Pleasing vs Submitting

Many men are sexually driven by the idea of pleasing another man, and often mix the need to please with the actual concept of submission. There’s a deep difference between pleasing and submitting, even though these two things are often linked together.

Pleasing vs Submitting in BDSM

Almost every bottom who likes to have fun with a man who is top only and who has any slight kink (like mensmells, or feet, or being lightly dominanted during sex) define themselves “slave”. Truly, most of these people are just looking for a sex date, with nothing in it about pleasing their partner, other than themselves.

Many others are actually getting off on pleasing men, but while they might think this means “submission”, this is not accurate.

When you identify as a submissive, pleasing another man is in your nature, and that’s your sexual and emotional turn-on. That doesn’t mean that you’re actually submissive or submitting to the other man. In fact, submitting is much more mature experience, that doesn’t reside in chasing your own pleasure, and having as a second effect the pleasure of your compatible partner. This is still just sex.

Submitting means having built up the maturity to recognize you’re perfectly able to have both freedom and power, but that your next step in self realization, is to give all of that up to another man. True submission comes from devoting your time, your mindset, your actions and your motives to fulfill your purpose as a submissive, which is to belong to another man, learning what pleases him, and turning your expectations into that.

Pleasing is about doing what’s natural, and fulfills your ego and needs.

Submitting is about giving up your ego and needs, because that’s what you want to be. Completely devoted, and finding your pleasure in his pleasure only; whatever that pleasure might be.

Pleasing is your pleasure

This topic requires a lot of self honesty, but you know what I’m talking about even without further reading (if you’re honest to yourself). 

What does it mean to you, being a men pleaser?

• Some might respond “being an ashtray and cleanign his house and being his toilet”.
• Some might say “Sucking a man’s cock very well, being available for foot rubs and body rubs”.
• Some might say “cooking, making a lot of compliments, and making him feel always in charge”.

Whatever is your mind state, from hardcore to vanilla, this is still all and only about you. The man you have in your mind, doesn’t actually exist (or maybe he does, but still for now, he lives in your fantasy).

When you are hunting for fun and offering yourself as a “pleaser”, you are not submitting anything to anyone; in most cases, in fact, you are using your top’s body as a temporary host for that fantasy. Is he doing the same? 

You might think that your top is just the same as you, he’s “using” you too. Often it’s not like that. A top’s mentality is wired differently, and in most cases he will actually believe to have some power over you.

Is it wrong not be fully submissive?

Absolutely not, in itself. You should always be yourself entirely, and you should never feel forced into something that isn’t you.

What’s wrong, and what happens often, is to have a selectively weak awareness on what you want and what you don’t, and advertising yourself as a slave, when truly you just want to get what you want. 

There are many, actually the majority today, of tops who won’t care about it, they just want to meet you and have fun. But, that doesn’t satisfy you, does it? Because you want to please your idea of “real man”, while you don’t want to submit to anyone. 

So, hunting for real Dominants or Masters, and pretending to be submissive, while you just want to use them for a few sessions, that’s wrong. That’s abusive, and manipulative, and sadly a very common dynamic; also the opposite is true. Think about all those “cashmasters” losers that are destroying BDSM for everyone. Also them are faking everything for their own interests and agenda.

Why Pleasing and submission aren’t the same

The weight we give to words, define how seriously we’re able to take ourselves and our lives. That’s why Old Guard Leather is so strict with formalism. From today’s perspective, it might all seem like a lot of rules without a meaning, but up to before the advent of social media, people actually meant the words they spoke, or at least fathomed that they meant something.

In nowadays kink and queer culture, instead, nothing seems to matter. If you care about definitions and meaning, if your complain because “ownership” should mean something, you get laughed at, and you’ll be ridiculed because you’re expected to only fuck around, playing with terms that are just like an outfit to slip into and out of. 

Nowadays, it’s perfectly fine to toss away your life and health with chemsex, but don’t you dare being serious about your will and actions.

So, of course, it’s important to understand the difference between pleasing and submitting, in the terms of who you are, what you want, and what can you offer to your partner. The BDSM community used to be one revolving around attention, respect and emptathy.

So, if you think you’re a BDSM player, and you want to make a difference while growing as a person, start asking yourself: are you being honest to yourself and others? Are you offering what you truly have to offer? Or are you using your tops?