In a comment to my previous post ‘Masochist vs Fetishist vs Submissive‘ Saratoga asked an interesting question.
Do you think your feelings of submission, as distinct from masochism or fetish, are different for you, than, say, for me, because yours involved Pro Dommes with whom you don’t have a non-professional attachment, whereas all of mine, save one instance, were lifestyle, relationship- or association-based FemDom experiences?
Saratoga
In many ways this is an impossible question to answer, given I don’t know know what his feelings of submission are. I’ve also only had vanilla relationships prior to getting involved physically involved in BDSM, so I don’t even have a good comparison to make in my own life. However, it did seem an interesting thing to think about in general terms. What are some of the potential difference between professional and non-professional play?
In a follow-up comment Saratoga likened pro-play to an unhealthy snack as compared to a good balanced meal. I don’t like that analogy at all. An unhealthy snack suggests something bad for you, a guilty weakness that you’d be better off resisting. That doesn’t align at all with how I feel about my sessions. Despite that, the food analogy, always a popular one in this kind of context, does have some merit.
I’d liken a professional session to a tasting menu in a high end restaurant. It’ll probably showcases techniques and ingredients you might find it difficult to replicate at home. With the right kind of chef in the kitchen it’ll probably be designed and prepared with intensity and passion. It can deliver an out-of-the world experience for a few hours. I’ve had some restaurant meals that have almost been spiritual experiences the food was so good. But it’s a context free, self-contained experience. It stands alone as a very pure event. There’s not all the shared emotional history and deeper connection that you might get with a specially prepared home cooked meal.
The purity of a professional session is a mixed blessing. On the downside it means dealing with a very disconnected world. There’s a session and there’s normal life. If you can’t deal with that kind of discontinuity then professional play probably isn’t a good idea. It also limits the evolution of the D/s dynamic. Even when you session regularly with the same pro-domme (as I do), it’s hard to create a sense of continuity between sessions. On the upside, there’s no emotional baggage to interfere with the dynamic. No residual tension, unspoken issues or unresolved arguments. There’s just a dominant woman, a bunch of equipment design to fuck someone up and a naked willing submissive.
It would be a mistake to confuse this purity with emotional simplicity. I think it’s instructive to compare a pro-domme session with a casual, just for fun, sexual encounter. To the outside observer these might look like very similar things. The activities are different, but they both involve people outside a relationship engaging each other in intense physical sensations. Neither of them feature any kind of emotional commitment or a broader context. And yet, in my experience, they are very different. The fun sexual encounter is just that, fun. It’s an emotionally light, physically pleasant way to pass the time. In contrast I’ve experienced incredibly intense emotions in sessions. I’ve been pushed into places I never knew existed, and headspaces that left me buzzed and happy for days. There’s an intensity to BDSM play that can work well even without the richer emotional context of a deep relationship.
Given a lot of this post featured pro-dommes along with a food metaphor, I thought this would be a particularly apt image to use. This is Mona Rogers, a pro-domme from NYC, feeding dinner to one of her slaves. I don’t think he’s getting a tasting menu. If you’d like to try that rather cool doggy helmet our for yourself, her contact information is here.
Hi Paltego:
It’s really tough to get into discussions like this without appearing to pass judgement. Specifically lifestyle folk tend to put forth the impression (whether intentionally or not) that their approach is somehow superior. I have repeatedly run into problems of this nature while posting about this subject.
In reality I don’t think you can say one approach is “better” than the other. Pro and lifestyle play are as different as apples and oranges. It all depends what you are looking for and what resources are available to you. The number of male subs far outweighs the number of (lifestyle) female dominants so it’s not as simple as just saying; “give up the pros and move over to a lifestyle relationship instead.” If you are a male sub seeking a female dominant lifestyle relationship you best take a number and get in line. The odds are not in your favor. Male dominants, however, are much more likely to find a willing lifestyle partner; at least from what I have observed.
