Loving Bondage Doesn't Make Me a Submissive Woman

The first time I was tied up was at the tender age of seventeen, a high school senior who snuck into a college boy’s dorm room for what I thought would be another night of great sex.

I knew that David was into BDSM and had a box full of toys under his bed that he had shown me and I was curious about, and we had even experimented before with a leather tasseled whip that he ran gently along the lengths of my body before smacking my ass with it every time it passed by.

And I loved it.

It was how I figured out that I liked a little pain with my pleasure and I’ll never be able to repay David for all the things he introduced me to and brought into my life — including bondage.

When David pulled out those lengths of thick, rough rope for the first time I was intimidated, wondering if it would hurt and chafe at my wrists, wondering whether I would like the feeling of not being able to control what he did to me.

David slipped the rough rope over my wrists and tied my hands to his headboard, leaving me completely unable to touch him or stop him from moving down my body, touching and kissing me all the way until he was between my legs going to work.

And good work he did, because it was while I was tied up, trashing against the ropes, feeling them pull and cut into my wrists, that I had my first orgasm from cunnilingus.

I felt totally out of control at that moment — tied up, vulnerable, exposed — but somehow there was a feeling of power in it, too.

Because I wanted it to happen, and I let it happen.

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All things considered, I want to be in control in the bedroom, and I feel like I always am.

It’s a mental thing as well as a physical thing.

Even if I’m physically being dominated by someone, I know it’s only because I am letting them dominate me, I am giving them the consent to have power over my body, and the only time I ever lose control is when I want to.

I just don’t consider myself a submissive person, even though I do love being dominated from time to time.

Submission, for me, is role playing at being emotionally vulnerable while being restrained, because if I am tied up it’s because I really wanted it or I asked for it, not because someone else pressures me into it.

Even as someone who considers herself a dominant woman, I still sometimes want to be tied down and ravished, I want to feel the heavy weight of a man on top of me pinning me down when he thrusts into me, I want to thrash against binds til it hurts, I want scrapes and bruises that last for days.

I’m not buying into the ideas or pressures that because I like to be tied up and fucked hard that it makes me a submissive person.

I think submission is much more a mental state than a physical state, a choice that one makes to give up control, or just the illusion of control.

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If the main sign of being a submissive is wanting to lose control in the bedroom, I definitely don’t fit under that umbrella.

I love the simulation of being submissive, of laying back with my hands tied behind my head while my partner has his way with me, kicking and thrashing out with abandon, straining against ropes or cuffs, pretending I’m trapped by my lover.

But the truth is, when I get in bed, I know what I want and as someone who considers herself a bit of a dominant woman, I’m not afraid to ask for what I want, either.

If I let you tie me up it’s not because I’m submitting to your dominance over me, it’s me allowing you to have the illusion of control over me for a little while.

At any rate, it’s hard to put a label on myself.

I think I am just a woman who loves what she loves and who wants to explore the full spectrum of physical and mental dominance and submission, and if there’s anything wrong with that, I don’t want to be right.