In my previous blog, I pointed out how the roles we tend to enjoy in sexual fantasies and erotic power play don’t correlate necessarily with personality types, style or roles in everyday life. Neither do they appear to be compensations. The busy, high pressure professional, doesn’t necessarily yearn to submit to a dominant sexual partner. Not all comedians want to play Hamlet, either.
With erotic power exchange and role-playing, however, we do get to release powerful feelings, and fly to places beyond the ordinary realities framed by ego, custom and society. When erotic power play works at its best, we leave cares and customs behind in order to be present totally to the rush and release of sexual energy. Seen in this light, erotic bondage and domination games are neither markers nor compensations – just what are, creative fantasies to get us out of limited selves – to feel intensely, yet staying safe. It’s theater I the best sense, but with a partner who goes there with you.
For example, take a look at two couples I interviewed, very different from each other, but who arrive at the same destination.
Beth and her partner, a successful, divorced, real estate broker named Jason, were among those couples I interviewed who enjoyed what’s called “Total Power Exchange” in their intimate life. Beth, in this case, being the dominant partner, and her male partner playing her consensual, eager “slave” during three, happy years they’d been living together in Southern California.
If any of these partners were typecast, one would have assumed just the opposite roles all around. Laura, the wife of another couple, in fact, said some of her friends would find her passion for consensual submissive sex demeaning to her as a woman. Laura, however, doesn’t see any contradiction between her being a liberated, assertive woman and a submissive to her husband in their erotic power exchange .
“I’m in charge at my office all day and lead a stressful life. I love the feeling of giving up control to a strong, dominant man. But only to one I trust deeply as I do David. I could never play that way with a man who tried to take advantage of this to show disrespect or anything but the most loving attitude,” she explained, adding that after that first encounters, they had communicated clearly on limits and rules, what worked and what didn’t for both of them. “I feel totally safe with David. He thrills me the way he takes charge -- and he knows all my buttons. The fantasy gets very real for both of us, but I can trust that I will never be harmed physically or emotionally. That way I can let to it completely.” Beth and Jason experienced the same dynamics, but with roles reversed…
Many dominants and submissive couples like to play out their favorite fantasies, which usually are the same ones with variations. They find it important to discuss the scene in advance to set down ground rules, mood, timing and various nuances that they learn each partner especially liked last time out.
They agree on limits – which the dominant may choose to push, but never violate. None of this preparation, however, stifles their scenes, it only heightens them by defining and framing the psychological, physical and emotion playing field. Master (Mistress/Madame) – slave fantasies are extremely popular, as are other such coercive scenes – prison, abduction and other mock-coercive scenarios. Of course, some people like bondage and “punishment’ play just for the sensations. But virtually all those I interviewed over the years acknowledged the rush they got from some degree of psychological power exchange. The brain, as they say, remains our most important sexual organ…
I asked Laura and David if they played with the roles of master and slave literally, beyond the bedroom, as some couples like to do…There were rituals they enjoyed, they told me – as do many erotic-power-playing couples. (More about those in later blogs.) They talked openly about limits and desires.
Like any play or film, erotic power play works best when done with energy, commitment and authenticity, even for unskilled beginners, they said. Trust is the key, Beth observed. It allows us to open up and be truly intimate. “Consensual BDSM brings with it an openness, honesty and sincerity very rare in the vanilla world. Everything is up front. I love it. There are no games, she added with a twinkle, “other than the ones we agree upon, that bring such pleasure to our lives.”
Well, I'm off to Germany next week, back for New years. Wishing you all a good holiday season!