While reactive service is done primarily in response to immediate and direct orders, proactive service is more frequently done in response to standing orders. The servant may go through their daily routine without the master’s presence at all, following the trail that has been laid out for them, and that they understand thoroughly. If a situation comes up for which they have no standing orders, they should be able to extrapolate what the master would want them to do, and make good decisions on the matter. It puts the servant on a much longer leash, and requires the master to trust them a lot more than the supervised results of reactive service.
Sometimes the master may have a firm big-picture goal but doesn’t particularly care about the details – and in fact expects that having a competent servant will mean that they can continue to ignore those details. For example: “I want a well-maintained car that runs, and when it ceases to run for whatever reason, I want it to start running again as soon as possible, and I want alternate transportation to appear in the meantime. Here’s the budget I have for that; if that’s not sufficient, you can talk to me about it. Otherwise, I don’t want to have to worry about it.” Housework may be another area where this approach is common. This puts a great deal of responsibility on the servant, and assumes that they have the knowledge and skills to make it happen.
At the high end of proactive service we have “anticipatory service”, where the servant tries to guess what the master would want before the master even thinks of it themselves, and have it ready to pleasantly surprise them. This requires lengthy observation of the master and their lifestyle, and good psychological skills – especially involving “theory of mind” – in order to pull off properly. There are many warning tales circulating about servants who tried anticipatory service before they deeply understood the master’s preferences and priorities, and presented the master with a fait accompli that the master hated. Even worse, some of them took it personally and became upset when their error was rejected. The servant who experiments with anticipatory service – assuming that their master wants that sort of thing – should learn to take rejections gracefully and not inadvertently penalize the master for the crime of not wanting the unsolicited service they have offered.
Masters have widely differing desires when it comes to reactive and proactive service, and especially anticipatory service. This may be due to their specific styles of dominance – which we discuss in the next section – but in general, some masters love proactive service because it’s less work for them, and find anticipatory service luxurious and delightful. They love it when things happen “automagically”. Others dislike proactive service and may especially dislike anticipatory service, either because they’ve had it go wrong too many times and they don’t trust the servant to get it right, or because part of their joy in the power dynamic is hands-on, up-close control over the servant, and they would rather be directly involved in most or all of the orders. Masters will usually make it very clear when they don’t want proactive service, or when they want the servant to be reactive in some areas but proactive in others. (“I expect you to take care of the household chores yourself, but when it comes to the cooking, you’re just going to chop what I tell you and sauté what I tell you and don’t worry about the rest of it.”) If they aren’t clear about the orders for whatever reason, the servant should respectfully ask for clarification before they make a mistake.
Styles of Dominance
Dominants (and we are temporarily including masters, mistresses, owners, and all the other People In Charge under this umbrella for the purposes of this chapter) are all very different folks. Unlike the porn stereotypes which would have them all put into the same “Fetch me a drink, slave!” category, they have varying attitudes toward service. For some, it’s important to their daily comfort. For others, it’s merely a way to assert their dominance. For yet others, it’s not important at all. Some are micromanagers who want to be as hands-on as possible; some want to be able to wave a hand at their majordomo-slave and say, “Make it so.”
From interviewing and watching various M-types in the demographic, we’ve noticed a continuum of dominant styles. Some are firmly at one end or the other, while others may shift from day to day, or activity to activity, or slowly over a lifetime. Many are somewhere in the middle. We’ve decided to refer to one end as “parental” dominance, and the other as “celebrity” dominance, and they shape what kind of service an s-type will be allowed to give.
Here’s an example of the far ends of the spectrum: Two M/s couples walk into a restaurant. (No, this is not the start of a bad joke.) The first couple pull up in a car driven by the master, because the slave isn’t allowed to drive, and might not even have been informed of where they were going. After being seated, the master takes both menus and orders for both of them, because the master knows what’s best for the slave to eat. The master decides when they are finished, and pays the bill because there’s no need for the slave to handle money.
The second couple pulls up in a car driven by the slave, who is the chauffeur. While the master make a cell phone call in the parking lot, the slave goes in and gets a table by the window, because that is where the master likes to sit. The slave orders for both of them, because the slave has been briefed in exactly what the master wants, and the idea is to have the favorite meal ready when they come in. The master finishes chatting and comes to the table shortly before the food arrives. After they are finished eating, the master breezes out while the slave calculates the tip and takes care of paying the bill, because the master has better things to do than to be bothered with such annoyances.
