Taking a closer look at my motives for submitting and for submitting to sex workers more generally

I’d love to hear from fellow slaves and submissives about how they came to their submission, what it stems from, and how they remain true to the truth in submission.

Are my motives healthy?  Taking a look at them certainly is.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately.  For one, as oestrogen has changed my body, it has had a big impact on my mind.  It has also had a profound impact on my arousal—what does or does not arouse me, and what arousal feels like in my body.  Learning about this and listening to it is one of the most important parts of my life.

Readers here will know that I believe very fundamentally that our erotic landscape is a language that speaks to our inner world—the things that turn us on tell us an awful lot about traumas and other issues which affect us.  Understanding the origins of our kinks does nothing to diminish them—I might even suggest that it enhances them.

Readers will also know that my erotic landscape, as it does for all transgender people I suspect, is changing quite radically right now.

My erotic landscape was founded on submission.  My way of processing being male and still desiring the erotic coupling of the female, required me to apologise to my partner, to all women, for being a man.  That came out as submission.  It was also forged in the crucible of my relationship with my mother, and her own man hate (justifiable rage for many women of her era, but also from the specific disappointments of being married to an abusive and soul-crushing husband—my father).  I could only exist in her world as a baby.  Who or what is more submissive than a baby?  Who or what is more innocent than a baby?

But am I innocent today?  Can we stay innocent after puberty?  Boy, did I hate puberty!  What am I saying?  Maybe my original motives were pure, but now that I am an adult, I surely owe it to myself and my partners to figure out if they are still pure.  In other words, do I submit for the right reasons?  And what about my particular desire to submit to sex workers?  The word “sex” being the key in that.

What else did I lose through puberty? I was beautiful until I was about 10. An ugly ducking to the outside world, but in my reflection I saw no gender, and my fantasy world did not jar with my reflection. As the tendrils of puberty gradually inserted themselves into my psyche, what I saw and felt reflected back at me was ugly, undesired. Dysphoria became intense, real. And I found the outward manifestations of puberty so disgusting…whereas I found that what was happening to the girls I knew was that they were blossoming. I didn’t like my smell, I didn’t like how my voice changed…how I went from being able to sing like an angel to sounding like a dying cat. I didn’t like my nose, or zits, or even my energy. And I hated how it was changing me physically. Never to be mis-gendered “incorrectly” again. Sigh.

The reasons for submission

I do it out of a need.  I need to submit.  It isn’t something that I can really “control”.  I am not sure I would even wish to control it.  It feels too good.  Too right. 

As a sexually intact male-bodied human, this was manifested in a state of arousal that was so strong it put me almost immediately into sub-space, and kept me there in this strange vibratory frequency.

Today, it is very different.  The arousal has gone, but the need remains.  This is due to oestrogen taking over, and for my emotional and physical needs changing along with it.  Now, this need is not a need to procreate, but rather one to connect—to touch physically and emotionally with another person.

But the submission is still there.  And this mental and spiritual change has allowed me to examine it more closely.  What I think is going on is that submission is a form of container.  That being in submission to another person, experiencing power exchange, in accepting the structure and respect baked into a D/s dynamic, particularly for someone as free-form and entrepreneurial as me, is to willingly accept structure in my life, imposed from the outside, because I can recognise it as good for me, helpful, healing.

And oddly, this also runs parallel to the ADD mind.  An ADD child benefits in their studies by the presence of an adult in the room.  In the room.  Just there.  And I can really tap into that.  Reading, studying, just doing, has always been faster, better, longer when someone else I care about is in the room—as an adult and growing up…and this applies to friend, colleague, anyone who I might wish to please on some level.  

In other words, such a person provides a container.

And this is what the essence of a Domme is for me.  A container.  And the beauty of it, is that I feel contained even when I am not with her.  This general feeling that there is someone out there with whom all interactions fall into this category of containing and being contained is to make me feel “safe” and contained at all times.  Session time, play time are re-ups.  But the relationship offers that.

How do you judge the value of the container?

I don’t know if this makes me an outlier in the world of BDSM.  I suspect it does, particularly with the pro-Dommes of this world, as my guess is that most clients turn to this outlet as a way to achieve some form of sexual gratification or release.  Where tease and denial fits into that, which seems to be just about the most popular kink, is hard to place.

And there is no doubt that seeing a pro- is a very expensive habit.  At least on the face of it.  In my own life I have regarded it as an investment (and this is a word I use with great care, knowing that its use is often misguided in this context and meriting its own post).  It is an investment in self-care.  I don’t know if it is wrong of me to turn to a pro not because I want to get off, but because they heal me and push me in ways that I feel I need for my general sense of well-being and effectiveness.