The food analogy is always a tempting one to make in this context. A lifestyle friend of mine once said something about “gorging on prodomme junk food” that reminded me a bit of Saratoga’s statement. I prefer my friend Advo’s comparison. He likened seeing a pro to eating a really exquisite gourmet desert. It may not be good for you but it is certainly not “cheap” and it can border on a spiritual experience as you said. If I had to choose between that and eating a tofu salad the choice would not be difficult.
Cultivating lifestyle relationships can be difficult and it takes a lot of work. All relationships do but I think D/s relationships are doubly so. And you don’t always get exactly what you thought you ordered from the menu. So there is a price associated with that deeper emotional connection you mentioned. I should also mention that many clients feel they form a deep emotional connection with the pros they see. For some it may be the most important emotional connection in their lives. So even there I have to be somewhat careful what I say. I personally don’t think it is healthy to become overly emotionally attached to what is essentially a professional relationship. I speak from experience there but who am I to judge anyone else? I can’t. I can only speak about what has worked best for me.
Great post! I could write a book on this stuff! In fact I think I just did! 😉 Nice picture of Mona Rogers too! 🙂
Hi hmp.
I was hoping/expecting you’d drop by for this one, given the subject of the post. 🙂
They are very different as you say. I probably should have qualified that even more in the opening section. Not only is pro vs lifestyle very different, but every relationship is different, both between pro-domme/client and lifestyle partners. So stating generalities becomes fairly fraught. I really wasn’t intending this to be a comparison of which is better, so if it comes across that way then I screwed up.
The exact ratio of female dominants to male subs is a much debated topic, but I agree with you that it’s fairly skewed. One can debate why that is, but as someone who has lurked a fair but on kinky dating sites, there does seem to be a distinct lack of options for the male submissive.
The emotions associated with a pro and the session are probably worth another post in themselves. I can have very deep emotions in a session, but then have little difficulty reverting to a friendly but professional relationship outside of it. It’s a very weird split. I can’t think of anything else that can cause such large emotional swings in a short time period, whilst still leaving me eventually in a good place. But everyone’s emotional makeup is different, and I do know people’s reactions to sessions can vary wildly. Some have big depressive drops afterwards, or can’t disconnect from the domme in the same way. It seems to be one of those things that’s impossible to predict until you do it.
-paltego
You didn’t imply one was better than the other so no worries there. I thought your post was fair and even handed. Interesting what you said about the post session drop. I suffered from those when I was a client.
This is a very interesting conundrum.
In my opinion everyone’s sexuality is different, even if only slightly, from that of all others. There is never a complete coincidence of taste or motivation and this induces a restless, but inevitably unsatisfied searching for the perfect relationship or even, to trivialise it, for the perfect image. I hasten to add that I have no direct experience of Femdom relationships other than, sporadically, with pro-dommes, so perhaps my opinion there is not to be taken seriously.
I have thought hard about my own sexuality (how would I describe myself?) and concluded that I am primarily a fetishist (heels, leather, rubber), then, secondarily a submissive and quite definitely not a masochist. I prefer to be dominated by a fetish-clad matron but do not get any enjoyment from suffering pain per se. Why I am like this I have little idea.
There are overlaps between people which is why certain images become iconic, but they are never and can never be, perfect. Maybe they are 80% or 90% ‘right’ (whatever that means) and therefore powerful, but they never achieve 100%. It is this continual falling short that fuels the continual search for more images and experiences.
An idiosyncratic view (and of course the main drive is the sex drive in all of us) but I think there’s something in it.
-Adam
I’ve never had a femdom relationship other than with pro-dommes either, and I post my opinion all over the place. So don’t treat that as a barrier to having a worthwhile and sharable opinion 🙂
Personally I don’t think perfection is ever something that’s possible to measure or assess. I couldn’t tell you what my perfect relationship (or anything else) looked like, so would never know even if I found it. Plus, opinions and preferences shift all the time. But I’m not sure that necessarily means a constant unsatisfying search. I don’t need perfection (or even 95% right) for satisfaction and happiness. I’d settle for mutual attraction and a healthy overlap of interests.
As for why people are like they are, I don’t think anybody knows. I’ve never seen anything close to a convincing study on why some people are kinky and others aren’t.
-paltego