A submissive's guide to ownership: trust, belonging and BDSM

As a submissive, do you ever wonder why you like being a submissive? Why do you like being ordered around, choked, put on a leash, degraded, knocked around? (Obviously only when you have consented to it!)

There are lots of articles about the psychology of BDSM. But what do we need to feel? How is it meeting our needs? If you are a submissive, it is likely you are wired that way and you CRAVE to be owned and CRAVE to belong to your Dominant. It is a deep need that you have that you feel empty without.

What do you need out of those cravings? A need to feel belonging, trust, to be able to satisfy someone else’s needs, to feel like an objectified body, to feel dependent and to feel interdependent. 

TRUST

What is trust? A feeling. An emotional state of being. Having someone that you can rely on to always have your best interest at heart. How is that relevant to BDSM? Because the trust between a Dominant and submissive is, in my opinion, the most ‘full’ level of trust two humans can experience together. Yes, we trust our parents and our family members. But in a D/s relationship, the submissive is putting her mind, heart, body and soul in the hands of her Dominant and trusting him to look after it. And in turn the Dominant is trusting his submissive. In allowing them to dominate you - it requires trust in them and in yourself. Trusting them to stop when you have reached your limits. Trusting yourself to know your boundaries and trusting them to respect your boundaries. Trusting yourself to communicate your wants, desires and needs and have that reciprocated. It is a two-way street and by gosh it is at intensely high levels. Nothing feels as good as having the most full and complete level of trust possible and feeling so safe, even when your play might involve high risks, emotionally and physically.

BELONGING

What is belonging? A feeling! An emotional state of being. To belong to someone so completely physically and emotionally, your heart and soul and your whole body. It’s not about property, although you can love feeling like your Dominant’s property. It is about love. You belong to someone and are allowing them to take something that is yours, something that is … well, you! A little wooden box can be your property and belong to you. But that’s not the feeling. That little wooden box held a photo of your best friend, your childhood dog, and that little wooden box was falling apart and needed some handy toolwork to get it functioning and then re-staining and then you restored the old photo and framed it and put it in your special box. Now that little box is not just a box you own. You love it, you adore it, it holds such special meaning. You are the box and your Dominant is the owner!

BDSM and being in a Dominant/submissive relationship is all about belong. I am HIS and just knowing that brings about such warm, fuzzy feelings. He takes care of my needs because taking care of me is part of his needs. 

You don’t really find that in vanilla relationships. Just listen to mainstream songs about not belonging to anybody and “you don’t own me”. Well listen up pop artists. I do belong to somebody and he does own me! And that is a feeling that maybe non-kinky people don’t need or realise they need, but as a submissive it is a feeling that I live for. Yes, I can live normally and do vanilla things with people who don’t know I am a submissive, but underlying all that normal activity is the knowledge and feeling that I belong to my Dominant. It is something that I so strongly need and desire and belonging to my Master so fully satisfies that sense of belonging.

OBJECTIFICATION

This is one that non-kinky people may struggle to understand. But I love being objectified by my Master. It is something I have consented to and not just someone random treating me terribly and like an object - that is not okay. But in BDSM play and in a happy D/s relationship, you can quiet your mind, quiet your soul and just be a body. Just be something to be used! Dominants have a need to ‘dominate’ and have a body to objectify, and it is the best feeling in the world to have the trust and belonging and communication, to be able to be JUST a body and feel used. This can also come from the emotional release that you can experience … when life is being tough and you just want to feel needed and used, having a play where you are just a “insert names your Dominant likes to call you” and just a body can be an intense emotional release. 

DEPENDENCE AND INTER-DEPENDENCE

We might live independently and be able to perfectly capably function as independent humans just relying on ourselves. But nobody is completely totally independent. We have needs that we crave and deeply need from others. Unless you are living together in your D/s relationship, there are likely going to be many aspects of your life that you will have to be independent in. Sometimes you might feel like you need to make decisions. Sometimes you might not have many people in your life to trust to help you figure things out, so it is left to you to make decisions. Sometimes maybe it is easier to just quickly figure things out yourself. And maybe you find it hard to trust others. They may have proven to be untrustworthy or just haven’t earned your trust. And maybe you have found yourselves in situations where you don’t have the opportunity to say no and can’t consent to things, so you crave finding opportunities to have full, real, trusted, consensual interdependence. You are meeting your Dominant’s needs and he is meeting yours. When you are being your submissive self, you have the chance to consent to things, you have the chance to rely on your Dominant who you know will help you and guide you and always have your best interests at heart. It’s okay to want to feel dependent on somebody and feel like they are looking after you!

So what are our needs as a submissive? To feel belonging! To feel wholly owned! To feel dependent! To feel trust! To feel objectified and safe! All of which are feelings, among many others, that you can experience in a relationship with your Dominant! And that is why we love D/s.