Preventing vanilla from contaminating your dynamic...

How Kinky Power Exchange becomes real #8

Oh no! The vanilla leaked! (Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash)

Xena is undressing to for bed. “Oh, I’ve got a thing tomorrow afternoon - I’ll be late home for dinner.”

“I’ll have probably already gone out,” I say, from where I’m kneeling on the floor. “I’ll leave the curry in the fridge so you can microwave it.”

“Great. Clean the guest bathroom tomorrow. And that’s three demerits for leaving it so long. ” Xena tosses her bra on the floor. “Wash that.” She pulls on her pyjama top. “How was your day?”

“Productive…”

And we chat as couples do, except she keeps interrupting the conversation to give me orders, and add chores to my task list, and I’m kneeling on the floor throughout.

At last, she sits in bed with her book. I kneel in silence until she tells me to rub her feet.

And that is us on an ordinary weekday evening.

The routine just feels right for both of us; a moment when I submit and she’s clearly in charge.

It’s also our bulwark against the vanilla.

Because the other side of creating an unfiltered D/s dynamic is protecting it from the vanilla.

It’s the evil twin of the firewall preventing your dynamic from leaking into your vanilla relationship through conditioning and aftercare. The aftercare part is all about firmly returning to the vanilla. That bears thinking about. You’re not dispelling the Femdom, not bursting the bubble. You’re returning to a different dynamic, that of the — what I’ll call — the Standard Vanilla Relationship.

(No paywall this time since I’m late in posting this!)

The Standard Vanilla Relationship (SVR)

The Standard Vanilla Relationship (SVR) is how couples in our culture are supposed to work; peers collaborating to build a happy life, or at least a pleasant date, and to maintain a mutually satisfactory bedroom.

Just like a Femdom dynamic, an SVR dynamic is a self-reinforcing framework comprising of: a balance of power; conditioned habits; and Relational Models. The SVR dynamic invokes a “Meta Relational Model” comprising mostly of Communal Sharing and Equality Matching, with plenty of role models and a slew of powerful emotions to maintain them.

I’m not convinced that the SVR works that well over the long term. Most vanilla couples seem to have areas of permanent conflict, and if the Dead Bedroom weren’t almost inevitable, then there wouldn’t be a big industry offering books and classes and couple retreats intending to restore its spark of life.

Even so, the Standard Vanilla Relationship dynamic has almost the entire weight of our culture behind it, plus maybe a bag of instinctive behaviours and emotions it can invoke.

For that reason, when Femdom and SVR actually clash, SVR generally has the advantage.

Dynamic Death Match: Femdom versus the Standard Vanilla Relationship

In a Femdom dynamic, the domme has the power— she has less incentive to push through discomfort than he does. Not so in an SVR dynamic.

The prevailing culture generally assumes moral and legal parity. Worse, her sexual negotiating position may no better, and usually much worse than his. He can usually reach orgasm far more easily than she can, especially after a kink session that went wrong. Long term, she can withdraw — or may find herself withdrawing — sexual engagement. However, he can escape into porn world, which she may find disgusting, hurtful, and triggering of insecurities, or just a waste of money. On a practical level, she is unlikely to be able to overpower him, and — in a settled couple — there’s still a good chance that he’s the primary breadwinner.

Likewise, a Femdom dynamic is built of unfiltered habits conditioned into both parties. However, these habits overwrite powerful existing SVR habits trained from birth, not just through upbringing, but through cultural norms. Even in very liberal countries, SVRs still carry a cultural assumption of mild vanilla maledom in bed — of manly men turning Alpha werewolf — and when a woman is pro-active, it’s maybe supposed to be to respond to male needs: being a good lover means giving skillfully, especially if you are a woman.

Finally, as I noted earlier, whereas the Femdom dynamic invokes the Authority Ranking Relational Model, the SVR dynamic invokes a “Meta Relational Model” comprising mostly of Communal Sharing and Equality Matching, with plenty of role models and a slew of powerful emotions to maintain them.

