Thank-you, Tom:

"What I'm trying to say is that I don't really get it. Even after reading the posts made here, I'm still none the wiser what it's for." I think I am a bit wiser now. Online is yet another way to develop a relationship, whether it blossom or wither in time. If it withers, it was likely to have done so in real life too. Just like any other relationship it will stand or fall on its own merits. I accept that.

But Tom made another point, only once referred to by anyone else (Warbaby), and then only in passing: the sex. (OK, I think for Sir Russell, sex is so obvious, it's a given!) This is a BDSM site, so doesn't sex come into it? Control <--> sex <--> submission.

For Tom, sex is fundamental and I can see that too. This was an unformed thought that partly prompted my original post - if the sex isn't real, then it's just masturbation: if the control isn't real, then there isn't really any true submission. For people like Tom, then, an online sub can never be ideal.

Sir Russell disagrees. Or rather, he differs from Tom, and disagrees with me. He is happy with RL and OL. He says his OL control is real, and I infer the sex is satisfactory too. (Is there a delicate way to say that? I mean no offence.) And this is achieved by hard vetting so that only suitable subs who are totally honest and whom he trusts are accepted.

I think I am coming to the view that OL relationships can be good - wonderful even - but are always less than RL Ceegee, for example, will fulfil her relationship when she at last reaches Oz. Sbbe and cadence use OL to fill gaps in RL (I hope I understood that right).

But OL does something that RL doesn't do - at least, not nearly so easily. It allows people to gain experiences denied to them elsewhere. There's no way, for example that I can have a real life BDSM experience, but I can look for it here. Thus, like sbbe and cadence, I have a gap in my real life that OL may satisfy, and, clearly, that is what an online sub is for.