Am I a submissive? What I wish I'd known a year ago

Am I a submissive? I typed that into a search bar at 1am about a year ago, and the results were either very confident quizzes or very explicit forums. Neither helped. I didn’t want a verdict. I wanted to know if what I was feeling had a name, and whether other people had felt it too.

So this is what I wish I’d read then. I’m not an expert, and I’m still figuring things out. I can tell you what pointed me toward submission, what turned out not to matter, and what I’d do differently. If you want the bigger picture first, there’s a guide to the main kink roles that explains all of them properly.

What made me wonder if I was a submissive?

Small things, mostly. I liked it when someone else picked the restaurant. I liked being told I’d done something well, more than I liked doing it. I’d read a scene in a book and notice I was imagining myself on one side of it, every time.

None of those things means anything on its own. Lots of people like someone else to pick the restaurant. But together they made a pattern I kept noticing, and the feeling underneath was always the same: relief. The idea of handing over control, within limits I trusted, felt like putting down something heavy.

That relief, more than any specific activity, was the thing I’d point to. Does that feel familiar?

Which signs actually mattered?

Looking back, these were the useful ones:

• Feeling relief or excitement, not fear, at the idea of someone else leading.
• Wanting structure: rules, routines, being given a task and doing it well.
• Liking praise a lot. More on that in my post about praise kink, which turned out to be most of my answer.
• Imagining myself as the one being guided, consistently, across very different scenarios.

And these didn’t matter at all, even though I worried about them:

• Being assertive at work. Lots of submissives run teams, argue with landlords and are generally hard to push around. Submission is something you choose with a specific person, not a description of your whole personality.
• Not liking everything. You can be a sub and dislike pain, or dislike rules, or both. The word covers a lot of different people.
• Sometimes wanting the other side. That might mean you’re a switch, which is common and not a sign you’re confused.

What about brats?

Some subs like to push back, playfully and by agreement. That’s called being a brat, and it’s very much a kind of submission rather than a failure at it. If you read the descriptions of quiet, obedient subs and thought “that’s not me, but I still want someone else in charge,” Marcus has a good post on bratty subs and the people who enjoy them.

I’m not a brat, for what it’s worth. I tried being cheeky once and immediately apologized, which I’m told is the least bratty thing possible.

How do you explore it without rushing?

This is the part I’d tell my year-ago self most firmly: you don’t need a label to start, and you don’t need to start with anything big.

Write things down. I kept a list with three columns: yes, maybe, absolutely not. The maybe column was the longest, and it still is. That’s normal.

Try a quiz if it helps, but treat the result as vocabulary, not a verdict. Mine gave me words for things I already felt, which made them much easier to talk about.

Notice what happens in your body when you read about it, too. That sounds odd, but the times I felt calm and a bit excited were better signs than the times I felt I ought to be excited because a website said so.

Then talk to someone. A partner if you have one, or people at a munch if you don’t. Saying “I think I might be submissive” out loud to another person was terrifying the first time and completely ordinary by the third.

And if you’re single and want to explore with someone new, please read how to find a dom safely before you reply to anyone who calls himself Sir in his first message.

What would I tell myself now?

That the question was the right one to ask, and it was fine not to know the answer yet. A year in, I’m fairly sure I’m a sub. I’m also less attached to the word than I expected to be. What I care about now is what I actually like, what my limits are, and whether the person I’m with listens.

The label was useful for finding other people who felt the same way. After that, the specifics mattered more.

So if you’re reading this at 1am with a search bar open, what is it you keep imagining, and how does it feel when you do?