I hold myself to high standards—sometimes impossibly high. I have a hard time feeling a sense of accomplishment because I focus on all the ways I could have done better. And this only intensifies when it comes to my Dominant. That desire to please is so strong. I don’t just want to obey; I want to anticipate my Dominant’s needs and fulfill them. I want to do it all and do it flawlessly. Then when I can’t do it all, I feel like a failure as a submissive. I feel like a failure because I couldn’t do all the things my Dominant never asked me to do.
This is why only your Dominant gets to decide if you are good enough. They know what you can handle, and they know when you’re giving your best effort. A good Dominant will never, ever set you up to fail. But submissives are perennial overachievers. We don’t just want to meet our Dom’s expectations; we want to blaze past them with the power of a thousand suns. There’s only one problem with that: this perfection is antithetical to a healthy D/s dynamic.
Let me illustrate with a story about makeup. I wear makeup perhaps twice a year, and even then, it’s a natural look. But this time, my Dom wanted slutty makeup. Smoky eye, lots of eyeliner, red lipstick. It is hard to overstate my insecurity here. I do not know what the fuck I’m doing with heavy makeup. I feel like a child playing with Mom’s makeup, and I am terrified I will look that way to others. I especially don’t want to look that way to this person I desperately want to please.
So I went to the place with the makeup and left with a bag of stuff I’d never used before. Then I got myself to YouTube. I found a video I liked and watched it obsessively, determined to get the look right. But when I looked in the mirror, it felt wrong. I felt like I was failing him. But I wanted to show him I was trying, so I snapped a couple pics for him. I waited nervously for his response. Finally, it came.
“Omg, it is so weird to see you like this.”
My heart sank. I started crying, and it only went downhill from there. Somewhere in my head, I knew he wasn’t criticizing me. He was just surprised. But his reaction struck at all my insecurities. I felt like he pushed me into something where I was bound to fail, and I lashed out at him for that. It took me days of reflection (and a bit of punishment) to understand where I went wrong.
What I finally learned was this: It didn’t matter how I looked. He didn’t want some makeup-savvy girl; he wanted me. He wanted to see his sneaker-and-jeans submissive put her heart into obeying him. He didn’t demand my perfection, only my enthusiastic effort and obedience. That’s all I had to do—obey. My obedience was perfection, no matter how the makeup looked.
There is so much simplicity in that, if you can allow yourself to believe it. You only need obedience. Eager, effortful obedience. That’s it. If the outcome isn’t what your Dominant wanted, it’s on them to instruct you differently. And if they do, it doesn’t mean the first attempt was a failure; this is just what it means to be led. It is how you move forward together.
The makeup story happened over two years ago, and I’ve had to re-learn this lesson over and over since then. It is hard for me to let go of my perfectionism. But when you hold yourself to higher standards than your Dom does, you steal control from them. You tell them their standards weren’t good enough, and you know better. It is unhealthy, and it is decidedly un-submissive.
If your Dom says you are good enough, then you are good enough. It’s a beautiful thing, if you just let yourself feel it.
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