timinsmarts wrote:
Yeah this is true. But there is more than one kind of experience. For me personally the most important experience a dom can have is spending some time as a sub! You can tie a knot a thousand times and still have no idea what it feels like. And the real skill to learn is not using bits of kit but reading your subs properly, knowing when a sub is in the zone and when not. Not always apparent because most subs have subs honor and will only stop or break a scene when they really have to. The doms that I think are dangerous are the low empathy ones. Maybe this translates more into gay context where most start out as subs then become doms - not sure if it works the same in hetero orientated kink. I guess what I am trying to say is that just time, or just knowing how to tie properly is only part of it - the best doms read people. After that I wouldn't say no to a well equipped dungeon though haha!
i think you have some great thoughts and insights here.
i do wonder about the idea of "...the most important experience a dom can have is spending some time as a sub!"
i get the sentiment, i think, "walk a mile in my shoes." But part of my wondering is is it possible? i believe there are versatile/switch people, but tend to avoid anything beyond friendship with them. my experience with them, more often than not, is that eventually they want me to be like them (i.e. "versatile/swtich), and i am not. E.g., i'm great with a versatile as long as he is in top mode, but if his headspace switches to bottom, i am useless for anything more than empathy and friendship. i've had more than a few challenging encounters because the versatile person simply didn't relate to anyone not being versatile like them, as though it were a choice.
i see a similar challenge with a Dom "spending some time as a sub." i guess they could put Their Self in the same physical scenarios, but it's not going to give them the same experience as a sub because that is not who they are?
i think the flavor of the original post, and some subsequent comments, are spot on. I.e., "the Cost to Be the Boss," involves listening (and hearing), looking (and seeing) who and what a sub is, and more specifically, who and what Their sub is.
There are times i really wish that i would be possible for a Dom to experience what i do, but i think that may only (or mostly?) be possible on a physical level? A Dom just is not going to have the same emotional/mental/psychological response or experience that i am as a sub. i am actually more than okay with that, because it is Their opposite bent or 'electrical charge' (if you will) that attracts me and bonds us together. i think it is Their deep interest and subsequent awareness and understanding of who i am as a sub that empowers them to control, maybe sympathy? but i don't think either a strictly Dom or sub can achieve empathy for the other?