SWM 052 – Are Dominance/Submission Games in the Bedroom OK? Sex Within Marriage Podcast : Exploring Married Sexuality from a Christian Perspective
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- Christianity
I get a lot of questions about dominance and submission play in the bedroom. Mostly everyone wants to know if it’s okay, and if they’re the only one doing it. I have a couple of posts on bondage (here, here and here), and we’ve talked about submission in terms of marriage structure, but I don’t think I’ve tackled the idea of power exchange games in the bedroom before.
And last month, I got a question from our anonymous Have A Question page on the topic. Rather than tackle it with the other anonymous questions for the month (soon to be posted), I thought I’d write it’s own post for it, because this is another question that comes up a lot, and I think people want to know more about it.
Here’s the question:
This is pretty embarrassing to ask.. But I enjoy calling my husband “Sir” in bed, as we enjoy our submissive/dominant roles in marriage to be played out in sex as well. He felt weird about it at first, but now loves it. I read your post a while ago where you mentioned that humiliation isn’t good for your partner in the long term. Would you consider this to be humiliation? What about the trend to call men “daddy” in bed?
This question was pretty interesting to watch in our supporters forum. A few guys responded first saying they didn’t get the whole “daddy” thing. Then my wife jumped in and said playing with dominance can be pretty arousing, and then a bunch of other wives jumped in chiming in their agreement.
And I find this happens a fair bit. Everyone is silent until someone speaks up, and then a bunch of people jump in to say “oh, we do that too”. Often people don’t even have a name for what they’re doing. In fact, a known acronym in some circles is TTWD (That Thing We Do) which usually refers just to spanking and similar activities, but is sometimes abstrated to include any activities that fall within the BDSM umbrella. It regularly happens that people will email me saying “hey, we do this thing, are we the only ones?” and they’ll describe it, and I’ll tell them the name of it. It’s handy to have a name, because for one, it’s usually a lot shorter than “that thing we do” and less vague, and it helps them know they’re not alone.
In this case, the wife is describing a power exchange game, and even explains that, for her, this is an extension of their complementarian marriage, but the truth is that this is often a turnon for those in egalitarian marriages too.
If you’re complementarian, then you might find it arousing to extend, or go even more strongly into those roles in the bedroom. If you’re egalitarian, you might find it arousing to play with roles you typically don’t exercise. So, I don’t want this to turn into an egalitarian vs. complementarian argument, but I do lean towards a hierarchical structure, though I’d argue I don’t resemble what egalitarians call complementarian at all, so it’s hard to give a name to my stance. Personally, I’m starting to think both complementarians and egalitarians are each on opposite, but equally wrong, radical sides.
Instead, I hope we can talk about power exchange play, aka Dominance and submission play, aka D/s play. That is, you’re doing it for fun, for the purposes of arousal. But in order to do that, we might have to delve a bit into marriage dynamics. But, I hope the comments will focus on the play aspect.
However,
I get a lot of questions about dominance and submission play in the bedroom. Mostly everyone wants to know if it’s okay, and if they’re the only one doing it. I have a couple of posts on bondage (here, here and here), and we’ve talked about submission in terms of marriage structure, but I don’t think I’ve tackled the idea of power exchange games in the bedroom before.
And last month, I got a question from our anonymous Have A Question page on the topic. Rather than tackle it with the other anonymous questions for the month (soon to be posted), I thought I’d write it’s own post for it, because this is another question that comes up a lot, and I think people want to know more about it.
Here’s the question:
This is pretty embarrassing to ask.. But I enjoy calling my husband “Sir” in bed, as we enjoy our submissive/dominant roles in marriage to be played out in sex as well. He felt weird about it at first, but now loves it. I read your post a while ago where you mentioned that humiliation isn’t good for your partner in the long term. Would you consider this to be humiliation? What about the trend to call men “daddy” in bed?
This question was pretty interesting to watch in our supporters forum. A few guys responded first saying they didn’t get the whole “daddy” thing. Then my wife jumped in and said playing with dominance can be pretty arousing, and then a bunch of other wives jumped in chiming in their agreement.
And I find this happens a fair bit. Everyone is silent until someone speaks up, and then a bunch of people jump in to say “oh, we do that too”. Often people don’t even have a name for what they’re doing. In fact, a known acronym in some circles is TTWD (That Thing We Do) which usually refers just to spanking and similar activities, but is sometimes abstrated to include any activities that fall within the BDSM umbrella. It regularly happens that people will email me saying “hey, we do this thing, are we the only ones?” and they’ll describe it, and I’ll tell them the name of it. It’s handy to have a name, because for one, it’s usually a lot shorter than “that thing we do” and less vague, and it helps them know they’re not alone.
In this case, the wife is describing a power exchange game, and even explains that, for her, this is an extension of their complementarian marriage, but the truth is that this is often a turnon for those in egalitarian marriages too.
If you’re complementarian, then you might find it arousing to extend, or go even more strongly into those roles in the bedroom. If you’re egalitarian, you might find it arousing to play with roles you typically don’t exercise. So, I don’t want this to turn into an egalitarian vs. complementarian argument, but I do lean towards a hierarchical structure, though I’d argue I don’t resemble what egalitarians call complementarian at all, so it’s hard to give a name to my stance. Personally, I’m starting to think both complementarians and egalitarians are each on opposite, but equally wrong, radical sides.
Instead, I hope we can talk about power exchange play, aka Dominance and submission play, aka D/s play. That is, you’re doing it for fun, for the purposes of arousal. But in order to do that, we might have to delve a bit into marriage dynamics. But, I hope the comments will focus on the play aspect.
However,