What is the hardest type of relationship problem subs have? Plainly, it’s recognizing — and addressing —self-sabotage.
It may start on day one in a power relationship. Or, it may crop up as the normal conflicts and mistakes in relationships push them to fix things before they have the emotional tools to do so. Self-sabotage does not only happen to subs, of course.
Today I am specifically homing in on the signs of relationship self-sabotage for submissive people and how they can work on themselves instead of trying to change their partner.
Take a Self-Inventory
Self-work is key for people new to the lifestyle — and for people who find it tough to maintain a satisfying power relationship. This is where people start to figure out if they’ve been engaging in self-sabotage.
The problems may start when they have unrealistic expectations or wrongful assumptions about how power relationships should work. Sometimes it’s about their personal baggage. For others, it’s the impact of childhood or adolescent traumas they have stuffed down. The repercussions showed up in kink when power was exchanged. They end up frustrated that they cannot dive into submission in real life the way they did in their fantasies.
Since I work on such issues almost daily, I’ll guide you through the five most common methods of self-sabotage, the ways people unwittingly create heartache for themselves and their doms.
Believing BDSM is Problem-Free
Carolyn came to me with anger in her heart against the world of BDSM. She had spent three years trying to find the perfect dom and had failed on every front. She had read a pile of books about BDSM and scoured the Internet; she attended numerous munches and a couple of educational outreach programs. She’d heard masters and subs talk about the joys they’d found, but she could not find hers.
The BDSM world, she concluded, did not live up to its reputation. Her experiments with doms were disappointments. Either they didn’t give her hard enough sensation or she felt they violated her consent. Was it all bullshit? Was everyone pretending to be happy? She envied couples who appeared to have no problems. She would pick apart their relationships to prove to herself that they couldn’t possibly be happy.
We are Humans First
It took her a while to accept that her expectations were unrealistic. For example, she thought that once a sub met a dom, they’d each know their role, and play it out without problems. She ignored the human factor: people are still people. Our individual needs and desires and, yes, our weaknesses too, factor into our relationship’s success.
Dominants are not all-knowing, 100% confident mind-readers who naturally understand your limits, nor are they sages who will take you on exactly the journey you jerked off to for years unless you: (a) find a good match and (b) were honest and firm about your own needs in terms they understood.
It Works Best When Things Line Up
Like falling in love, BDSM can feel magical because of the power of our hormones. But hormones show us what we want to see, not what’s true. The truth is, not all doms are right for all subs. Adjusting to this practical reality is part of the process.
Before Carolyn could build a reality-based relationship with a dom, she had to approach kinky people as real people, not just roles. If her kinks/fetishes didn’t line up with theirs, the outcomes would be, at best, problematic. Real people don’t conform to the scripts in your head.
Basic Guidelines When Choosing Dominants
Think carefully about what you want from a BDSM relationship. This is YOUR journey. Pay attention when they talk about things that you’d rather not hear. Sooner or later, those very things will be impossible to ignore.
You have a responsibility to yourself to examine who they are, what they want, and whether you feel confident that they’re a good fit for you. Do that before making a commitment. You are equal until you are collared or verbally committed to the dominant.
Standing up for what you want does not make you a bad submissive. It makes you a wise one. Even if you agree to a Total Power Dynamic, that doesn’t give others the right to hurt your feelings, exploit you, or require that you invest more energy in the relationship than they do.
Don’t Expect a Dom to Fix You
My client Yvonne’s dom was willing to work with her to fix their relationship. The problem was she couldn’t tell him what she wanted, not in any significant detail, so their sex life and power dynamics were collapsing. Now her biggest fear was that she would lose him. After a dysfunctional childhood and an abusive first marriage, she used manipulations, tears, and outbursts of anger to get attention. She could feel Jim’s interest fading. He loved her but her emotional baggage was too heavy for him.
Fix Yourself First
If you have baggage, the way to move forward is to heal yourself first. Doms who promise to fix all your problems are as naive as submissives who assume they have that power.
A good dominant supports and guides your journey. They work with you to set a positive agenda. Yvonne didn’t have the tools to help Jim help her! Yvonne decided to try a professional and asked for my help.
Now she had a place to work on the abuse she had endured, overcome some demons, and calm down. She accepted responsibility for her emotional blackmail. She worked on being more transparent and truthful with him, overcoming her anxiety he would reject her if he knew her deep down.
Basic Guidelines For Overcoming Emotional Baggage
Don’t expect your dominant to do all the work for you. If you want to be owned, own yourself first. Only then are you giving a dominant the “gift of submission.” Offering a whole person who understands what they need and want is a gift. Acting like a wet mess that a dom must mop up is a burden.
Yvonne apologized to Jim for her manipulations. She proved she was ready to negotiate a better dynamic now, from a place of strength and self-awareness. Her blow-ups, melt-downs, and passive/aggressive manipulations began to fade away. They built a new foundation based on transparency and a team approach to resolving conflicts. She and Jim are still together, closer than ever before.
They Ignore Red Flags
Sad but true, “what the heart wants” may be something the mind cannot accept. Your heart may be saying “Do me, do me,” while your brain is saying, “Are you sure about this?” Building a comfortable balance between heart and mind is the path to inner peace. If you ignore red flags, you are destroying your chances of achieving a stable relationship.
(See my blog about Red Flags in Kink to learn more about the red flags to watch out for.)
Basic Guidelines For Accepting that Red Flags Are Real
If someone says “I’ll never do (that thing you love),” take them seriously. If they tell you they are poly or ENM, stop hoping that they will turn monogamous for your sake. Red flags are exit signs! You may ignore them but they will come back to bite you. That is planting bombs in your own future. Serious self-sabotage!
