conundrums

In the world of BDSM, unexpected dilemmas can arise, and many riddles to be solved that are unique to each power exchange couple. These essays cover only a few. We welcome your thoughts on your own dilemmas as well. Feel free to contact us at terratbloom@yahoo.com

A Dom/sub conversation about subby tears with the most traditional Dom I know [...]

A Dom/sub conversation about negotiating power exchange with the most traditional Dom I know [...]

A Dom and sub walk into a bar ... and have a conversation. Well, okay, we weren’t in a bar, Robert (the Dom) and I (the sub) were in separate cities emailing each other. It is always interesting to look at a power exchange issue from both sides of the D/s slash. Such as a Dom requiring a submissive to be nude [...]

After four years of enjoying a “secret” BDSM life that no one knew about, just my husband and I making up our own rules as we went along, we joined our local kink community. It was a great decision for many reasons — the awesome people! — but it was quickly made clear we’d be following a new set of rules as we moved through the community. [...]

“There is a flaw at the heart of D/s,” I’d often say in the early days of my Dominance/submission explorations with my husband. The flaw, in my mind, lay within the open-ended nature of consent. I felt that if I had a choice to revoke my submission at any time, whether by using a safeword or other means, then it wasn’t really submission, it was just elaborate roleplay. [...]

The discovery of power exchange and BDSM set my marriage on sexual fire and swept up my husband and I in a wave of more honest communication, deeper intimacy, unbreakable trust, and more liberated love. We deeply wished we had discovered our D/s dynamic sooner, and I often felt angry that this path to unlocking sexual nirvana for us had been so deeply buried under myths and taboos and off-putting fetish porn that we only discovered it by accident. [...]

BDSM is an umbrella term that shelters a nearly endless array of kinks and fetish behavior. Lately, the alleged cannibalism fetish of the actor Armie Hammer has been all over the Internet, but there are plenty of others: puppy play, knife play, Shibari, feminization, and controlled chastity to name just a few. Just when you think you have heard it all, another unique manifestation of kink pops up. Some are amusing, while others lend themselves to discomfort. [...]

Soon after our discovery of D/s, my dominant Daddy and I spent a lot of time online, exploring BDSM sites and learning the language from others who have been immersed in it for ages. It was reassuring to discover we were not alone, and that this path has been traveled many times and found wonderful. We soaked up the new language, and tried it out like people with a phrasebook getting ready to journey to a foreign land. Should we try going to a “munch,” I’d ask, then laugh at this unfamiliar word. [...]

Early in 2020, I dressed up for a what I thought would be a fun night in a well-known dungeon in Los Angeles. A group of about 50 people were there, a large fraction of them heading over from a nearby conference on sex positivity. For many, it was their first experience in a BDSM environment, and an opportunity to play out fantasies and expand their sexual consciousness. But, it turned out not much play actually happened. [...]

When I started a blog about my experiences as a submissive wife, and put forth my feeling that I was “wired” for submission as a woman, I often heard from other women who begged to differ. Especially women who are of a more dominant bent. Fair enough. Many women do align with what Tantric philosopher David Deida would call active “masculine” energy (although many might object to that word choice as well), while plenty of men prefer to align with passive “feminine” energy. [...]

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. [...]

One of the biggest surprises in exploring BDSM is realizing that the more rough the sex becomes, and the more it drifts toward “force,” the more hot and charged the sex becomes. No wonder, then, that at our very first BDSM conference, my dominant Daddy and I were most excited to attend a workshop called “Consensual Non-Consent: The Rape Fantasy.” Yet, despite the presenters’ skill in presenting different ways to roleplay rape, we left the workshop disappointed. I didn’t want to roleplay force; I wanted to actually be forced. [...]