Why I Love Commanding, and Being Commanded by Men

Anita Teresa
Nov 4 · 5 min read

“Seduction should feel good to both parties. If it doesn’t, it isn’t seduction, it is manipulation. People conflate the two, but they are two utterly different ways of interacting.”

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I realized some time ago that I like being commanded by men, and I also like to command men. That may sound like a really bizarre thing to say, especially in the current #metoo era, but the specific thing I’m experiencing & talking about actually feels like a healthy aspect of power dynamics between men and women. Hear me out on this…

I like when a man (whom I’m dating) throws his weight around in the best possible way, by making space for me to feel compelled by him and by his personal power, without being forceful. There’s something completely natural and primal about it. And my guess is that it’s probably something which certain men just have an intuitive feel for, while others need to cultivate it deliberately.

When I experience a man as “showing up,” being himself and being present, and then offering the space for me to enjoy him equally from a distance or up close, I feel safe and also turned on by that. Then when the moment for an expression of intimacy arrives (such as a kiss), there is a kind of gravitas in that offering. It is fully choice, no bribery, no manipulation, nothing but the bare presence of desire in the space between us, and a nonverbal request that feels like a command coming from an authentic place. This is compelling.

A great analogy for what I’m talking about is ballroom dancing. In tango, for example, a gifted male dancer will provide a frame for the woman to relish the music, add her unique embellishments to the structure, and express the emotionality of the dance. She can soar, free of the burden of vigilance about other people’s proximity to them, or worry about whether she’s heading in the right direction or counting time properly.

I really enjoy being able to glide in and out of that space of surrender, being held and protected (yes, men, there are women in the world who still like the feeling of being protected and held by a man!), and not having to be constantly “on” and alert in a mode of fight or flight, a state I think most of us women unfortunately wind up living our lives from in a place like New York City or DC. In any case, on the dance floor, I have had many experiences of when a man knows himself and commands his power graciously in relation to a woman; it’s almost like a certain button he’s pushed in me, activating my willingness to go with his flow, the directive he’s leading with his presence. And of course, the same is true in my experience of when a man is willing to go with my flow, follow my lead, and in turn, surrender to me, in other contexts.

On that note, I do love to command and compel a man to do what I want! It is, more than any conscious intention or linear thought-process, a sort of rising up in my being, a confidence mixed with a bit of brashness, a kind of ebullient taste for fun, mixed with a fair amount of female haughtiness — quite proud-peacock-like (and yeah, I know that the male peacocks are the bright ones). Coming from this space of confidence, of knowing that I deserve the best treatment, the best experiences, the best behavior and the sweetest reward from my interactions with the man in front of me, my presence expands to “command” it, inspire it, compel it to come forth from my counterpart.

For any of you reading this who think, “Well, I don’t relate with people that way, I’m just simple and straight-forward, and I’m the same in every situation and with every person, and I never “impose” myself on anyone else or deign to want things from other people…well, most likely you’re very passive AND resentful about it. This whole dance of personal power, this dynamic, is almost entirely nonverbal. And whether or not you’re aware of it, it’s constantly taking place not just between two people who are courting, but in every encounter between two people period, with different shades of meaning and variations on how the power dynamic between them is expressed.

While this may all seem utterly obvious and like Body Language 101, I find that these dynamics, including presence, personal power, charisma & influence, and how this all stems from your own connection to your body’s intelligence, can be completely overlooked in day to day life. For most of us, it happens on auto-pilot, without the slightest direct observation of it or deliberate enjoyment of it.

That is why Somatic Movement is one of the most helpful disciplines around, in my opinion, because it opens the door to the most intriguing language out there — the language of the soma (the body). Equipped with sensate capacity for detecting and “reading” the most nuanced of signals, a master Somatic Movement analyst was hired by the CIA during the Bush administration, to assess whether Saddam Hussein was lying or not. And at the same time, her colleague was hired by a family to de-code the erratic behavior of their child with Autism. For my life, Somatic Movement training has deeply enriched my overall health & my experience of intimacy, both with myself and others. And it serves me in countless other ways — winning consensus, integrity of presence, holding my own without even saying a word, and generating success of all kinds among a few of them…

Have you commanded your presence lately? Why or why not?

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