And Neither Should There Be

There is a particular kind of perfection that BDSM can tempt us to believe exists.

The perfectly composed Dominant.
The effortlessly devoted submissive.
The immaculate protocol.
The relationship in which expectations are always understood, needs are always anticipated, boundaries are never misunderstood and neither person ever doubts their place.

From the outside, some dynamics can even appear to possess it.

But perfection is usually something we see when we are standing far enough away not to notice the work.

Come closer and you find two human beings.

And human beings are complicated.

They misunderstand. They hesitate. They become tired. They change their minds. They discover needs they did not know they possessed and limits they once thought would never move. They occasionally disappoint one another. They sometimes get things wrong.

None of this means the dynamic has failed.

It means the dynamic is alive.

Perhaps one of the more damaging things we do within BDSM is measure the relationships we actually have against idealised versions of relationships that have never truly existed.

There is no perfect dynamic.

More importantly, there should not be.

The Submissive Who Could Not See Herself

I once had a submissive who struggled to believe that she was a good submissive.

It was something I found difficult to understand at first because the woman I saw was very different from the woman she sometimes appeared to see in herself.

She never ceased to amaze me.

As our dynamic developed, so did she. Not because she was gradually becoming some idealised version of submission, but because she was becoming more comfortable inhabiting her own.

She learned.

She questioned.

She trusted more deeply.

She discovered things about herself that neither of us could have predicted when we began.

There were uncertainties along the way. There were conversations. There were moments when confidence arrived slowly rather than dramatically.

Yet she seemed to carry an invisible measure against which she judged herself.

Was she submissive enough?

Was she doing it correctly?

Was she somehow falling short of what a submissive was supposed to be?

The irony was that while she worried about becoming a good submissive, I was watching someone become an increasingly remarkable partner within the particular dynamic we were creating.

Those are not necessarily the same thing.

There is no examination for submission.

There is no universal standard against which someone can be measured and declared sufficiently submissive.

There is only the relationship in front of you.

And the people inside it.

Someone Else’s Best Dominant

A while ago, a fellow Dominant received an award naming him the best Dominant.

His response stayed with me far longer than the award itself.

He said, in essence:

I am not the best Dominant. I am simply her best Dominant.

That was all he needed to be.

There is considerable wisdom in that distinction.

Because what would the “best Dominant” even mean?

The strictest?

The most experienced?

The most knowledgeable?

The person with the most elaborate protocols, the greatest collection of equipment, the longest list of skills or the most impressive reputation?

Dominance does not work like that.

A person can be deeply respected, enormously experienced and technically accomplished, yet still be entirely wrong for a particular submissive.

Likewise, someone may possess none of the outward markers that attract attention within a community and nevertheless be precisely the person with whom another human being can flourish.

Compatibility cannot be awarded.

It cannot be ranked.

And it certainly cannot be copied.

Being someone’s best Dominant does not require being better than everybody else.

It requires being right for the person who has chosen to place their trust in you.

The same is true in reverse.

The question should rarely be whether someone is an exceptional submissive in some abstract sense.

The more meaningful question is whether these two people can build something worthwhile together.

The Blueprint We Keep Looking For

BDSM has always contained structures.

Protocols. Traditions. Titles. Rituals. Expectations. Different philosophies of authority and surrender.

These things can be valuable.

They give us language through which to understand experiences that might otherwise be difficult to articulate. They allow knowledge to pass between people. They provide starting points from which we can explore.

The problem begins when a starting point becomes a blueprint.

When this is one way quietly becomes this is the way.

Then we begin measuring ourselves against other people’s dynamics.

Perhaps their protocol is more elaborate.

Perhaps their submission appears deeper.

Perhaps their Dominant seems more authoritative.

Perhaps they live together while we do not.

Perhaps theirs is 24/7 and ours exists within carefully negotiated spaces.

Perhaps they use collars and contracts and rituals while ours is built largely through conversation and quiet understanding.

Comparison has an extraordinary ability to make something meaningful feel inadequate.

Yet we rarely know what another dynamic actually looks like from within.

We see the ceremony.

We do not necessarily see the negotiation that preceded it.

We see confidence.

We do not see yesterday’s uncertainty.

