Ask Giles: I'm a sub (f) but I want to switch with my boyfriend

"He wants me to lead, and he wants
 to thoroughly please me...."

I'm starting an Ask Giles column, mostly posting -- with permission -- conversations I've had on reddit. 

A lady who normally identifies as a sub sent me a long question:

I'm in a bind, and I wonder if you would be kind enough to share some advice with me.

Essentially, I'm a very sexually submissive and service-oriented woman with a fair amount of experience in D/s relationships, and I'm now dating a man who is kinky but doesn't entirely identify with the bdsm scene.

He hasn't let me be completely submissive with him yet, but we're new, and sex for me is amazing with him regardless. He's recently told me he wants me to switch and be more dominant with him. He is a great lover, and he can switch to be just dominant enough for me (minimum), mostly when I ask for pain play or rough sex, but he's said he doesn't think he can be totally sexually satisfied without also, at least occasionally, me initiating for him to be submissive to me.

He wants me to lead, and he wants to thoroughly please me....

We met without knowing anything about each other's kinks until several dates in, and now we've been dating for a few months and finding a way to make this work has been a frequent conversation topic. The thought of us being fundamentally mismatched just because we both enjoy being submissive is really heartbreaking for me, and I want so badly to make him happy.

I love service, pain play, bondage, collars, rules & protocol, and I've been in 24/7 D/s relationships. I feel I'm so far to the extreme sub side of the submissive-dominant spectrum that it seems so far out of my element to be dominant in any sexual context.

In work and other social settings, I can delegate and take leadership roles when I need to get things done a certain way, though I don't prefer to.

I've been in enough scenes and seen enough dommes in action to have ideas of things I COULD do, but it is almost a turn-off for me to take/use power and control rather than to give it. Even receiving oral sex, which he loves to give, is hard for me to enjoy without feeling like I have too much control/privilege/attention unless I'm restrained or 'forced' to receive it.

I do love sex, I love the physical sensations of sex, I love physical attention and affection, and I do love being adored and cared for. It's just so easy to enjoy it as a submissive, and seems so hard to relax into it in any other role. I want to give him what he wants, and I feel like I don't know how to be or think or feel in a dominant role.
Can you give me any advice from your own experience to help me satisfy his need to switch? Any help would be appreciated.

Note how they met -- "We met without knowing anything about each other's kinks until several dates in" -- which is so common an experience, I'm starting to believe in kinkdar.

I responded:

I'd be very surprised if you can't find a way to make this work! Fetishes tend to be a bit random, but dynamic is inherent in the person, and you two people were together before discussing kink.

It sounds as if his urges are actually submissive rather than bottomish. He's not after particular play, so much as an experience of a particular dynamic.

If this is correct, you don't need to play dom or emulate the dominatrixes you've seen. He's not a scene person anyway. He will measure his experience against what he's previously done, not what he's seen on xtube. In fact, I wonder whether the best approach might be to take off your kinky hat and think just self-centered.

In my self help books I keep harking back to the concept of the Roman dominatrix. She isn't actually, kinky, she just happens to own a male slave, which lets her get her way. Don't think "dom", just think "in control".

It follows that you need to work on just being comfortable giving orders. Intellectually, you must know how mind-blowing it is for him to have his kink satisfied, so your block is at the gut-reaction level. I think you can get around this by initially emphasizing the service side of things. Forget erotic for an hour or so, and just get him cleaning your apartment, sorting your book collection, whatever, with you not domming him, just giving orders.

Another thought - an alternative, or something that might also help - is that you could try setting up experiences that pushed both your sets of buttons. For example, imagine if he was locked into a male chastity device - there are ways of making this a timed thing, outside both your control - and had a butt plug in (thus ticking the anal play box). Anything sensual you did to him would be at once a service to him and a torment, and one of the best ways of getting him close to orgasm would be by letting him go down on you.

I'll send you a copy of my Roman Dominatrix book. It's not quite what you're looking for because it assumes the lady reader is vanilla. However, you might find it's general thrust useful.

She responded:

I love your suggestions of removing myself from the idea that I need to "dom" for him to be satisfied and to begin with service-oriented submission. I have been bossy and self-centered in non-kink contexts before and it's a great idea to try it with him outside of the bedroom.

He will be traveling for work for the next few ways, so while I anticipate his return, I can be thinking about other creative ways of making sensual pleasure "at once a service to him and a torment," as you said so well.

I asked him to write out some short fantasies for me while he is away, and for me to do the same. I presented it as a way to tease each other, but I'm hoping to gain more insight from what he writes on the type of experience he would be looking for as a submissive.
Thank you again for your time. It really helped me to hear your perspective. :) I'll let you know how it goes.

I'll be interested to see how this one plays out...

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Don't resign yourself to just getting off on other people's adventures! When we started out, my wife was vanilla. Use my manuals to help you walk the same Femdom path! There's one for him, and one for her.