Quote Originally Posted by rachel06 View Post
My best non-vanilla dates, and the men who give off the most Dom vibe, are pretty similar to vanilla dates except in the course of our emails we've made our goals and aspirations pretty clear. A lot of guys who call themselves Doms are really just kinky, and they tend to steer the conversation to sex pretty quickly. Some guys seem like wanna-be's, and they tend to steer the conversation to "submission is a gift and I will cherish you" pretty quickly. This wisdom was aquired in the course of about a month and half of non-vanilla dating, most of it within the past two weeks.

The guys who seem the most authentic are actually willing to spend some time getting to know me, and not just my kinks, and the date looks a lot like any other. This is a very fine line to tread, though, because some are so vanilla that I lose interest. But a few, a few few, maintain that dominance even during a vanilla conversation. I can't describe exactly how. In a way it winds up looking like lack of respect. I hope that's not actually it! But they tend not to over-consult me, they sometimes tell me to do something instead of asking, they might touch my hand during conversation or my neck as we're leaving a restaurant. I'm not sure what it is, but they leave me wanting more.
This is exactly what my experience was Tuesday night on my non-vanilla date. 80% of the conversation was vanilla, 20% D/s, and the D/s part was in general terms. We exchanged our ideas of what D/s is, and our general characteristics of what we're looking for. He didn't really 'maintain that dominance', but I didn't have that expectation. I actually felt very comfortable and will be seeing him for dinner again in a couple of weeks.

On the other hand, today I have a lunch date. And our one prior interaction, as well as the phone conversations and emails since, have put us on the path to having the limits and boundaries conversation today. And I am his guest at a play-party tonight, if we agree we are a good match today. Our interaction will be vanilla, in that I don't want him to do his Domly thing until we've set up some parameters...but the conversation will be completely non-vanilla.