Fifty Shades of Argh:

Good Luck — It’s Rough Out There

Prepare yourself. You are about to be so disappointed. I’m worried about you and would like to help if I can.

I’m not talking about disappointment in the Fifty Shades of Grey movie. That’s a given. They’ve taken a boring book with some nice pornographic moments and stuffed it into an R-rated movie that attempts to tell a story with a plot. I don’t plan to see the movie because if I’m looking for porn and get a lame-ass, boring love story, I’m going to be pissed.

Nor am I talking about disappointment in the Fifty Shades book. The book is not high art, but who cares? The plot is awful, the writing is not great, but the sex is sometimes steamy. To use a phrase coined by my daughter at age six (in reference to a Slipknot song of all things), it’s got some stuff.

No, the disappointment to which I refer will occur all across America, beyond the movie theater and outside the pages of the trilogy. Many women read this book; even more will see the movie. We’ve all heard something about it — as bad as the book and movie may be, this Fifty Shades craze has smacked us all on our collective ass. Some women read the book to see what all the fuss was about, got a little turned on by the sex and kinkiness, and moved on. For others however, this seemingly out-of-nowhere exposure to blindfolds, spanking, and bondage might have lead to some dizzying realizations.

If this happened to you, congratulations, and I’m sorry. Congratulations because you have something new and fun to explore and can start to incorporate some level of BDSM into your sex life, if you’re ready. And I’m sorry because, if you’re ready, this Fifty Shades era in history is a terrible time to quietly explore your newly discovered inclinations.

I doubt I am shattering anyone’s dreams when I say that Fifty Shades is not a good example of what to expect from your BDSM exploration. You will not stumble into your future dominant’s office. You are unlikely to meet him at a (regular) bar or on a (regular) date. You will not simply luck into a worthy dominant.

Instead, if you do a better job at it than I did, you will talk to several people before you decide who is worthy enough to dominate you. You will interview. You will negotiate. This process can feel frustrating because it takes time, and you are ready NOW. But the time, thought, and talk is important. And it requires patience and level-headedness — which is why I am worried.

If you are as eager as I was, you might suddenly find yourself in a dizzying headspace where you will say or do anything if there is a chance it will lead to one of the BDSM scenarios you’ve fantasized about for years. Kate Kinsey (a good resource for new submissives) calls this phenomenon “sub-frenzy.” It’s real, and it’s a dangerous place for your head to be.

Therefore, in my quest to help you remain levelheaded in your new adventure, I’m going to share my biggest mistakes and the reasons I think I made them. These mistakes will seem obvious and very stupid. But that’s the point — to show you the bad decisions that come from a dizzy brain.

My first mistake was looking for a dominant friend on a mainstream dating sight. In fact, I mistakenly approached this whole thing like dating.

To my credit (my only credit), I did not state in my profile that I was looking for a dominant/submissive relationship. But I asked questions and dropped hints in an effort to discover whether he might just happen to be into that sort of thing. BIG mistake. Because if he thinks it will get him laid, or even get him a date, then hell yes he’s into it.

With this Fifty Shades business in full swing, I’m sure that dominant-faking is at an all time high. You probably don’t even need to drop hints anymore; they will come out of the gate pretending to be Christian Grey — throw it out and see if it sticks. Thus, until the Fifty Shades business runs its course, it is going to be very confusing out there, especially if you look for a dominant in the “regular” dating world.

I was barking up the wrong tree to begin with, and on top of that I did not ask enough specific questions to feel out whether a particular guy and I were on the same dominant page. For example, I believe that the first guy I dated in my quest considered himself dominant under his definition. We talked about buying bondage stuff, and sometimes he was kind of forceful in the sense that when he wanted to fuck me, he just did it. Didn’t ask — stripped off my clothes and took what he wanted (which I liked).

But the taking-me stuff was the extent of his dominant behavior — that’s what dominant meant to him, but it wasn’t enough for me. If I had asked the right questions in the beginning, I would have uncovered the difference between our dominant definitions and not wasted my time.

The next candidate from the mainstream dating site was a sweet man who pretended to be dominant to please me (is there anything less dominant?). We texted about spanking. He directed me to arrive at our second date in a skirt, no panties (which I liked). But there was not a dominant bone in this gentle man’s body, which he finally confessed — during sex. He explained that he was a gentle guy and that playing the dominant role was fucking with his head to such an extent that he couldn’t come if he was acting “dominant.” Well, shit — I didn’t want him to act dominant either.

I used the dating site to shop for sexual partners and crossed my fingers that I might stumble upon a guy with dominant leanings. Crossing fingers is not a strategy. I asked just enough questions to let them know what I was poking around for, but not enough questions to figure out if they had what I wanted.

My next mistake relates to trust and risk. If you are the submissive sort, you might also be a risk taker, which can be a dangerous combination. I’m lucky that most guys out there are pretty decent because I made some horrible decisions by trusting people who had not yet earned my trust.

