How/when to back off

Marquis

Jack Dawkins
Joined
Jul 9, 2002
Posts
10,462
Last night a sub that I have a good level of familiarity with rejected my domination in a way that really surprised me.

I made her an offer she couldn't refuse. I make dinner, she IS dessert. We're comfortable enough with each other that we do a decent amount of D/s posturing. She refers to me as Sir, and usually obeys me without question. Although she has long had submissive fantasies, I am her first explicit Dom, and I have tried to be careful not to take things too quickly with her.

We sat down to eat, and she noticed she didn't have any silverware. She got up to get some, but I stopped her. I told her she was to eat with her hands while I dined like a civilized man.

Now this is a person that has done significantly grosser things for me, but the hesitation in her body language was clear as daylight. My first reaction was to get into enforcer mode, and it must have been obvious in my body language, because she reacted to it. But not in a submissive "oh no, the bad man is going to get me" way, but rather in a "I don't want to upset you, but I am not doing this" way. A few years ago I might not have been able to tell the difference.

We were silent for a while, then I asked her to come sit next to me on the couch and tell me what was wrong. A long conversation ensued and it turned out the problem was emotional and had nothing to do with my request.

It ended up OK, but I went through a series of emotions that I am sure I will deal with again, and I am curious as to people's reactions to these situations, from both sides of the whip.

At first I felt confusion and anger over her refusal over what I saw as such a small request. I had half a mind to grab her hair and stick her face in the food, but this is a good bitch and I couldn't afford to blow her over a guilty pleasure.

As it began to occur to me that there was some reason for this that needed to be adressed, I became very concerned that if I wasn't firm with her here, pretty soon I was going to be getting topped from the bottom. Again, I can recall a big mistake I made with this in the past, where presented in this situation I would throw up my arms like a baby and promise to never ever dom the person again. That'll show 'em.

My confidence as a dom is a lot stronger than it used to be, so I can take a little rejection these days without pouting, but I still wonder if there isn't a point where you are just spoiling your sub. How do you go about giving a sub the room they sometimes need, without giving them the impression that you're going soft?
 
This would be the 60,000 dollar question.

I say listen to mr. Gut. Erring on the side of going easy can usually be corrected and compensated for much more easily than erring on the side of going too hard.

If someone shuts down on you, has a lifeless kind of response, I think it's a good time to take up your role as human confidant.

I don't think if you reserve this for those times you will lose face.
 
Incidentally I think your plan was hot and your exit well done.
 
From a sub standpoint it sounds to me like you did an excellent job of dealing with the situation. I wouldn't have seen your reaction as spoiling me or being less Masterful- but rather working within a situation to deal withthe unexpected. How were you supposed to know she had an emotional hangup over not using her silverware?

If you'd pushed odds are she'd have pushed back.

If you'd tossed her aside you'd have lost what sounds like is a D/s situation that works for you.

So you did the smart thing IMO and worked with her. It is possible to sit side by side, discuss a problem, and still be a Master. I don't see any weakness in doing that...
 
CutieMouse said:
From a sub standpoint it sounds to me like you did an excellent job of dealing with the situation. I wouldn't have seen your reaction as spoiling me or being less Masterful- but rather working within a situation to deal withthe unexpected. How were you supposed to know she had an emotional hangup over not using her silverware?

If you'd pushed odds are she'd have pushed back.

If you'd tossed her aside you'd have lost what sounds like is a D/s situation that works for you.

So you did the smart thing IMO and worked with her. It is possible to sit side by side, discuss a problem, and still be a Master. I don't see any weakness in doing that...

Her emotional issue wasn't over using silverware, it had to do with unrelated personal issues between us.
 
Marquis said:
Her emotional issue wasn't over using silverware, it had to do with unrelated personal issues between us.

Well, I still say you did good. ;)
 
rosco rathbone said:
Ditto to grace

Whatever happened to "oh, shut the fuck up"?!

If I can't count on you to be the devil's advocate I'm sure to drown in a sea of PC BDSM. :D
 
Marquis said:
Whatever happened to "oh, shut the fuck up"?!

If I can't count on you to be the devil's advocate I'm sure to drown in a sea of PC BDSM. :D

Just make sure you, one day, end up eating like a civilized man while she eats with her hands, no matter how long it takes. Then lie back and watch her.
 
I think I can understand your inner dilemma, though.

Is she now going to behave in this manner to get her point across all the time instead of just coming to you and talking about it?

Does this have the potential in other circumstances to be a test of your own boundries, in which maybe she actually WANTS you to push a little harder?

If you assess the situation wrong, and give her too much leaway at the wrong time, will she doubt your abilities as a dominant?

If any if these scenarios is the case, then how are you supposed to determine when to respond in what way?

In the typical scenario, a long term relationship would provide you with the abilty to read circumstances better, but if this is just another casual fling, it is a little more difficult to be accurate. Time will tell, I guess, and I'm just relieved that there was enough familiarity between you two for you to react appropriately.

