ALPHA_BY_DAY: AND SO I BEGAN

I was so disappointed when I got bored with my last “vanilla” relationship.  We seemed a good match and had fun together, but she was impossibly submissive. Once again I came to the reluctant conclusion that I couldn’t find enough to satisfy my inner needs.  So I broke up with her and decided to reactivate my profile on a kinky dating site. 

But, having repressed by submissive desires for so long, I was paranoid about “exposure” and felt that the only way I could freely explore my submission was with someone who had a vested interest in discretion and who specialized in unwrapping newbies like me.  And, yes, I had interest in learning more about the D/s dynamic and the mysterious world of BDSM. 

Admittedly, there were all kinds of fears, rational and irrational, swimming around in my head, but the one thing I was most afraid of was falling in love with some dominant “her.”  I mean, having the opportunity to uncork 30 years of repressed submissive desires would no doubt bond me to her very deeply and very quickly, and that made me fear an eventual and devastating loss if romantic feelings were involved with this part of my journey.

With a year left on my master’s degree, I figured this was my opportunity to get two educations at the same time, so I committed to dedicating the next year to immersing myself in learning about submission.  I vowed going in that when I found a teacher, I would obey her in every way.  Whatever direction she wanted to take my training, I would happily and energetically follow and I do my absolute best to be completely obedient to her.

As luck would have it, I met a Domme who checked all the right boxes.  Granted, some of her kinks were well beyond anything I had imagined (I had to Google a couple of them), but she was kind, and, after having dinner with her, I was pretty sure she was the one to guide me gently into a low-risk exploration of femdom. Even more perfectly, she was a lesbian and in a serious relationship with a woman. This helped me set aside my greatest emotional fear, because I can’t fall in love with someone who can’t love me in the same way.

Here’s my journal entry from the day after we met:

16 Dec 2012 – Dinner With A Domme

Last night, I had dinner with a Domme. And no, I wasn’t naked and eating out of a dog bowl. It was, at least from a distance, a casual dinner at a trendy restaurant in LA. I was nervous. For the first time in a very long time, I was so very nervous. The conversation in my head was nothing short of manic—“How do I act, what do I say? No, you can’t say that, and for God’s sake, be respectful!”

There was a middle-aged guy sitting at the next table waiting for his wife to arrive who caught about every fifth or sixth word of our conversation,n and I couldn’t help but notice when he heard one that was unexpected.

A couple weeks ago, I broke up with my vanilla girlfriend and decided that I was going to use 2013 to focus solely on exploring my submissive desires. Ironic and apropos then to be sitting across the table from this beautiful, elegant, intelligent, woman and the very last thing on my mind is dating. Instead I’m trying to hide the fact that I’m scared out of my mind. That, I must admit, was a rush. Being so far out of my comfort zone and having her sit there completely casual and comfortable was great.

So the good news is that I found the right Domme. I trust that she’ll lead me where I want to go; and based on our conversations about her interests, she will also very likely lead me in some places I’m not so sure I want to go. But that’s the best part, because I swore that I wouldn’t push my own agenda. In the true spirit of the journey, I’m going to acquiesce to her kinks and spend the next year becoming whatever she wants to make of me.

It’s particularly fun to think of our foot fetish discussion because I have literally never had a single sexual thought about a woman’s foot. In fact, I have a vanilla friend who I joke with frequently about being a germophobe. She would definitely never believe that I’d go near another person’s foot. But that’s the point of learning to serve, isn’t it? If she likes it and I want to learn to serve, then it doesn’t really matter if I’m into it. Heck, for me at this point, I get turned on by being told to do something I don’t want to do, so this should be a very interesting year.

She seems very comfortable with the fact that I’m a newbie. The bad news is…I’m a newbie. I know it sounds stupid, particularly to folks with D/s experience, but I don’t know how to submit. Is it being less of ‘me’? Is it balancing my alpha side? Is it a release of a lifelong inner need to submit to a woman?

In closing, I’ll share a caveat. I have no illusions about our pending relationship. It’s actually quite refreshing to know this going in. She’s my teacher, I’m her student. I expect nothing more. Well, OK, that’s not entirely true. I expect to be a somewhat sluttier student when she’s done with me.

We would have our first session together a month later. There really aren’t words to describe how nervous I was.  I mean I’m 40 years old; when was the last time I actually felt fear?  Blinding, paralyzing, stammer-inducing fear? And here I was about to taste that which I have coveted my entire life. 

I won’t describe the details other than to say that I was literally shaking and short of breath to

the point that she put her arms around me and assured me that I was safe.  And at the end, she allowed me to kneel in front of her and wrap my arms around her legs and hug her like a child.  I squeezed and squeezed her and kept repeating the words “thank you” over and over again.

I walked away that night knowing that the surge of electricity in my brain and the quiet peace in my soul were telling me I had found my place at last.  That my submissive desires were OK. They were right. They were me. And in the weeks ahead, I would find newfound emotions surging within. A man who hadn’t cried in 30 years was all of a sudden in tears two or three times a week.

I also knew that this was just the first phase of my journey, and that real submission, the kind that I had dreamt of my whole life, required romance, love, commitment, and emotional courage. The vulnerability I was learning to embrace was nothing compared to the vulnerability of a man who happily serves his wife. And I started seriously to dig into research on female-led relationships.

The course of my training would take several unexpected turns. I found out that there were certain things that I have a natural inclination toward, like service and obedience.  And that those things genuinely brought me joy. I’d have the opportunity to meet and serve several dommes over the next few months, culminating in serving a ladies tea and also volunteering as a server at a fundraiser for women’s empowerment. 

It was around this time that I began to see things a little more clearly. I began to understand that

female-led relationships aren’t in and of themselves a kink. “No kidding,” you say? But remember, I’m still just a newbie, so this was a big moment for me. I also began to realize that having more experience with “kink” doesn’t build my resume as a prospective submissive hubby. Sure, I think it would be fun to keep trying new things, but my aptitude for domestication, my love of cooking, my joy of service, and the deep satisfaction I get from obedience are all far more valuable to me as I step out into the sunlight of FLRs.

—Alpha-by-Day (who writes his own blog, My Journey Into FLR)