Listening Skills and D/s

This week, I attended a couple of half-day sessions as a taster course in Counselling Skills. One thing that struck me was how some of the skills of “active listening” were familiar to me from my D/s relationships.

The attendees on the taster course had a number of exercises in listening, summarising, repeating and paraphrasing what our partners said. On some of these the other people struggled; I feel rather smug and proud that I didn't have much difficulty with any of it (although the exercises were a challenge – anything that requires focus must challenge you to command that focus, I feel).

But this focus I think is what gave me the edge, because of my experience as a BDSM Dominant. A Dom, particularly someone like me, who has a strong disciplinarian/strictness flavour, has to be able to pay attention to what a submissive partner is saying or doing to be able to keep hir on track. Many is the time a sub has tried to derail an interrogation or lesson by distracting me onto some other course. Being able to reflect back to her what she's saying and remain focussed on the task at hand has proved invaluable in that kind of situation.

In fact, another skill not directly touched upon in the course but that I found useful anyway in the exercises, was the ability to “bookmark” points in the conversation where departure happened and things went down some side alley or whatever. As mentioned above, subs try to derail a discussion and thus evade some dreaded “punishment”; it can be very fun to allow them to think they've succeeded and then bring things back to where we were anyway – no escape! Well, obviously there was no such dreaded consequence or such involved with the counselling skills, but the exercises had a tendency to evolve away from where they started and then we had to get back on track. By being alert and following carefully what was being said, I was often able to bring things back with a well-placed comment.

The attentiveness of active listening I think is a real parallel with D/s. It really is essential within a D/s relationship to be paying attention closely to one's partner. To maintain the command and presence as a Dominant, one must always be alert to how one's submissive is responding. And of course, as a submissive one must be able to follow carefully what is being asked of one by one's Dominant partner. And this is before we even get to the importance of attentiveness when there is any kind of bondage or SM play involved!

Now, it's fair to say that as a Dominant my reasons for using these skills are very different from the reasons that they are important in counselling. In counselling, the purpose is to enable the client to express themselves and know that they are being understood. The client leads the conversation and the counsellor spends more time listening and doesn't try to steer it. A Dominant (or at least, this Dominant!) is always in control, and is going to take any "discussion" where zie wishes it to go, and indeed is going to use the skills of active listening, of paraphrasing, and of "bookmarking", to make sure that happens.

However, at the same time, these points stand as a direct contradiction of the assumptions that some people make about D/s, particularly that a Dominant must simply not care what hir partner thinks or feels and can ignore what is said. There is no way that a Dominant can maintain the control that is the basis of consensual power-exchange and the pleasure that both derive from the relationship, unless that Dominant is completely aware of and in tune with hir submissive partner's feelings and responses!

I think that, for those who kink that way, this is one of the reasons why submission in D/s relationships feels so positive. Although counselling and D/s are very different things, and certainly should not be mistaken one for the other, some of the same benefits can be derived from both because of this attentive, active listening. In the taster course we were reminded that in the modern world, having someone genuinely pay attention to you and just listen is actually pretty rare - and it feels GOOD when someone does. Again, it only works in D/s for those who already desire some element of submission or Dominance in their relationship with another. But to have that attention, that focus, and it be all about you (a sub is all about hir Dom; but equally, a Dom is all about hir sub - no matter what the script of the play says!) is very comforting and reinforcing. It makes us feel good about ourselves, and it makes us feel that we have value as human beings.

No doubt there will be those who look at a passage like that and claim that it's an unhealthy relationship, that the Dominant is preying upon a sub's insecurity or whatever - but that's only as true as it is to say that a counsellor or therapist is preying upon the insecurities of their clients. And in both D/s and counselling, part of the aim is that the people go away and feel they have their own strength to deal with the world as a result - not a strength derived from the counsellor or D/s partner.

It is this, I think, that may lie behind a lot of the times when submissives (in particular female, feminist, submissives) talk about how D/s is empowering to them.

* Yes, of course there are some D/s relationships that are unhealthy and where the attention is made conditional upon a subservient structure; but then, there are arseholes like that in every walk of life, not just D/s - I'd argue that probably they appear more often by proportion in 'nilla than in D/s. But most often, the relationship is negotiated, understood, and the attention is not conditional but simply a part of the engagement of two people with one another (which form of language is used because the principles apply whether it's a one-off play scene or a full D/s relationship).