Maintaining a Balance in Online Domination

Rich writes with a dilemma he’s in that faces many men who are playing in the online Domination scene.  Rich writes: (this question is redacted and paraphrased for privacy purposes)

“…Dr. Sue this leads me to my question i have now, i have served my Mistress now for four years, she’s an **** Findom who has complete ownership over me, my finances, and i’m owned with blackmail. I do like serving her and being her property but i have reached a point where it’s effecting my personal life, and not financially, but physically, i can no longer perform sexually with women.

                  I’m by no means impotent; i get extremely aroused by my owner through her photos and her clips which you know many Mistresses use kinkbomb and c4s. In the beginning i first started buying her clips which these are what the Mistresses use to lure in the weak men such as myself, and as my Mistress knew when i first started contacting her, she slowly and with emails worked out of me all of my weaknesses, and that i was a little depressed and alone. She didn’t put a whole lot of effort into it until i started sending tributes, and at that point i believe she knew that she had me, from there she really started working me and i did become addicted to her as she really knew how to work me in the right ways, which kept me coming back to her, and that was ok i mean i sought her out.

                  I was wondering Dr. Sue is there a way i can somehow get back to at least carrying on a healthy, sexual relationship with a woman without having my only sexual release with my Mistress’s clips? I mean she knows that i’m addicted like this and she couldn’t like it better, she knows that i’m impotent with other women as i did at one time confide in her, she had no interest in listening to me. In the beginning i even told her i was depressed and she said let’s talk about it and she would ask me why i was depressed, i realized after i started serving her though and she knew she had me. I would tell her i’m still depressed and then she would just tell me to keep my mouth shut, and she would tell me i’m not a psychiatrist, and i would say well you said you would help me in the beginning, and there again she would just blow off my question and tell me to stay focused on what was important and that was serving her and her needs. Is there any help for me Dr. Sue, a way back to at least having a healthy relationship and life?”

In a word, YES Rich you can get your life back.  I first want to give you kudos for not whining and saying it’s all the Domme’s fault.  You make it quite clear you went to her for a service and she has supplied that service.  Well done for both parties.

This situation comes in to play not only in the world of D & s but in just watching excessive porn.  Our brains are wired to enjoy routine.  That’s why it’s hard for a heroin addict to kick that habit.  Once the drug is out of the system the person is no longer addicted to the drug and what you’re left with are negative habits that have formed.  It’s the same for smoking, eating, drinking or anything else we become habituated to.  These habits are actually harder to kick than the drug itself but they can be fixed.

Your Domme is correct; she’s not a psychiatrist and doesn’t profess to having those skills.  Her job is to hook you and get you to make her life easier and clearly it’s a job she did very well. So I’m not about to chastise the Domme in this case because she’s obviously very good at her job.

You have to first take responsibility for your own actions.  You asked for it, you got it.  Which I think you’ve pretty much done and that’s great.  From here on out it’s a matter of balance and re-conditioning.

Just as those who over eat need to learn to modify their behavior in order to lose weight you too have to modify yours.  Does that mean you leave your Domme behind?  Only if it gets to where you cannot balance your, in essence, two lives.

In the case of our over eater, unlike the heroin addict, we can’t remove food from this person’s life the over eater needs to balance what they eat with their activity level.  The same is true in your case.  If I said to you, “you can never talk to her again,” you would end up craving her more and doing more harm to yourself because your submission is a part of who you are.

So let’s look at our over eater again, if I say to the over eater, you can never, ever have any cake, cookies or whatever they are addicted to again, all that person will think about is that denied cake, however if I say to that person that I want them to limit their cake to two times per week instead of everyday that’s more doable.  This is the reason why most of these insanely stupid diets fail, they set people up to fail.

An individual can become addicted to porn to the point where they no longer can become aroused by a three-dimensional woman standing in front of them.  That’s sort of where you are.  This condition is known loosely as ‘porn creep’.   Unfortunately the DSM-V (which is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders #5 which was recently released) has only just added a new section on behavioral addictions but only included gambling in that section, nothing else.  This is how very slow the mental health industry is and why I say it’s all still in its infancy and is equivalent to Neanderthals throwing rocks at the moon.  Hence the big issues we’re experiencing in the world today with folks who are very mentally ill and not getting any treatment.  The reason I point this out to you is for you to see that you’re not alone and that even professionals aren’t very good at dealing with these issues.

Right now the best way for you to re-integrate yourself back in to the ‘real world’ is to start replacing some of your sessions with your Domme to watching straight porn.  I realize this sounds stupid since I just told you that you have a similar addiction to porn creep but we need to start getting your mind on other women, in vanilla sexual situations and nothing related to Domme clips or D & s at all.  This is a form of CBT (no not Cock and Ball Torture, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) which is the only way to battle a habit.

So again, don’t remove her from your life because that’s a real part of who you are but you need to start integrating more vanilla sexual situations to your mind.  You won’t be aroused right off the bat so don’t panic but we need to re-train your brain to accept regular relationships and not just the one you have with your Domme.  So we start small just like with our over eater.  For every session you have with your Domme you have a session alone with some vanilla porn.

You also need to start getting away from your computer.  You need to get yourself out in the physical world around regular (for lack of a better word) women.  You need to start physically socializing again not online socializing.  That can be done by simply joining classes or groups you might be interested in like cooking, photography whatever floats your non-sexual boat.

All this takes time and diligence on your part.  Unfortunately there is no magic pill, yes you could be put on anti-depressants but I’m not a big fan of drug companies and cognitive behavioral therapy really comes down to you being aware of your behavior and using your will (yes you still have some in there) to turn things around.  It’s not easy which is why addicts end up re-using when they’ve been clean for so long.  Our brains don’t like change. They fight it.  It’s your mind squirrels, which is what I call the voices in your head that do the negative talking, “go ahead do it, you know you want to, what harm could it do, it feels really good when you talk to your Domme, come on let’s just talk one time,” that you have to fight because they CAN be changed but they sure as shit don’t want to.  It’s easy to slide back in to negative behavior especially negative behavior that feels as good as yours does but only YOU can take control of your own mind squirrels.

Your Domme and your D & s life don’t have to go away but you need to learn to balance the two so you remain a member of society.  And that means walking away from your computer and living your life and breathing fresh air and talking to real people, preferably women.

You can do this and you know I’m always here if you need me!