Thursday 25 February 2016

Facilitators and Commanders: A theory about Submissive and Dominant personality types

When I look around me at my friends, they tend to divide neatly into people I can imaging subbing and people I can imagine domming!

Of course it's more complicated than that. Some people's D/S roles (if they have them) are at odds with their normal roles, and service tops turn the whole thing on its head.
However, I find this perception intriguing.

The vanilla subs (that I see) are all facilitators. We - for I am one - sometimes hold leadership roles, sometimes supportive ones, but our natural style is to work with people towards some goal. Even when we are in charge we want you to agree with us. Blind trust makes us feel uncomfortable. We are facilitators.

The vanilla doms are all commanders. Like the subs, they may hold leadership roles or supportive ones (think "IT support" or "bossy PA"), but the point about them is that they know what needs to be done and their natural style is to tell people what to do. They are more interested in being right than being liked. They want your trust, not your agreement. They are commanders.

I think we learn to do the other roles either consciously or from role models. Facilitators can decisively ride roughshod over people's feeling when we have to - but we agonise over it later. Commanders can be inclusive and consensual - but they find it irritating and stressful. In a relationship, a sufficiently motivated facilitator can insist on what they want, and a commander can make themselves listen.

However, I think we are happiest when we learn to go with the flow of who we are and make that work. Whether leading or following at work, either style works. In relationships it's easier to accept the roles - because I do see these types in couples made of opposites.

I don't think this is quite a predictor for the bedroom, vanilla or kinky. You'd also have to know about how much they were interested in giving and receiving of pleasure. In the distant past I had commander girlfriends who enjoyed the power of giving pleasure, and others who just wanted to lay back and be serviced.

I would hazard, though, that facilitators are sometimes service tops but never doms, and that commanders are sometimes bottoms*, but never subs (unless in the do-me sense).

I wonder if anybody else has spotted this... or is it simply too simple to make a good self help book?

EDIT: This looks awfully like the old Type A and Type B personality theory; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_A_and_Type_B_personality_theory

EDIT 2: However, they really don't map: https://www.reddit.com/r/BDSMcommunity/comments/47i1d0/psarant_about_subs_who_arent_the_right_kind_of/

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