Submissive Frenzy

by Terra Bloom

Deep submission, says Tantric philosopher David Deida, allows a woman to experience her own “uninhibited sexual essence.” The man knows whereof he speaks. In the first weeks of submitting my body to my husband, I became so uninhibited, and my sexual longings to be used, somehow, anyhow, became so intense, it started freaking me out. A lot.

So when I came across the term “submissive frenzy,” I immediately recognized I had a raging case of it. Sub frenzy, say women who have been there, is a state of mind, common to new submissives, in which they feel an overwhelming need to have all their desires fulfilled. As in, immediately. As in, one’s entire mind is consumed, and there is no room for anything else.

I also found words of warnings about sub frenzy meant a caution for new subs, so that they don’t risk putting themselves in danger within the wider BDSM community. Or, so they don’t give a Dominant they barely know too much power over them. But as I was married to my Dominant, that wasn’t something I needed to worry about.

I had a different problem. My sub frenzy exposed my deepest desires to my husband. All my unseemly hungers, and all my darkest, neediest corners were on vivid display to him. While in the middle of heated sex, it was thrilling to feel so open, so known, so accepted. But at every other moment, it felt increasingly uncomfortable.

Frankly, I felt in danger of becoming a freak. I had once played top to a boyfriend bottom who needed more and more complex stimulation to get into subspace. Our sexual relationship eventually became about satisfying his ever more out-there fetishes and masochistic desires for pain and erotic humiliation, rather than real submission to me. When he began asking to drink cups full of my urine in the guise of “worshipping” me, I had no desire for that. Yet I carried cups to the toilet anyway, and half the time got more pee on my own hand than in the cup. I watched him gulp down my urine over and over, my smile frozen on my face. I didn’t judge him for his fetish. But because I wasn’t being honest about what I truly wanted and didn’t want, this so-called worship only made me recoil from him.

In the midst of my early sub frenzy, I feared this was the path I was on, pretending to be submissive in order to get my husband to be my continual sex-giver. Sure, he told me he wanted me insatiable, and had succeeded remarkably well in getting me to that state. I was full of fevered, explicit desires to be bound and beaten and penetrated; and, like my ex-boyfriend, I framed it in the guise of “worshipping” him. Still, I worried that if kept going that way, he too would become turned off and recoil.

And what if he eventually recoiled from himself as well? A month earlier, he’d been a nice “normal” guy, and we had been enjoying a wonderful relationship that made us both happy. Now, I was calling him “Daddy,” and getting off on him cramming my face against the mattress while he fucked me. We had become weird, and everything seemed full of pitfalls, too difficult to navigate.

Yet, neither of us once considered going back to our vanilla 50/50 life before power exchange. There was nothing we could do about it but go forward find the right way to accommodate it. And eventually we did learn how to settle into it. I let my submissive frenzy be what it was until it calmed on its own and we found our sweet spot. How? The passage of time helped, yes. But mostly it was learning to trust. First, to trust my submission, trust that it was leading me in the right direction; and then, to trust my dominant.

I learned that if I was willing to reveal everything to him – what I truly wanted, how I truly felt – then I could let go and let him figure out what to do with it. Indeed, the thought, “Daddy will take care of it,” became a comforting mantra that I still rely on to this day. I still find myself tangled in the occasional bout of sub frenzy, but the fear of it and where it will take me is long gone. I am submissive, my dominant is in charge, he will figure everything out and make it okay.

Excerpted from the book, Ravish Me: A BDSM Memoir of Submission, by Terra Bloom.