with a surprisingly large number of men interested in submission, is that they feel an agreement to entering into a D/s relationship constitutes a contract to expect specific behavior of their partners! They have a very well-defined picture of what a dominant partner does and what he, as a submissive, is expected to do…and anything other than that isn’t D/s. Unfortunately, these men are dictating the content, frequency, focus, and severity of the activities. Not very submissive at all.
Sorry for the diatribe…but this is a GREAT blog and I’ve really enjoyed the discussion!
- Rika.
devastatingyet // 27 February 2008 at 1:00 pm
Welcome, Ms. Rika, and thanks. It’s great having more of your perspective explained here :-)
Ms. Rika « Devastating Yet Inconsequential // 27 February 2008 at 1:12 pm
[...] 27 February 2008 — devastatingyet Don’t miss Ms. Rika’s response to my post about her interview on Tom’s blog. Posted in [...]
True Submission « Sweat Shop Sissy // 30 November 2008 at 10:17 pm
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saratoga // 30 October 2009 at 7:24 am
I stumbled upon this post very late through a somewhat indirect Google search.
Leaving aside the entire question of Ms. Rika, with whom I’ve had some exchanges. I find myself, surprisingly, agreeing completely with Alexis. He used to read my blog, then became upset with a post or two, and went off in a huff.
That doesn’t mean I recognize truth when it’s expressed, and he did in his comments here.
And not surprisingly, again, finding Tom Allen once again completely wrong.
Alexis makes the simple point which I, too, have stressed in my own posts, that males are responsible for their commitments, including things like marrying vanilla women in their 20s, promising things they actually can’t deliver.
I didn’t marry until much later, partially because I knew I was still evolving, and wanted no part of making promises I could not or would not keep.
Alexis is correct in saying, as have I, that a male should address FemDom and kink issues early in a dating situation. Tom Allen’s excuses notwithstanding, I would guess, from comments on my blog, emails, etc., that virtually any and every male with kink or submissive tendencies knows this before the age of 20.
You know, as a male, within a few years of discovering your sexuality and masturbatory abilities, what images excite you. I knew I was fetish-oriented, leather-wired and, then, submissive, by age 10. Only much later did I realize real couples lived real FemDom lifestyle relationships and marriages.
But Alexis is right. And your post is on the right track. Males shouldn’t marry women who are vanilla, if the male wants to submit to a woman. And they shouldn’t hide their wiring until after marriage.
Finally, as I’ve written elsewhere, and Alexis may disagree with me on this, once having married and made promises, the male should have the courage and dignity to honor those promises. Not issue his wife, to whom he allegedly wants to submit, an ultimatum to either FemDom up, or he will leave her- and any children they have together.
-saratoga