For someone who is quite new to formal D/s, the feeling of sub-space is alien and deeply comforting. The deep comfort comes from familiarity, as if to say “ah yes, there you are. I know what you need.”
It takes almost nothing for me to find the way into sub-space. I don’t know if that is common for newbies or something peculiar to me. When you are new to this world, are there just more triggers?
The first time I met my Domme I asked her what she expected of me, and she said, “be open, let yourself feel, let whatever emotions are there to come to the surface.”
In the past few years I have felt my emotional range getting stronger. I had put it down to love for my SO and for my children. And usually, the feeling I get of love that triggers tears is when we are together, often just talking. But I started getting triggered at work too, whenever I made speeches to my team, to the company, whenever I was dealing with something emotional.
In the work I do with companies, emotions are a big part of the process…companies in distress, divisions in distress, leaders and people in distress. I play not a role as therapist, but more one as medium. I remember once early in my career the PA to the MD of our UK office (who was not at all impressed by a man that looked like me—stick thin, hair in a bob, occasional barrettes, occasional nail polish—and all in a VERY conservative milieu) asked me “to what do you attribute your promotion to Associate Partner?” Her question was dripping with disdain. At the time I had hair with dark purple and auburn highlights. I was feeling good about the promotion, not least because it meant that the global leadership felt I was someone who would go all the way. I was also pleased because I had gotten to this point at the fastest allowable pace. I considered her question and answered truthfully.
“I live my client’s problems as if they were my own. I crawl inside the emotion of what they are doing, and I live it, feel it, and take it into me. That is an enormous relief to them, it helps me understand better what we are dealing with, and it allows us both to proceed because we are in it together. I was promoted last week because my clients wished it so.”
It reminds me of a time very early in my career when a client visited our offices and saw that I sat at a desk outside of my boss’s office. This was a holdover from when I was her secretary. I managed his $25m budget. He was offended that I didn’t have an office, let alone a nice one. He went to my boss’s boss right then and demanded an office for me, much to my embarrassment.
Submissives do get to have their cake and eat it.
I regard the whole debate about alpha’s and beta’s to be supremely silly. It is fetish narrative. If a woman wants me to be a bull, I will be a bull, even if I would much prefer to caress her and feel her, and writhe with her in passionate embrace. Everybody needs to be taken with gusto every once in a while, hair pulled, smacked, and dominated. I can do that. But I would never take that…as in for granted…she will tell me “f@£X” me…which is code for being a bull.
This emotional feeling that I associate with submission is the source of my power. That I can feel what others feel and absorb it into myself. It almost always makes me cry. Even just thinking about it can make me cry. But these are not pain tears, they are joy tears, joy of emotions shared, joy of beauty. What is different in D/s is how intense they are.
I asked my Domme the first time I met her if it would be okay if I cried. In truth, I didn’t know whether I would, but I was more worried that I might cry uncontrollably…and I don’t want to be afraid of losing control.
My voyage of discovery has led me to connect all of these states together. I have learned thanks to Mistress that ADD is a pathology of sensitivity above all else. I have learned from another Domme that ADD people bury their emotions to protect themselves from this sensitivity. This is something true of my life. As I grow, and possibly thanks to my children and my SO, who together have provided an emotional grounding in real life that is stable and solid and reliably there, I have been able to unfurl my feelings and express them.
And I love doing it. I feel that every time I let these particular emotions to take over, that I grow tremendously as a person. Sub-space triggers a high. It triggers a rush of dopamine and endorphins which induce a state of euphoria in me that can last for days, weeks, even months—long enough until I see her again.
What I love most about it is the feeling of personal growth that it engenders. I feel like I am getting somewhere, so deeply, so fundamentally…that my power grows every time I experience it, that my ability to shape and contribute to the world around me grows with it. My Domme is a medium to a spirit world, a high priestess without whom I couldn’t make the journey. And as she brings me back, looking into my face, her eyes dancing across my features as mine look back at hers, and they are synced together for those moments where just looking at someone is a bond of infinite strength, I feel filled with power and glory.
And right now, one of the greatest motivators in my life to achieve, to be successful, to grow as a human, to have impact, is from that simple desire to know that my Mistress is proud of me, that she likes what I have done, how I am growing, and how I respond to her teaching.
In this context, please understand why I rage against discrimination, why I love and respect Sex Workers so much, why I regard transgender and non-binary people to have the greatest gift of all, and why I regard violence and discrimination against women in particular the greatest sin of all.
Beyond Non-Binary 
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