What’s the most anxiety inducing part about meeting up with a new pro-domme? Is it finding her playspace the first time, using whatever set of hoops you have to jump through for that? Is it the moment you first go to knock on her door? Or maybe the moment just after getting naked and just before walking out to meet her?
I think those all are solid options, but for me the biggest stress is way before the actual session. It’s the pressing of the ‘submit form’ button on her website.
Filling the form is stressful in itself as I’ve written before. But that damn button is the worst. Click, blink and it’s gone. Your carefully curated application – that you’ve re-read and tweaked a dozen time – is loosed into the world. Off in the ether. Did it work? Who knows. Maybe it’s sitting in her inbox. Maybe it gotten eaten by internet gremlins. All we can do now is play the waiting game.
Some dommes respond almost immediately. Others can take a week or more. Which then raises the question – when do I reach out again? I don’t want to be the unknown asshole nagging someone whose just busy or on vacation. But I also don’t want to be sitting there waiting on a reply if the button sent the form straight down to hell. Which has happened to me on multiple occasions.
That also raises the question – how do I reach out if the form doesn’t seem to have worked? Filling it in again seems silly. If it worked you’re just repeating yourself and if it didn’t you’re wasting your time. Some dommes have public emails but a lot don’t. Reaching out via IM on social media is one option, but always feels like a last resort to me.
I have found it useful to monitor social media for a sense of what the domme is doing. If they’re traveling, on vacation or obviously dealing with some issue, I assume it probably worked and they’re just busy. If they’re posting a lot about sessions and regular daily life then I’ll think about reaching out again if I haven’t heard back after one week.
One thing I do appreciate is when a domme lists on her website what her response process is. Some will even give the turnaround time you should expect, which is super helpful for reducing stress and knowing when it’s sensible to reach out to check on an application
Image shows the likely fate of new clients who nag pro-dommes unnecessarily about their session applications.
Several professionals I’ve played with have an auto-response letting their clients know their message has been received and setting expectations – something I very much appreciate.
Yes, that’s an excellent approach. I’ve had that happen a couple of times but it’s definitely the minority case sadly.
-paltego
Yes, I’ve had exactly the same experience.
Also I’ve learnt to copy and paste out the text I put into the form, as the stuff I say about what kind of session I might like varies according to my mood and – as you say – one click and off it goes and disappears leaving me no record of what I actually asked for.
The very first domme I ever contacted, over twenty years ago, didn’t reply for a few weeks. She was on holiday. But in the interim, I’d made contact with and been acccepted by the lady who became my first domme, with whom I had a wonderful, very special relationship. I apologised to the first lady and sent her a present in lieu of.. well, me – and later had the experience of hearing her complain about me (or rather, the absurdity of men, with me as a principal example) to my Mistress at a domme’s party, not realising that very slave wannabee was the one kneeling on the end of my Mistress’s leash.
Hey ho.
Best wishes
S
That’s a funny situation to find yourself in. Although I’m with you on your approach. If I don’t hear back in a week or two, then I think it’s totally fair to either reach out again or to try someone else.
Not sure what else she expected you do to. And she got a present for doing nothing! Seems like a win to me.
-paltego
Like you I find sending the initial submission and waiting for the reply to be the most nerve -wracking part of the process. That may be why I haven’t sessioned with a new Mistress for quite a while, I prefer to play with the ladies I already know these days. Even then their response times can vary from almost immediate to over a week which always annoys me. Still it’s preferable to the pre internet era (and pre mobile phone) when I used to have to decide who to visit based on cards in phone boxes which were almost always drawn rather than pictures and even if there was a picture it wouldn’t be of the person you were arranging to meet. I meet some absolute shockers that way and even when you met a good one there was no guarantee you could find them again.
I typically play with the same people whenever I can as well. Much better for building chemistry and avoiding this problem! It’s normally when I’m traveling – particularly to somewhere I don’t go often – that the situation arises for me.
I should do a post on the old days (not that I was doing sessions then). Sardax posted a picture of a bunch of cards in a phonebox recently, which brought to mind your comments on them.
-paltego
I have the great good fortune to have sessions with a domme who is scrupulously prompt and polite in correspondence.
However, I did take a great deal of care over the initial application. I think that’s a very important first step.
Manners maketh man
PP
Definitely important to get the initial application right. You only get one chance to make a first impression. I spend a lot of time on mine – which is what makes the webform submission mechanism even more stressful!
Thanks for sharing,
-paltego
This post hit home. I traveled recently and wanted to session in this other city. I started a month out, emailing a domme I’ve seen to see if she’d provide a reference, sending her a tribute in the process. She’s slow on email, so I wasn’t surprised it took a week, but she said yes, of course. Then I filled out the form of one very established domme who showed availability on her site and, again, that took a week or so. She replied saying she was out of town on the days I’d be in the city but offered another day that I was unavailable. Moving on, filled out the form for domme #2 and waited again several days. I got a reply saying she was off the entire month but I could session for next month, again when I’m not in town. Filled out the form for domme #3, and this time got a quick reply saying she was traveling but would be in town when I was there, but then our communication trailed off and by this time I was in the city and my schedule was full. I wound up just doing other things that extra day but wondered whether I should have messaged multiple dommes all at once and just gone with whoever responded.
The strange aspect of this experience is that I kept receiving from one of these dommes an incessant series of texts on her fan page — pictures of her in the dungeon, good morning and good night messages, etc., which I realized had to be just automated bot posting.
That sounds very frustrating. Sorry you missed out there.
My approach is always to start emailing with as much lead time as possible. In the case of my current trip that was around 2.5 months before. That’s just because I worry about exactly the scenario you describe. Of course that only works if you actually know you’ll be traveling so far in advance. Sometimes you only a have a handful of weeks to plan.
I don’t like the idea of messaging multiple dommes at once, but I can understand why someone might do that in this situation.
Getting stuck onto an email list for domme spam sounds super annoying! Particularly if you didn’t even get the fun of a session. I think that’d be a quick block from me.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your tale of woe 🙁
-paltego