“How to be a good dominant” is a question I’ve been asking myself and the world for quite a few years now. This post discusses some of the most useful principles for achieving that goal, and having better, healthier dominance and submission relationships.
When I first started out, there wasn’t a particularly coherent model of “dominance and submission” available. There were snippets. Extremely varied ideas and opinions spread by lots of people, heavily influenced by fiction. I had to try a lot of different things out to see what worked well, and a lot of it didn’t, which led to some epic mistakes.
However, since then, I’ve tested a lot, and researched a lot more, and eventually found a set of principles that can be successfully applied to pretty much any D/s dynamic.
Since I’ve discovered these… the rewards have been unbelievable. Far more than I could have imagined, from the kinky mindblowing sex to the warmth and joy of a consensual power dynamic that exists far outside the bedroom. It’s difficult to list all the rewards, but I’ve added some at the end of the post.
It’s been a hell of a journey learning this stuff, but it’s been worth it. These principles now form the core of my own model of dominance and submission, and I’m hoping that in sharing them with you, I can support your journey as well.
For the purposes of this post, a useful way of thinking about dominance and submission might be this:
That dominance and submission is a consensually negotiated relationship where each party deliberately undertakes a particular role; typically, one being the dominant, the leader or person who is the driving force, the decision maker, the director, etc, and the other takes the role of the submissive; they who obey, they who serve, etc. This might occur within a particular span of minutes or hours, or be more ongoing.
And the reason why they do this, is because one has a desire to provide direction, and the other has a desire to submit or follow direction. There are a lot of ways to describe dominance and submission, but I find this one quite useful.
Learn To Identify the “Toxic Myths”of Dominance and Submission
An important principle when starting your own journey of learning how to be a good dominant is learning to identify the toxic myths of dominance.
The reason this is important is because when you accept some of these myths at face value, they basically ruin your chances of having a satisfying and enjoyable D/s dynamic.
Imagine basing your relationship decisions on principles that are unhealthy, ineffective, and unrealistic… it would make for great tv, with lots of conflict and drama, but a pretty bad time in real life!
Here are some of the toxic myths that I’ve come across in my time:
- Toxic Myth: A Dominant should have magical Domly Powers of thought reading and desire knowing, without their submissive partner having to expressly communicate these. Yes, some opinions and writings actually suggest this. It’s a great way to encourage NOT communicating.
- Toxic Myth: A dominant can solve everything by being firm, assertive, and commanding. Never mind actually discussing things reasonably and testing different solutions.
- Toxic Myth: Dominants hold the responsibility for everything in the dynamic, but actually don’t have any power of their own. This one is very common. Relationships work best when both parties take responsibility for their success; and both parties have the power to contribute tremendously to a dynamic, or to walk away. This myth doesn’t acknowledge that at all.
- Toxic Myth: A dominant can and should expect to be able to command their submissive to “kneel and serve however they want” in any eventuality. Ah yes, the classic “instant gratification”myth.
- Toxic Myth: “True Dominants” are born, not made. You certainly can’t learn as you go… unlike any other human skill.
- Toxic Myth: A dominant isn’t allowed to end a scene, or safeword out if they feel uncomfortable; their duty is to facilitate a great scene for a submissive (Yes, some writings have shown that some people do believe this).
- Toxic Myth: A “true dominant” has the wisdom and the power to “fix” the broken submissive… getting into any kind of dynamic with the intention of “fixing” the other person, whether through love or dominance, is a sure recipe for a bad time . Supporting each other is great. Fixing each other is not.
Etc, etc.
Toxic myths about dominance and submission are usually quite one sided, rigid, and can end up with really messed up results. They’re often born out of overcompensation or allowing fantasizing to reign over reality. And yes, toxic myths exist about both submissives and dominants.
Once you’ve eliminated toxic myths, it’s time to turn your attention to principles that are more effective.
The First Step In Learning How To Be A Good Dominant Is… Figuring Out Your Own D/s Wants And Needs.
So you want to be a dominant, and provide direction for the benefit of your submissive person and yourself?
Great, those are important things to want.
But what ELSE do you want?
