“Cupid for Balin”, photo by Martin Fisch

I was talking to someone recently about how thoroughly different experiences and individual takeaways can be for persons sceneing with one another. It can be very challenging when it isn’t understood by your partner that the experience happening in their body/heart/mind doesn’t play out like your own experience of the scene you’re both engaged in. I thought this was an interesting topic to write about, so here we are… This subject can be broken down into a lot of different topics, I’ve written about a couple of them. I have a lot more to say on this issue than I’ll get into in today’s blog, but it’s a place to start.

Point of difference: Dominants and submissives emotionally and intellectually (not to mention physically) have very different functions in a scene, and so very different experiences and potential meaning makings from any given interaction. This seems reasonable and even obvious if you think about it. It could be said that the “job” of a Dominant is to come up with ideas for play, to practice skills, and often to administer physical, mental, or emotional manipulations of another person. This work is intellectual as well as physical, it requires time, consideration, preparation, and check-ins to be done well. A submissive’s “job” is often to receive, primarily physically and emotionally. A submissive may often be expected to enact another person’s will, and effort to please, bear, or follow. It’s possible to submit without having skills at the ready, or even knowledge of what will happen when one meets a partner for play. Pre-scene preparation for a submissive may be more personal and less about their partner’s needs (outside of any homework they’ve been given or expectations previously outlined by the Dominant). In my experience as a switch who’s gone pretty far in both directions, I can definitely say that what I get out of Dominating someone is very different than what I get out of submission. I can explain the differences between these experiences most clearly by writing about my emotional and intellectual observations.

When I submit to someone I am bending to their will. The emotional component of this is strong. How I then feel toward someone whom I’ve handed that much trust to, or invested that heavily in pleasing, or allowing myself to be flooded with chemicals from our play, is such that I find I may get emotionally attached to them quite easily. I am almost always out of my intellectual element when I submit.

When I Dominate I get off by being pleased, by nurturing, by being physical, by feeling empathy and connection with my partner, by having done a good job pulling someone out of themselves, and by garnering the chemicals and emotions which will allow my sub to intellectually disengage and “fly”. I enjoy being affective. I put a lot of thought and preparation into my scenes and I try to make sure my skill administration, my communication, and my requests are not harmful to my playmates (pleasurable even) — even days and weeks after our interaction. Maybe because of my need to be logistically and holistically responsible for what happens, I do not develop the same “need” to play with certain people time and time again or on a regular schedule. My desire tends to be a little more activity oriented than person or timeframe oriented.

The heart wants, where the mind acknowledges distance.

I am sure this is not the case for everybody. I have observed in the kink scene that it’s more common to find Dominants who play with multiple subs, than subs who trust and fully submit to (rather than simply agree to bottom to) multiple Dominants. I wonder if the difference in one’s emotional vs. intellectual investment effects that?

It’s very possible to Dominate someone who is bottoming, or to Top someone who is submitting. How we feel about what we are doing is each person’s individual takeaway, and thus reality. I think it’s common to project one’s own meaning making based on their emotional/physical/mental/spiritual/lived experience onto partners, and to form expectations of others along those lines. It can be difficult to ask a partner what they got out of a moment of connection. Perhaps this is due to a fear that our experiences can be “wrong” or “not count” if they aren’t shared by our partners?

Point of difference: Kink as a potentially healing activity, or trauma informed catharsis is not for everyone. This is a more complicated look at the subject, one which can have deeply meaningful fallout, and one which I think a lot of people don’t take the time to consider. One of the genius parts of the human psyche is our ability to sexualize trauma as a way of overpowering an instilled feeling of powerlessness in order to heal it. You may have heard the phrase, “Kink isn’t therapy, but it can be therapeutic”. This is absolutely true for a lot of individuals. What people often fail to realize though, is that what’s happening in one person’s head is not necessarily (or even commonly) happening or being considered in their partner’s.

Of note: the rate of abuse in our world is so high it’s common for a person to be dealing with some form of trauma while engaging in sexual or kink related activities. For some people to function normally or have sexualities/sensualities which are accessible at all, sexualizing activities and emotions which are taboo, or attempting to reclaim power within a scenario another person might never want to experience (much less negotiate about), is very real.

It is absolutely every person’s right not to engage in fantasy/sensual/sexual play that feels like edge play to them, or feels as though they are having to process or be complicit in something they morally, ethically, or in any other way do not condone. It’s important not to demonize people whose psychologies are different from our own. It is especially important to keep this in mind when interacting with people who have gone through trauma and who feel safe enough to let you know what has happened to them. There is a marked difference between judging someone, and accepting that their needs are not ones you’re interested in fulfilling or even further discussing.

I would hazard to say that the more taboo the kink being discussed is, the higher chance you have of running into a person who’s processing some sort of trauma when they engage in it. It’s understandable if that feels bad for you to partake in. These realities have to coexist, because, well, in reality they do. What we have power over is what we do about this disparity in realities when we interact with each other.

This is a primary reason that when I negotiate any type of play (role play, edge play, or other activity) with someone (Dominant or submissive) I try to ask during our interview if anything like the activity we’re negotiating has happened to them in a negative way, “Is it possible or probable that how we’re planning to engage with one another could be triggering?”. There are big differences between planning a scene which is meant to be an innocent exploration of a fantasy, and finding yourself in a scene which is triggering, or intentionally engaging in edge play, or playing specifically in order to overcome deeper emotions and address someone’s emotional or mental health. It should be every individual’s choice to negotiate engaging up to (and not beyond) whatever level they feel comfortable.

If someone’s limit is “not playing with people who have a history of abuse in the type of play being negotiated”, that doesn’t make them a bad person or an unsympathetic partner. In fact, knowing that’s a limit of theirs is helpful to know upfront for those people desiring play which will go deeper or might take on a darker catharsis. I think a lot of people come across these disparities of needs, or conflicts of boundaries.

It’s vital to talk about our differences. When someone is approached with a desire or fantasy which feels triggering, dangerous, or like it would require a higher level of responsibility than that person is willing to take on, it’s important to voice that in a firm but non-shaming manner. This is how we help one another grow, learn to advocate for our needs, and communicate more and more respectfully over time.

Where we meet (hopefully) is in the moments of connection we do find with one another. We search for partners who want to play similar games, and those whom we enjoy playing with. Maybe it’s attraction, chemistry, the dungeon-side manner, the desire for a certain level of intensity, the challenge, the growth, the admiration, the trust, or any other limitless number of ingredients which go into a play partnership which make a person’s partner(s) the one(s) who flip their switches and make them want to come to the table with everything they’ve got. Like the socialization lessons we learned on the playground as kids, we must respect the boundaries of those we enjoy or we will not have them around to enjoy for very long. Not everyone wants to play the same games everyday or with the same people all the time. Not every person enjoys playing to the same level, or will reap rewards at the same pace.

For a moment in time to be cohesively beautiful between two (or more) people, we work. We do not owe one another to go outside of our personal limits in order to connect. The desire to connect itself is changeable, sometimes fragile, and hopefully evolves over time as we do.

I like to think that we do owe one another words. The truth as we each understand it is a glimpse into the inner workings of our desires, experiences, and needs. This is how we bridge the gap between all the variable expectations between us, which simply exist.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

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