Femdom dating vs vanilla dating is like chalk and cheese for me.
I mentioned in a previous post that on the vanilla dating site, I take a very different approach to ‘when to meet’ than I do on BDSM sites.
There are a number of reasons for that that range from the obvious and simple to something more complex.
The first and biggest thing that influences my decision on ‘when to meet’ is that I’m an introvert and I get no pleasure or fun out of meeting people just because. So anyone who says ‘yeah, but it’s just a coffee so why not’ and then smiles smugly can fuck right off. I have to cycle up a bunch of social energy to do that and it’s mental and emotional work for me, unenjoyable tedious work.
That’s clearly not a difference between F/m and vanilla, though. That’s just the baseline.
With vanilla men, I’ll exchange a few emails and want to meet. Let’s fucking go already. With submissive men, I will take my time to see if there’s real potential before I’m willing to meet. They are very different.
The biggest reason is that vanilla men are simple. They either want casual sex or they want a relationship. They’ve had experience with both, they have an idea of what they want, there is nothing to unpack there. They always have photos, so with that and a few emails to see if they can string a sentence together well enough to be interesting, I want to meet to see if there’s any chemistry. That’s it. Done.
Submissive men are not simple. At all. Sure, they may want kinky play or they want a relationship, but there’s so much more to it.
Firstly, many many submissive men simply WILL NOT TURN UP to a meeting. My Domme friends are astounded when I say I’ve never had a no-show, and I think part of that is because of my approach to meeting. But pretty much every dominant woman I know who sets up a date with a sub considers ‘him actually turning up’ to be a crap shoot. It’s depressing and so very common.
Secondly, they may not really know what they want. They may say they know, but they may be fantasists, they may not have any experience with D/s, they may have really odd ideas about D/s or BDSM, they may have a lot of shame about their submission, they may think a ‘relationship’ is 24/7 play, they may think I’m going to cater to their fetishes, they may have very specific scripts they want followed, they may be unable to relate to me as an actual three-dimensional woman, they may… and etc etc.
Thirdly, they may know what they want, and it may be great and achievable, but they may still have a D/s relationship vision that is nothing close to what I want. There’s nothing wrong with wanting something different, but the truth is that ‘traditional’ vanilla relationships all pretty much work the same way. D/s relationships definitely do not all work the same way. The variety of ‘how to do D/s’ is endless, and I want to be sure that our relationship goals line up.
So before I will waste a second of social energy on meeting them, I want to wade through some of that to understand if there’s any potential at all.
There’s more though.
Submissive men offer me more than vanilla men, and I want to give them the best chance to reach me. And the best way I know of to do that is to give them an opportunity to get their grubby little fingers into my synapses, to show me something that will fire me up. And if they can do that, if they can communicate with me in a way that *works* for me (and vice versa of course), we will both know it, and it is leaps and bounds ahead of a cold start. I don’t discount physical chemistry at all, it’s important, but I know myself and I know that if someone can carve out space in my head, I can bring the sparks to fire up physical chemistry where otherwise there wouldn’t be any.
I know this because I’ve been in love with men who I would have passed on if I’d just met them straight up over a coffee. A big part of that is because an initial meeting is superficial, about pleasantries. Because of course it is. And I struggle with that, not doing it, but to see potential in it. I pretty much always come away with ‘yeah, they seem nice enough *shrug*‘.
With my last submissive, getting to know him before meeting was unavoidable because of the distance. But in hindsight, I know that if I’d met him immediately, I’d have thought he was perfectly nice and I would never have seen him again. There was no way that he could have articulated what was in his head in person, plus he wasn’t really my physical type, and on top of that he was really shy. But because we’d spent time in email and chat before meeting, I’d already seen who he was, and I wanted all of that, and him, and I was eager and willing to do the work to reach for it.
For me, a cold start from nowhere is super hard. I know some people connect well and easily with anyone and everyone, but I don’t. And I know that taking advantage of an opportunity to worm their way into my head is the best chance for someone to reach me.
And if it’s a burden or tedious or boring for a submissive to correspond with me in the ways that work for me, then we are ill-matched anyway, so as a weeding tool, it works just fine.
So yeah, that’s how it goes for me, and why my approach is wildly different for each.
10 comments
What a great blog post, it really explains the difference into a hook into someone so clearly.
When you first started out this way, did it take you time to get over the ‘making a mental image of someone in your head vs seeing them clearly’, or was that a natural talent? It’s something I see on Fet quite a bit with some people that first start out talking online or via email or chat, seeing a mental image of what they want to be there rather than the real thing (which I think is why a lot of people say ‘meet quick’. I’ve always been the opposite and found it easier to read people through their consistency and their words than in person when dealing with all that body language and omg I’m socialising thing, so I’m curious about your experience.
Thank you :).
And yes, it did take me time to manage the process. I had to learn from experience.
