The right mindset

This post is directed at women who are not adverse to being a Domme, who are willing to try it out but are not sure if they can be or even play dominant. I hope some of this advice will be useful to you, because I tend to receive a few questions on how to become a Domme. Being dominant is mostly a state of mind, an act, a role that you play. Playing a role does not automatically change you into that role. But it can help you with establishing dominance.

One of the most difficult things, especially for a woman just setting out on the path towards dominance, is to find the right mindset. Dominance is not in your body or in your appearance. It is in your mind. A petite and fragile woman can be extremely dominant when she knows herself to be dominant in her mind. She has to be convinced that she exudes dominance. If you can convince yourself that you are dominant and that what you say, carries with it an air of confidence, you are already halfway there. If you doubt your own dominance, or are not confident in it you can not be an effective Domme. So how do you go about being confident or at least faking your own confidence if you are just beginning?

Well, it may sound corny but a lot of it begins with posture and stance. A Domme does not simply stand. She stands upright, her shoulders back and her chin up proudly. Try it out and you will feel your confidence building automatically. Breathe deeply and slowly so you calm yourself down. Next, there is walking. A dominant lady does not walk, she strides. Try walking slowly, planting your feed purposefully. Walk upright, looking around. Always remember that a Domme stands and walks upright with a straight spine.  This will give you a feeling of power and confidence automatically. And don't forget, it will make you look confident and powerful too. Try slowly walking in a circle around a man who is on his knees. It will be very difficult not to feel some sort of rush of power.

Speech is vitally important. If you are just starting out, you may feel very awkward telling a man what to do. This can make your voice soft, timid and your speech unsure. Fortunately, you can also fake confidence here. Start out by only giving short instructions telling him what to do, don't hold long speeches. Don't allow him to look directly at you, instead make him look at the floor, your feet or something like that. By avoiding direct eye contact, it will be easier and less confrontational for you to give commands. While a powerful, dominant gaze may be what you want, this method will give you some time to develop it. Should he look up despite being instructed not to, don't stare him down if you're not feeling confident. Instead, a simple slap to his face will be enough. It doesn't have to be hard for it to startle him and remind him of his position.
At the same time, don't allow him to speak. He will have to answer when asked a question but he should not be allowed to speak out of his own. This will ensure you don't have a big mouth or awkward questions. Most submissive men will easily accept this instruction.

Next, make him take a position that shows he is submissive. Especially if you are petite and the man in question is big. Simply telling a big, strong man to kneel so that you can look down on him, will give you a feeling of confidence. You may ask yourself why the man in question would even consider obeying you. After all, he is much bigger and stronger than you. Never forget that in his heart, he wishes you to take charge. He wishes to obey you. He wishes that you tell him what to do. Otherwise he would not even be there with you. The power exchange is always a matter of give and take. He gives you the power and authority and he expects you to accept it and assume the authority. As long as you remember that he longs to obey you, you will be fine.

Dress is an important aspect of asserting dominance. Don't worry, you don't have to be a leather-clad, whip wielding, booted vixen. Try to go instead for a business like look. Dress in a strong colour like dark grey or black. A simple white blouse over a black pencil skirt is more than enough. It looks strict and stylish at the same time. There's no need to dress in anything sexy. Most submissive men would not need that anyway. For them, the Domme is someone they should not see as a sex object. The Domme is a woman to be respected and somewhat feared. Proper dress will help them to create and strengthen that image of you.
On the other end of the spectrum is the submissive. While you remain dressed, stern looking and aloof, you can widen the power gap by having him undress. The clothed female, naked male concept can work wonders for you here. It's difficult for him to feel anything but humbled if he is in the presence of a dressed woman and he himself is naked and on his knees.

By playing the dominant role more often, you become better at it. It will start to feel more natural and before long, it will no longer be simply a role. The things you tried to do will become more comfortable and more natural to you. As you see that your dominance is accepted as a matter of course by a submissive man, your confidence will grow and while you may still resort to any and/or all of the above devices, you will no longer have to rely on them.

