Submission Can Be Many Things

by Dark Vulcan To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object. Simone de Beauvoir Submission is a state of mind, not a status. It is a choice, and in BDSM play it is the gift the bottom brings to the scene. However the role-play…

Using Training to Keep BDSM Relationships Passionate

by Ayzad While physical practices allow fantasy to run wild, what really thrills BDSM connoisseurs is the opportunity to take advantage of the full-time regime to push the envelope of the most cerebral forms of domination. Few things can prove one’s ownership of a slave more than taking complete control over their life: when they…

Developing Rules for Your Relationship

If you’ve bounced in here from our previous article A Reverse Pyramid Look at Rules in BDSM Relationships, you might be thinking “well, he’s no fun” and it’s true, it wasn’t a particularly fun look at rule making. But, in that article I was talking about the newbie error of substituting rules for Dominance, and…

A Reverse Pyramid Look at Rules in BDSM Relationships

I think it’s common for Dominants/Masters who haven’t had a lot of experience with relationships to go into a new coupling issuing rules the way a parking inspector issues tickets. Way too many, way too quickly, and about all the wrong things. It’s understandable where this comes from. We quickly discover that Dominance/submission is a…

Shy and Introverted Masters – A Field Guide to Recognizing and Loving Them

When people think of a leader, the image that comes to mind is, more often than not, a dominant, assertive extrovert. In the West, extroversion has long been a coveted trait, and in workplaces you’ll find them being promoted more rapidly and getting better performance reviews. That’s exasperated by media and a huge personal growth…

Dominant Energy and the Small Drops That Are Life

The word “tired” is one of those clumsy English words (like “love”) that means a lot less without context. Is it “tired” like “haven’t had enough sleep”, “tired” like “just ran a marathon” or “tired” like “I’ve spent the day with a piled up inbox and the boss on my back”? Synonyms are a lot…

What Makes a Reality Real?

What is reality made out of? We all know that water is made up of two hydrogen and one oxygen molecule, snapped perfectly together to form the shape of liquid under a certain gravitational force and atmospheric pressure. But what about our own reality? Is it so logical? Discussion about BDSM’s association with mental illness…

Piercing and Aftercare – Master got my Nipples Pierced!

A few weeks ago, Master had both of my nipples pierced by professional piercer. I’m still in the healing phase for that and I wanted to share some thoughts on the experience and its meaning to me. FINDING THE PIERCING HEADSPACE There’s always a background story to a piercing or tattoo. Some people get piercings…

How Real is a BDSM Lifestyle? As Real as You Want it to Be

by Joseph D. All sex is a power play. We like to deny it. We like to pretend that sex is birds and bunnies and bubbling brooks, that sex can’t be evil, nasty power dynamics, but that’s what makes it hot for people, whether they cop to it or not. Even the most vanilla sexual…

Underneath Conflict and Frustration

Recently, my Master and i have bumped into some difficult situations in our long distance M/s dynamic. We have been making some deliberate changes to the control and management parts of our relationship, and in the past two weeks we have had to take time out for some intense discussions almost every two to three…