A dominant may spank his submissive, but an abuser will spank her in anger. The rule within the BDSM community that is widely accepted is that no one will ever touch their partner in anger.
Absolutely. A Dominant should always be in control and that includes the control of His/Her own actions. Some would say the difference is that a Dominant knows when to stop. I believe, a Dominant knows when to start, as well. A Dominant who can't be in control of his own actions should NOT be attempting to dominate or control someone else's.

Power exchange is about control, but so is abuse. How does a potential victim tell the difference between the two? Your dominant will want you to learn. He will want to see you grow as a person and as a submissive. He will want you to have friends, attend munches, learning functions, social functions and play parties, even if he cannot attend himself. An abuser does not want these things. He wants his victim to stagnate and to become internal. He wants to keep his life with his victim as private as possible. He knows what he does is wrong, but it might also be all he knows. He does not want his victim to learn, nor does he want her to be social. After all, his perfect little world may come crumbling down around him at one uttered sentence from his victim.
Again, I TOTALLY AGREE. One of the things I can count on with my Master is that every single punishment or pleasure is carefully thought out and is for my benefit as well as his. He does everything in order to help me grow, in one way or another, and he never does things just for the cheap thrill or to overpower me completely because it is a power EXCHANGE not a power DRAIN. An abuser will do what he can to drain your power completely, from any and possibly every direction, so that you become completely dependant upon him for power rather than sharing the power that each of you brings to the relationship.

Thanks for posting this.