I wish you luck in the future, as you will likely encounter this again.
 
sincerely_helene said:
I think I can understand your inner dilemma, though.

Is she now going to behave in this manner to get her point across all the time instead of just coming to you and talking about it?

Does this have the potential in other circumstances to be a test of your own boundries, in which maybe she actually WANTS you to push a little harder?

If you assess the situation wrong, and give her too much leaway at the wrong time, will she doubt your abilities as a dominant?

If any if these scenarios is the case, then how are you supposed to determine when to respond in what way?

In the typical scenario, a long term relationship would provide you with the abilty to read circumstances better, but if this is just another casual fling, it is a little more difficult to be accurate. Time will tell, I guess, and I'm just relieved that there was enough familiarity between you two for you to react appropriately.

I wish you luck in the future, as you will likely encounter this again.

Thanks for delineating a lot of my concerns.

"Casual fling" has a bad connotation to it. I no longer assign labels to my relationships, but we've been doing our thing for a few months now and I don't have a deadline on pulling the plug. I see other people and she is allowed to, but as of right now chooses not to. I've never met anyone she knows since the day I gave her my phone number.

I do worry that my understanding of her is limited by the scope of our relationship, but for now I think this is better.
 
Marquis said:
Thanks for delineating a lot of my concerns.

"Casual fling" has a bad connotation to it. I no longer assign labels to my relationships, but we've been doing our thing for a few months now and I don't have a deadline on pulling the plug. I see other people and she is allowed to, but as of right now chooses not to. I've never met anyone she knows since the day I gave her my phone number.

I do worry that my understanding of her is limited by the scope of our relationship, but for now I think this is better.

I guess I particularly feel for your situation because there are a quite a number of us out there who do get off on the intensity of pushing the boundries of our partner. People make the mistake of associating limitations as being something only the submissive possesses, but that is so not the case.

The problem is, push back at the wrong time, and you're not only placing the level of trust and emotional welfare of the submissive at risk, but you could very well land yourself behind bars.
 
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Marquis said:
Whatever happened to "oh, shut the fuck up"?!

If I can't count on you to be the devil's advocate I'm sure to drown in a sea of PC BDSM. :D

I know I'm not RR, but I'd hate for you to drown, so . . . .

Shut the Fuck Up.

There, feel better? Don't say I've never done anything for you.
 
I stop when I feel that I may do something out of spite. A masochistic urge turned inside out that will backfire on the dominant. Or when I feel what is asked is going to be hurtful to me in some sort of fundamental way. Or when although it's something I "would do", I'm not prepared to do it in that particular relationship. I do "play casually", and the boundaries are often different than they would be in a very committed relationship.

Boundaries can and will be overcome, but there are some that immediate sheer force of will on both parts can only succeed in breaking down the relationship. The lines can be deceivingly odd.

In talking about it we usually find out we have very different perspectives on the activity, it's meaning or expectations. Sometimes it can bridged through talking, often it's put on the backburner for further exploration later, and sometimes it becomes a limit to that particular relationship.

I am responsible first and foremost to myself. I don't blame the top for those boundaries - they're mine. Stepping up control at any point is fairly easy - going backwards because too much was given is much more difficult. Everything in it's own time.

Post-stalk of sun fox :kiss:
 
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I agree with rosco. I can't believe that. ;)

There's nothing wrong with letting the situation go this one time, so long as eventually, you make sure that it happens.. then she's not getting out of it by sandbagging you with something else.

That's honestly not my style, so I can't make a more in-depth comment.. I would have done what you wanted without complaint and tackled the personal issue later, cause the times a man's cooked for me are few and far between, and not to be discarded. :D
 
tiny hijack


*stalks larksparrow, cause she missed her* :kiss:


/end tiny hijack
 
OK, here's my two CP's:

Are you sure that the relationship issues were the real thing bothering her? If you're not, this might need some further delving into. Sometimes we submissives (submissives? heck, this is a human trait), when faced with something that is phobic or irrationally distateful will pull up something in our minds that is much more plausible as the " real resaon" for our otherwise irrational behavior. People also do this when the issue brought up by the activity is too painful to look at directly.

Assuming that unrelated personal issues were actually at the core of her refusal, were they dealt with sucesfully as far as you can tell? Or are these things that can't be resolved, such as her wanting a different sort of relationship than you do?

For the future, assuming this was not an issue about silverware: a way to handle this sort of thing that I've seen work well is that after a sucessful talk (she is feeling good and back to her old submissive self again) you go right back to the activity that she balked at before. You don't wait for another day or even for a few hours to pass. You give her a loving kiss or hug (or however you show affection), walk her gently back to the table, and then very kindly but firmly have her do the thing that was bothering her before. Not waiting on this is important when establishing control over somebody, so that she learns the lesson that others in this thread have pointed out as being so important: that while you care for her a lot, she cannot manipulate you with her emotional upsets. Not that she was necessarily doing that this time, but it's something submissives pick up on quickly if you don't follow up kindness and a concern for their feelings with your original firm intent.

