It’s a cliché of femdom porn, but many cliches endure because they work. It is also the antithesis of how I (usually) operate and it’s been a trust fall-esque exercise since our first hookup when my train was late so he drove me 3 hours home (and 3 hours back alone). It’s so hard to let myself relax and enjoy someone’s giving.

This one is both a soft limit, and the kink that I am exploring right now: being inconsiderate.

The vulnerability of being dominant is ultimately part of being a half of a whole. In power exchange you get things back, in the meta of D/s, you put a lot of vulnerability in the ability to have expectations for someone else that, more often than not, fetishize the unreasonable.

As such, I recoil at the masochists who do it just to please you, even as my own self thrills to see pain in the face of my lover. I needed Silver to be the slutty little masochist I discovered him to be, because my dominance has always had a generative more so than a consumptive aspect.  

I told him early on his fetishes belonged to me, the control panel of his sexuality. I want to be powerfully and compellingly desired. I glow to command attention, and have to tame very petty jealousy when someone is more important or better at something than me shows up. 

I can see how, of course, the inverse is true. Silver smiles more happily than anything else every time he is reminded I also actually share his fetishes, particularly latex. I think he feels about that the way I feel such delight in his craving to hurt.  

Pretty, perfect, driven, wired boy. It’s funny to use the diminutive on someone both older and having more of his shit together in many respects than me (we are about 8 years apart in age, and I often appreciate feeling it as much as it makes me insecure). But, “boy” comes easy. Maybe it’s the big blue eyes and sandy blond hair? Maybe it’s the painting in his attic, unweathered pale skin. I couldn’t place it.

Telling him his pleasure doesn’t matter did not come easily to me, but I am using it now.

There are a few things that come forth from Silver’s sexuality, fed from his desires and quirks. The masochism. The rubber. The hypnosis. The self initiated urge to please via “surprises”, and the surprisingly hard limits around long term rules via contracts. He has, historically, pleased me by trusting that I will treasure who he is. I prefer it when he is active, not passive, to please me.

And in intimate talk, to each other, those words tripped out of him “my pleasure doesn’t matter”.

At the time I corrected him. His pleasure, like his fetishes, are tools of my control. I was feasting on his enjoyment of this as a significant platform of my sense of power but also, my sense of security. 

In every person there is this being you can dredge up in psychology as an “inner child”. You use it in thought exercises to teach yourself to shed that raiment of self loathing many of us use to gird ourselves against things that are good for us.  

My child-self saw some shit, and often fantasised about folded down into nothingness, not a burden to any adult. I craved to be needless and giving, conceived of myself as selfish. Trauma didn’t make me dominant, but it probably influences my perception of love.  

In the hindsight of adult maturity, I can realise, alongside the pile of  other abuse I experienced, I was a victim of emotional incest. We should not ask children to provide for adults as I was. 

Unfortunately, knowing why I am fucked up doesn’t fix being fucked up.

Silver is perfectly willing to be patient with that warzone aftermath, but ultimately there is a piece of me that stays alert to danger when most would melt into an embrace.  You want to know how meta this is, I am anxious to write this in case he worries he is too much of a nuisance. 

So big breath, relax: Your pleasure doesn’t matter.

When I say it, he reacts with that sort of erotic, wide eyed cringe that makes my heart sing and my core tighten. It’s the same shudder of found out desire he gave when I discovered “whore” or “slut” and even more so “bitch” are sharp yanks on the leash on his soul. The same caught breath and big eyes, but relaxed body, as when I physically pull his cock between his legs in a controlling fashion. 

Trick is, I can’t just say things to indulge him. I have never been the sort of domme who could do things I wasn’t into, just cuz. The latex I wear is my fetish. The pain I give him, my desire first. To work for me (and for him), I had to take that phrase, understand it and use it as it means to me rather than just wave it about ineptly. I have to believe it, not put it on like an ill fitted costume.

In the spirit of the phrase, it’s been a defining thread in our relationship, to trust his giving. The first time I leaned in, it was a dark and rainy night, much like the Pacific North West weather of the last 2 months. He offered a big favour, and I stepped out into uncertain ground and said yes. I knew, over a year ago now, that letting him drive me back to Canada was a huge imposition. But that he offered because he meant it. So big breath, trust, say yes. And it worked. Every extension, every tentative query that my whole self might be wanted, has received an affirmation. Now I try it more consciously, with that phrase.

Let his pleasure not matter. Let myself enjoy. Let me trust to use him and be sure this is as it is supposed to be.