My dominatrix is bright, a great listener, and knows her trade well; I’ve been seeing her for several years. A couple of months ago, in chit-chat after the scene was done, I asked her about her school and made an offhand remark about how she seemed to like unstructured events. She was offended, said I didn’t know her well enough, and left without a word of goodbye. Later she texted me saying I was intrusive and needy, and that it wasn’t her job to give me attention. Now she is ignoring me. What did I do wrong?
Different people have different boundaries, and sex workers are no exception. We’re a lot better at policing our boundaries than most people, but we all have different ways of doing that. Some of us, especially those relatively new to the profession, have extremely firm and rigid boundaries and strict rules about how we maintain them (which often includes rules about the consequences of boundary violation, up to and including “firing” a client who transgresses them). Over the years, many (perhaps most) of us get more flexible about our rules; we develop a better sense of which boundaries are serious deal-breakers and which we’re willing to negotiate for the right client under the right circumstances, subject to intuition. For example, when I first started I absolutely never gave out my personal phone number or legal name; now there are clients who know both. There were also things at first that I’d never do for anyone, but now don’t mind if I know the gent well enough. It’s not that I’ve become jaded or don’t care about my boundaries any more; far from it. It’s just that I’ve internalized my needs well enough, and have such a finely-honed sense of how I feel about a situation from moment to moment, that I don’t always need the rigid rules as I did 17 years ago. However, not everyone is like me; some ladies maintain strict rules for their entire career, and it’s their right to do so. Nobody can determine what works for any individual but that individual herself.
It’s pretty clear that your lady is one whose boundaries are both firm and non-negotiable, and you broke one of them. That isn’t a criticism of you; it may be that if I were in your place I’d have unknowingly done the same thing. And it’s equally clear that your offense, however unintended, was serious enough in her mind that she is willing to forgo the income to maintain her principles and/or avoid the possibility you may do it again. My advice is that you move on and find another domme; it may be that she is being manipulative and will contact you when she decides you’ve been punished enough (or when she wants your money enough). And when and if that happens, you get to decide whether that kind of treatment is forgivable or whether it violated one of your boundaries, and whether you should go back to seeing her or tell her where she can stick her moodiness.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
