Who Am I to Lead?

Photo by Haberdoedas onUnsplash

There is a very particular absurdity in being a Dominant while also being a person whose own life is, in places, held together with hope, scattered sticky notes, calendar reminders, and the noble lie that “I will do it tomorrow” has ever meant anything good.

You may be making decisions for someone else. You may be setting rules, receiving service, offering correction, holding rituals, shaping scenes, giving permission, withholding permission, guiding behavior, and becoming the person your sub turns toward when the world feels too loud or too much. Then, at some inconvenient hour, you look at your own life and think: Who am I to lead?

A rude question. A useful one, sometimes. Often a badly timed one.

It tends to arrive when the contrast feels a little too sharp for your liking. Your sub may see you as steady while you know exactly how unsteady you can be. They may ask for structure while your own routines are in open rebellion. They may want discipline while you have three tasks you have been avoiding with the strategic elegance of a certain orange man ignoring political unrest (almost as well, because truly, nothing can top him, except for the Devil in this South Park episode I guess, I had to ask Charlie what the show was called, so if you’re here, thanks Charlie). They may look at you with trust and desire, and part of you wonders whether they have been tricked by some great act of manipulation only you can pull off, or a few good decisions made close together by pure coincidence.

This is Dominant imposter syndrome. I do like to think that it is not simply insecurity, though insecurity is certainly present. It is the fear that your authority is somehow fraudulent because you are still unfinished. It is the feeling that you should have earned the right to lead by becoming more composed, more disciplined, more healed, more organized, more certain, more impressive, more untouched by the very human difficulties you are now helping someone else navigate.

Now, it may be a fun fantasy that qualified people arrive whole.

However, we owe it to ourselves (as the reasonable and clear-minded D-types we aim to be) to see things reasonably. And the reasonable take is that people do not simply spawn completely whole and put together, and rarely do they ever become that.

People lead from inside ongoing lives. See for yourself: therapists have therapists (who have therapists). Teachers are still learning. Parents are still growing up in some corners of themselves and may ask their own parents for advice. Speaking of advice, most people who give great advice forget their own advice at times. Mentors make mistakes. Doms, tragically, do as well. No one waits until the self is complete before holding responsibility, because the completed self is not a human state. It is a concept. Possibly a cult-like end goal. At minimum, a very suspicious delusion.

The ethical question is not whether you have every part of your life perfectly arranged. It is whether you are aware of your limits, honest about your capacity, responsive to feedback, willing to learn, and able to repair when your authority affects someone in ways that require care.

Now that is a good standard, because we all know, beyond our grand goals of perfected perfection, that no Dom needs omniscience. A Dom needs responsibility. A Dom needs a relationship to their own motives, desires, insecurities, pride, fear, and capacity. A Dom needs enough humility to ask, “What am I doing with the power I have been given?” and enough steadiness to act when action is needed. This combination is irritatingly difficult because it asks for both confidence and reflection. Too little confidence, and the dynamic becomes vague, apologetic, and under-led. Too little reflection, and the dynamic becomes a shrine to the Dom’s ego.

So where do we go from here?

Mix confidence (or confidence as a work-in-progress) with reflection, and we end up with self-trust. Which does not mean believing every decision you make will be right, mind you. While that would be convenient, it is also both nonsensical and unattainable.

Self-trust means believing that you can make decisions with care, gather information, notice impact, receive feedback, and repair when things don’t go as planned. It means you trust your process more than your fantasy of certainty. It means being able to say, “I am going to make this decision,” and also, later, “I see where that decision needs adjustment.”

This is the part that can be difficult. The feeling that a decision must be correct to justify the authority behind it. So you delay. You overthink. You make the sub wait while you consult every possible internal bias and hold a little inner symposium. I truly think that sometimes, us D-types become so determined not to misuse power that we barely use the power that was negotiated, requested, desired, and, in some cases, very politely begged for.

A submissive can be very patient with a Dom’s growth, and I think they should be (remember the first thing I mentioned on nobody starting off as a fully accomplished being? We owe each other grace and patience). However, too much patience without verbalized communication may quickly start accomodating and enabling the Dom’s uncertainty until nobody remembers what the original desire was and everyone is simply being understanding in a room full of unmet needs. All that to say, patience is lovely. But we need more than one lovely thing.

At some point, you do have to lead.

