If you’ve not seen my previous post, then I suggest this post will make a lot more sense if you go read that first. Or alternatively, read this one, try and guess what the hell I’m talking about, and then see if you’re right afterwards. Your call.
Assuming you buy my theory of a submissive stress budget, the obvious follow-up question is: What are the implications? How should I use this information?
The simple answer is to be aware of what your submissive budget is and what it costs to spend it on different activities. That’s certainly a necessary thing to do, but hardly radical new thinking. Where I think it gets interesting is when you start planning out scenes with specific goals in mind. Then I think the idea of a budget helps focus the play. You can evaluate if each new element introduced advances you towards the goal or simply wastes budget.
For example, let’s say you both want to do an intense impact play scene. In this case the bigger the whacks the happier everyone ultimately is. This means the budget needs to be focused on riding out the impacts. So make the submissive’s physical position relaxed, give him room to wiggle and don’t add other clips, clamps or spiky things. If you use bondage, make it light and comfortable. Mix the impacts in with things that grow his stress budget, like touch, teasing and visual stimulation. Spend all the budget on the focus on the scene, not on the details around the edges.
As another example, let’s say you want to try out urethral sounding, but that’s a new and scary thing for the submissive. In this case do the sounding as a very separate activity from other play. Making all his budget available for the sounds will maximize the chance of success and minimize the freak-out potential. Then, when he’s had a chance to calibrate, you’ll both have an idea what could be combined with them in future play.
We typically think about kink and BDSM as being all about maximizing intense experiences. But sometimes you want to achieve a particular effect with the minimum amount of stress. For example, tight hoods burn a lot of my stress budget, but I do enjoy sensory deprivation scenes. The solution to this conundrum is to use ear plugs and blindfolds. That achieves the same effect, but leaves a lot of my budget available for adding bondage, breathing control, e-stim devices, etc. In that kind of scene the domme is trying to add a lot of layers, but not burn too much budget on the early ones.
I’ve a few concluding thoughts on this topic I’ll save for a third and final post. Given I was just discussing sensory deprivation, I thought it’d be appropriate to finish with this image. I’m guessing a lot of his budget has been spent on that impressive wrap. Hopefully he’s got enough left to handle whatever she’s planning for the bit left sticking out.
This is obviously from the Divine Bitches site.