THE DIFFICULT JOURNEY TO LEARNING HOW TO SAY NO 2/2- LETTING YOUR SUBMISSIVE SIDE HELP

Last week we talked about basic skills that can help you learn to say no to people in your life. These are the basic tools that you can use anywhere, in any situation, and are just, in general, really good things to practice.

Today we’re going to focus more specifically on the BDSM side of things, but keep in mind that the skills in Part One can still be helpful in kink situations because they are easily adaptable. This part is just more BDSM centered and is going to be more nuanced.

I’ve always said that BDSM can help your life if you are engaged in healthy dynamics, and this is another aspect of that. It might sound counterintuitive, but your submissive inclinations can be used to keep you from spreading yourself too thin.

Part Two— Letting your submissive side help.

We’re going to talk about some different mindsets that might help you focus on your decisions, so you’re not obeying on autopilot. The goal is for you to make the choice to submit, and I’m going to be honest, submission feels more satisfying when you choose to do it.

Read more: THE DIFFICULT JOURNEY TO LEARNING HOW TO SAY NO 2/2- LETTING YOUR SUBMISSIVE SIDE HELP

Auto-pilot isn’t effort. It’s not you deciding to obey, and therefore it’s just, in general, less fulfilling. And once you discover that, it can be motivating on its own.

So, let me start by saying… if you’re at a scene event, club, or party, and you adopt a submissive demeanor where you defer to everyone—it’s fine. Some parties even have submissives who volunteer to serve the crowd, fetching drinks and stuff. It’s fine if you are choosing this. It’s okay just to enjoy slipping into that place of obedience, many of us do.

But you need to be wary of who you’re obeying. You need to be able to pull back out of that headspace when someone you don’t trust is giving you orders that make you uncomfortable. You need to understand that submissive does not equal doormat.

This is how the wanna-be fake Doms take advantage of submissives. It’s how the abusers trap you, and you don’t need to deal with that.

Being mindful of who you obey is easier said than done for some people. I know. I get it. But if you put in the effort to change your thought processes around your submission, you’ll find you have a much safer experience in the BDSM world.

So, let’s discuss some ideas that might help. Hopefully some of these may work for you; it will probably depend on your situation.

1. Learn the value of your submission.

My first suggestion is to try changing your mindset around submission. Fix it in your head that your obedience is too valuable to give out to everyone. It’s a gift just for people you trust, for people who earn it.

If you obey everyone around you… then what are you saving for your own Dom/Doms/bossy people? If every Tom, Dick and Hepzibah can order you to your knees… it stops becoming a special gift to offer those you trust.

Sometimes this makes it easier to say no. You might not have it in you to say no for yourself, but maybe you can say no for the people who care about you.

I know it sounds a little purity culture/slut-shamey, and the language around it is similar, but hear me out.

For a submissive, thinking about other people first is natural. It takes time and energy to learn to make yourself a priority, and some submissives never manage it. So what we’re trying to do is make sure your need to obey is at least tied to specific people that you trust not to take advantage of you.

I’m not talking about reserving yourself for one person. I’m talking about elevating people you trust, no matter how many there are, above the general riffraff you run into.

You can play with as many people are you like. I’ve played with hundreds. There have been parties where I was literally spanked around the room, and everyone had a good time. But you need to make sure that the people you allow to control you are safe.

A mutually agreed scene you both want, in a room full of people is probably going to be fine. Saying yes to a scene you don’t want is not safe or healthy. Letting someone you don’t trust pull you into a private room is a risk, a risk you should only take if you want to, not because you can’t say no.

Elevate the people you trust above strangers, and you’ll be less likely to get hurt. Then when someone asks to go play and you have a bad feeling, you can remember that this person isn’t on the list, and the people who are on the list wouldn’t want you to give in to them.

It’s not to give those you trust the ego-boost of being someone special. You don’t even need to tell them they are on the list. You are just, internally, deciding who can tell you what to do, based on how much you trust them.

Fix it in your head that obeying people who aren’t on that list is disrespectful to those who are. The ones on the list are the ones who care about your wellbeing. They have earned your trust.

They can be removed from that list at any time, if they fail you, but until then they are on the list. (Again, this is internal. This is about your mindset.)

If you start thinking of your submission as a gift, it becomes easier to give it only when you choose to give it. This is for your own safety and well-being. You need to settle it in your mind that your submission is valuable. It’s worth something.

2. Use rules as a shield

This works best when you have a Dominant person in your life. It doesn’t have to specifically be ‘your Dom’ but it’s preferably someone who is willing to enforce rules, as needed—even if only casually. (See: bossy friend, which we’ll get into further down.)

Ask the Dominant person to set some rules for you. They can be as loose or as restrictive as you like, but the idea is that you can no longer give in to everyone around you, because you aren’t allowed.

“I’m not allowed,” is a powerful phrase for a submissive. It affects your behavior, controlling what you can do, obviously, but it also warns off predators.

It tells them that you have someone looking out for you. You can absolutely just lie and just tell people you have a Dom, or that you’re not allowed to do something. You don’t owe strangers honesty about your submission. But I’ve noticed people who have trouble saying no also have trouble lying. So find someone to give you the rule, and then it’s not a lie.

This doesn’t have to be exclusively for scene interactions either. This can be useful in your whole life. Your boss wants you to take yet another shift for someone else? Nope, your Dom doesn’t want you to wear yourself out.

When given a choice between disappointing a Dominant and disappointing a random person who is trying to take advantage of you… even the most subby types will generally find the strength to say no.

