Features of Good Responses
to Your Personal Ad

We'd like to describe what we think a good response to a submissive woman's personal ad looks like before we address the...other kind. Here are a few characteristics that we think should be part of any ad response that is worth taking seriously.

• It addresses concerns or fears that you raise in your ad and seems genuinely interested in and concerned about you.
• It is responsive to the points in your ad--it doesn't ignore or overlook what you are saying. In addition, it doesn't seem to focus on just one or two points while ignoring the others.
• It seems honest: it points out where the dominant thinks you two are compatible and where there might be differences in opinions or styles.
• It is forthcoming. The dominant volunteers enough personal information that you can get a decent feel for what he or she is actually like. Included should be relevant facts (age, current marital status, number of kids, type of work) as well as information about his fantasies, desires, and experience with D&S.
• It asks you questions. It isn't completely narcissistic or concerned with how you can fill the dominant's own desires.
• It makes you think that the respondent is around the same level of intelligence as you.
• It takes its time. It does not instantly start ordering you about or insisting that you telephone, and the dominant does not automatically assume that by answering your ad he or she has made you his or her slave. Instead, it acknowledges explicitly or implicitly the need for a "getting to know you" period first.
• It is humorous. A dominant who can laugh at himself and who doesn't take himself too seriously, is a dominant who is less likely to pose, posture or put on an act to impress you. Flexibility and the ability to see things from perspectives other than your own is essential in a good dominant. While a sense of humor doesn't always indicate that a dominant has these qualities, the lack of a sense of humor is almost a sure sign that this person also lacks the ability to deal non-rigidly and compassionately with real submissives and the unexpected non-fantasy situations that always arise in genunine living relationships that aren't attempting to be a pathetic imitation of S&M fiction. Finally, a sense of humor, especially at the beginning, is a sign of an individual who is self-confident and relaxed enough to joke around, even with someone he does not yet know well. Someone who is uptight, rigid, worried about what you will think of him, or tying to impress you with his "domliness" won't attempt humor, as making a joke involves taking a small risk: that you'll misunderstand and brush him off. Some people are, for various reasons too uptight, rigid, literal, serious, or timid to joke around about anything, let alone a "life and death" situation like finding a submissive. Do you want to be the slave of a scardy-cat who's too terrified of your opinion to risk making a joke? Do you want to submit to someone who's deadly serious (or puts on an act of being so around a submissive because he rigidly believes it's the only "proper" way for a dominant to act)?
• Nothing about the response strikes you instinctively as wrong or off or makes you ask, "What planet is this person from, anyway?"
• The dominant strikes you as a real person, someone with a variety of interests and many other aspects to his or her personality besides sexuality, not some cardboard cutout imitation of what the ideal dominant should be like. The dominant isn't too insecure to act human, even fallible, around you.
• The reply does not seem too perfect to be true. In other words, the respondent does not run down through your message point by point, telling you how perfectly he meets each and every one of your qualifications. It's become quite common for people pretending to be dominants simply to reply to an email telling the sub everything that she wants to hear: that he or she is everything described in the ad. The way to expose such people is to ask them what else they are or feel besides being perfectly responsive to your interests. This brings them up short, and they usually have nothing to say--because they can't think of anything. They'll often respond to this sort of question by trying to turn the tables: "So tell me, what else are you looking for in a dominant?" If you tell them, they'll simply respond that yes, they're just like that, too.
• When the dominant talks about his former submissives, what he liked and disliked about them or how he treated them, his attitudes sound human, sensible, as rational as the circumstances allow, and most, importantly, things you could live with comfortably and happily if he were to treat you similarly. A dominant, writing our sub woman friend, recently said about some former submissives of his, "It just simply gets so tiring being around women who never seem to learn, who must repeat the same errors over and over. How many times must I punish her for speaking out of turn? How often do I have to explain to her basic feminine deportment? And I suppose in some ways, I grew tired of hearing the whine that `I'm always finding fault, that I think she never does anything right.'" If you read between the lines of this dominant's complaint, you'll see an inexperienced perfectionist who expects way too much of his submissives way too soon.
• What the dominant wants from the relationship, from D&S, and from you is very close to what you want for yourself. No matter how charming, erudite, or understanding a correspondent might be, you are not going to be a good fit for each other if the style or degree of relationship that each of you wants varies dramatically. Be careful, however, not to brush someone off too quickly because his needs do not seem to match yours. Often, especially when you are trying to get to know someone via email, apparent differences are only semantic: he uses different words to describe things than you do. If an otherwise suitable correspondent says something that surprises and dismays you, don't write him off immediately. Question him on the issue and clarify whether he really means what you imagine he means. In our experience, the majority of the time, these so-called differences dissolve when the two people talk them over and figure out what each is really saying.