In order to know what you want and why you want it, for yourself and your submissive, it’s necessary to do some reflection. This will be a big part of figuring out what kind of dominance and submission dynamic would work well for you.
As an example, some dominants really enjoy the experience of being a micromanager. Having constant check ins, lots of contact, finely detailed tasks and orders that their submissive is expected to fill to the letter – every detail included. This kind of thing can give a dominant person a very happy buzz.
– 7am: Meditate with mala beads on “the joy of service”
– 7.30: Polish Mistresses shoes with love in your heart. Then take a picture and send it to her.
– 8.am: 15 Minutes yoga for bondage….
However, other dominant people are almost the opposite. They hate micromanagement, and would rather lay out broader guidelines and expectations that the submissive person is expected to fulfil without constant check in and oversight. They don’t sweat the details; the important thing is that the submissive’s actions are in line with the dominant’s values.
Some examples of other questions you might ask yourself can include:
- Do I want to be a dominant just within a scene, or outside of one as well?
- Do I like the idea of domestic service?
- Would I enjoy having a submissive person as a kind of secretary, researching things for me while I’m busy doing other things?
- Do I enjoy the idea of punishing my submissive? Or is that a turn off for me?
- How would I enjoy having a submissive show their obedience?
- Would I enjoy training my submissive? What would I enjoy training them to do?
- How am I most comfortable expressing direction or dominance?
- Do I like a lot of tension, conflict, back and forth in my idea of D/s, or do I like the idea of something more collaborative, where the goal is minimal conflict?
Asking yourself questions like these are important, because it helps you get a foundation understanding of what’s going to work well for you.
Knowing what’s going to work well for you will help you figure out who you’re compatible with, which brings us to the next principle.
Compatibility: Don’t Try To Dom Them All
There are many many many submissive people out there, and each and every one of them have their own ideas about what makes for a “good” dominant.
And of course, for these people, what makes for a good dominant differs wildly according to their individual preferences and fantasies.
So for you, when you’re thinking about how to be a good dominant, and how not to fuck it up, you have to be aware: you’re going to run into a lot of different expectations and ideas about what a “good”dominant is.
The answer to this lies partly in the previous principle; knowing your own wants and needs; and partly in running through a “dating” process where you identify attractive submissive people who think about dominance and submission in the same way that you do, or who are at least open to the same ideas about dominance and submission that mesh well with you. That’s how you know you have a good chance of learning how to be a “good ” dominant with that person.
If you run into people who are really invested in one or more of the toxic myths of dominance, and are unwilling to let them go, then that’s going to make for an unhealthy and potentially damaging D/s dynamic, which is a bad time.
The same goes for people who have very different requirements. If you love punishing, and they find being “punished” to be really damaging, it’s not going to be the best fit. While you can compromise and adapt – to a degree – the more of these incompatibilities there are, the less likely it’s going to work at all well.
You’re going to need to have discussions about what D/s is and isn’t, and what it looks like early on, to make sure your visions of dominance and submission are compatible. The more similar and complementary your views and visions are, the more smoothly your D/s interactions will go.
Learning How To Be A Good Dominant Means Learning A Bunch Of Different Skills
“Dominance” is not a single skill. It’s not even a single quality. In order to be a “good” dominant, it’s necessary to learn and practice all kinds of different skills on an ongoing basis.
For BDSM scenes, that involves things like negotiation, monitoring your partner, learning to use equipment and practicing the skills of applying said equipment (e.g. rope bondage), managing aftercare, etc.
But outside of scenes and “Play” activities, there’s a hell of a lot more to learn. These are the people skills, sometimes known as “soft skills”. They involve communication, direction, and learning how to effectively interact with your submissive to bring about your desired results.
I was really lucky. As part of my career pathway, I learned about leadership, and while dominance and leadership are a bit different in certain areas, they have a TON of transferable skills and principles.
And yes; leadership can be studied and learned! It’s a skill set! Which means it can be acquired! I was pretty excited when I found that out 😀
If you want to learn how to be a good dominant, one that’s effective in being a driving force, who can provide direction for a dynamic, and who can promote the wellbeing and enjoyment of both parties in the dynamic…
Then I strongly recommend studying leadership and leadership principles.
