Online v. real-life submission

April 11, 2010

Online v. real-life submission

So... (i often seem to start a blog post with 'so', have you noticed?) i left a comment on this post of dissy's supporting her defense of online submission as 'real':

http://www.dissonanceinwriting.com/2010/04/09/is-online-real/comment-page-1/#comment-533
and she asked me to write a post about the differences between online and real-life submission from my own experiences. And here it is! i'm not even going to write the usual reminder about how these are only my views and other people's may vary, blah blah blah, because you all know that by now. But i will just say that some people still tend to think of online submission as being 'pretend', 'fake', 'pseudo', etc. and don't class it as 'real' BDSM and claim that it's not possible to have a 'real' relationship online. i'm not going to get into relationships today, because that's a whole different story, but i will defend the 'realness' of online BDSM interactions and compare them to real-life ones.

First a bit of history. When Sir and i first 'met' our interactions were online only for a while, at my request, and at that point i thought that i'd never want to move beyond that. Quickly i realised that there would be so much more to gain from other types of interaction and i allowed Sir to have my phone number and i bought a webcam so we could hear and see each other, but there was a couple of months where our only form of contact was text-chat and emails. Then later on in our relationship Sir sent me to some BDSM chatrooms as part of my training and i have been going to them ever since, for chatting and 'scening'. For those who don't know, 'scening' involves two people pretending to take part in sexual or BDSM activities together and typing as if they are (for example: *Dom takes each of her arms and secures them tightly to the St Andrews cross with ropes, running his finger down her body once she is in place*, *sub pulls against the ropes, wriggling her hips side to side as his finger teases her* etc, etc). Obviously there is no real physical contact between the two, and no actual pain is inflicted, but that's not the point of the scene. On the surface it may appear as if the participants are just typing words on a screen, writing a story together if you like, and there seems to be no purpose behind it or no depth to it, but i'm here to refute that appearance.

You see, only part of the reason i still go to the chatroom is to catch up with my friends there (both Dom/mes and subs), find out what they have been up to and fill them in with what's going on with me, just like in a normal online chat situation. The main reason Sir stills allows me to go there is because it acts as a support base for me, and i am able to discuss my problems and worries with other subs, which i can't do so much in real-life; also because flame is there and He wants me to be able to develop and maintain my relationship with her as He knows it is important to me. And then the scening is almost like an added extra, it is a fun and enjoyable activity which helps me to deepen my relationship with some of the Dom/mes and subs there, but Sir and i both realise that it also helps me as His slave to learn more about my submission and how i react to different types of Dominance and control, and sometimes it helps in areas of my training too (Sir will often tell me to try out an activity online first to get some idea of how i will react to it in real-life). And there lies the key, i believe. Because Dominance and submission are mental acts and states of being, i don't need someone physically there saying those things to me or doing those things to me in order to feel and act submissively towards them. And because submission is so linked in with internal states and characteristics, i pretty much react the same way to an online scene as i would to the same scene in real-life, so all my limits are the same online. Though obviously there is more intensity to having something physically done to you than just imagining it, and the body doesn't get the same adrenalin rush from pain and pleasure mixed together for example as when a Dom is scening with you for real. But even so the emotions can definitely be brought on from an online scene as they can from a real-life one, and many times my submission in that moment to that person is very real. (That doesn't mean that there haven't been times where i've started a scene with a new Dom and then realised partway through that the vital connection just isn't there. In that situation i do end up just typing words onto a screen, going through the motions, and i am not 'feeling it', but i do it to please the Dom which is a form of submitting in itself, especially as i get nothing from it personally.)

i think sometimes an online scene can even be more intense than the same scene would be in reality, because for certain types of scene the physical sensations can crowd the brain and take away your focus, whereas when you're scening online you can concentrate on the mental and emotional feelings without those distractions. Also i don't get the 'floaty' feeling (subspace) from online scening, so i can be present for the whole of a scene, which is interesting to compare to the same type of play in real-life when i may only remember parts of it because of drifting off halfway through. i find also that scening online has helped with parts of my training because it gets past my shyness factor, for example when scening with Dommes which i was very very nervous about doing in real-life. There isn't so much of that 'oh god, how do i look?' factor to inhibit me when i am scening online, so i have been able to explore new areas for me easier than had i only had real-life experiences to rely on. So there are benefits to online BDSM interactions!

Having said that, i much prefer real-life ones, mainly because of the deep relationship i have with Sir which goes beyond the M/s one and means that i trust Him absolutely and fully and so can totally let myself go during play sessions with Him. i'm only able to do that with a few Dom/mes online who i know very very well and have a special connection with, but even then the love part of the relationship is always lacking. And i do find that my body craves actual physical use and pain after a certain amount of time, which no amount of online scening would ever be able to satisfy. So those people who only have online, i do wonder about how they manage to satisfy those needs. Having experienced both online and real-life, i would say that for me being physically with my Master has enabled us to take our relationship to a deeper level, but it may just be that i am more suited to a real-life dynamic and others may have just as deep a relationship through online means only. i certainly don't view online BDSM relationships as 'lesser' or not as deep/complete/meaningful as real-life ones, and i totally admire those people who manage to stay together despite the distance between them. But having tasted a real-life M/s dynamic i don't think that i personally could ever go back to just an online one ever again. (And i said that i wasn't going to mention relationships as such.... oh well!)

Hopefully that has explained a bit more about the differences between online and real-life BDSM interactions for me. Oh, one last thing to add: because of the mental/ emotional/ internal/ personality aspects being so prominent in online interactions when the physical aspect is completely missing, it is much easier for me to tell who is a genuine Dom/sub and who is faking it for some reason! And there are far fewer genuine people than you would expect, but that's for another post sometime!