I Was In A Dom/Sub Relationship And It Was An Epic Disaster
He instructed me to strip and crawl on the floor.
Oleggg / Shutterstock I texted him as soon as I woke up.
"What do you want me to wear today?"
I brushed my teeth and washed my face while I waited for him to text me back.
"White button-down shirt. Tuck it in. Your jeans. Flats. Put your hair in a ponytail. Send me a photo."
I dressed as instructed, then stood before the wall-length mirror in my apartment's hallway. Smiling into the mirror, I snapped a photo on my iPhone and sent it to Ben*.
Thirty seconds later, a text message: "Very nice."
Then I knew I could leave for work.
Ben wasn't abusive. I wasn't being hurt, nor was I unhappy. We were in a dominant/submissive relationship — or playing at one, anyway — and following his orders got me unbelievably turned on.
Ben cheated on his girlfriend, Rachel, with me; he lied about going on a break with her for me. I was so upset when I found out he lied that I emailed her and told her he'd been cheating. But I haven't been totally forthcoming about the nature of our relationship.
Ben and I weren't just friends who became attracted to each other; we were both extremely interested in exploring sexual roles as a dom (him) and a sub (me).
Ben was cheating because he has strong, natural impulses to dominate a woman in bed. And his girlfriend, Rachel, wouldn't let him. When we were just close friends, Ben would gripe to me about how he and Rachel rarely had sex.
As time passed, Ben and I talked frequently via DM or on the phone, and flirted with each other more and more. It's not exactly a secret that I have a fetish about being spanked and at some point — clearly crossing the line of what was appropriate for a guy with a girlfriend and his cute single friend to be discussing — Ben told me he loved spanking women.
He loved it. He loved all types of light, sexual domination play — tying women up, using his paddle, hair-pulling — and Rachel wasn't into any of that. When it came to outside-of-bed stuff, Ben described Rachel as resisting his natural inclination toward leadership.
She didn't particularly like him being protective toward her and he said they bickered constantly. So you can see why I saw an "in" here.
I should be clear, though: Ben wasn't the first guy I'd come across who professed a liking for domination play. My first serious high school boyfriend was actually the one who flipped my switch, making me realize that getting spanked turned me on.
In my freshman and sophomore years of college, both of my boyfriends spanked me. One guy I dated in college actually took me to a "spanking club" in New York City, where he rented a paddle and spanked me in public.
Then I dated Jason* after college and, through my relationship with him, I learned that it wasn't just spanking that turned me on — it was dominance.
Jason was over six feet tall, strong, and sturdily built. He had a naturally dominant personality. He was a leader — fearless, protective, and decisive. He could be stern and take charge when he needed to. And he spanked me and dominated me in bed all the time, of course.
Outside of bed, which was starting to feel like catnip in this new, weird way, I always felt "safe" with him because of the way he took charge.
It didn't work out with Jason for other reasons, but he left me with 100 questions: I'm a feminist. Why do I like this so much? Isn't this wrong? How can I be a good feminist and still be like a man taking charge outside the bedroom?
All of this occurred around 2006, so, of course, I spent a lot of time on Google looking for the answers. By searching terms like "spanking" and "domination," I discovered many women online who wrote blogs sharing the same desires I held. They had college degrees, and jobs, and made their own money, but they were sexually attracted to men who dominated them both inside the bedroom and outside.
I studied these women for over a year and published an article called "Slap Happy" in the feminist/pop culture magazine "Bitch" about them. ("Slap Happy" cannot be found online, but writer Amanda Marcotte at the feminist blog Pandagon wrote about it. And my article was included on the syllabus for a Rutgers University Human Sexuality class.)
I can't explain to you how all-consumingly liberating it felt to know it wasn't just me who wanted this. This is something hundreds of other women and men love, I thought. This is a part of me and my sexuality that I can be honest about.
I was pretty sure I didn't want to be dominated by a man all the time like these women; though the idea of domination "play" some of the time, like Jason and I had engaged in, aroused me more than I had ever felt before.
When Ben revealed to me that he got off from being dominant, I felt like I'd found the golden ticket. We not only shared the same kink but the same intensity for it. Ben wanted dominance and submission "play," but all the time? Seriously? Where had he been all my life?