Leadership is about creating positive change, influencing and inspiring and communicating. It’s about providing direction for people. It’s about making sure that the important things that need to happen, do happen.
Much like dominance, leadership is a practice and an art, and there are as many different ways to apply it as there are people doing it – but there are many underlying principles that can be learned to make it easier. And, rather helpfully, there is a crap ton of very useful material on this.
Look up popular leadership blogs and youtube videos. Read books, observe people that you know are good leaders, and pay attention to how they interact with people.
It’s impossible to cover all the leadership inspired principles that can apply to dominance in one post, but here’s a great example.
Many dominants, and many leaders, when they first start practicing, think they need to be the one to have and implement all the important ideas. They think they should know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.
But making yourself solely responsible as the source of great ideas to implement in your organization, or your dynamic, is to ignore your other resources and create unnecessary work for yourself. It cuts you off from other sources.
You have other assets, like the internet, other people and like your submissive, who has a great brain which is also working all the time. Why rely solely on your own brain and ideas, when your submissive is right there as well?
Good leaders, and good dominants, recognize that great ideas should be implemented. They identify and implement great ideas while acknowledging the source of those ideas, and they’re totally okay with the fact that the idea may not have originated with them. They make sure credit goes to the source of the idea – which in turn helps that person feel happy and acknowledged, and very importantly, listened to.
The role of the leader, and the dominant, is simply to drive the implementation of that idea, using the various skills at their disposal. And this works out to the benefit of both parties.
That’s one small example. There are countless others.
Learning How To Be A Good Dominant Means Taking Responsibility for Decision Making
When you’re the dominant, you’re often the driving force, or the final word on decisions within your scene, or within the areas that both of you have agreed fit within your dominance and submission dynamic.
That means that at many points, your role is to step up and make the decision. That responsibility is yours.
That can be a bit anxiety making. After all, what if you get it wrong? What if the results of that decision aren’t fantastic?
The secret is: getting it wrong is also part of the role of being a dominant.
There’s absolutely no way that every decision you make is going to go well or according to plan.
That’s part of being human, and it’s an important understanding to have going into this. One of the most important things you can embed early on in your understanding of how to be a good dominant, is simply that you’re going to make mistakes…
And you’re going to learn from them.
This, my friend, is called gathering experience. This is how you develop your practice of dominance, and how you eventually become a “good” dominant – you try a lot of things, and learn both from what doesn’t work well, and what does.
This is also why it’s important to have discussions with prospective submissives early on, to make sure they’re open to the idea of an “imperfect” dominant, who makes mistakes, and has a growth mindset about learning from them. If they’re really invested in the idea of a “perfect” dominant, who never makes mistakes, things are going to go sour really quickly.
The same goes if you’re too invested in being “the perfect dominant”. That’s an unrealistic standard to live up to. Yes, you’ll always be trying to do and be your best – but you cannot expect to be perfect. That expectation will end up creating a very sour note in your own perception of yourself, until you finally give in and accept that imperfection is the way of all human beings, including dominants.
I recommend resolving instead to get comfortable making decisions, and learning from the outcomes of those decisions. This is a key part of creating direction, and a key part of learning how to be a “good dominant”. Yes, your decisions can and should be informed by the input of both parties (it would be silly for them not to be) but your role is to be comfortable holding the responsibility for those decisions.
And finally, the final principle of this post…
Learning How To Be A Good Dominant Means Practicing Communication. Which Is Hard.
There are times when our feelings get in the way of good communication. We can get angry, we can feel unjustly targeted, we can be embarrassed or just really tired.
All part of being human.
But in practicing dominance and leadership, and always asking the question of how to be a “good” dominant, we’re always eventually going to have to come back to enhancing and improving our communication.
To moving past those uncomfortable feelings and modeling the behaviors that we know are most likely to be helpful.
We have to learn to communicate our desires; to ask questions; to gather the information needed to inform our decision making, and in general, to communicate in a healthy way which supports our dominance and submission dynamics.
We also have to learn to be not just honest, but vulnerable. Not only does this allow us to be “our real selves” with our submissives, but it models that same behaviour for them, so they can be their own real selves with us.