So, it’s no surprise that when you are “doing vanilla”, it’s very hard to not keep doing vanilla. It’s why getting into a kinky headspace can be difficult and weird at first, and also why it’s possible for a friend of mine to have a nice cup of tea and a chat with her sub, after a spending the afternoon beating the crap out of him. The Standard Vanilla Relationship is the powerful default.

It follows that if you are a malesub trying to help your domme feel more dominant, you should also consider ways to prevent her from feeling merely equal. (Similar logic applies if you are the domme.)

That obvious approach is just to avoid invoking the SVR.

Avoiding invoking the Standard Vanilla Relationship

Not only do you need to treat her power as real, but you must also avoid referencing what power you do wield. Only negotiate when outside your dynamic.

For example, it may be OK to horse trade before a kinky session. However, when the whips and chains come out, don’t break role to renegotiate. Provide information as required — “too hard… cramp…” — but don’t ever bargain as an equal. You could also even up the sexual power through liberal use of a male chastity device — now who has the most trouble orgasming?

Avoid serving up any stimuli that trigger an SVR habit. Don’t provoke a vanilla romantic or erotic response. That can include presenting an erect penis — another use for a chastity device — but it’s also maybe not a good time to declare your love or petition for relationship changes.

However, the most important thing is to be a reliable user of safewords and safety information. If the domme has to keep second guessing you on safety, then she’s starting to drift into a very different mindset from, say, ruthless sadist.

Last, when inside your dynamic, don’t deviate from the Authority Ranking Relational Model. This includes not treating the session like “impro” by nudging and reframing around your fantasies and your ideas. For example, if she’s not teasing you, don’t act as if she is by making a fuss about how desperate you are to come. Do not top from the bottom, no matter how subtly you do it.

The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t cope well when the vanilla does intrude.

Extend the Femdom dynamic to absorb the vanilla

If you are in a lifestyle relationship, or dipping into one for a weekend or a vacation, that means that there’s no place to stand that’s outside your dynamic.

If follows that when vanilla needs come up, the vanilla will intrude on your dynamic unless you do something about it.

By vanilla needs, I mean any time your domme need you as a fellow adult for companionship and general… well adulting… things you can’t provide via, say, sticking to a high protocol rules.

Suppose you’re secluded away being mistress and slave in a Highland holiday cottage. Or maybe you’re doing pretty much the same thing for a weekend or an evening at home. She’ll still want your conversation on walks and for sightseeing, there’s still hampers to pack and outdoor clothing to select. She’ll maybe want to watch a movie with you. After all, she — hopefully — likes you as a partner so not being able to have your company makes things less fun for her. “This humble slave also ventures to enjoy the view of the glen, made more glorious for the presences of his radiant mistress, and craves a rest stop and a cup of tea…” I think not.

Now imagine that’s your lifestyle. The same things apply, but more so.

The trick is to extend the Femdom dynamic to absorb — not replace — the vanilla.

That takes us back to the kneeling routine I described at the start.

It works because it is a routine; I don’t wait for Xena to order me to kneel. It also puts me unambiguously at her service. There’s no sense that she’s interrupting me when she has me run errands or provide a massage. If I’m not serving, I’m waiting. And I’m doing this in what would otherwise be a very vanilla moment.

You’ll have also noted the demerits, which later translate to strokes of the whip or cane. Keeping track of demerits is a great way of applying kinky power exchange to real vanilla things, but without requiring your domme to switch into a full kinky dominant mode and get out the whip right now. If she feels irritated by something you’ve done, she can demerit you and move on… for now.

Finally, the vignette showcases something else less obvious: I have developed a comfortably subordinate persona… or to be more exact, I’ve become comfortable with my subordination and can be myself without forgetting who is in charge.

I’m the same person when we’re hanging out with friends or visiting a gallery as I am when I am being a mute slave, and everything in between. The only thing that changes is the ground rules, and I’ve become adept at picking up what’s required. I know when to husband and when to slave, and also when to do a bit of both.

There’s something deliciously naked about being yourself and still being submissive. It’s also scary because it breaks the firewalling rules by not adding a kinky tag to a vanilla stimulus for a kinky response. Xena is now quite used to handing out demerits for things that irritate her, regardless of how vanilla the situation… but that’s for another article. (You can find the entire series here.)

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