But because Ben was still dating Rachel, we didn't do anything about this for a long time. We flirted for months and months, occasionally talking about our mutual love of spanking and domination, but in the one very intense month after he said he wanted to break up with Rachel to be with me, domination and submission "play" consumed us.
First musing about it. Then doing it over instant messages, mail, phone and text message.
Much of the non-sexual domination "play" with Ben was just a shift of our regular friendship: We'd talk about the stuff we'd usually talk about, but he would take a more dominant role, sternly issuing instructions. For example, I had a co-worker who was experiencing some difficulties and being the naturally hyper-anxious person that I am I'd fret all the time about the fate of her job.
"Don't worry about her; it's not your responsibility. Worry about yourself," he would say. And I would follow his instructions.
But there was the more obvious "play" component: As part of our "play," I would ask him permission to do lots of things. I told him about all the kinds of bras and panties in my drawers, and each morning he'd tell me which ones to wear, which I would send him in a photo.
I would ask him how to dress each morning. I would ask him if I could watch a movie or if I had to work on writing a freelance article more. If I "disobeyed" him during this sexy-talk "play," he would tell me over the phone or over IM how he would "punish" me.
But it was the sexual domination that was most amazing to me. Even though we physically had not been intimate with each other yet because of his girlfriend, we had phone sex with each other frequently where he'd verbally explain to me how he was going to spank me.
And much of our IM chats and emails were dirty talk about future spanking "punishments" to come: He would promise I'd be spanked 10 times for this or that infraction. He'd also tell me whether he was going to spank me with his hands or with his paddle. And, of course, we would talk dirty at length about having intercourse. Through all of this, he wanted me to call him "sir."
Basically, Ben was one kinky motherf***er.
For the first few weeks, I was horny constantly. And I mean constantly. Never before in my life have I experienced desire this way.
One weekend, I couldn't handle it anymore. and slept with two different guys and made out with a third. And trust me, I'd never done that before. I really felt like my sexuality had awakened and been released, roaring from the gate.
All the build-up actually raised my expectations too much, because the one and only time Ben and I were physically intimate with each other, it was a bit of a disappointment. Oh yes, he was sexually dominant: He instructed me to strip, to crawl on the floor and fellate him, and he spanked me with the paddle he kept in his closet.
But something about him seemed skittish like he wasn't giving 100 percent. I remember thinking, Where's the guy who is a marvelous dirty-talker? The deflation could have been because Ben was cheating on Rachel with me; however, I got the sense that Ben liked talking about dom/sub more than actually doing it.
I never got to find out: A week or so later, everything with Ben crashed and burned. It was messy, it was bad, and it was a horrible time in my life.
My spectacular crash-and-burn at a dom/sub relationship was educational in ways I never could have imagined. I now see that what Ben and I had wasn't a romance and we had no foundation to sustain a relationship beyond sex. That was just a disaster waiting to happen.
But I also realize now that Ben and I didn't know what we were doing and we didn't have the foundation of trust that a dom/sub relationship needs. Not "should have," but "needs." With no exceptions.
I gave Ben trust that he had not earned yet. When he would instruct me to stop worrying about my co-worker, I would listen, but really Ben had done nothing to prove he was worthy of this trust. In fact, if anything, he was negatively trustworthy for not having ended his relationship with Rachel yet. It was my fault for trusting a man who wasn't trustworthy and I take full responsibility for that.
I also learned that when it comes to sex, sometimes people like talking about stuff more than they like doing it. They think they want it, They say they want it. But, they're afraid to fully experience what all their sexual impulses are telling them. This is where trustworthiness comes into play.
Maybe it's because it's scary to them. Maybe it's because it's so taboo. I don't really know; I just know that Ben turned out to be that person while I was not.
I'm glad I have nothing whatsoever to do with Ben anymore, but I'm kind of bummed my first foray into a dom/sub relationship didn't work out. I really would have loved it. Now, I'm in a loving, committed relationship with the man I'm going to marry and we have a happy sex life, but he doesn't share the same desire for dom/sub "play" that I have.
But these days, given how I had such a negative experience with domination the first time, I'm not eager to repeat it.
Jessica Wakeman is a journalist who writes about women's political, societal, and cultural issues. Her writing can be found in several online publications and medical outlets including Huffington Post, the New York Daily Daily News, Radar Magazine, and ForbesTraveler.