Quote Originally Posted by Pearlgem View Post
I have direct although bitter experience of this. My Master is a sadist first and has learned through his relationship with me to express his sadism through being dominant. The relationship you had with your girlfriend and the things you did together sound just fine because it suited the two of you. But please don't present yourself to any sub as a Dominant only because of your experience so far with sadism. If you think you might now enjoy a D/s relationship then you have to present yourself as a new Dom and learn, learn, learn the new disciplines that that involves. To my mind a sub needs her Dominant to understand he must cherish and guide her, over and above any pain he wishes to inflict on her. The philosophies of Domination come first now and sadistic practices should be secondary to them. Good luck in your exploration.
Thanks. "Presenting myself to a sub as a Dom only because of..." is exactly what I want to avoid. That's why I wanted to know if people would understand what I was getting at with the description of sadist but not dom, or if they would tend to assume sadist=dom and would misunderstand.