These days, I’d have to say I’m pretty happy. I’m a kinky girl with two wonderful doms in my life. I’m a poly girl with two wonderful boyfriends and one awesome girlfriend. But there was a point, not that long ago, when I didn’t know I was submissive or poly. In fact, the idea of either terrified me a mere four years ago. Clearly, I got over it. I wish I could go back and give that earlier me advice. I wish I could let her know all those things that I learned along the way. She wouldn’t listen to all of it. Or maybe even much of it. But maybe a little bit would stick. Since I can’t do that, though, I’m going to tell you all of those things I wish I’d known.

Being submissive and poly isn’t easy. For a lot of reasons. Either alone is hard enough; the two combined are even harder. But it certainly can be worth it.

First, let’s talk about being submissive. I’m naturally submissive. Taking orders and pleasing someone I consider dominant to me is a pleasure (this made me an excellent student, by the way, so long as I could find a teacher I trusted). My pain tolerance is high, too. At the start, I was worried about those things. Worried that I would get something wrong, that my dom (whoever that happened to be) would be unhappy with me. I was also afraid of canes and sharp edges.

Those aren’t the hard parts. The point of having a good dom is that he (or she) can teach you what you need to know. It’s okay if you fuck up. He’ll guide you. That’s his job.

In terms of pain tolerance, you can take a lot more than you think you can. It’s called sub space. And even if you can’t take much, that’s not what BDSM is about. It’s one element, but BDSM is about a lot of other things. It’s about power and trust. It’s about giving yourself over to someone else and letting them care for you. It’s about finding safety and passion at the same time. And, for goodness sakes, don’t be afraid of canes.

The hard part was coming to terms with my pre-programming. I was a feminist, right? And good feminists don’t beg men to tie them up and flog them and then fuck them senseless, right? That was a hard one to navigate.

What it came down to ultimately was that no paradigm, regardless of what you call it ‒ feminism, humanism, spaghetti-ism ‒ is a good one for you if it stops you from being happy. Or makes you ashamed of who you are. True empowerment is about exploring all the parts of yourself that give you joy.*

At the same time that I was exploring being a sub, I was also discovering polyamory. I was tremendously lucky that my first dom was also poly, and was a spectacularly good teacher. I call him my bearded muse. In fact, he’s still one of my doms, and he’s been guiding me since before I knew what to name our relationship.

When it came to poly, I was scared about my own insecurity and jealousy. And those were legitimate things to worry about. Those can seriously fuck up any relationship, and with poly, they can fuck up many relationships all at the same time.

The thing I learned to balance out that insecurity was to use my romantic energy ‒ because that’s what it was, thwarted romantic energy ‒ to meet more people. At the start, that meant looking for more lovers. I was far less likely to feel jealous about my sweetie going to visit his other sweetie in Nevada if I was happily flirting with someone new. Usually that was through online dating, but sometimes it was from meeting people out dancing, or at science fiction conventions, or hanging out with friends and meeting their other friends.

Once I found the magic number (or magic constellation) of lovers for me, it was easy not to be jealous or insecure about one of my lovers going out on a date if I had some other cute and sexy person curling up with me in my bed.

I’ll admit, it was tempting to sit home and mope, poking at my insecurity like a sore tooth. But using that excess romantic energy to meet new people was the way to go.

Now, I could also talk about learning how to communicate clearly, which is ridiculously important. Or I could talk about how to balance your schedule so you not only get enough time with each sweetie, but enough time to yourself (don’t ever forget that you will need some down time). But there are tons of wonderful articles and books about those things already out there. My advice, in this case, would be to read those articles and books. Fortunately, I did.

I’d rather talk about trying to find a balance with being a poly sub. That one can get complicated. I really didn’t know how that one would work. At first I thought I could never have more than one dom in my life. I fully believed I could be poly: he could approve the others I dated or played with in a scene. But I didn’t believe I could have more than one master.

After a time I came to realize that I could sub to more than one dom, and not just in individual scenes. What I’d realized in terms of polyamory enabling me to find different partners who would each meet different needs also applied to the BDSM side of my life. Different doms could meet different needs, too. One dom may be great at guiding you in life decisions and flogging you till you melt, another may be better at teaching you discipline and tying you up.

The big piece of advice here is that it really depends on what each person wants and making that clear to everyone involved. You don’t want two doms competing with each other for the same kind of attention from a sub; that would be bad. But you can have two doms with different or complementary roles. (By the way, thanks to Claws and Pet on this one. They really helped me crystallize this in my own head).

My two doms have very different roles. My bearded muse kicks my ass about my writing, about communicating clearly with those I love, about growing into new skills. He demands writing of me, demands use of my writing skills and my networking skills. He sets me lessons that I need to learn.

My other dom, who is actually also my primary, kicks my ass about getting me working out or applying for jobs or breaking bad habits. He doms me on a daily basis. My bearded muse doms me on more of a weekly basis. They also each have different technical skills, but it’s really these psychological skills that are most important for them working together.

One of the other things I worried about, which actually applies to both being a sub and being poly, was how open to be about it. When I first began getting into both I was a teacher. Something like that getting out could easily end a teaching career. That was terrifying and it was a legitimate concern. For the sake of my career, I felt that I needed to hide those things. At the same time, I felt dishonest to myself. I didn’t want to hide being kinky or poly, as if they were things worthy of shame.

The advice I have to give here, unfortunately, wouldn’t have solved the problem. I still don’t have a solution. The only suggestion I can make is to accept that this is a less than ideal world. You may feel trapped between hiding yourself and making a stand. It would be nice if people were more tolerant and understanding. It would be great if the mainstream accepted poly, instead of insisting on monogamy and then turning a blind eye to infidelity. It would great if people dug the concept of consensual pain, instead of assuming all instances of one person hurting another had to be unwanted.

Instead, we have to pick our battles and we have to pick when we want to fight them. There’s no point in making your life one endless cause. Husband your strength, so you’ll have it when you need it. Start paying attention to what you care about, what seems important, so you’ll know when it’s worth the fight.

These days I’m pretty open about my lifestyle. I don’t hide from my friends, but I don’t wear my lifestyle on my sleeve for everyone to see. If they ask, I’ll answer. That’s the balance I’ve found for now. It may change. It may not. And that’s fine.


*I will add the caveat here that it is also about doing so consensually and safely.