Really powerful dominance is founded on really deep knowledge of our partners. We can rule them and guide them and play them like instruments because we know how they work: what they need, what they fear, what inspires them, what puts a smile on their faces and, perhaps most of all, what gets them so turned on they can’t think straight. As dominants, getting to know our partner’s sexual desires better is always a good investment.
Here’s a simple technique that’ll help you learn to push all your partner’s buttons with confidence and grace. I call it a fantasy paraphrase, and it’s a three step process.
Step #1
Get your partner to tell you one or a few of their hot, kinky fantasies.
Putting their deepest and wettest desires into words—and then getting those words to come out of their mouths—-is easy for some people, but a shy, challenging, stammering process for many. We can help our partners open up to us by building up a lot of safety around asking them to share. Being accepting of their sexual needs and wants in general, and never judging them for their passions or poking fun at their fantasies, will help tremendously. We can also choose a safe, comfortable, relaxed moment in which to ask (or tell, depending on our dynamic) them to share. We’re more likely to get a deeper, yummier fantasy when they’re safely curled into bed, in our arms, with the lights off than if we ask across the table at Burger King. Possibly the most effective way to encourage a shy partner to share their fantasies is to model the same vulnerability we’re asking of them by sharing a few juicy fantasies of our own.
When they are telling us their fantasies, the most effective thing we can do is listen—without butting in with our own ideas or making a lot of comments. If we do that, then we end up hearing less about what pushes their buttons and more about what pushes our own. We don’t want to sit stone cold silent either, since that can seem uninterested or cold or downright weird. So we show interest and prompt them for more, but without steering the fantasy or injecting our own ideas into it. Lots of “Mmmm,” and “That sounds hot,” and “Tell me more” is good. Masturbating them while they whisper in your ear is even better.
Step #2
Getting a partner to share their fantasies with us is educational in and of itself, and it certainly isn’t a new idea! But when all we do is hear a story, the understanding we get from it is limited because we don’t get why it’s sexy, which elements are core to our partner’s fantasy and which are window dressing, or what the story really means. Very often meaning is crucial to fantasies, especially kinky ones. Say our partner tells us a hot story about being dressed in nothing but frilly lingerie underneath a long coat and being taken across town via public transit to a sexy dinner with friends. Are they fantasizing about all those strangers on the bus and the tantalizing risk that they might get caught and exposed? Or are they imagining having perfect confidence that only you and they know the secret, and they’re getting off on that shared intimacy? Or maybe their attention is mainly on the lingerie itself—the feel of it against their skin. Is the sexy dinner with friends an important part of the fantasy, or just a convenient excuse to ride the bus in a teddy?
We could always just ask our partners those kinds of questions, but sometimes having your fantasies analyzed and dissected like that can feel like you’re being judged, or even attacked. And often people aren’t even sure themselves what it is about their fantasies that gets their motors running. A way to gently dig deeper into your partner’s erotic inner workings and get around those difficulties is to paraphrase their fantasy back to them.
Step two is that you take the fantasy they told you and, on your own time, reimagine and repackage it. Think about all the elements that you guess make that fantasy sexy, and work some, most or all of them into a story of your own creation. Add maybe one or two flourishes of your own, but not too much. Your goal is to make it so that anyone who found the first fantasy hot would find this fantasy just as hot or hotter. So instead of crossing town on the bus, you and your partner are boarding a plane to fly to a kinky conference in another town. After you’re both seated, you surprise them by pulling a bag out of your carry on and telling them to go to the bathroom and change into the frilly things inside. Suddenly they realize why you were so adamant they wear a long coat leaving the house!
Step #3
Finally, create another safe and intimate moment like you did to hear their story. Get them good and turned on, and tell them yours. (Writing these back and forth works too, by the way. Especially nice if you’re dominating at a distance.)
Watch their reactions while you whisper in their ear, and ask them (maybe in a later moment) what was hot about your story and what wasn’t. You gotta not have your ego invested in being right here—make it super clear to them that you want their honest reactions, and don’t try to argue or justify if they say you missed the point, just learn from it.
You might find that your partner goes cold as soon as you get to the part about surprising them with the package of lingerie. They didn’t think to include it in the story the first time, but in their fantasies they’ve always assumed that there was a drawn out, sensual, careful process of getting them primped and prettied up at home before putting on the coat and stepping out the door—and now that you bring it up they realize that that part is crucial. The thought of being sent off to wriggle into their lingerie in a cramped airplane bathroom kills it for them.
And maybe through that realization you get to learn that a core essence of this fantasy of theirs is about being cared for like a prized possession.
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If we play this game enough, incorporating what we hear back from our partners and using it to guide new stories, we can start learning to reliably spin together fantasies that get our partners as wound up and eager as their own imagination. And having that level of understanding of their internal erotic world gives us a wonderful foundation for keeping them wrapped around our little fingers.