I also know that I didn’t “need” this to be effective before.  But I also feel that I am becoming more effective as a human with every passing day, and it is the pro- who is pushing me, whether consciously or simply by the mere fact of her existence, and in the vary particular case of the kind of person she is…and what that does to me.  Inspires, yes, but also role models values and a way of being that calls to my best self.

How do you know when things are going wrong?

With ex-Mistress the creative muse abandoned me.  I stopped writing.  Not this blog, which I more or less kept going, but more my publishing/published/to be published writing.  And that was a huge warning sign to me even then…and what played out in our dynamic showed why.

What went wrong?

I am pretty sure I understand what was not working for me in that dynamic, and in a way it isn’t really relevant other than that it was work.  Too much processing.  What was driving that was that too much of our dynamic was centred around play, and that made me uncomfortable.  That was about me, not about her.  

Play felt about me.  My kink appears to be “how to be about her?”  In submission, how can it be that my needs even exist?  And this strikes to the core of what this submission actually is.  I remember saying to ex-Mistress that I wanted to serve her in real ways, ways which enriched her life.  I had glimpses of that, but only glimpses.

And rather than tease me, they frustrated me, undermined my trust in her, my faith that she was really at all engaged with me on a human level.  After all, a “slave” in the context of a pro-client relationship is really only of value for the financial contribution.  I have no issue with paying, but being confined to the container of session-time play didn’t and doesn’t work for me.

And why not, when it seems to work for everyone else who accepts the nature of the dynamic?  I am ruling out the people who develop an idea that they are going to have a romantic relationship with their pro-Domme.  

What am I saying?

I need to be needed in order to feel safe.  That is the progression in the dynamic of the relationship.  I go to her to feel safe.  I submit to feel safe.  Feeling safe is the byproduct of a container.  I need to feel that the container is safe.  Continuity, longevity are the things which make it safe.  Not being needed, or suspecting as much, was telling me that the container wasn’t safe.  

Yes, one can pay for a session and so on, and so on, forever and ever…but that has nothing to do with the safety of the relationship.  In other words, I don’t get a feeling of safety from my therapist because of the money, especially since the money is small.  I get the safety feeling from the history, the energy, from the sharing, the openness, and yes, it is two-way.  A therapist doesn’t share, and yet they do, naturally.  And that has to do with how the person treats me, the kind of relationship they allow for.

All of these dynamics were what I experienced and continue to experience in the world of the pro-client dynamic.  But the person/people I see now don’t fetishize me.  I feel human.  And that’s really important to me.

When you let someone into your life to work on you, it is a very sensitive place.  We pay for their time, whether it is therapy or BDSM, but how we then use it is a mutually created situation.  If it works for both parties, then it keeps going, if not, then it does not.

What makes the pro-client a better place to experience this?  The lack of ulterior motive.  At least relative to a partner.  The latter feels too risky, whereas with a pro I could say, ‘could you please consider teaching me such and such, or it would be nice if.”  I would be terrified to do this with my partner.  Too much to lose.

Can one become attached, even fall in love in this context?  Yes, I think so.  I am not afraid of such a thing.  I am not afraid of falling in love with a provider.  I am not afraid of forever having a client-provider relationship with a person I am in love with.  Part of the love that develops is to provide for the provider.  Paying is a mark of respect, but it is also a source of joy.  To give that, and to give it regularly, is nice, as you can think that you are enriching her life.  And as a former working husband, I can tell you, it is an awful lot simpler.

And yes, at least in my case, what I get back is real and meaningful and profoundly helpful.  It helps me to grow as a person, it helps me to achieve potential, it helps me feel contained, which in turn helps me to produce, thus feeding my ability to generate income, returns.  It is an investment in myself.  Can you ask that of a partner?  I don’t think so.  I think it is unhealthy.

Can you ask that of a provider?  Absolutely.  That is what they excel it.  And if they don’t, you are most likely just incompatible, and there is another one with whom you will gel.  I was desperately sad to find myself at a dead-end with ex-Mistress, but also knew that working for 6 months at trying to make the dynamic find harmony was telling the same story—that it wasn’t healthy and it wasn’t going in the right direction.  That isn’t to say that I didn’t learn tremendously from it, and that I continue to process those lessons.  I do.

It is more to say, I deserve different.  Not necessarily better.  Every human on both sides of the slash is different, and we all deserve to have our needs met.  And when it isn’t working, it is prime time to work with someone else.  The relational cost of a change is much less impactful than it would be were it with a lifestyle person.

So, I ask you, what do you expect from others that you shouldn’t just expect from yourself?  My conclusion?

Communication that is honest and open is the critical factor.  It is usually easier with a pro than with a partner.  I am finding this now, but my relationship with ex-Mistress was a clear illustration that things don’t always work that way.  And that is the end of trust.