In summary, use of the following devices will help you establish dominance and allow you to assume dominance more naturally:

• Posture and stance
  Keep your back straight and stand tall, keeping your chin up
• Stride, don't just walk
  Try to walk slowly, purposefully
• Speak in short commands at first
  You speak, he does only when asked a direct question
• Avoid direct eye contact by making him look down
  It will make you feel at ease when he is not staring at you
• Submissive posture
  If you are looking down on him literally, it is easier to be dominant
• Dress for power
  You look strong in your business-like clothes, he is naked
• Practice
  Do it often enough and it will start to feel more natural

Oh, and perhaps the most important thing to remember is, try to have fun. Sure, you may not get it right but that is no reason to become disappointed. No one was born the perfect Domme. We all learn by doing and along the way, we make mistakes. So if both of you end up on the floor in a laughing fit because during your purposeful stride you tripped, that is fine too. As with all things in life, practice makes perfect but if it is not fun, you will lose interest. I can honestly say that assuming a dominant role can be a very rewarding experience. There is something very beautiful in seeing a strong man yield to your desires. This does not mean that he is weak or worthless. It simply means that he values your desires over his and that takes a very strong and decent man. Physically, you may look down on your submissive but in your mind you should honour and respect him. After all, what good is it being dominant if there is no one for you to dominate?

Bitch? No, just confident!

A comment left by Susan' Pet yesterday, got me to think about something. I know many men out there are longing for a dominant woman. They are either single or in a relationship with a vanilla woman and their submissive desires go unfulfilled. Such a shame! It seems as there are just not enough Dommes to go around. But is that true?


I think there is certainly some truth to that. I remember from my own upbringing that I was often reminded that girls are supposed to be "sweet". They are certainly not supposed to be independent, strong willed, capable and bossy. And as they get older, it only gets worse. A woman who knows what she wants and is not afraid to say it or get it, is often referred to as a bitch. Men who are in a relationship with such a woman are "pussy-whipped". The media do not have a favourable view of strong women, most of the time. I think this is too bad. If I had been confident and comfortable with being a strong willed woman, my life might have been different. It took me quite some time to accept myself as a dominant.

There are plenty of men who have problems with strong women. I have encountered this in my work many times. Some men just can't accept women in a position of authority. If you have to instruct them or call them to order, you are immediately viewed as a bitch. Even if you are just trying to do the job you have been hired to do. While most men pay lip service to the sentence "I don't have problems with working under a female boss", the reality is often different. That is not the kind of "lip service" I look for in a man.

Perhaps there are many more dominant woman out there. But because they have been trained from a young age to be sweet, they may never feel confident enough to explore their dominance. So when they are asked to be dominant, they may be taken aback, shocked even, because they are being asked to go against everything they have been taught. The reverse is true for submissive men, who wish to serve a woman. There is much shame associated with a man allowing himself to be dominated by a woman. Somehow, it appears to be "not natural".

If I may, (of course I may, it's MY weblog after all!) allow me to direct a few words at women who are asked to be dominant by a lover. First of all, be honoured! Be very honoured! A man has trusted you enough to share his most hidden desires and fantasies with you. This is huge, since we all know that most men find it very difficult to communicate. So for God's sake, don't panic and loose your head. Of course you are taken aback, but listen to him. If you manage to suspend any judgement, this may very well be one of the most intimate moments you ever share with him. It may also be a start of something new and very special for the both of you. So don't refuse flat out or laugh at him. Most likely he is not asking you to turn into a leather clad, whip wielding dominatrix (and even if he is, would that really be that bad?).
Think about it and be open with yourself. Are you willing to at least consider the option of dominating him? It doesn't have to be full time, but maybe every once in a while. Does it interest you somewhat or not at all? Imagine him doing things for you, such as bringing you breakfast in bed, hoovering the living room, the kind of chores you don't like. One of the benefits of being a Domme means that you will no longer have to, if that is you game. Does that have any appeal? If you find there is absolutely nothing about this that tickles your fancy, then being a Domme is probably not for you. Still, I would say: don't knock it until you try it, but insist that he helps you. After all, he is asking for it, so he must have an idea of what he wants, even if you don't.

