Dating: Spotting Red Flags
When you are a new submissive heading out into the wild there are a lot of factors to consider when looking for a Dominant to date. The most important thing to consider is your own personal safety. Although the purpose of BDSM is to use creativity and exploration to play and create intimacy you will find people taking advantage by creating darkness in the corners. To protect yourself you must shine your own light into the darkness to create your own safety. Creating your own safety requires you be able to identify some of the more common red flags. Let's look at them carefully.
Overly Demanding: An example of this is when the Dominant makes a lot of demands upfront. They require to be addressed in a certain way immediately such as being called Sir or Master in the first conversation. They want to establish many rules in the first couple of days. They make you feel badly for wanting to wait for more connection before taking on rules. This has been a very complex topic in dating. Inexperienced online dominants especially will expect you to take on rules within the first day or two of chatting. Someone who is proposing multiple rules be adopted all at the same time is displaying their lack of experience for you. Experienced Dominants understand that it is difficult for the submissive to integrate a lot of new rules or habits at once and they also know that holding a submissive accountable for many at once is also challenging and often unrealistic.
Avoids Negotiation: An example of this is when the dominant is unwilling to discuss limits or boundaries with you or doesn’t know how to have this conversation. An experienced Dominant is going to want to know your limits and boundaries early on in your connection. This not only ensures that you are a good match but demonstrates care and appropriate practice.
Avoids Safewords: The Dominant is unwilling or doesn’t know about using safe words. One of the beautiful parts of BDSM is that it allows you to openly and freely explore areas that are emotionally or physically challenging. This is only really possible with trust and appropriate use of communication through safewords. Educating yourself on how to use them properly is vital to being able to participate in BDSM play fully, especially with more complex topics such as CNC.
Doesn't Learn The Submissive: The Dominant does not take time to learn about your motivations. If we are to consider that a large part of a BDSM relationship is to create growth (see Laracco Volume 4) then the dominant should be investing time and energy into understanding the submissive and their fantasies, needs and desires. If this isn't happening and the entire focus is around what the dominant wants and needs than you should get out fast. Selfish Doms will never be sexy.
Doesn't Practice: They are unwilling to learn, read or practice. BDSM takes quite a lot of practice to be done correctly. A lot of areas of play have different implements and skillsets required to execute them. It is often very unsafe to just guess how to do something and you can genuinely hurt someone if you adopt that mindset. If your dominant isn't putting the time in to educate themselves the best advice is to RUN.
Requires Unhealthy Acts: They encourage or require unhealthy or disrespectful acts. An example of this could be unprotected sex. They might expect you to participate in fetishes or acts that are outside of your limits, acts that put you in danger, or acts that put you in a public space where the consent of bystanders can not be achieved.
Withholds History: The Dominant is unwilling to discuss dating history and references with you. This either means something bad happened or there isn't a history. I'd have a lot more questions before progressing with someone who isn't forthcoming about their past.
Inappropriate Attitude: The Dominant puts you down outside of the container of your dynamic. Such examples might be making you feel shame for your preferences/needs or talking down to you in front of coworkers and family. There is a time and a place for everything and if the dominant is unable to sense and respect that then there will always be a multitude of issues present.
Anger Management: The Dominant gets angry easily without good self-control, or has large mood swings, or lacks self awareness. There is a solid rule in BDSM that you should never play while angry with the person you are playing with. It is a basic rule that is generally an accepted truth within the community. It can be appropriate to play with the concept of your anger, such as taking a bad day at work out on your submissive with their consent (as described in the New Topping Book), but in order to do this you must have very tight control and understanding of your anger and your triggers. If the Dominant can not demonstrate this self-control properly, consider it a huge red flag.
Inconsistent Connection: Disappearing for extended periods of time really creates instability in BDSM dynamics and shows a lack of awareness to the sensitivity of the relationship. It shows inexperience and selfish behavior. It is not uncommon to find online dynamics where the Dominant shows up to connect only when aroused which is abuse of the connection style that is required for the submissive to let go and participate.
I'm sure there are more, there are always new and interesting ways for miscommunication and misunderstandings in all types of relationships. The best we can do is be aware of these more obvious factors so that we can do our best to protect ourselves from predators.
Happy Hunting.
