People who have little or no experience with erotic power exchange often ask me if people like to play the same roles in bed as they do in life.

They believe that dominants – whether male or female – must have aggressive personalities and that those who like play submissive roles must incline to be meek, even wimpy, in everyday life. They also believe that a person is either a “master” or a “slave” and never the twain shall met

Of course I have to tell them, gently, that nothing could be further from the truth,

I my many years interviewing thousands of people who enjoy power exchange in their relationship, I’ve found that sexual fantasy role preferences have no correlation to personality type or even sexual orientation. Gay and lesbian couples enjoy the same practices as straight ones, and partners, and vice versa. The same goes for straight couples that enjoy power play.

The dominant/submissive fantasies and roles people like to take with each other in bed are interchangeable between the sexes.

Going against traditional gender role, women often enjoy being dominant in a relationship, and men being submissive. That doesn’t mean the woman is “masculine” or the man “feminine.” Regardless of their personality types, the roles could be just the opposite, or be switched according to mood.

Many erotic power players, I found, experimented with top and bottom roles before settling into one or the other, or discovering they simple like to go on switching with partners.

Most “tops” I found, of either gender, had at least some experience in submission to “learn the ropes” as it were. Because they have been conditioned culturally over many centuries to do so, most women, moreover, tend begin by playing submissive roles to their men.

Many women discover they have dominant sexual natures later in life. “I have spent most of my life being the doting, agreeable, self-sacrificing, sitting-and-her-husband’s-feet kind of woman,” one lively, middle-aged, middle-class, widow, told me. “Now I want that kind of “wife” for myself. I love a man strong enough to surrender to me willingly in the bedroom and in the rest of our relationship,” she confided with a smile.

Another woman who enjoys having her husband tie her up and dominate her sexually, had to get over feeling “politically incorrect” when it came to her strong feminist values in real life and her executive position where she worked. “It’s liberating for me to let my submissive side come out in the safe, strong and loving hands of my husband,” she says.

“She is in every way, a strong, formidable woman and I respect that,” said her handsome, artist husband who has become skilled at playing the dominant role in their mutually consensual, private scenes.

And so it goes. Are you self-conscious about your own fantasies? Remember, they don’t have to be consistent with who you are in live – just be a part of that life.

Have good holidays!

Dr Gabriele

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