What a very interesting point, dr_mabeuse. And it's one on which my view has completely changed in relatively recent times. Without going into any detail, the person i used to sub to (in r/l) was fairly cold, unemotional...but almost in a sort of..fake sense. At the time, i'd have said this was a strict necessity, but when it eventually dawned (on both of us) that he was only doing it for my benefit (Ds, i mean), it was with much sadness that i realised that he wasn't actually being himself...he's nothing like that in the rest of life, hence he was using it to cover up how he really felt about it.

When i eventually met up with my current Dom (who i met online)..the experience was quite different which in turn created totally different feelings in me, from a submissive POV. The...emotion, pleasure, ecstasy, sheer happiness at being my dominant that was evident in his body language and in his eyes was....well, awesome, is the only word i can think to describe it. It was at this point that i realised that in fact, whilst i obviously like a dominant to behave 'dominantly' (yes, really! LOL), i no longer thing it is preferable for them to behave like an automaton, in fact, to see some element of emotion and unabridged pleasure at dominating me, makes me feel proud and more comfortable with being submissive than i could ever have imagined.

So, having see it from both sides, i definitely agree that the latter is better, dominant is fine, but if someone doesn't feel some element of emotion from having such power over another person...well, there's something up with that, IMO.

sl