3. Find a Dom of your own

This is obviously not an easy thing. Finding a Dom, the right Dom, to submit to can take a long time. And you have to be careful because saying no to your own Dom is harder than saying no to anyone else. You need to make sure that the person given this authority over you can be trusted.

But when you get it right, submitting to a Dominant can help with the internal struggle. Because now you belong to someone, and that person has the right to your obedience… other people don’t. Even when you are free to play with other people, your Dom is the one who makes the rules and enforces them.

Try telling your Dom that you broke a rule because a friend insisted. It never goes well, trust me.

Knowing that can give you power you might not have on your own. Maybe you can’t say out loud “Sorry, my Daddy says I’m not allowed to go,” or “My Top says you’re taking advantage of me, and I’m not allowed to help you anymore,” but you can say it in your head. You can wrap their strength around you and use it to help you say ‘Nope! I’m not doing this. Sorry.”

You can say no, because it’s not really you saying no. Your Dom is saying no, and you’re just passing along the info—even if you can’t tell people that part.

Giving in means being punished and no submissive wants to disappoint their Dominant and get punished, especially not over something they didn’t want to do anyway. That’s a very good incentive to stand up for yourself with others.

And if your Dom doesn’t already know you struggle to say no to people, tell them, so they can help you with it. You may never be able to say no easily to the person you belong to. A lot of submissives struggle there, but at the very least, your Dom should be able to have your back against other people.

And if you don’t have a Dom possibility…

4. Get a Bossy friend.

This goes well with #2 but can be a different dynamic. It’s an option if #3 isn’t possible.

My next suggestion is to find a bossy friend. And it’s important to note that a bossy friend doesn’t have to be a Top. They don’t have to be willing to punish you or anything like that. They don’t even have to be kinky.

They can be, but that’s absolutely not always the case. Sometimes it’s enough just to have someone who will stand up for you. Or yell at you for not standing up for yourself.

It can be a vanilla friend. It can be a fellow sub. It can be a Dom friend. The important thing is having some accountability.

Sometimes finding a Dom can be hard. A real Dom who is educated and has experience can be a rare find. A lot of submissives, especially those who are submissive by nature, will struggle without one, which leads to them rushing to accept the first Dom who wanders by. We already know why that’s not a good idea.

I have a lot of bossy people in my life. They are not my Doms, which is a very specific and defined relationship, but they are people that I trust to boss me around, as needed. Some of them are Doms, just not specifically mine. When I need help, these are people I can go to for a little bit of structure, guidance, or just “No, you’re not doing that.”

The bossy person might not be a Dom who will punish you if you don’t obey… but they will probably be disappointed if you don’t listen, and that’s a lot of motivation for a submissive person.

If you don’t have a Dom of your own, or even if you do, but you need more help than they can give, a bossy friend can be wonderful. But while we’re on the subject…

5. Delay and check in.

This works best in combination with one of the above and with some person mentioned above: Dom friend, Dom of your own, Bossy friend…or someone who will help you. Make it clear that you need them to say no for you. So if you are asking them at all, that means you are hoping the answer is no.

It is important to be clear about this. They need to be aware that “Sure, why not?” is not the answer you are looking for.

Set up a system where you don’t automatically give an answer to things you don’t want to do, but instead reply with, “I have to check.” Then you check in with whoever to see what they think.

It works easily online, but if someone corners you in person, you just say, “Hold on, let me check,” and then you whip out your phone and text someone.

They don’t need to know who you’re texting. It’s none of their business. All they need to know is that you are checking to see if you can do what they are asking. When the answer comes back ‘no’, as it should… you can pass that on to them.

This works for the regular world and the kink world. Girls have been doing this kind of checking in with each other forever. The fact that you’re a submissive is really irrelevant, except that this can be used in the Scene too.

“Can you do this for me?”
“Um, I’m not sure.”
“C’mon, you know you want to. Just say yes.”
“I have to check, hold on.”

“Friend? Rando wants me to do this thing, and I don’t want to, but…”
“Hell no. Tell him you can’t.”

Now it’s not you saying no. It’s someone saying what you can’t, and you can just relay their message.

“Friend? Rando Dom wants me to come over to his house to play and—”

“Nope. You can’t go.”

Obviously, you can edit the question if you’re asking a vanilla friend who doesn’t know. It’s easy enough and the important thing is that someone has your back.

I hope some of these suggestions will help you. What I wish for you… for all submissive people, is that you do practice learning how to say no.

It’s important to be able to say no on your own. There will be times when being unable to say no will absolutely cause you harm. And the people you depend on to say no for you, might not always be there in the moment you need them, so developing this skill is essential for your safety and wellbeing.

But… it’s not easy to do. I am all too aware of that, and if you have to rely on someone else’s strength to get you there… then that’s okay.

Just please think hard about Part One and how you might be able to incorporate some of those techniques into your life.

One last note: you’ll probably notice we didn’t get into saying no to your own Dominant and there are a few reasons for that. Saying no to your own Dominant, someone you have submitted to is a hugely complicated issue and honestly, most subs, never really get good at telling the person they most trust in the world no.

This is why choosing the right Dom is so important, and rushing into relationships is a bad idea. You need a Dom who will listen if you try to say no, and also pay attention enough to know when you have concerns you aren’t able to voice. If you need to say no, and can’t, they will hopefully pick up on that and ask.

If I was going to write about saying no to your own Dom, it would require a specific topic focusing only on that, and at some point, I probably will, but consider it an advanced lesson. One I haven’t entirely mastered myself, though I’m much better than I used to be.

But if you practice some of the tools here, I do think it will help. If you continue to work at it, eventually you’ll be able to stand up for yourself even with the people closest to you. That’s my hope for you anyway.