If she balks again when you do this, you know the issue is not really about what you just talked about, and some more exploring may be necessary. Some dominants see this sort of talk-exploration as tedious work and no fun compared to the actions of domination. But it is actually part and parcel of any intensive domination that does more than scratch the surface potential of the relationship: the better you know somebody, understand what makes them tick, the better you can sucessfully control them.

Whether you do any of the talk-exploration stuff and how extensively you do it depends a lot on your goals for the relationship, of course: how deep you want it to go with this particular person. If you don't know that yet, what many people have suggested above is best: play it by ear and err on the side of caution.
 
I've got to agree with TaintedB. There are times when I react badly to a scene without really knowing why. My brain seems to come up with some more plausable reason because I can't figure out what it is about the scene that bothers me. So, I think you did the right thing by stopping the scene and talking to her about it.

Now in terms of after the talk, again, I agree with TaintedB. It's cool to go back to the scene after you've talked over the issue and pick up where you left off. I've been through that before and it worked really well for me. I liked the security of knowing we could talk it out and then being able to go back and feel his control again immediately. It really re-confirmed the trust between us as well as the boundaries of who is in control.
 
sunfox said:
I agree with rosco. I can't believe that. ;)

There's nothing wrong with letting the situation go this one time, so long as eventually, you make sure that it happens.. then she's not getting out of it by sandbagging you with something else.

That's honestly not my style, so I can't make a more in-depth comment.. I would have done what you wanted without complaint and tackled the personal issue later, cause the times a man's cooked for me are few and far between, and not to be discarded. :D

Right, there is a big difference between "quitting" and "sneaky patience". Two of my biggest precepts come into play here: Pick Your Battles and Never Play The Other Fellow's Game.

Challenges are fun.

And of course TB is well worth listening to, since she Knows Everything,

:p
 
I'm with rosco's "shelve the idea and revisit when she has almost forgotten about it" take on it, rather than stepping right back into the scene-- I'd intepret the latter as insecure, somehow.
 
Desdemona said:
Now in terms of after the talk, again, I agree with TaintedB. It's cool to go back to the scene after you've talked over the issue and pick up where you left off. I've been through that before and it worked really well for me. I liked the security of knowing we could talk it out and then being able to go back and feel his control again immediately. It really re-confirmed the trust between us as well as the boundaries of who is in control.

Ok, now it's time for me $.02 ...

While this has worked for you, this kind of thing does not work for everyone. We pushed sylvan when he was here, he pushed back, we worked on the reasons he pushed back, but we did back off ... a little ... because breaking him is not what we are wanting to do, and doing that would have broken him. We still pushed, but we slowed down. Perhaps that was, in the long run, a mistake, but again, breaking him is not what we were looking to do, and even knowing that now he is balking at moving, I would not change anything that we did with him one single bit.

It is an assessment of each submissive that must be made by each dominant, as well as an assessment of the relationship existing between them. In this case, if I read it correctly, Marquis decided to shelve the idea for the moment after discussing things with her. If that is what he thought was best, then it isn't our place to say that he made the wrong decision, as we cannot see the interactions between him and her - and for the record, I think that he made the right decision ... as long as he does take the scene back of the shelf in a little while (if, assuming, that he still has a relationship with this particular sub). And another thought that occured to me as I review this - asserting control over the sub again immediately after the talk doesn't have to be jumping right back into the same scene. For us with sylvan, it was to give him new orders - ones that we knew that he might not be happy about, but that he would do.

We know that what works for us doesn't work for everyone - hell, what works for ghosst doesn't work for sylvan ... just like anything else in this lifestyle, there is no one single, simple answer. For ghosst, talking about it and going right back in would most likely work, for sylvan, it most likely wouldn't wouldn't ... it also depends on what the scene involves as to whether or not each approach would work - I can imagine a few that rushing back in wouldn't work for ghosst, and maybe one or two that rushing back in would work for sylvan. It all depends - on what the scene is, on the mental/emotional state of the sub, and on what they state the issues are, as well as 100s of other little things that could also be occuring at the time.

Miss Karen
 
Netzach said:
I'm with rosco's "shelve the idea and revisit when she has almost forgotten about it" take on it, rather than stepping right back into the scene-- I'd intepret the latter as insecure, somehow.

That's one of those fine art of domination distinctions; really could go either way.

Now me, I'd bide my time and when she ended up doing it; I'd be smirking like a motherfucker and she would know why.
 
I might've gotten back to the dinner demand, but it was clearly time for sex after our talk. Nothing punctuates a good lesson like knocking the pussy out.

Oh yeah, and although I haven't told her, I think she knows she'll be making up this assignment. Like all belated assignments however, the new task must be more challenging to make it fair.

I will wait until she is ready, besides revenge is a dish best served cold. Think: expensive restaurant.
 
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