We see the photograph of the collar.

We do not see the difficult conversation at the kitchen table.

We see the polished surface of somebody else’s relationship and compare it with the unfinished interior of our own.

That is rarely a fair comparison.

Built Rather Than Found

A meaningful dynamic is not something two people discover fully formed.

It is built.

Sometimes slowly.

Trust is built when promises survive contact with reality.

Respect develops when each person learns that their voice still matters when conversations become difficult.

Communication becomes meaningful when it extends beyond expressing desires and includes the ability to say, this isn’t working.

Authority develops substance when it can withstand questions.

Submission develops depth when it does not require the disappearance of the person offering it.

None of these things arrive complete.

They accumulate.

Conversation by conversation.

Decision by decision.

Mistake by mistake.

That last part matters.

Because growth requires the possibility of getting something wrong.

A dynamic in which neither person is permitted to make mistakes is not pursuing excellence. It is creating anxiety.

The Dominant who believes they must always know the answer eventually becomes tempted to pretend that they do.

The submissive who believes they must always please eventually becomes frightened of admitting when something is wrong.

Perfection does not protect a dynamic.

Sometimes the pursuit of it prevents the honesty that actually could.

Growth on Both Sides of the Slash

We occasionally speak about growth within BDSM as though it belongs predominantly to the submissive.

They learn surrender.

They develop confidence.

They explore vulnerability.

They discover limits and desires.

But Dominants must grow too.

We learn how another person communicates.

We discover that something which worked beautifully in one relationship may be entirely inappropriate in another.

We confront our assumptions.

We discover weaknesses in ourselves that authority cannot conceal.

We learn when to lead, when to listen and, occasionally, when to admit that we simply got something wrong.

The slash between D/s may describe different roles.

It should never imply that only one side is evolving.

A healthy dynamic changes everyone involved because genuine intimacy rarely allows us to remain exactly who we were when we entered it.

That does not mean losing ourselves.

It means becoming more capable of meeting another person honestly.

The Dynamic Only You Can Build

There will always be people willing to tell you what a “real” dynamic looks like.

Some will insist upon particular protocols.

Others will tell you how often authority should be exercised, how submission should be expressed, what titles should be used, how rules should work or what commitment ought to resemble.

Listen where there is wisdom.

Learn where there is experience.

But remember whose relationship you are building.

Yours.

The purpose of learning from other people is not to reproduce their dynamic.

It is to gather enough understanding to build your own with greater care.

Take what strengthens communication.

Take what encourages responsibility.

Take what helps you understand consent, authority, surrender and yourself.

Then leave behind what does not belong between the people actually standing in front of one another.

Your dynamic does not need to resemble mine.

Mine did not need to resemble the Dominant who received that award.

His did not need to resemble anybody else’s.

What mattered was something considerably quieter.

He wanted to be her best Dominant.

Not the world’s.

Hers.

Better Than Perfect

Perhaps we should stop asking whether our dynamics are good enough when measured against the culture surrounding us.

There are more useful questions.

Can we speak honestly here?

Can we trust each other with difficult truths?

Can we change without threatening the entire structure?

Can we acknowledge mistakes?

Can we remain curious about the person on the other side of the slash?

Can both of us grow?

And when the dynamic inevitably changes—as all living relationships eventually do—can we recognise that change is not necessarily evidence that something has gone wrong?

Sometimes it means something has gone right.

Two people have learned enough about one another that the relationship can become more honest than the one they originally imagined.

That is why I no longer find the idea of a perfect dynamic particularly desirable.

Perfection has nowhere to go.

Nothing left to learn.

Nothing left to discover.

Nothing left to become.

Give me something human instead.

Something occasionally uncertain but deeply considered.

Something capable of surviving difficult conversations.

Something built upon respect rather than performance, trust rather than appearances, communication rather than assumption.

Give me two people who do not need to prove that their dynamic is better than anyone else’s because they understand that nobody else has to live inside it.

There is no perfect Dominant.

There is no perfect submissive.

There is no perfect dynamic.

There are simply people learning one another.

And perhaps the finest thing we can ever become is not the best Dominant or submissive.

It is the right one for the person who chose us.

That is more than enough.