I'd also like to direct a few words at the men who are considering asking their lover to become dominant. What you are about to do, is one of the bravest things you have ever done or will ever do. It's wonderful that you put such trust in your partner. But be careful! You are about to confront her with a role in which she most likely never pictured herself. Most likely she will be very surprised that her partner harbours such desires. She may even become upset and feel betrayed that you mention this at the current point of the relationship and blame you that you should have mentioned it earlier. They key here is patience. I can not stress that enough. Be patient. If someone is about to parachute out of a plane for the first time, you don't just push them out of the plane and see how they get on. You instruct them, teach them techniques, tell them what to expect, do tandem jumps and only then do you allow someone to jump solo. A woman who is asked to be dominant is like someone parachuting into completely unknown territory. Don't expect her to know anything about it or understand what she is supposed to do.
Here is where my second piece of advice comes in: C O M M U N I C A T E ! It's not enough to tell her that you'd like her to Domme you. That's a good start, but no more than that. Be very open, answer all her questions and more. Tell her why you want her to do that, tell her how it makes you feel. Tell her that you are there for her and want to help her, if she is willing to experiment. You can not make a woman a Domme against her will no matter how much you want to. She has to at least be open to it. If you've asked her, told her everything she wanted to know and she states that she is not open to it or comfortable with it, you may try and pry why that is. But accept her refusal. Don't push the matter because you'll likely make her even less interested. It's not in everyone. But it could be in the one you asked.

As for me, am I a bitch? Well, if being confident of my abilities, sure of what I expect and not afraid to say it, makes me a bitch, then yes. And in that case I am proud of being a bitch.

A Domme is born

I consider myself to be a natural born Domme. How do I know that? Well, I still have a kindergarten report card which says that I tend to be bossy towards the other children. And I suppose that was true then. I've always been quite dominant in my relationships with others. I grew up in a small village and had many friends there. Of course, we often visited each other's house to play. One of the favorite places we had to play, was in the backyard of my best friend. They had a shed there, where we had toys and things. We often "played house" and invariably I ended up being the "mother" of several boys and girls. And yes, when they were "naughty", "Mommy" would have to spank them. It was curious how many boys/girls went over Mommy's knee and were fascinated by it.
Because of this, I believe that I was born a Domme. Somehow, there's some gene in my body which makes me the way I am.

Of course, as I got older, less and less of my friends were interested in playing house. Curiously though, there was one boy around my age who continued to have an interest in playing house, or rather the spanking part of it. Slowly our play moved away from playing house and started revolving completely around spanking. Most of the time it was me who was spanking him but we also tried it the other way around. We started meeting secretly at his parents' house. They were gone a lot of the time, so that gave us ample time. Our games were very innocent and involved only the bottom being bare and just gentle spankings, but somehow we knew very well that what we were doing was "strange". Or rather, other people would find it strange. Instinctively, we hid our activities from everyone else.

Moving into our teens, we continued playing together. We also became more interested in other aspects of our body, of course. Our games reflected that by becoming more physical. Spanking on the bare bottom was still a large part of it but we expanded it with more nudity and sometimes bondage. By this time it was always me who was in the dominant role. My friend (I never considered him as my boyfriend though most everyone else did) became the "victim" of many of my early fantasies of domination. In that time, I devoured books and comics where there was some form of punishment, embarrassment or something similar involved. I would read them and get this strange, warm feeling which I did not yet recognize as sexual arousal. My friends arousal was of course more obvious than mine, all the more because he never got to see me naked, in underwear at the most. I became fascinated with his erect penis, since it apparently produced such intense feelings in him when I played with it. That fascination to tease and torment a penis lasts until this day.

Our games were cruelly interrupted when his family moved overseas. Despite promises to keep in touch, our letters became less and less frequent until finally our contact stopped completely. I have never seen him again. By mentioning the word "letters", am I betraying my age here?
His sudden departure meant the beginning of a long dry spell for me where it came to domination. As more and more of my friends became seriously involved with young men, I started feeling peer pressure to have a stable relationship with a nice guy. It was also the time where I left my parents' home to move to the big city for my education. Finally free of an obsessively concerned mother, I could explore my feelings deeper and more freely. However, I was still careful should anyone find out my secret. In an effort to learn more about my interest, I started frequenting the library (oops, another sign of my age) for books about the subject. I did not dare borrow them, instead I wrapped them in a magazine and read them in a quiet corner at the library itself. Strange, condemning words leapt at me from the pages: "deviant", "aberrant", "abnormal" and the worst one of all: "perverse". These words hurt me deeply. I was apparently a sick person. I was perverse. I was sexually deviant. Apparently, my illness even had a name: sadism. I felt branded.

