It’s been a while since I have written about the use of tasks with in BDSM relationships. Actually in reviewing what I written last time or rather when I had last written about this subject. And it turns out that this is exactly a year ago, give or take a day. But such is the nature of the actual year. So a year onwards, and here we go again…

In a discussion that I was partial overhearing this weekend, the talk came about controlling a submissive “remotely”. What did they mean by remotely. They did mean expecting a submissive to follow orders given in Real Life when they are given over a digital medium in this case (surprisingly) the world of Second Life. Speaking for myself, I personally do not like the term remote, mostly because it implies a certain distance between the dominant and the submissive, even though I do understand that this is a distance in the physical rather than the emotional sense.

So in the this blog I want to look once again at the various structures that can be placed within existing on-line BDSM relationship to make at least a partial step into reality that is the world of BDSM. I will try to give various examples if and where possible but by all means this blog is in general intended to be a higher level overview of the possibilities of what is possible and what is involved. Plus all examples and such given are of course from within my own frame of reference and may or may not be applicable to your own situation

The first thing you need to ask yourself when making the step from pure on-line BDSM to the inclusion of several elements of BDSM, is what your goals are, or what you want your goals to be and what you want to achieve. And above all, not only do you need to ask yourself that, you also need to communicate this to your other partner (be this your dominant or your submissive) and talk things out and through until you are both happy. For the submissive this means pushing until she has made herself clearly understood that what she wants to achieve is understood by the dominant. For the dominant this means bringing your own points forward as well as pushing the submissive to open up about her wants, needs and desires.

Once you have figured out what you want to achieve, start making plans in steps on how to achieve this act. Again this is a step that requires a lot of communication between partners. Make sure that you detail all the steps you want to take. To give an example: (see I promised you!), if you want your submissive to be able to walk in taller heels, then you start her off with small heels and over time (and I mean time, some things really are games that are played in the long run), you increase gradually her heel length by an inch of perhaps when possible half an inch each time and give her time to acclimatise to the changes. After all you want to build your submissive up and make her achieve things. Not set her up in such a way that she is guaranteed to fail. Doing so would seriously undermine and damage your relationship. And listen closely to your submissive. After all she knows her body a lot better than you do and you better heed her advice, given that it is of course sincere.

So what kind of tasks can there be set? That depends a whole lot in what direction you want to take this, there are tasks that are beneficial to a submissives health, for example enforced exercise or better sleeping patterns/curfew. Something, in the case of the latter that I am closely familiar with.

Of course other areas of training, although training a submissive can be a goal in its own right. There are various tasks that one can deploy that would help to increase the connection between the dominant and the submissive. A good example of this, of course is mantras that submissives should perform at certain times, morning and evening before bed seem to be rather popular. You have to wonder in how much that is a throw back to very old customs of praying before bedtime. Other ideas for such training could be for the submissive to kneel when the dominants comes on-line or when speaking to them. Or for the submissive to pay extra attention to their looks when talking to their dominant. What do I mean by this? Well to give a more concrete example, a dominant could wish their submissive to be dressed nicely in a skirt and properly made up and wearing perfume, or perhaps wear sexy lingerie and heels when talking with their dominant.

Of course there are even a greater multitude of sexual goals to achieve. Orgasm training and denial seem to be particular one in this regard. But please to the dominants out there, a word of caution – do not take orgasm denial too long. Maybe the idea is interesting to leave a submissive months without orgasm in the idea of her making more and more needy but there is a limit as how much the body can endure and the fact of the matter is is that at some given point the submissive just will stop being aroused. No matter what you might like, orgasm denial when there is no pressing need is a failed attempt. And not only that the frustration the submissive may feel after all that time may turn outwards and express itself as resentment and that is, I assume, the last you want to achieve.

Of course there is one other element to training a submissive this way. Some of the actions may have as side effect (this by the way, may be very well intended and even have planned by the dominant), that these become habits. It is said in the annals of modern psychology that it takes about twenty-eight days to set up a new habit. Of course after these twenty-eight days any further training will only help to reinforce and strengthen it. But do not think that after these twenty-eight days as a dominant you can rest on your laurels and expect everything to run smoothly from then on. You have to be actively involved and invest in this, but more about that later.

In the previous paragraphs I spoke about setting tasks that impact the submissive directly in their every day life. But even within the realms of virtual environments and the Internet at large is it possible to set tasks for a submissive. A good example of this is either letting the submissive write a journal, or write a blog (see what I did there? *grins*). But say you want to keep the tasks to a virtual environment alone? Is that possible?

Yes without a shadow of a doubt there are plenty of ways to do this. I may have touched upon this in my previous blog on this subject. You can make the submissive do searches, look for things that you need, or even if the environment support it, make them do all kinds of chores. In that sense a world such as Second Life is wonderful because it is by and large limited to the imagination alone and there are various systems that can be brought that will make your submissive have to do actual chores in world.

The biggest question that remains when dealing with the transition from a virtual environment in whatever form that takes, towards BDSM in real life, is what you could give all kinds of fancy names but in the end of it, it comes down to one thing: “Can I trust my submissive to do the tasks that I give her.” The answer to that question is pretty much the same as the question itself and what it comes down to, is trust. Do you trust your submissive enough, yes or no. If you trust her enough, then the question of “can I…?” becomes in my opinion pretty much moot. Because even asking that question means there is a sliver of doubt that you can not.

However there are always methods that can help you in here. The first of all is just go ahead and trust the situation. However some people do often want some measure of proof, or perhaps not just proof. They want to see. They want to see the control they have over this other person and see the effect that their training, their demands and wishes have on this person. For people like this, obviously there is plenty to be found in the way of voice chat, web-cams, telephones and what have you not. So you can rest assured that your training is progressing just in the way you plan it.

So I hope this blog gave you at-least some ideas of were to take the next step if both the dominant and the submissive in the relationship decide they are ready for that. And only then should you even being to think about this. I can say that within my relationship with my Mistress, there are several tasks I have that she expects of me in real-life, among others this blog and of course my ever present curfew. I joke of course, I know they are healthy for me and have done wonders for me and I am grateful for them to be in place, even if I gripe about them at times. But then again, as it is always, much so is the submissives right to gripe about things, even if we do secretly like them in the first place.

Stay safe, talk, love…

lexi

ps.

I would like to quickly remind people that we’re down 1/3rd of March and that of course the March Blogger Question and Answer Challenge, is still active. Head over the blog entry and drop your question in the comments and I answer them