If you promise to lead and someone trusts you to, at some point you have to lead.

Now, hold your horses or whatever they say, this does not mean making decisions quickly for the sake of sounding decisive. Speed is not the same as authority, though many people do confuse the two, often with great confidence and mediocre results. A good Dom can pause. A good Dom can say, “I need to think about that.” A good Dom can decide that the stakes are too high for improvisation and take some time to gather information and think things through. The difference is that the pause has a frame, rather than being a grand and ominous act of disappearance or avoidance.

Example:

• “I need to think about this and I will give you an answer tomorrow.”
• “I want more information before I decide.”
• “I am not going to make that call while I am tired, so I will sleep on it. Ask me again when I am awake and have eaten.” (peep how I make sure my needs are met here so I am not hangry)
• “I hear what you are asking for. I need to think about this for a bit and figure out if I have capacity for this. Let me bring this up with you tonight.”

These sentences can feel less glamorous than instant certainty, sure, but they are also often safer, clearer, and more trustworthy.

Look inwards

Dominant imposter syndrome often attaches itself to the areas where your own life feels unfinished. If you struggle with structure, how can you structure someone else? If you struggle with self-discipline, how can you discipline a sub? If you need reassurance, how can you be someone else’s steady place? If you are still healing, how can anyone safely surrender to you?

I get (know) those little questions are tough to deal with, so if you need to wallow in that spiral for a sec, feel your feelings, friend, be my guest. Here’s some background music that might even hit a little too hard, if you want to ugly cry while you spiral.

Okay, alrighty. Now that we’re done with the self-pity, these questions deserve better answers than either self-condemnation or empty reassurance, so let’s get to actually answering your question.

Asymmetry

The first answer is asymmetry. A power dynamic does not require both people to have the same relationship to every behavior. A Dom may set a bedtime for a sub while having different sleep needs or different obligations. They may require a submissive to maintain a routine that serves the sub’s goals even while they are still working on their own. They may hold a sub to a standard because the standard has meaning inside the dynamic, not because the Dom is a flawless manifestation of that same standard in every corner of life.

This can be ethical when it is clear, consensual, and honest. It can be an issue when the Dom pretends to be above the work or uses authority to avoid looking at themselves, of course, but this whole article is here assuming y’all are working on yourselves and want the best for one another while still wanting to grow as a person. Okay? Okay.

Either way, the issue is not that you have imperfections. If you’re not using the dynamic to actively hide them, you’re good. You’re a fellow human, as saddening as it may be sometimes.

You can say:

• “This is an area I also work on. In our dynamic, I am setting this expectation because it supports your goals and our agreement.”

That kind of honesty tells the sub that the Dom can distinguish between role, responsibility, fantasy, and ego. Very useful distinctions, all of them, truly.

Skill

The second answer is skill. If you feel unqualified because you lack a skill, learn the skill. This is delightfully unsexy, which means it will likely work. If you do not know how to give correction, study and practice correction. If you do not know how to negotiate intensity, learn better techniques for negotiation. If you do not know how to design protocols that survive real life, start smaller and build up. If you do not know how to hold (or take!) space after a scene, get better at aftercare skills both for yourself and those you play with, and do more debriefing before doing intense scenes. If you do not know how to receive service, learn what kinds of service actually help you and how to give feedback.

Imposter syndrome likes doing this thing which I like to call giving you ‘identity statements’ about yourself. And the best fix for that (in my opinion and experience) is skill-building, which actively focuses on action.

• “I am unqualified” becomes “I need to learn how to repair after a scene.”
• “I am a bad Dom” becomes “I need a better way to communicate needs with my partner to avoid resentment.”
• “I do not know what I am doing” becomes “I need clearer principles for when I say yes, no, or renegotiate.”

This is how the fog clears. It doesn’t happen all at once, and it doesn’t happen all that smoothly, most times. But it does. Usually with some irritation and a notes app.

Support

The third answer is support. Doms need places to think out loud without making their sub the sole witness to every fear. This matters ethically as much as emotionally. If the sub is the only person who hears the Dom’s uncertainty, they may feel responsible for protecting the Dom’s confidence, and that has a high potential of spiraling into them ending up managing the person who is supposed to be leading them. And while some people can eroticize almost anything, emotional load-bearing without consent is a poor foundation for a dynamic.