I’ve worked with innumerable married people who married kink-negative partners, and then spent years pressuring them to do kink with them. Blaming and shaming a non-kinky person for their lack of interest is selfish. It violates the rules of mutual consent. If you can’t respect their sexual identity as non-kinky why should they accept your kinky self?
Your partners are NOT the bad guys if they share their truths and you dismiss those truths as unimportant. You are. Stop sabotaging yourself. Be vigilant when red flags wave. Kink is healthy when both partners are joyfully consenting. If someone can’t love and appreciate you as you are, they do not deserve to be in your life.
They Picked the Wrong Role
Some subs love being brats, and some doms find brattitude adorable. But there is a big difference between a consensual “brat” and one who is sabotaging a relationship.
It’s natural for playful subs, brats or not, to have fun being sassy or acting rebellious. But some subs push boundaries to grab power back from the dom. This is a lose/lose situation.
Ask yourself, is this a competition? What’s the end goal — to prove to yourself that your dom is weak and destroy the relationship?
Looking for proof that your dom isn’t good enough — instead of letting things play out and giving the dominant room to express genuine power — is self-sabotage at its rawest.
If You Need All the Power, You Aren’t Submissive
Time to get radically honest with yourself! Are you a sub or a dom in denial? This is where practical thinking becomes critical.
Over the decades in my therapy practice, I have seen many people who tried to control the dom while claiming they were submissive. They were not “do-me” subs or “pillow princesses.” They were people coming from a place of shame about taking power. They conflated “being nice” and “doing no harm” with being submissive, not realizing that you can be both dominant AND kind!
George Picked the Wrong Role
During his self-exploration with me, George had an epiphany: The thought of calling himself a dom repulsed him because of how he was raised. His mother had a grudge against men after a bad marriage. Her voice was still in George’s head. He didn’t want to be a brute. He couldn’t be mean to women: he wasn’t a sadist. And since he adored foot worship, he assumed he had to be submissive.
Now he was questioning whether he should switch labels. I encouraged him to experiment. It would give him a better understanding of what he needed. He cautiously began dating submissive women. They eagerly gave him control over their footwear and hosiery. Instead of begging for footplay, he could now tell a partner to serve his fetish needs from a Masterly place. This too was a huge revelation. The shame and anxiety lifted. He felt so much happier with submissive women. He treated them well and respected them, as the gentleman he was, using his power kindly. One of them loved him so much she invited him to join her polycule. To find a family of kinky partners who loved him as he was was a dream he never imagined could come true.
It startled him how much better life felt once he accepted that embracing the dominant role aligned with who he was deep down. His self-esteem grew. His new-found personal power spilled over into his stagnant career too. He knew what he needed to do and got bolder, finally earning the promotion he always wanted.
Basic Guidelines for Finding Your Best Space
If you love to be a brat, find someone who loves dominating a brat. It’s aggravating to a dom who requires obedience. Look for that playful dom who loves the brat game.
Maybe your jam is strict training. Then look for someone who will keep you on a tight leash. If you question them every step of the way, something inside you needs to take back the power you agreed to surrender. Stop and do a body/mind scan: what role would really fulfill your needs?
If you need power, own it! Stop playing a role that emotionally tortures you. Being dom doesn’t mean you can never switch! You can also order your submissive to top you, if that’s your mood. Experiment with different roles to see which suits you emotionally, intellectually, and physically. They are the keys to living authentically in kink.
Self-Sabotaging Subs Confuse Their Priorities
Carter was a “people-pleaser,” he said. He threw so much energy at friends and acquaintances, that he had barely any left over for his intimate relationship. He felt tired and stressed and feared that his dominant would dump him for failing to show up at times. He consistently prioritized his friends over his dom.
It seemed sweet on the surface that Carter was so caring. Deep down it was self-destructive. He never learned to prioritize his or his partner’s needs. He scurried down every rabbit hole, trying to save others while his relationships fell apart. Eventually, his dominant ditched him for someone more loyal and available.
Carter was crushed and lonelier than ever. He did it to himself by believing the relationship could be functional even though he failed to show up for it time and again.
Basic Guidelines for Prioritizing Joy
If you don’t prioritize your needs, no one else will. I asked Carter to list his priorities. He put his dom first. Then I asked him to share a typical schedule for his week. When we looked it over together, it was clear that his dominant always came in last place. He was running his ass off trying to help others.
A total power exchange (aka TPE) requires attentiveness and devotion to your dom. Sometimes that includes sacrifices. It’s part of the role, and for those who are committed to submission, those sacrifices feel noble. When you consistently prioritize other people’s needs over yours or your dom’s, you do not yet get the meaning and depth of TPE.
You can still maintain a busy social and friend life, of course. But if you want a TPE that will last a lifetime, that relationship should be your priority. Work with your dom to create a life that accommodates your generosity to friends while making the health of your primary relationship your top priority.
Self-sabotage in Subs is Fixable
You may not have the power to change others but you can always change yourself. Regardless of the trauma in your history, the baggage you may be carrying, or the misconceptions you have about Dom/sub interactions, you can turn it all around. Or, as I tell clients, “If you were trained into a behavior you can untrain yourself.”
It isn’t your fault or a hopeless flaw that you’ve made mistakes. Mistakes are human. The question is always whether you learned from those mistakes. You need to take concrete actions to prevent yourself from making the same mistakes again and again.
Who would you be if you could be the best version of yourself? As an exercise, try to summarize that better person in a single paragraph and reread it until it sinks in.
Your ability to imagine a better, more balanced version of yourself is the first step in becoming that person. Find a therapist, a friend, a mentor, or a dom who supports your journey. Take power over the process of becoming your best self, and you will get there. I’ve seen the process and the success it yields thousands of times. You can do this.
image credit: Mittal Uday at UnSplash
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