The Worst Mistake a Dominant or Submissive Can Make

Both sides: not being self aware and open.

i think every human has to deal with this in relationship, but i think it's easier to hide or get lost behind labels in kink culture, and the real person gets hidden or lost for myriad reasons.

Having been around for as long as I have been, I couldn't possibly limit myself to a singular worst thing that a dom could do. Read WAAAY too many horror stories ranging from accidental suffocation to attempting to "spank" a woman with a baseball bat to outright murder.

This is why I absolutely abhor it when mainstream movies with a bdsm theme comes out because I just KNOW some idiot is going to trust some other idiot way too much, way too early and there'll be another tragedy making headlines.

The worst thing a sub can do is not take an active role in getting to know any potential Dom. That means asking questions, getting to know them, ask for references if you think its applies. If you've ever seen The Breakfast Club, take a note from Ally Sheedy's character and pour it all out on the table - same goes for the Dom. And above all: PLAY. IT. ABSOLUTELY. SAFE!!! Safe words. Safe drops (if you're playing with gags). Meeting in public places (sometimes not always an option if its an LDR and you're flying someone in). Safe calls with a friend (absolute must, IMO) - I would punish a girl meeting with me the first time who didn't have one set up in advance. If you want it hardcore, I would STILL recommend SSC for the first 1-2 years and ONLY then, if you both want it, move to RACK.

Trust is paramount and if you have any insecurities or doubts, ASK QUESTIONS.

Its also why, when I tie someone up for the first time, the absolute first thing I do is kiss her long and hard for putting that much trust in me. To paraphrase Death from the series Supernatural when he spoke of the soul; "Trust is not a rubber ball. It's vulnerable, impermanent, but stronger than you know and more valuable than you can imagine."

Maybe this is not the worst thing but since I already answered this question earlier in the thread I'll add another. This is for both sides:

Initiating first contact with immediate expectations.

And I'm not speaking of the instadom nonsense. I'm talking about reading a profile, seeing words like "I want to be trained" and "I am an expert" and "I'm brand new" and "I'm so experienced" etc. and thinking "Finally, exactly the D/s I've been looking for. Just look at these buzzwords, they are perfect! What could go wrong?"

People are more than just profiles, and we may all have different understandings of what these and other words mean, and the height or depth of these ideas may vary wildly from we want due to our expectations of them.

A good example was when I met a woman here, and spent less than a week of casual, pleasant 'getting to know you' chat sharing opinions about life and non-BDSM topics other than one conversation regarding ghosting. After those few days she blocked me claiming that clearly I wasn't "the kind of Dom" she wanted. We had never even discussed D/s but somehow I had already failed to meet her expectations of what a Dom SHOULD be.
I hadn't jumped right into trying to Dom her because we had only just met! So she blocked me. WTF?

We all talk about how much we hate instadoms and how they pretend to have the immediate right to throw their Dom dicks around just because they are capitalized. I'd add that all instant expectations are bullshit.

Getting tired of the missing quote button. At any rate, LongerJohnny said:

"A good example was when I met a woman here, and spent less than a week of casual, pleasant 'getting to know you' chat sharing opinions about life and non-BDSM topics other than one conversation regarding ghosting. After those few days she blocked me claiming that clearly I wasn't "the kind of Dom" she wanted. We had never even discussed D/s but somehow I had already failed to meet her expectations of what a Dom SHOULD be. WTF? We all talk about how much we hate instadoms and how they pretend to have the immediate right to throw their Dom dicks around just because they are capitalized. I'd add that all instant expectations are bullshit."

That reeks of what I often giggle over - the type of woman (or man!) who uses their "submission" as a lure for hooking someone who will bend to her/his every whim and essentially making the dominant little more than a plaything/means to an end - the type who play submissive for the sole purpose of finding someone to indulge them with their own favorite fantasies. I've seen that over the years so frequently that I've become jaded and am now prone to take it with more than just a grain of salt when someone brags about how submissive they are. I'm sorry you were treated so cavalierly.

It was the first time I had ever been blocked, and I was so fucked off about the whole thing that I immediately posted to my blog an amusing little anecdote about not being able to choose what Mexican food item to eat for dinner.
True story.

Sometimes I bemoan how tough it is to be "non-vanilla" until I remember how hard it is to try to function in a manner which actually seems to discourage being authentic and open. It's still my belief that a sizable number of people professing to be "kinky" are really using that label as a lure to get their "bedroom kink" satisfied. As a Facebook junkie, I do sometimes block as many as half a dozen people a day but that's not in any kind of kink capacity. I HAVE blocked several people here without even responding to them - because it's very apparent they didn't even read my profile. Your case, however, is far different and sounds more like she was feeling you out to see how far you might be willing to go to meet *her* expectations. Again, it's not just dominants who can be looking for instant gratification and show boating in their attempts to get it.

I will likely never know what exactly what her expectations were, or how exactly I failed to meet them, but whatever was going on had much less to do with me than it did with her.
Yep, instasubs are definitely a thing. Less common than instadoms but they are out there.

You don't hear the "instasubs" mentioned because for the most part this thread seems to be dealing with male doms/female subs and suggesting that a woman might be misrepresenting herself is likely to provoke a shit storm directed at you.

Actually, the blog post that I wrote following the whole incident was received very well by Doms and subs, many of whom felt that they had never thought of it that way, or had in fact done the types of things that I wrote about.

I haven't taken time to read your blog back to any time prior to the end of October when I joined here but I'm relieved to hear your disappointment/disenchantment wasn't discounted. I've seen too many instances where dominants have been accused of having done something wrong just because it's a knee jerk reaction by some.