So make sure to have support around if you feel it is needed, to whichever extent is sustainable and beneficial for you. Have peers. Have mentors. Have a kink-aware therapist if that is available and useful. Have community spaces where Doms can admit they do not know everything without immediately being stripped of their glory. Read. Write. Debrief. Learn from people whose dynamics have survived long enough to include boredom, grief, illness, bad moods, and the ordinary wear of time.

Self-trust sometimes grows faster when it has witnesses who are not dependent on the answer.

Repair

The fourth answer is repair. This is perhaps the most important and least comfortable source of confidence. You learn to trust yourself by surviving your own imperfection with integrity. You make a decision. It has an effect. Sometimes it is the effect you wanted. Sometimes it is not. You listen. You take responsibility. You adjust. You follow through. Over time, you develop evidence that your authority can survive correction.

And trust me, folks, that evidence matters more than the fragile confidence of never being challenged.

A Dom who needs to be right all the time is brittle, but a Dom who can be wrong and remain responsible is much easier to trust. There is great relief in that, once the ego has finished making its little objections from whatever pedestal it climbed its way up to.

A practical way to build self-trust is to create decision principles before you are in the heated moment. Principles reduce the burden of constantly inventing yourself.

For example, here are a few of mine:

• I do not make major dynamic decisions when I am angry, panicked, exhausted, or trying to prove something.
• I pause when the stakes are high and the information is low.
• I do not promise consistency at a level I cannot maintain.
• I aim to repair impact without making my shame the focus of the conversation.

Now obviously, this does not make you immune to messing up, but they do work as anchors. They help you return to the kind of Dom you want to be when your confidence is unreliable, your desire is strong, or your fear is trying to make decisions.

To be seen is to be loved…

There is also the matter of being seen.

Imposter syndrome often says, “If they really knew me, they would not trust me,” only because it perceives you as untrustworthy in certain moments. Which creates a disconnect between how you perceive yourself and how your submissive perceives you, which has you wonder if you misled them, or if they simply don’t know how terrible you might be. Oh no. /s

Reality check: Of course your sub does not know every corner of you. No one knows every corner of another person. What matters is whether the parts relevant to the dynamic are being handled with care. If you hide your limits, avoid repair, pretend certainty, or use authority to protect yourself from accountability, then yes, trust becomes unstable. If you are honest, responsive, reflective, and willing to grow, then it’s fine. You do not have to confess every insecurity and intrusive thought at the feet of your sub with the expectations that they will shun you and reject you all’at. They know you, and they know the you that you are beyond the intrusive thoughts.

If you do want to share your moments of vulnerability, make sure to do it in a way that is either constructive or connective.

Examples:

• “I am still learning how to handle this well, and I want your feedback as we build it.”
• “I made that decision and feel unsure about it, can you tell me how you feel about it?”

These sentences let the sub feel the reality of your leadership. They are neither inflated nor evasive. They are honest. And honest is good, no?

A final note

There will be days when you feel unqualified. Some of those days will point toward real growth. So do listen. Learn the skill, repair the harm, seek support, check in about the commitment, ask the question. Other days will just be tough and your evil brain goblins will judge you endlessly for no good reason.

Thankfully, you do not need to believe every harsh thought simply because it appeared. Why would you listen to a weird judgemental brain goblin anyway? Eck.

All that to say:

You can lead while still becoming.

You can hold authority while still learning about yourself.

You can offer structure while still improving your own.

You can make decisions while still building confidence in your judgment.

You can receive service while still learning how to receive care.

You can be trusted before you feel entirely trustable.

And perhaps that is less glamorous than the fantasy of perfection we like to twist and turn in our minds. It is certainly less convenient, since the fantasy DomlyDom™ descends fully formed, perfectly certain, sexually devastating, emotionally regulated, and all’at. But the real Dom learns through practice, folks. Through mistakes. Through repair. Through support. Through the slow accumulation of evidence that they can act with care and return with honesty.

“Who am I to lead?” can be a spiral, yes, but it can sure also be a serious question.

So answer it with your behavior every day.

The rest is just practice. You’ll get there.

Anyway. Not to be all soft and all that, but in case you did have a little intentional wallow in sadness earlier with the Half A Man song, I present you my personal necessary follow-up, because once again, if I may remind you, humans do not come to earth whole and complete. We can grow as we go.