Two couples, two styles which are both entirely legitimate – and probably much loved by some couples out there. While most may be somewhere in the middle, they probably have occasional moments of one extreme or the other. Think of them as the X axis and Y axis of dominance, and you can plot your point on a mental graph, or that of your favorite M-type. Let’s look at them a little more closely:
Parental Dominance
We’re using the word “parental” here, but we definitely aren’t referring to any sort of ageplay. We also aren’t implying that the submissive should be considered anything other than an adult. However, the amount of hands-on management is very similar to what is required to parent a child. This is a high-control style; at the far end of the continuum, the dominant may control very personal aspects of the slave’s life – their clothing, hairstyle, diet, exercise, daily schedule, bedtime, orgasms, money, etc.
If these are the X and Y “axes” of dominance, then control and service are two of the main “axes” of the power dynamic itself. Some people crave controlling or being controlled more, while some crave service or being served. However, almost all power dynamics manifest some form of both. While the “parental dynamic” may look like total control, there are often various forms of service going on. They may be for more traditional reasons of wanting to be served, or they may just be ways that the master reifies their dominance by making the slave do things for them. Either way, it’s likely to be reactive service – a very controlled and possibly micromanaged “Do as I say.” The biggest service rendered by the submissive is simply being completely obedient in the moment to whatever they are told.
It’s important to have a good fit along these axes if a power dynamic relationship is to survive. A strongly service-oriented submissive who prefer proactive service and prides themselves on being able to anticipate their dominant’s needs will be unhappy and frustrated with an extreme parental style. “What, do you think I’m that incompetent? Why don’t you let me use my skills for you?” they will wonder, and it may eventually have a negative impact on their self-esteem. If there is also, as there often is, an element of controlling behavior that periodically sets them up to fail – either for the master’s entertainment or to teach them not to do more than react without much thinking – then they may feel even more like a constant failure. At best, they may achieve a kind of epiphany where they realize that the be
st service they can provide is to learn to be constantly in a kind of serene meditative “living in the now” state. However, it sometimes happens that a submissive in this state does not provide enough emotional reaction for the control-oriented dominant, so they end up failing anyway.
Celebrity Dominance
Think Batman and his own batman, Alfred! The celebrity dominant wants the obstacles smoothed out of their path, and while there is probably extensive training to familiarize the submissive with all the dominant’s preferences, the end goal may be a dynamic of almost complete service with very little hands-on control. While some celebrity dominants may not actually do anything more important than holding a day job and watching TV, this is often a style of dominance preferred by hard-driving career people with complicated lives who want the ultimate perfectly obedient Man or Girl Friday to take care of the smaller details. The submissive may be expected to learn a wide variety of skills and take on tasks with very little supervision. They may function as a personal assistant, personal care attendant, and/or extra unpaid employee for a business. They might be a majordomo, managing a household and possibly a staff of other slaves or hired help. Their job is to “take care of it,” whatever “it” is, and to make the dominant feel as pampered as they might like.
This is a dynamic where proactive service is required, and possibly even a high level of anticipatory service. Again, a poor fit is a problem. Control-oriented submissives who prefer reactive service may feel like they’re being abandoned and told to “master themselves”. They pine for lack of attention and the feel of the master’s direct will, and may eventually accuse them of “not really being dominant.” They may feel like they are being used, more of a maid than a partner in a power dynamic, and may feel that their opposite number is shirking their responsibility. All too often, they get desperate for any kind of attention and act out with obvious disobedience, hoping for the crackdown and the strong hand. The celebrity dominant generally feels that this is wasting their limited time, and won’t keep them around very long.
The servant who is right for a celebrity dominant is generally one who is strongly invested in their own feelings of competence, and enjoys taking on responsibility. They tend to be more interested in service than control, or perhaps they get their control fix from the bedroom or less day-to-day parts of the relationship. They are comfortable with proactive service and perhaps even anticipatory service. It’s also often someone who is invested in the life and work of that particular M-type, and part of their surrender is becoming subsumed into that life and work, skills and all. They may enjoy being an integral part of something bigger than them, and they may take pride in being good enough at their job to be indispensable.
The Annoyance Factor
(This chapter is written specifically and entirely by Raven, as it is a chronicle of his struggles with managing a slave. It is, therefore, written entirely in the first person singular, unlike the rest of this book, which was a collaborative effort.)
When we first started out together in our M/s relationship, the hardest part of all for me was remembering to enforce the orders I’d given. Joshua was extremely obedient – fortunately – but he would often forget to do what I’d asked, and if I didn’t check up on whether it was done, he’d continue to forget and it would never develop into a habit. Sometimes we’d both forget and then one of us would remember days or weeks later—and then he’d be upset both with himself for forgetting, and with me for not noticing. We went through a lot of orders and protocols that way, orders and protocols that just weren’t going to work. I had a busy life and I couldn’t always keep track of it all, and neither could he.
