I know what you’re thinking - who does?

Actually, the men that have watched 50 Shades of Grey and think that man = dominant and dominant = doing what he pleases and uses it as an excuse to be a predator.

But this article isn’t about that. It’s about discovering dominance from the perspective of a woman, in a society where women are oftentimes perceived or assumed to be submissive.

There was no moment where I declared it as an identity. It was something I gradually shifted into and felt more comfortable owning as I grew older. It was something that revealed itself over time, through experience.

When I first started exploring kink, I did it in isolation. I leant into my desires - I created my ideal situations, and one thing was consistent.

In my fantasies, or as our resident Sexologist, Georgie Blewett, calls them, your hottest sexual fantasy, I was never in the submissive role. It’s just where my mind went when it was left to its own devices. I was always the one leading, deciding, directing what happened next.

That mirrored how I am in everyday life. I am a project manager through-and-through. But looking back I see that I didn’t own it as part of my identity until I moved out of casual kink exploration and into a long-term dynamic.

This week sees the launch of my episode of Don’t Scare the Newbies with kirizal and their Dominant, S. 

On the podcast we discussed how my preference for leading both in life and in the bedroom feels uncommon, given a common understanding that life-dominance doesn’t often equal bedroom dominance. Where one might want to take a step back from leading, and be led.

There’s a common narrative around high-performing, type A women wanting to submit as a form of relief, by handing over control, to stop making decisions, to be taken out of their own head.

And this makes sense, but my instinct leans the other way, and if I am honest, it is likely rooted in hyper-independence. There are some patterns that even good self-awareness and a few rounds of therapy do not fully undo.

In my day-to-day life, my mind is constantly moving. It jumps from one thing to the next, always a few steps ahead, always anticipating what needs to happen. Running a business only exacerbates that.

My head is not a calm place to be, but my dominance, is. When I am leading, my mind goes quiet.

The way dominance grounds me is not dissimilar to what kirizal described experiencing through submission. They’re different roles, but a similar outcome - it’s a sense of being pulled into the present.

S and I joked about something else as well. As Dominants, we both have a shared love of spreadsheets and a certain comfort in being “the decider.”

It sounds flippant, but there is truth in it. For me, I am satisfied by structure and reassured in knowing what is happening next.

In a scene, I adore moulding the shape of an experience. I tend to know, mentally, what is going to happen and in what order. I will have everything laid out beforehand. My implements are placed deliberately, in sequence. 

I am not somebody who improvises a scene. In my experience, improvisation only throws off my pacing and leads me down a path of indecision and excited overwhelm.

There is a high likelihood that this is where I overlap into neurodivergent territory, though my specific flavour of neurodivergence remains unknown and changes depending on who you ask.

There is also growing research suggesting a higher-than-average representation of neurodivergent traits within BDSM communities, particularly around structure, sensory processing, and control dynamics.

For me, the effect is very simple.

When I concentrate, almost ritualistically, on curating the environment, something in my brain shifts. For once, it calms down and focuses entirely on the task at hand. There is no more running commentary on tasks I haven’t completed, and tasks I need to remember to do tomorrow.

I am entirely focussed on my partner and reading her body. Her reactions and micro movements. 

I am just there, and I am connected in a way that’s hard to describe.

People often imagine dominance is entirely performative. Or control for the sake of control. But for me, and many like me, it’s a level of care that is easy to overlook from the outside.

You are not just orchestrating an experience, you are holding somebody’s trust. That requires a level of presence that I don’t naturally arrive at in most areas of my life.

My dominant tendency extends beyond scenes and into my everyday life. It isn’t something I switch on and off again, but rather, shows up in smaller and more ordinary ways.

I like being the lead, I like organising - planning dates, choosing where to go, taking care of the details, making sure things run smoothly without it needing to be a discussion every five minutes. 

I don’t seek to control everything, but create a structure that my brain, and my partners, can settle into.

And the crux of it, now I think about it, comes down to creating a safe environment for us both. Though this isn’t entirely reliant on me and does require contribution from a partner. But the goal is an environment where communication is easy, boundaries are clear, where there’s enough consistency that nothing feels unstable or unpredictable unless we’ve explicitly chosen it to be.

There’s also a decisiveness to it. I don’t particularly enjoy endless back and forth over small decisions. I’d rather take responsibility for them, own the outcome, and adjust if I need to. That doesn’t always make me the easiest person, but within a dynamic, it tends to work.

In a scene, the structure is more visible because everything has a place, a pace, a reason and a desired outcome I’m working towards. And day-to-day, it looks like consideration, attention to the small things and a willingness to lead and keep the ship steady.

And that’s the version of dominance I wish more people understood.

If you want to listen to podcast, head over to Spotify (or any podcast platform) and listen to our episode.