Appearances and deception

In conversation over the weekend with Different Drummer, a friend who may soon become a little more than a friend, and he expressed a certain amount of shock when I told him I was a submissive. We'd been discussing pain and the general wonderfulness of it, alongside a promise to take him out to a club and introduce him to the joys of BDSM. I'd long suspected that he leaned in that direction, which was confirmed enthusiastically, but I was interested to realise that his impressions of me were not correct.

I do switch, but occasionally and only really with The Photographer. Overall I prefer to submit and yet, this person who I know reasonably well, assumed that I was a Domme. I am a strong personality, I suppose and I remember a conversation with Understated Fetishist where he was a little disarmed by the combination of confidence and submission.

I don't set out to be untruthful or to deliberately confuse, but for very obvious and private reasons neither do I wear my outlook on a T-shirt. That said, I also don't feel that in order to be a submissive one should appear so all the time, or that there is any one particular mode of submission. I like to submit, and I tend to be very enthusiastic and energised about things I enjoy. Confidence is internal and external - it is the value I have for myself, and also the face I present to the outside world: the strength that allows me to hand over my body and my mind to someone else in full acceptance of what might happen. For me, without that there would be no submission, because nothing would change or be exchanged.