How do you feel when you play?

A new dominant woman asked this of more experienced women in a discussion forum: “How do you feel?” She meant ‘when you play’, and it’s a great question that I’m not sure gets explored all that much from the dominant side.

She wrote:
So far, I don’t think I’m getting it… the thing that befuddles me the most, is how am I supposed to feel? Is there a way you should feel about this? Or does it make you feel a certain way? Is it pleasurable, like an orgasm, or like eating chocolate? Or is it something else? I read what people say here. Strangely enough, it lacks any description of sensation. The few times I have “Dressed the part”, I feel this surge. It’s like a confidence, if that makes any sense. But sadly, it doesn’t carry over into interaction. When play starts, the only thing I feel is awkward.

My response:
In those instances where everything emotionally, physically, and mentally clicks into place, what I feel most is connected: Intimately connected to my submissive. There is just us and nothing else exists. I can crawl under his skin and into his heart and mind and I know exactly what he feels and I know just how to pluck at his insides to get at his most vulnerable places. I both want to destroy and protect what I find there. Electric energy flow and intense intense intimacy.

When everything doesn’t click into place like that (just like how sex isn’t always some transcendental, super intimate experience), it’s more ‘fun, hot play, whee :))’, and that’s great too :).

To expand on that further, ‘it’s complicated’ and ‘it depends’, neither of which are useful answers for anybody.

That doesn’t make them untrue. It does depend: What kind of play is it, what’s my mood, what am I wanting out of it, are we doing something new, how long have we known each other, how close are we feeling that day, etc etc.

I’ve spoken about Domme space (dom space, top space) before, and I think that’s something else again. That’s the rarified air of the perfect storm.

Either way, though, there’s no ‘single way’ that it feels, not even when it’s with the same submissive, under what looks like the same circumstances, doing the same kind of play. People are too complicated for that and any small change in mood or emotion or stress or room temperature or goodness knows what can change how play pans out, where it goes, how it feels.

I think back to my very first, very simple, playtime where I flogged two men, one after the other. For some reason that I still can’t understand, playing with the first was ordinary, I felt nothing, it was literally just doing the physical act of flogging him, and thinking ‘well okay then I guess’. Playing with the second, though, was ‘oh my god’ level mind-blowing. I don’t know why. Something ‘clicked’ with the second one, we connected, even though I was a know-nothing newbie and didn’t really know how to do that and didn’t think I did anything different. It was an ‘us’ thing that was, in those days, largely out of my control. In all truth, if I hadn’t had played with number 2, I might have walked away thinking ‘huh, well, that was NOT what I thought it would be’ and drifted away from BDSM altogether.

For me ‘how it feels’ is different every time.

Sometimes the stars align and angels sing and we have some other-worldly shared experience, and sometimes I can make ‘amazing’ out of thin air by force of will and emotional work that I don’t even really understand, but I still know I’m capable of conjuring it up out of nothing.

When it’s not all that intimate-special, it can absolutely still be really hot and fun, or it may end up with laughter and silliness, or it may be pure top/bottom play for sport and sensation. And sometimes the entire mood is just wrong for some unknown reason and it feels like we’re emptily going through the motions, in which case I may try a few things to see if I can fix it, or I may just… stop, and maybe we cuddle and whisper together that it’s okay, that we’re good, instead. We probably don’t hear about or talk about those times enough. The ‘this-isn’t-working’ times.

It’s a good question, and hard to answer in a meaningful way.

So, how do you feel when you play?

Loves: 22
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  1. I’m going to come back to this maybe but I really think this is an important post. Of course, all your posts are but you know what I mean. I really like when you throw out into the world the things people don’t talk about, or don’t talk about enough.

    Here is my in the moment thought. I read that post of your first time alot. I wonder if it is a lot of what the second one gave back as your “object” as opposed to the first. I use object since I don’t know if they were submissive. But his feedback ..feeding into you..connecting s what made the second. The feedback itself.

    1. Yes, something like that. But why? How? I can’t (and couldn’t) see anything different, but yeah, something ‘clicked’.

      I suspect both of them walked away thinking they’d each had the same experience with me, but they didn’t.


  2. I think you hit the nail on the head. It feels different every single time as we are complicated beings. I learn and feel something new every time I play with pet and we have known each other a long time.

  3. I had to come back to this despite not wanting to take up more comments.
    Being newish in my submission most of mine has been fun hot wee!

    But when it’s more…when it clicks just right in all aspects with the same person…

    I feel everything! And I feel it at earth-shattering magnitudes. I feel scared and small, powerful, strong, and sexy, desired and animalistic, comforted and cared for, vulnerable and excited, all the emotions at once. I feel like I’m a part of her. I can’t see anyone but her. My mind stops and focuses on only her and that is so amazing since my mind never stops.
    And mostly I feel as if when I breathe, it’s her breath and when my heart races; it’s her heart. And I want to stay lost in her

    So yea, that’s the closest I can describe how I feel.

  4. It seems inaccurate to say the new dominant lady doesn’t know how to feel. Maybe she’s the new submissive lady, who’s not really satisfied with the apparent aesthetics.

    1. I’m not sure what you mean. That was an actual real question from an actual real newbie dipping her toe into dominating her partner, so how can it be inaccurate?

      Or are you saying ‘dominant women don’t have those feelings, where they are unsure or confused, and if she does, she must be submissive’. If that’s what you meant, you’re wrong about that.


  5. As in so much else we do, there’s probably a range of “feelings” among dominant women and no single “right” way that holds for everybody. I’m a male sub and obviously don’t have any direct personal experience, but looking at blogs and such suggests that some women have a sadistic streak and get off on watching their subs squirm and beg under the lash. Others are more about giving their partner what he wants. Still others are into the control they exercise by giving orders. There are some reports of women getting “into the zone” by focusing intently on how the partner is reacting rather than anything overtly sexual. Or all of the above, or changing emphasis as you get into it. No right way, just what’s right for you. You may have to experiment until you find what is.

    1. Absolutely it’s different for everybody, there’s no ‘supposed to’ or ‘should’, but if it just feels awkward, what she was really looking for was an answer to ‘Is this all there is?’ Because if so, I don’t get it.’


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