When your D/s relationship is out of the norm part two: maintaining a group dynamic

Continued from: When your D/s relationship is out of the norm (part one)

Now that we’ve gone through a few different examples of D/s relationships let’s get back to my situation. I’m afraid that after giving you all those lovely descriptions, I’m not actually going to apply them to myself. They was more to open your mind to the various possibilities, so I won’t get into the exact nature of all my relationships or detail what I do and with who, because there are things we like to keep private. What I am going to do is give you a basic idea of how this works mostly by focusing on my relationship with K and W.

I have a number of dominant people in my life, but not all of them are involved in every aspect of my submission. I have “fill-in” bossy people who don’t really make rules but do tend to deal with common sense type “What were you thinking? I’m going to spank you!” situations that they happen to see. These are friends/family who are dominant but are not my Doms—oh and that doesn’t mean I get off without having to tell K and W what happened either. It’s one of those get punished at school, get punished again at home situations.

I also have Dominants who are play partners and those may make rules specific to our interactions, but it’s W and K who make the daily rules that I live by, some of the others might enforce those rules when they aren’t available—as I’ve said I’m a group project and rarely unsupervised, but they are the real ones in charge.

So that’s a little easier to picture right? Two people who work together as a team to keep me well taken care of. What you need to know about W and K is that they’ve been friends since long before either of them knew me. This is the first time they’ve dominated someone together, at least to this extent. I think they’ve done scenes together but I’m definitely the first person they’ve owned together and since we’ve now been together for almost a year and a half I’d say things were going well.

For me it’s an ideal situation because I am much more likely to express needs and ask for help when I don’t feel like I’m sucking all the energy out of one person. There is less chance of my hiding things because I think someone is too stressed to deal with a broken rule, if I have more than one person to go to. It allows me to relax into my submission in a way that otherwise is harder for me. Plus, I love the group dynamic—it’s like being surrounded by warmth and affection all the time.

If K is having a bad day or is too tired to deal with me, I get dropped in W’s lap. If W is off for the weekend camping, K is there to keep an eye on me. It means no one gets too stressed and that’s an important benefit.

Another positive is that if one Dominant has a trigger or an issue that is unhealthy for them to deal with, they don’t have to feel like they need to force themselves to do it anyway for the submissive’s health, because there is someone else who can and will handle it. There is absolutely no reason not to divide up the tasks when you have more than one person to handle them.

But there are downsides and pitfalls too. Some, if you aren’t careful, can destroy the whole relationship. The amount of trust and honesty required in a D/s relationship is pretty huge to start with. Now go ahead and double that for each person you add. It is very easy for a sub with two Doms to accidentally play them off each other, like a child does with their parents because it’s a very similar dynamic and subs can get manipulative without intending to when they are worried about being in trouble. It’s also death to a healthy D/s relationship when the manipulation works so you really want to be careful there unless you’re confident in how it will be handled.

I can go to W or K and whine and vent and complain and cry about the other one all I want—because nine times out of ten they will comfort me and then ask if I’ve told the other all of that yet. At which point if I haven’t I’m given the choice of doing that on my own or having it done for me, unless I have a very good reason not to. That’s a frustrating thing, but usually very good for the relationship. And I know that’s what is going to happen, so I don’t have to worry about there being a fight because one helped me keep my feelings secret while things festered.

I have the freedom to vent, get my thoughts in order, and calm down before I have to address it with the person who needs to hear it. If K and W weren’t close to start with, things probably would have gotten rocky at a couple of points because they might not have been able to work together so well. And here’s a tip: I’ve found that group dynamics don’t work unless everyone is invested in each other—not just invested in the sub, but in each other also.
To make sure that your relationship lines stay untangled I think it’s essential that everyone get time alone together.

Which means…group time is wonderful, but I also need to be with K or W alone and separately, and they need their own time together to maintain their friendship without having me in the middle of everything. It can be hard to balance if you only ever see each other in a group, because often the focus settles on the sub and if they are following their rules, and what their problems are. It can be very easy for the Dominant’s issues to get lost if you’re not careful.

If there is more than one Dom in the group they should be supporting each other. Being a dominant is stressful and no one will understand that more than your co-dominant. My situation is based on two Doms and one sub (me!) so that’s what I’m focusing on here, but since there are more submissives out there you’ll see one Dom with multiple subs more often than the reverse. It doesn’t always happen, but submissives on the same ‘chain’, or owned by the same person, should be supporting each other too.

I would not recommend having more than one dominant person making life rules for you if they aren’t able to work as a team because that’s where things start to fall apart. K and W don’t argue over what my rules should be or how I should be punished because they have a system for handling that. They either discuss it and decide together or one will take the lead on that issue.

Sometimes that means I get double punishments. You can complain it’s unfair to be punished for something twice, but you might as well just suck it up because the price of love and affection from more than one Dom is double jeopardy. And I’ll be honest, when it comes to big issues I need to hear from both of them. I need to feel like I’ve dealt with disappointing both of them, and sometimes that means being punished twice.

Is the group thing for everyone? Nope. My gut feeling is that people who are polyamorous will have an easier time with this type of situation, even if the D/s relationship involved isn’t inherently sexual, the skills you learn in balancing more than one romantic partner will be very useful here.

The best advice I can give you besides what I’ve already stated is: Be honest. Be open. Be careful of jealousy and when it rears its head (and it will, trust me) be ready to discuss it with your partners.