A submissive does not enter the BDSM scene "fully formed". Instead she enters with some idea of her wants and needs and, as her experience grows, her appreciation of what is available in the scene matures (possibly sparking new ideas) as does her own awareness of her wants and needs.
She will try various things, possibly with a range of partners. The different techniques, both physical and emotional, will have their effects and she will select what she likes and what she finds pleasing or necessary for her.
Things that were possibly new and exciting at the beginning will maybe lose their gloss and things that were once considered beyond her limits will become desirable.
Variety will likely be important for purely recreational BDSM, but for psychological submissives and slaves certain specific acts of submission will be discovered that "do the trick" better than others. These will become "favourites".
It is likely that a submissive will enter the scene as an immediate submissive. It is unlikely that she would be aware that there is the possibility of any deep satisfaction being found in PDR alone unless she recognizes masochism in herself.
So. She will explore sensation and pain play, bondage and fantasy role-playing. This may be enough for her and she may remain an immediate submissive for her entire BDSM career.
Or she might find that control and PDR itself stir something inside her. She will explore different types of PDR and play with different intensities, maybe pushing her own limits. With experience she will both be able to identify the acts of submission that she best responds to, and will also learn the ability to let herself respond deeply to the control and to the PDR and find satisfaction in it. This "learning to respond" is both a psychological and emotional skill that will take her considerable time to develop. It consists partly of a journey of self-discovery and self-recognition. She will become, as a consequence of this journey, a psychological submissive.
The "something" that stirs inside her may be the coalescing of miscellaneous small, different feelings, cravings, wants or needs into a single focussed one. What she finds from satisfying this may be enough to trigger a type of dependency, thus making her, instead of a psychological submissive, a slave to the resultant need.
In any case, along the way she will undoubtedly experience new feelings and find new desires and possibly needs within her.
The growth and development of a dominant
Like a submissive, a dominant is likely to enter the scene either as a sadist, or with ideas of finding an immediate-type submissive, possibly for kinky-sex.
As the one who inflicts the PDR on the submissive one of the first things that he must learn is how to do the inflicting and how to do it safely. The early stages here are purely mechanical--involving tying knots, and learning how to wield a whip, flogger, crop and candle.
If he is into role-playing fantasy then he must also learn how to create scenes in his mind and how to express them, story-teller style, to his submissive.
His growth might end at this point. He might remain an immediate dominant.
Further development requires that he don a mantle of significant responsibility because to involve himself with a psychological submissive or a slave means exploring and playing with the often-sensitive emotional and spiritual sides of his submissive. Cuts and bruises caused by a whip or flogger will heal in a few days, but the real emotional hurt that a dominant can inflict on a trusting submissive by poorly chosen words or actions can take weeks or months to heal, if ever.
The skills required by this type of dominant include perceptiveness, compassion, wisdom, sensibility, understanding, empathy, patience, openness, honesty, the ability to communicate, the ability to explore trust and the ability to explore intimacy, both his submissive's and his own, without fear or deception.
Some dominants have these skills. Some must learn them. Some will never have them.
The dominant of a psychological submissive or a slave will take often the role of teacher and mentor for his submissive. She will look to him for guidance and authority in her exploration of herself and BDSM. He will need to be sensitive to her changing needs both within scenes and in "real-life" as her submissive aspects develop and integrate with the rest of her personality.
Of course, the dominant must learn these things, often doing so with a submissive whose experience reasonably matches his own, growing with her and, undoubtedly, making mistakes along the way.
The best tool that the dominant has to aid his learning and his growth is his ability to communicate with his submissive. By talking with her, discussing her reaction to him and to their scenes together he will learn how she reacts and gain more confidence in himself. From her and his growing pool of experience he will develop new ideas and new approaches.
He needs to be very open and very accepting. It will often be the case that his own preconceived ideas will be clearly and definitively wrong, and he must be ready to read the signs and hear the words from his submissive that tell him so. Stubborness in some things is good, but responding and adapting too slowly to his submissive can be just as damaging to the submissive's trust as responding badly or not responding at all.
Peter
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