Let’s see. I went up in a guy’s plane the very first time I met him. He piloted the plane with one hand up my dress. Ok, that was pretty fun, but I never should have gone up in a plane with a stranger.

I met someone for the very first time at my house. We had never even spoken on the phone — just email. We were having trouble with the logistics of meeting so I said fuck it, just come to my house. He arrived at my house one afternoon (at least it was daylight). Turns out he was missing several teeth. That moment resulted in a short-lived “what the fuck am I doing” awakening, and I sent him away. I wish I could say it had nothing to do with the missing teeth, but I can’t. Luckily, he was a decent guy, and he left.

I almost met a guy for the first time at his hotel room, but he had more cautionary sense than I did and realized that any woman who was willing to meet a stranger at a hotel room might be crazy. Not crazy, just so ready that I took ridiculous risks in hopes that it might turn into something fantastic. But again, bad decision making with crossed fingers is not a strategy.

My biggest of all big mistakes with respect to unearned trust was the Skype guy. Out of all the potential dominants from the dating site, he was the only one who was outright conniving (verging on cruel). I ignored every blazing red flag because he was saying the things to me that I’d waited years to hear (“I’ll leave you in cuffs all day. I’ll slide my cock in your pussy whenever I feel like I want to get your wet juices around my cock. Put it in your mouth so you can taste yourself”). And he used my submissiveness against me, which is the most blazing of all red flags.

Because I was honest with him about my desire to explore BDSM, he knew he had a sucker (he probably got those cartoon dollar signs in his eyes when he read my messages or saw a giant cartoon steak when he looked at my naked pictures). He would get me to just the right dizzying point on email chat, and then ask me to get on Skype. I knew I should refuse. I knew he was a liar. But he was good with words, and I am a sucker for the right words.

So before I knew it, I was fucking myself with a glass dildo on Skype. And the cherry on top of this bullshit sundae — the camera was not working on his end so he could see me but I could not see him. Weird, right? No — complete bullshit, obviously. I knew it was lie, but in that moment I didn’t care because his words were as close as I had gotten. I told myself, yes I know he’s lying to me (the Skype camera was only the tip of the lie iceberg), yes, I know I will never meet this guy in person and he is probably not who he says he is, BUT I don’t care because I love the things he’s saying and this is fun.

But the thing is — it wasn’t fun because I believed and trusted him more than I allowed myself to acknowledge. Finally, I found concrete evidence of a flat-out lie regarding his identity, and I called him on it. He had a ridiculous justification for the lie. I told him never to contact me again. He tried a couple of times. I ignored him, and that was the end of it. Luckily, nothing too terrible came out of it—just a bunch of Skype-hungover mornings and bucketfuls of frustration.

Skype guy leads me to last mistake I want to talk about— lying. I was lying to myself pretty regularly throughout this process, and sometimes I lied to others as well. I should have listened to my gut. My gut is smarter than my brain — I can fool my brain. If I’d listened to my gut I would have ended every one of these relationships very early on — sometimes after the first conversation. But my dizzy head shut out my gut.

For example, I knew from the first time I met guy number one that he was too lazy to be anyone’s dominant. His apartment was the dirtiest place I’d ever seen. And I don’t mean it was a bit of a mess. It was filthy — trash piled up, bugs. How can you be a good dominant if you can’t keep your apartment clean? Yet I was willing to ignore the filth if it meant getting a taste of the BDSM-style sex I’d been craving. But eventually I got tired of driving to the suburbs for what had become run-of-the-mill sex (when he had the energy for it), and it ended.

There are all kind of lies. When asked (by multiple men), I said I was interested in a threesome. It wasn’t untrue — I like women and I like idea of a threesome. But there are many other things I’m more interested in experiencing with my dominant. I played up my threesome interest when asked because I thought it would get me somewhere good, which was dishonest and got me nowhere anyway.

I also said I was open to the possibility of a serious relationship because I feared it was the only way this man would engage in the BDSM stuff with me. But I wasn’t looking for a relationship at that time; I wanted to play. I didn’t flat out lie, but I defined “being open to the possibility” so broadly in my mind that I could say yes. And that kind of lie is just as bad, if not worse, than the sweet guy who pretended to be dominant to please me.

If I could do it over from the beginning, I would approach the search for a dominant like one might approach the search for a spouse in an arranged marriage (except I wouldn’t involve my relatives). Because while you hope for some chemistry with your dominant, what you need is a transparent arrangement in which you try to meet each person’s expectations. Before you agree to such an arrangement, you want to feel confident that the person you’ve chosen has the requisite knowledge, experience, and desire to provide what you expect, so that you are not disappointed or worse.

I did it all backwards — looking for the chemistry guy and then hoping he’d make a great dominant. I should have been looking for a good arrangement—if there ended up being some chemistry there to make it all the more interesting, then even better.

The arrangement is paramount. It can become more, but it cannot start as less. Yet another reason why the 50 Shades scenario is crap. She fell for him and then she decided to consider the contract. That’s dating. If you are searching for a D/s relationship, the arrangement comes first. Then you can fall or not fall, but at least you know where you stand.