A vanilla friend once asked me, when I gushed about how well my new dommy beau’s kinks fit with mine, “Isn’t that the point of identifying as dominant or submissive? So you can easily find someone who’s compatible with you?”
Ha. Easily? That’s a laugh. While I am indeed a submissive – and a damn good one, if I may say so – that doesn’t mean I automatically jive with every dominant who crosses my path. Even setting aside more basic factors like attraction and harmonious personalities, we might not work well together kinks-wise because there are so many different ways to be dominant or to be submissive. If I want to be nurtured but you want to degrade me until I cry, maybe we’re not gonna work out. If you get off on heavy sadism and my pain tolerance is only so-so, we might have to part ways. If the names and words that light your fire are ones that squick me out, maybe we should quit while we’re ahead.
While there’s no foolproof and thorough way (in my view) to assess compatibility quickly, there are certainly ways you can help speed it along. With that in mind, here are 5 questions you can ask your new beau (and answer yourself, too) to figure out whether your approaches to kink could work well together – for an evening, a fling, or maybe even for the long haul.
1. What kinds of feelings do you like getting from kink?
When you’re in the midst of a kink scene, do you like feeling adored, appreciated, accomplished? Or do you prefer to feel overwhelmed, overpowered, and owned? How about degraded, dejected, or dismissed? (More great feelings words on Bex’s Yes/No/Maybe list.)
Knowing this about a potential (or current) kink partner can help shape your scenes. I’ll take a very different approach when submitting to a dom who appreciates quiet obedience, for example, versus a dom who likes a little bratty resistance. Likewise, if a dom thinks I want to feel used and put down, they’re not going to be able to give me the type of scene I actually tend to want, which involves me being cherished and coddled. Figure out your desired feelings first, and then you can start to figure out everything else.
2. What does it look like when you’re enjoying yourself? What about when you’re not?
As a sub, I giggle when I’m enjoying myself – but I know other subs whose mid-scene giggles might mean they’re uncomfortable and don’t know how to say so. I know people whose stony silence might mean they hate what’s happening, and people who only go silent when things are feeling really good. I know people who kick and scream when they’re taken past their pain limits, and people for whom that’s just a sign that the scene is going swimmingly. It’s important to know how your particular play partner responds to both good and bad stimuli, so you know when to slow your roll and when to hit the accelerator. Of course, you shouldn’t rely only on these cues – it’s still important to have (and heed) a safeword, and perhaps a green/yellow/red check-in system or something similar – but they’re crucial to know, nonetheless.
That doesn’t only hold true for subs and bottoms, either. Doms and tops also have “tells” for when they’re enjoying a scene and when they’re decidedly not. A bonus of articulating these signs to a partner is that you get clearer on them yourself. I never used to notice, for example, that my ankles would cross together protectively when I was nearing a pain limit, until a partner asked me to list and explain some of my nonverbal signals. Being more aware of your own body and responses is always useful!
3. Has anyone ever safeworded with you before? What happened?
This is one of my favorite screening questions for new doms, because it shows me quickly how they handle consent in scenes and to what extent they respect their partners. A bad or dangerous dom will tend to get defensive when asked this question – “Of course no one has ever needed to safeword with me!” – while a good dom who’s been around the block will likely have at least a few stories to share. (I’m sure you could learn a lot about a sub by asking them this question, too.)
Pay attention to how they talk about the person who safeworded (affectionately? dismissively?) and what they claim to have done after the safeword was said (hopefully they tried to give the person what they needed, instead of reprimanding them or abandoning them). Notice, too, what their general attitude on safewording seems to be. If they view it as a wimpy cop-out that should best be avoided, rather than a vital communication tool in any encounter, maybe you should steer clear.
4. What are some edges you’re interested in pushing?
These malleable edges are also known as “soft limits”: things you aren’t interested in doing, with most people or in most circumstances, but that you might be open to if the right situation and partner came along for that particular thing.
For example, I don’t want to feel like some douchey bro’s blowjob machine, but with a compassionate dom who I trusted and loved to please, having my mouth used in an objectifying or degrading way could be fun. Maybe your partner’s been curious about knife play for ages but has never had a chance to try it out. Maybe they’re a dom who’s curious about subbing, or vice-versa. Whatever it is, you don’t have to push that edge immediately or at all, but it’s good to at least know about it, so you can perhaps start to work toward it together.
5. What kind(s) of aftercare do you need?
If someone is new to kink – or hasn’t done it in a while – they may not know the answer to this. But they probably have at least some idea. Common elements of aftercare are cuddles, compliments, and snacks – but of course, these don’t work for everyone.
I get nervous doing scenes with new partners who I haven’t discussed aftercare with yet. While most kinksters seem to know intuitively that aftercare is important, it’s hard for me to relax and have fun if I don’t know that I’ll be properly taken care of when I’m too subspacey to articulately advocate for myself. So it’s best to have this conversation before it becomes relevant, so both of you know you’ll be able to get what you need.
What questions do you like to ask new kink partners before playing?
This post was sponsored. As always, all words and opinions are my own.
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