There is a person who, a couple months ago, I might have referred to as “my dom” (one of my two doms, anyway!) who has since ghosted me, and it’s got me thinking once again about how my kinks fit together with romance – sometimes to my detriment.

I wish it wasn’t the case that someone domming me tends to elicit romantic feelings in me. It makes me feel like a trained animal, easy to control as long as you know the passphrases. It isn’t quite that simple, of course – the domming has to be skillful, thoughtful, and deliberately aimed at me in a way that makes me feel focused on and seen, or else I’ll just laugh it off like I’ve done with countless presumptuous dudes in my DMs. But still: it sucks to feel manipulable.

It’s not that I think this person was manipulating me on purpose, domming me with the intent of ensnaring me and then hurting me. There were reasons that things fell apart (none of which warranted ghosting, IMO, but whatever!). But their erstwhile dominance made it far more painful for me to watch the relationship unravel. I can’t help it: I’d wanted to be their good girl, to make them proud, to earn their praise and approval and languorous spankings. And now I can’t. It makes my inner teacher’s pet want to don a dunce cap and cry in the corner for weeks. And all because they threw me around a little on our first date, awakening the starry-eyed submissive I know myself to be at my core.

I’m still feeling raw from the ghosting, needless to say – which might explain why I was particularly vulnerable to someone else low-key domming me this week. A cute friend of mine knew I’d been moping around the house a lot, and he encouraged me via text to go out, take a walk, see a show. At first it was just light cajoling, and then as our conversation continued, it became almost a command. Or at least that’s how I felt it. And I don’t know why this still surprises me after all these years, but when someone hot/smart/sweet bosses me around, it stirs my longing at a level that vanilla crushes just can’t touch.