Convinced that I somehow needed to be cured, I looked for a way to do that. The answer seemed obvious: I needed to find a normal man. I became convinced that if I found myself a normal man to fall in love with, that somehow these feelings would go away. And as luck would have it, I met a normal man. A very decent, caring, loving, strong and dependable man. The ideal son-in-law. Marriage material. And before I knew it, I was in the caught up in the stream of engagement leading to marriage leading to pregnancy. We had a son. We had a daughter. We worked normal jobs, had a normal life and my mother approved. I was happy.
Or so I told myself. But underneath it all lurked the monster. My perversion. Oh sure, I tried to suppress it. I tried to ignore it. I tried to run away from it. But I could not. It was as much part of me as my arm. Every now and then, it popped up its ugly head into our sex life. I loved to be on top (and hubby loved me to be on top too) but when I suggested to experiment a bit by tying him to the bed board, he refused. He said that it wasn't for him. He did want to tie me to the bed though, but I didn't feel for that. I didn't realize it then, but I think this was the end of our marriage. My monster went unfulfilled and became more and more hungry. As the years passed, we grew apart, each leading our own lives, caring for our children, holding up the appearance of a marriage.

By this time, we had the Internet in our home as well. And like it or not, the monster compelled me to look up things about it. At first a little but it became more and more. There was a wealth of information out there. And slowly, I became less convinced that I was in fact sick. Maybe the monster was not so much of a monster after all. I read stories, saw photos, discovered that there were many, many more people out there who were like me. That there were men who wanted to meet women like me, desperately.
However, not being very technical and unable to cover my tracks (not even aware I was leaving them), it was only a matter of time before my husband discovered what our computer had been used for. At first he thought it was our son, but the poor boy was hardly old enough to have developed such a profound interest already, let alone grasp English. I confessed that it had been me. And for the very first time in my life, I openly told someone face to face about my deepest, hidden desires. My poor husband, shocked as he was that his wife had such a dark side to her, did his best to comprehend. We talked, we laughed together, we cried together and slowly reached the conclusion that our relationship had reached a point where we didn't have much of anything in common any more. We weren't angry, just sad yet somehow also strangely relieved. We divorced on good terms shortly afterwards and fortunately to this day, we have remained friends.

And there I was, single again, though a mother of two. But this time I was more confident and started to explore my feelings more openly. My resolve strengthened by the things I read online, the knowledge that there were others out there like myself, I joined a web forum about BDSM. I also knew more about computers now and knew to be careful with my identity.
When I came out of the closet as a Domme on this forum, I was swamped by messages by men who were looking for someone like me. The desperation of some of these men, the way they addressed me, shocked me to the core. I was called things that I never even had believed I would be called in my wildest dreams. "Goddess", "Mistress" or "Lady" were common, as was the term "Madam" or "Ma'am". I allowed the use of the latter since it is more a generic way of addressing someone, although polite. Many jumped me, telling me what they wanted me to do to them. That was just wrong to my mind. I was the Domme. Shouldn't I be telling them what they should do for me?

On this forum, I met a young man (I say young because he is almost 10 years my junior) by the name of Robert (which is not really his name, of course). He seemed very different from many of the others. For one, he seemed very interested in pleasing me, not himself. He seemed open to the things I told him I enjoyed or would like to try once. We chatted privately more often. And before long, we decided to meet (we weren't that far apart, fortunately). Incredibly, we got along amazingly well. We share our sense of humour, we like many of the same films, the same type of trips, everything. Plus, we are a perfect match when it comes to the type of play. Little more than a year later, we got married. And for the first time in my life, I can say I am complete. I am truly happy and do not have to try and fool myself or deny who I am. I am a happily married Domme and wife (yes, in that order). Life as a Domme has so many perks for me. For one, imagine the looks of murderous jealousy I get from the other ladies at the office Christmas party when I proudly strut in with a man almost ten years younger than me, who takes my coat, fetches me something to drink and things like that. When they ask me how I managed to do that, I just give a wink. If only they knew how I keep him in line...