9 Reasons to Block and Delete a Sub Sending You a Message

letter2Female dominants get messages, partnered or unpartnered, searching or trying to hide. In honour of the recent batch of crazy letters and threats, I’ve created a quick guide for new femdoms for signs you should save yourself the trouble and delete the message now. If any of these nine behaviors have come up in the guy’s efforts to talk to me, I’ve never found any good was going to come out of the interaction.

1) Tries to rapidly escalate or control the conversation medium. If you’re on a dating site, they try to push for an in person meeting immediately. If you’re online, they try to get you to give them more contact information right away or keep pushing to switch to another medium, eg going from email to chat, or guessing at your geographic location (such as “did I see you on X street?”)

Why this is bad: Taking the time to feel comfortable is important when you’re getting to know new people, among many things because it lets you figure out who they are on your own terms. Someone who pushes you this way doesn’t care about this and may even want you to disregard something about them you would pick up on if you took your time.

2) Instantly appears enamored of you and/or tries to force a D/s dynamic right away. They greet you with loud and hyperbolic praises, more so than simply a polite, respectful compliment or two – or they start trying to sub to you right off the bat. Alternatively, within a handful of messages you are, according to them, the best person they have ever met.

Why this is bad: An actual attachment to someone takes knowing them – anything else is fantasy they’ve created in their heads. The problem with being put on a pedestal this way is that if you do anything to topple off your perch, you are put at risk for them not being able to handle reality.

3) Only seems to know about femdom from porn. They have a particular, rigid understanding of roles and relationships and seem startled when anything deviates from their script. For example, they don’t seem to know negotiated limits are a thing or think dominants and subs are a special class of people under different rules than everyone else.

Why this is bad: If we were a few decades ago, the lack of material available would make this attitude slightly more forgivable. These days, the sheer wealth of knowledge presented to the newly self identified as kinked means that anyone with an internet connection can find scads of teaching resources. Therefore it shows a disproportionate willingness to let what they want to be true be the case, and more to the point, they’ve absolved responsibility for themselves.

4) Instant or whirlwind courtship commitment. From the word go they are already sure you are the one. They will relocate, marry you, whatever. Their heart is, according to them, true, and belongs only to you. This is probably combined with #2 – in their eyes you are the best and most beautiful and they want your collar NOW.

Why this is bad: Once again, this person is chasing a feeling more than trying to have a meaningful, nuanced relationship. This also tends to be a pattern in people with personality disorders- super epic passion followed by a crash when they stop being able to sustain things.

5) Claims they “read all your profile” or writing, but can’t answer simple questions about it, or takes and approach counter to what you’ve written about yourself and your preferences. You say you want a poly relationship and they talk about monogamy. You say you are a down to earth tomboy and they talk about how feminine you are. You say you hate being called titles and they open with ‘Mistress’.

Why this is bad: Being forced into being a fantasy prop is a perennial problem for femdoms, and also this sort of nonsense is proof of the person’s willingness to lie to you from the start, instead of saying “I liked what I read so far”.

6) You have a really bad feeling about this. Something feels off, but you can’t put your finger on it and you feel bad about not giving them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they are just awkward or have a socialization disorder?

Why this is bad: Trust your gut. Women, in particular, are taught to disregard symptoms of dislike and make nice and forgive. Protect yourself. Even if you feel like a meanie – adults with social problems aren’t automatically allowed to put you at risk by trying to be open minded and most actually awkward people are balls of blushing apologies, not the type of people who make you feel itchy under your skin.

7) They have nothing nice to say about other people. All the other femdoms were findoms or fakes. They were crazy or ugly. You’re different of course! Not like their bitch ex- or their wife who’s a prude, their abusive parents or shitty boss.

Why this is bad: Everyone knows some bad people in their life, but if all the people they know are horrible by their description it’s statistically more probable they are the problem. and cross them and you will be just another fake who hurt them, according to what they tell the next woman.

8) They start telling you what to do, or expressing really strong preferences about other people or you. Maybe it’s phrased as introducing themselves, but they want to make sure you know that they like a particular thing, for example they start worrying about you getting fat or thin, they make appearance based suggestions or offer unsolicited critiques.

Why this is bad: This person is a controlling jerk who thinks they are just being honest. they won’t care about you except such that they can cram you into the shape they wish you were.

9) They want to talk about what gets them or you off in detail right away. You get asked to describe scenarios, share your fantasies, or they just won’t STFU about co-eds in ballet flats or busty trans leatherwomen.

Why this is bad: Wanker! This person is going to try to use you to titillate them. If their fantasy talk is all you want, good, but don’t expect things to get better or to focus on anything other than immediate gratification.

With this sort of winnowing in mind, consider it a chance to save your valuable time for only the worthwhile people. And remember, you don’t owe anyone a chance more than you deserve to feel safe.

