Khaos Theory

People who are practicing BDSM in any of its trillions of forms are doing it voluntarily, for fun. It’s a way to explore. Everything that happens in a BDSM relationship is consensual; and believe it or not, it’s not just about the dominant getting what he or she wants – it’s more about the submissive getting what she wants. People who are good at dominating or inflicting pain are, in general, LESS likely than many other people to be jerks or assholes.

Why? Because in order to be good at doing it, you need to be highly in-tune with your submissive. People who are self-centered generally make poor dominants, because they lack the empathy required to be able to read and judge their partner’s reactions, and bring their partner where that person wants to go. Assholes quickly find that nobody wants to play with them; and people who are empathic tend not to be assholes. All of the real top-notch dominants I’ve ever met, without exception, are incredibly cool people.

An abuser has no regard for the feelings, needs, or limits of the victim. A BDSM dominant is concerned above all else with the needs and desires of the submissive. The dynamics of a BDSM relationship are often driven by the submissive, not by the dominant. The submissive sets the limits; the submissive decides what places can and can not be explored; the submissive has the ability to call a halt to the scene. The dominant, in many ways, is simply a facilitator. It’s the dominant’s job to create a setting where the people involved can explore the submissive’s fantasies.

A romantic connection (also called pair-bonding) is a deep emotional bond to another individual. The tendency to form a deep emotional bond to another individual is an universal feature of human life.

The connections we form to our partners are designed to keep people together. When we form a connection to a partner – we want to be near that person. And we tend to feel safe and secure when our partners are around. Overall, forming a connection was designed to help create stability. If you are connected to someone and the relationship comes to an end, the sense of loss can be overwhelming – including feelings of uncertainty, fear, and despair.

Humans are designed to form a strong connections to a romantic partner because human offspring are born extremely immature (unable to care for themselves). Individuals who formed a deep connections to their sexual partners were better equipped to raise offspring. And over millions of years of human development, evolution favored people who formed a deep emotional bond to a sexual partner. As such, people living today are all the descendants of individuals who formed an emotional bond to their romantic partners in the past.

Not only are humans designed to form a deep emotional bond to a sexual partner, but the process by which we do so is very similar to how infants form a bond to their primary caregivers.

Human infants universally form a deep emotional attachment to the person who provides the most care (usually a mother). This attachment is designed to keep infants close to their caregivers, which ultimately helped ensured an infant’s survival. When infants form a deep emotional attachment to their caregiver – children feel safe and secure. For infants, attachment figures (caregivers) provide a sense of security and comfort. When separate from their attachment figure, infants will stage a protest (crying and screaming) designed to get their caregiver’s attention.

How do infants know who to form an attachment to?

Infants form an attachment to the caregivers based on the nature and amount of physical contact they have with others. Infants form an attachment to the person who provides the most physical contact – the most kissing, cuddling, caressing, and so on.

And adults do the same when it comes to forming a romantic connection. Adults form a deep emotional connection based on intimate physical contact – kissing and cuddling, etc. If you have repeated intimate contact with another person, you will most likely form a deep connection to that person. Once a connection is formed – people want to spend more time together, feel safe and secure in each other’s presence, and they will experience loss when the relationship comes to an end.

The lesson to be learned? Be careful about whom you have repeated intimate contact with – you are likely to form a strong connection to that person. And once a connection is formed, it can be very difficult to break. Doms especially tend to forget that when they dominate someone they are creating a two-way street where both will feel increasingly connected emotionally.

“Submissive” is a label used to describe a partner who takes the passive, receiving, or obedient role within a sexual context.

Here the term submissive typically refers to the partner who accepts the control of, and is obedient to the authority of, her Dominant partner within a sexual experience.

The submission of a partner is seldom absolute, often operating within a set of defined limits. A common means that submissives use to signal a Dominant partner that their limits are being approached, pushed, or even crossed is the use of safewords.

“Erotic submission is a contract between two equals, an expression of trust, and effective avenue to arousal, and a potent means of self-expression. To let another person into your heart and mind, to give him or her the ‘keys to the kingdom,’ and to trust that this person will not abuse that gift can create sexual magic. “ from Nina Hartley’s Guide to Total Sex

If you had a chance to try anything one time, what would that be?

The question suggests “trying anything without consequences” and that is territory of fantasies, sexual in nature or not. The fundamental component of fantasies is that they exist only for their elasticity, their ability to instantly incorporate any new character, image or idea – or, as in dreams, to which they bear so close a relationship – to contain conflicting ideas simultaneously. They expand, heighten, distort or exaggerate reality, taking one further, faster in the direction in which the unashamed unconscious already knows it wants to go. They present the astonished self with the incredible, the opportunity to entertain the impossible^*.

One of the greatest discoveries I had during these last few years was to learn that women also have and express their fantasies in ways that are more rich and interesting than men. Nacy Friday’s book and some others were like finding a little window with a view to another world.