We want both ourselves and our submissives to be getting what we want and need out of the relationship… and we’re not going to be able to achieve that or know if it’s working if our communication isn’t on point.
Fortunately, there are many books, podcasts, and other materials available on the internet for this as well. Communication skills and techniques are embedded all through leadership educational materials, and books like the 5 Love Languages and Non-Violent Communication are enormously helpful as well. I quite like The Art of Charm Podcast, particularly their toolbox episodes, for learning about great concepts like “emotional bids”.
Studying and practicing communication will never quite be finished… it’s going to be one of those ongoing areas of development, probably throughout your entire life. It certainly is in mine. But in learning how to be a good dominant, and a good leader, it’s essential. I highly recommend it as an ongoing practice.
The Rewards of Being A Good Dominant
A question at this point might be “This sounds like a lot of work… is learning how to be a good dominant really worth it?”
My answer to that question is yes, absolutely. There is a fair amount of work, learning, and levelling up that goes into becoming a good dominant – and with this, as in everything else in life, it pays off.
The rewards of learning how to be a good dominant are tremendous. They tend to differ from dynamic to dynamic – after all, there are different people involved, and different people will enjoy particular things more, but these are a handful of the rewards that I enjoy.
There’s the skill and experience that it brings. Nearly everything you learn is transferable in some way, and it adds to your overall life confidence and ability to make things happen.
All that communication, learning about leadership, learning from mistakes, etc, results in a power dynamic and relationship where your submissive trusts you and feel safe. You’ve explored a lot of mutual growth together.
This means you and they can also feel safe to have an array of insanely hot, sexual and kinky experiences that you couldn’t imagine happening in “the real world”… because you’ve built the solid foundation of trust and communication that allows for that to happen.
There’s the satisfaction of an intense relationship dynamic where the roles are clearly defined – all that communication and negotiation gives people a much clearer idea of where they stand, which is a rather nice, secure feeling. For those that enjoy the feeling of security, it’s pretty great.
At work this week, I’ve enjoyed wearing the shirts my submissive ironed for me. Not only did I feel nice and crisp and professional, but it was like wearing a tangible reminder of her and how awesome our dynamic is; a very positive note in what could be frustrating days.
There’s the feeling of being involved in a really enjoyable “dance”; maintaining this tight connection and bond, and responding to each other to create something awesome.
Dominance and submission can be, in it’s own way, a unique kind of love language. Your feelings or each other are expressed through acts of dominance, and acts of service, as well as all the other fun love languages.
Supporting your partner in managing stress by creating a helpful rule – for example, “No more study after 7pm – you need sleep and wind down time to stay well and keep your mental fitness up”. She’s just graduated, by the way. I’m incredibly proud of her.
Coming home at the end of the day, and having your after work coffee served to you with exactly the presentation you requested. My pet holds my coffee a particular way as she offers it to me, and that little refinement, knowing that she’s doing it just because she wants to serve me and please me, is a very nice feeling. I often pause for an extra second or two to appreciate it before taking the cup.
The relaxation of knowing that you can be imperfect, and not only is that okay, it actually helps create trust.
The satisfaction of knowing that your direction helped make good things happen. That’s fucking cool. Sometimes it happens in unexpected ways – like the time I got a submissive to start doing squats, and it ended up giving them the confidence to pursue a career in the armed forces. I didn’t anticipate that one, but it was a great side benefit.
Your submissive’s unique interests and skills can add enormous value to your life. My pet is also my costume manager (because I am shit at costumes) and she also enjoys baking. This adds all kinds of value to my life, and she gets the joy of acts of service – which just happens to be closely aligned to her enjoyment of clothes, crafting and costuming.
So those are some of the things that I enjoy. For you, some of the rewards will be similar, and some will be different. But they most definitely exist, and they’re well worth enjoying.
I hope you’ve found this post useful, and at the very least that it’s given you some food for thought in how you or someone you know might explore dominance.
And as always, I’m interested in collecting information and other perspectives relating to this post; so if you have reflections on the post or something awesome to contribute, please add it in the comments!