What did I miss? What are your favourite signs that things just not going to go well?

FAbQ: What Is a Dominant or Submissive and How Do I Know What I Am?

This is intended to be a regular feature on this blog, in which I try to talk about the absolute basics. I personally won’t be able to teach you elaborate rope tricks or fancy ways to flog or how to make someone orgasm on command. The goal here is to cover the things people say they wish someone told them when they were new, and to answer the Frequently Asked beginner Questions.

This time I’m going to look at dominance, submission, how to figure out what to call yourself and most importantly, the sanity rules.

What is this, anyway?

One of the first pieces of confusion that comes up for new people is finding out how the Dom/sub thing works in real life. Sure a host of porn covers the things they might do, but it really doesn’t explain possibilities in reference to how it tends to go down with real couples and also people are generally not given a sane approximation of the limitations of a D/s (that’s Dominance/submission or Dom/sub) relationship. It also doesn’t let you figure out what to call yourself if you’ve only ever had fantasies.

First, the sanity check.

  • All submissives do not have to do what all dominants say just because Dominants are dominant.
  • Individual submissives do not have to do what their particular dominant says they should do, without prior negotiation. If you agree to a D/s relationship this is not automatic implicit consent.
  • There is no central licensing system for dominants or guild system of training. Despite desperate hopes, even tales of “Old Guard” or “Leather Families” do not replace common sense in the quality of the dominant. The dominant can be as inexperienced or more inexperienced than the sub.
  • Every D/s relationship is different. Some involve sadomasochism, some do not. Some are built on pure obedience, some involve deliberate disobedience on the part of the sub.
  • Dominance and submission are identification labels not personality types. Doms can be shy and quiet and nervous, while subs can be aggressive and outspoken and have fantastic careers.

Now, some terms:

Dominant: The dominant person is a relationship is the one who is in charge. Dom, domme, dominatrix, master, mistress are all used to refer to this sort of person. The way you become dominant is by deciding one day to call yourself that. The way you act dominant, more often than not, is to convince someone else to call you that too. However the act of the stereotypical dominant (you know the one in leather chaps or the latex corset who is whipping someone?) can also be referred to as a Top if the level of compliance/disobedience is less important than the hitty bits or rough sex. Generally dominants get a warm fuzzy feeling from control that may be sexual arousal.

Submissive: The submissive is the one being told what  to do. How accurately these commands are followed is really defined by what sort of relationship two people want to have. The submissive might like thinking of themselves as a slave, a pet, a servant, or simply the other half of a happy couple, maybe even all of the above over the course of a night. The sensations only version is a bottom. Generally submissives get a warm fuzzy feeling from someone being in charge of them. This could be arousal, feeling ‘safe’ and any number of other pleasant sensations.

Switch: Surprise! Some people are both! In some relationship people switch off on the roles with each other sometimes. In other cases, people feel dominant towards some and submissive towards others. Some switches are more there for the sensations, for example they could be equally happy being spanked or spanking. Switching isn’t even on/off and some people like ambiguous dynamics.

Okay, that’s nice but what am I?

A lot of people starting out don’t really have a clear idea of what they want to call themselves. Even your taste is porn is no help, for example it’s not uncommon for male subs to enjoy female submission as masturbatory material and many dom women find the stereotypical pro-dom shtick causes them to flee the room. If you’ve never done all this, for example you’ve never been spanked or actually had control over someone outside the safe limits of work you probably just have a vague idea some things are kinda hot.

It’s okay not to know what you are. If you’re filling out a profile, put yourself down as ‘unsure’. You have all the time you need to figure it out. Me, as a masochist I was under the impression that I’d be happiest as a sub. A friend who is entirely submissive mislabeled herself as a dom. Neither of us had the world explode on us as we worked out what we were.

Plenty of people even shift how they ID over the course of their life. However if you’re urgently trying to figure out a leaping off place with a label you can either go generic with ‘switch’ or give your fantasies a holistic look. Unlike a lot of quizzes I’m not going to think about whips and chains because if you’re not sure that’s probably just more confusing.

Are you more comfortable (in your fantasies!) being in charge or having someone else tell you what to do?

If your nurture someone are you being ‘responsible’ and taking care of things or are you ‘serving’ them with pampering?

If you like the idea of someone handling all the details of a problem or task for you is it because they are being responsive to your needs and letting you delegate or are they in charge and you feel great because you can just do as you’re told?

Your lover gives you a token to wear, like a neck charm or a bracelet or maybe a jacket  When you put it on do you feel “Mine, mine, mine! My person!” or “I am marked and connected to them!”

I phrase the questions this way because not all dominants do the ‘harsh’ thing and not all subs are into passive. You will need to decide even beyond that, what kinds of dynamics you like. This could be anything from 1950s household or full bore wicked dungeon slavery games to equals with bedroom wrestling. And it’s all okay.