* Shamelessly adapted from My Secret Garden, by Nancy Friday

Everything I’ve experienced has led me to believe that when it comes to BDSM, there are two main categories of people: there are kinksters, people who enjoy the lifestyle and find pleasure in certain aspects of it; and then there are a smaller category of people who seek it out because they recognize in themselves an innate need to dominate or submit. It doesn’t need a name or a definition. It is just there, lurking in the subconscious, waiting to be unleashed on the conscious mind. The latter category of people are the ones I am most interested in, as it is the category I belong to.

I’ve met many people who engage in BDSM activities, such as bondage or spanking, but who insist they are “not into that BDSM stuff.” Usually, it’s because they have an idea in their heads about what BDSM is, like “BDSM means wearing a leather mask and being chained to a wall and whipped, and I don’t like that, so I’m not into BDSM.” But BDSM desn’t necessarily mean wearing a hood and being chained to the wall. If you like being lightly spanked, or light bondage excites you, then you’re into BDSM.

Some people love the aesthetic of an elaborate form of bondage; others simply aren’t interested in the bondage elements at all. The key to all these different forms of BDSM, though, is the exchange of power or sensation. One person (the “bottom” or “submissive”) is choosing to allow the other person (the “top” or “dominant”) to have control over him or her in some way, or to inflict sensation in some way. Perhaps it means allowing the other person to tie him up, perhaps it means allowing the other person to spank her, whatever.

I am romantic enough to be protective and chivalrous. I prove to her that I am someone she can lean on, and depend on. Old-fashioned enough to be a bit of a chauvinist, yet modern enough to respect my women. I believe people play different roles in the relationship. Quick to point out the differences between them, I also know there is no inferiority in those differences.

In times of need, a Dominant man will leave the roles behind, to be a supportive friend and partner, never forgetting that this is still a loving relationship between caring individuals. He is quick to understand the differences between fantasy and reality.

That is something that happens backwards. First I learned a lot of “stuff”: Techniques, methods, solutions and protocols. I thought I was very skillful, but the most important was still missing. As I met women that were more experienced, more advanced, and more sensual than I ever seen before, that opened my eyes to a very simple fact: What makes you an “expert” is not your resources and devices and methods, but your capacity to connect to women emotionally. Being capable to feel them, learn from them, but most of all love them deeply, is what makes you a man they want to be with. And we know that love is the only binding that truly holds.

I then became secure enough to laugh at myself and the absurdities of life.  Courageous enough to accept assistance. Open minded enough to learn new things. Strong enough to grow. My tools are mind, body, spirit and soul with a little help from rope, handcuffs and blindfold. I understand that each partner gains most from pleasuring the other.

Fear can prevent someone from moving forward or from trying certain sexual acts. Those fears usually come from unfamiliarity or inexperience, or from bad experiences from the past, or from bad associations that came from watching, reading, or being told that some act is dangerous, painful, unhealthy, demeaning, or humiliating. Those fears commonly cause some people to tense up or shy away.

Most fear is created by anticipation and by projecting thought forward. In a moment of true pain or danger there would be no anticipation, just action or reaction. Fear can also be indirect. A sub may not fear the act itself, but doubt the capacity of the Dom to do it correctly and safely. Fear also comes afterwards when you think about what could have happened.

The same kind of fear reaction can occur when about to engage in something new. The deep instincts we have of fight or flight cause us to tense our muscles.

An experienced Dom must know when to use fear and when to avoid it. He can use fear, even provoke it, with the intention of tensing the sub and heightening her senses, stimulating and intensifying the experience. He may also use trust, care, comfort and orientation to calm down, prepare and relax the sub prior to a challenging act or situation.

Those are moments when I don’t advocate the use of alcohol or drugs at all. If you can’t calm down someone to do something while sober you shouldn’t try it with her drunk either. A [pseudo]Dom that needs to intoxicate a sub to have his way is a faker and potentially a criminal. I am not against the use of alcohol or even drugs as recreational items and to have fun at other moments, but during sex in general and BDSM in particular.

There is one very effective shortcut to learn to approve of yourself is to approve of others.

Pay attention to what others do and when you see effort, dedication, elegance, or any other great qualities in someone’s self, or someone’s work, point at it and tell them how much you appreciate it.

When you give an honest compliment, both people win something.

Drama accomplishes a lot of things at once. It gets attention, it sends emotions through the body (emotions are highly addictive chemicals), it’s a way to be self-righteous, it’s often fun, it’s interesting and prevents boredom, it gives things meaning… and on and on. There are a lot of good reasons for drama. But most
men can’t understand because drama fulfills needs that most men don’t have.

Everyone will give you some drama. Everyone has baggage. What matter is that you baggage fits all the way under the seat in front of you. In other words, not uncontrollable and overwhelming amounts of drama and baggage. It is ok if she tells you a little about her crazy friends, but not about the reappearing assaulting and occasionally spanking ex-boyfriend who just got paroled. You get the idea.

So drama is expected, but there is a right way to deal with it:

Don’t react to it emotionally.

That is it. Don’t react. Don’t try to solve the problem. Don’t try to explain anything. Just smile, occasionally ask questions, but in general just ignore the issue. With time she will get tired of throwing her drama at you because it just bounces on you and falls to the ground. Just don’t do anything about it.