The first ever ‘corresponding, then meeting’ I ever had was vanilla way back in my 20s. Short story: He was a jerk (I’ve dubbed the whole experience ‘the relationship from hell’ :P). I forgave SO MUCH that I would not have tolerated for one second if we’d just met out in the world. I genuinely thought ‘yes but I *know* who he really is, the REAL him’ from our correspondence. Nope, dude was an arsehole, THAT was the ‘real him’. I was slow that time, but never again.
So absolutely, I had to learn that lesson, and now I kind of split them into two (‘how he thinks’ and ‘how he behaves’), and I take the time to see each for what it is, and take the time to reconcile the parts when we get together.
Ferns
Ahhh yes the 20’s shhhh we don’t talk about that, hehe. I had one (or two) wild head over heels with people I’d met online and they turned out badly as well, they were not exactly stable.
Looking back with hindsight (much much hindsight) I think it’s not so much my judgement was off (though I was naive and inexperienced with people) it was more I fooled myself because I wanted it to be true and ignored what my gut was telling me. I did the same with my first marriage (which was purely real space) so I think there was a lot of learning to trust my instincts and not twist myself in knots giving people ‘reasons’ for stuff.
“I fooled myself because I wanted it to be true and ignored what my gut was telling me”
I think the ‘ignore what your gut is telling you’ thing is super common and while it may be easier to do from a distance, it’s just as true in any face-to-face situation.
I do that too. Not between ‘arsehole or not’, that’s an easy one. But between ‘wanting to make something work and not feeling it’.
You’ve seen it here on my blog a lot: Where my gut says ‘meh’ and my head says ‘yeah but…’.
The kicker is that I HAVE made successful and great relationships with men who started at ‘meh’ and who I grew to love. I know it can work. BUT in those instances, I had long term access to those men in non-dating situations (via work, friends, etc), and that makes a difference. The current online dating paradigm of ‘get in and move fast or move on’ is never going to facilitate that.
Ferns
It seems to me that for a relationship to work between a vanilla man and a Dominant Woman, that man must accept that the woman is the leader.
There may be two or three possible variations of F/m:
1. Based on classic BDSM Dominants and Submissives.
2. Based on Fern’s vanilla subs.
3. Based on “Dominance Hierarchy”. (See the Wikipedia article).
I started to give number three serious thought last Sunday. I was relieved at change of shift by a co-worker who tends to volunteer information about her personal life. I don’t know what prompted her, but she described herself as an “Alpha”, and mentioned that she had butted heads with family members of both genders.
I believe that the term “Alpha” has been borrowed from the dominance hierarchy of wolf packs, with Alpha being the top tier of leadership. The second-in-command tier is referred to as “Beta”.
Primate species also have dominance hierarchies. One species, the bonobos, seem to have a sort of matriarchy.
My point being that our species may have a latent ability to revert to ancient patterns of dominance hierarchy.
From what Peppa said, it sounds like her relationships have involved dominance hierarchy. “…they also *get* me being dominant”.
Super post.
As you know, you and I are on opposite ends of the get to know one-another vs. meet immediately spectrum. It’s great to read such an articulate explanation of how you navigate these waters and why your way works for you.
Thanks!
We are on opposite ends. And your method worked beautifully for you, clearly :)).
I only realised how clear the reasons were with this recent spate of vanilla dating and my utter lack of patience with the ‘blah blah’ with vanilla men. In that domain I think I’m the one scaring potentials with my ‘shut up and meet me’ approach :P.
Ferns
This really resonates with me. I met my now-husband online over ten years ago on a forum. Would never have met or fallen for him if I hadn’t been able to get to know his mind and his thoughts first. I met my Domme IRL but at a convention and since she also lives far away we built our connection online through talking and messaging. I think it’s just something I need to forge a genuine connection with a person. It’s both great and a little frustrating because I tend to fall for people romantically (or friendwise) who live very far away from me.
It’s interesting isn’t it? How we all work so differently.
Fun fact: One of my ex-subs contacted me on a dating site after we split up just to let me know he was back on it, a courtesy. He had a new nickname so I didn’t know who it was, and he left the ‘hey it’s me’ part to the end of the email. I read the email, which was funny and smart and a bit flirty and *immediately* felt ‘it’, was getting all ‘oh hell yes!’ over this stranger. Then at the end he wrote something like ‘anyway, if you haven’t figured it out yet, it’s me :)’. Boo!
My point being: There are some men who ‘bring it’ (whatever ‘it’ is) for me, and I recognise it and react to it in my gut. The fact that ‘how my ex is’ triggered that response even when I didn’t recognise him and he wasn’t trying to woo me or anything, reinforces this idea to me. The ones who ‘work’ for me somehow manage to tweak some response with ‘how they are’ and I see it and feel it very quickly and that’s what I love. I *can* do it differently, but yeah, I know ‘it’ when I see it.
Congratulations on finding your husband and your Domme this way :).
Ferns
Nice write up, I’m keeping it just simple as my typing skills are atrocious or put it another way, slow.