Later, we’d learn that this was one of the most common early mistakes of service-oriented power dynamic relationships. M-types start out with an idealistic list of activities that they’d like their s-types to do for them, but many of them aren’t practical for the fit of their daily lives, and the amount of time and attention they actually have available to spend enforcing them. This is especially difficult when first constructing a full-time 24/7 dynamic where there are no periods of “on” and “off”. It is definitely the M-type’s responsibility to do the checking up, assessing, and enforcing – it’s the other side of the coin, the price we pay for all that obedience and service – but we also have a responsibility to ourselves to choose those orders sensibly.
This mistake is especially common when people are transitioning from a part-time, scene-oriented relationship to a full-time, live-in dynamic. By their nature, part-time relationships are concentrated periods of super-D/s. The people involved try to pack a whole lot into a short time, and then they go home to their “regular” lives. That kind of concentrated focus on the details of the dynamic feels great for a weekend, but when it gets stretched over all the pieces in between that were formerly “regular time”, it often becomes clear that it’s impossible to keep up that kind of focus. This isn’t a failing – it’s a reality. Couples who are making this kind of transition may well need to back up and start over, rather than just trying to adapt a periodic pattern to every day.
Eventually – and please understand that this process took a couple of years – I gave up and threw out all the failing protocols, and started over. I looked at the ones that were left – the ones that I’d consistently been able to notice and check up on – and figured out what they had in common. For every one of them, their lack of appearance created an immediate annoyance for me. For example, Joshua is my chauffeur and drives me around. When I walk over the passenger side of the door, it’s supposed to be unlocked – he is supposed to get there before me and open it. Every time that I got to my door and couldn’t open it, I had a surge of annoyance and would immediately call his omission to his attention, often loudly. Similarly, he is also supposed to report to me as soon as he gets home, given the few minutes it takes to drop off groceries in the kitchen, navigate around the dog, etc. When I hear our car pull into the driveway and the front door slam, I immediately become vigilant for his arrival to kneel at my feet. Whenever it didn’t happen within a few minutes, I would become displeased and go to look for him.
Starting with these as a basis, I began to look around for the other annoying things in my life – things that I would love to see disappear, and would definitely find unpleasant were they to suddenly appear again. Some of these could readily be taken over by Joshua so as to spare me the annoyance, and I found that they were easily noticed and corrected when he forgot them. I also took a long and honest look at each of the protocols I’d assigned because I thought that they would be cool, or sexy, or particularly master-slavey. A disconcertingly high number of them turned out to not have enough deep significance, when push came to shove, for me to notice when they fell away. They just weren’t as pleasurable to me as I’d hoped that they would be. A few stayed; his “Thank you, sir,” after each orgasm that he was allowed to have or allowed to give me, for example. An omission of that and a few other similar protocols was glaringly obvious, not because of inconvenience, but because I loved to hear it and it reified our dynamic for me. However, many of the protocols that I’d read about in BDSM erotica or Old Guard-style manuals looked good, but didn’t carry enough of a charge for me in the end.
In some cases, the impetus for the psychological protocol had come from him. He found some activity arousing or deeply meaningful, and I agreed both because I wanted to make him happy – because I do care about his happiness in this job – and because I thought that some activities that he particularly liked would be good for his morale. It was hard for both of us to accept that I just couldn’t find the internal motivation to continually pay attention to protocols that did nothing for me. The ones that worked were based around my own selfishness – my convenience, my annoyance, my hard-on, my emotional responses. Faced with his disappointment, I had two choices: I could beat myself up for not being able to do this, or we could work together on making the activities that were meaningful for me likewise meaningful for hi
m. We chose the second option, and it has worked out well. It wasn’t even that difficult. It was simply a matter of communicating clearly, every time I reinforced one of the activities that was meaningful to me, that this was yet another way in which I showed my power over him … and in some cases, yet another way in which he rendered me service, if only by enduring what I wanted. Eventually, every one of these things became meaningful for him as well, through repetition and seeing that it pleased me.
I also enlisted Joshua’s help in discovering new and unusual ways in which he could render me service, derived from his keen and constant observation of my life. Sometimes his suggestions were excellent; sometimes they simply weren’t something I was interested in. An example of one brilliant idea was ordering in restaurants. Some dominants order the food for their submissives in order to show dominance or hold them to a specific diet; that never interested me, and I would generally ignore whatever he wanted to eat. I, on the other hand, am one of those people who finds that their normal decisive nature completely vacates the premises when faced with a food menu. Seeing me struggle, he suggested that paring the possibilities down to two was easier than choosing only one, and offered me his food choice as a service. I could order the two most likely-looking meals and he would either eat the one that proved less desirable, or let me eat from both and finish off the remainder. There was no way that I would forget to enforce this one, as it alleviated a good deal of stress every time I faced down a new menu.
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