0 ALPHA_BY_DAY: THE ORIGINS OF MY SUBMISSION

I always enjoy hearing about the development of people’s kinks. That first moment you knew something was different. For many of us those moments occurred before the Internet. And that made it difficult to seek out information that would help us understand and identify our desires.

It wasn’t until my early twenties that I even heard terms like “Female Domination” or “submission,” and yet I had already spent more than 10 years harboring the secret desire to submit. I had long attributed my first feelings of submission to women as being a memory from when I was 12 years old, but the more time I’ve spent examining it recently, the more I realize that there were other catalysts.

An obvious place to start is that I grew up the youngest male in a female-led household. My mother was in charge of the family and ran the household unilaterally as we were a working-class family and my father was very rarely home because of his grueling work schedule. When my mom wasn’t home, my oldest sister was in charge, and in her absence my other sister was in charge. My brother, for the most part, was absent from my life. So I had what I would consider to be a very happy, well-adjusted childhood, but one that was decidedly under female authority at all times.

After 48 years of marriage, my parents are still together today and they both very openly, honestly, and happily discuss our female led family. Just the other night, my father said, “I trusted your mother to run the household. She was in charge of the family and my job was to provide.” And to that, my mom echoed, “We were a good team and still are. We both knew our roles.”

So that provided a solid base and good example of both a successful, loving relationship and a well-balanced female led household. And several of my early interactions with women (girls at the time) would also play a role.

One that very recently took on new meaning for me was the very first time I kissed a girl. I was 10 years old and had been “dating” the girl down the street for almost all of the fourth grade school year. Very early into that summer, I was hanging out with her and her best friend. We’ll call them “Paula” and “Jen.” Spending the afternoon swimming in Jen’s pool, we all ended up sitting on the roof of her house over the garage, and she asked the question of whether Paula and I had kissed yet.

Of course we hadn’t and shy, nervous little boy that I was, Jen took it upon herself to make it happen that day. “Kiss her. Oh, come on. God, don’t be a wimp.” And then she finally grabbed the back of my neck and pushed me toward Paula for the most awkward, forced peck on the lips imaginable. I hadn’t given that moment any thought in many, many years but looking back through the lens of my current submissive mindset, I can accept that the kiss itself was only a small part of the importance of that moment. It was actually Jen’s hand on the back of my neck that left the lasting impression.

The following summer, I was hanging out with some neighborhood friends when one of them brought out one of his father’s Playboy magazines and the four of us sat there making creepy remarks about the women we saw. I remember feeling a little conflicted because while the images of the women turned me on, I was creeped out by the commentary of my friends. But a few weeks later while visiting family, I would discover my uncle’s massive Playboy collection, and the first thing that came to my mind looking at the very first picture was a desire to kneel in front of the improbable goddess.

This would prove to be my first masturbatory experience, and afterward I was deeply confused and conflicted. I didn’t understand why I would want to kneel in front of this woman. I mean, wasn’t the whole idea of porno mags to objectify women? Instead I wanted to worship her. And I felt humiliated and ashamed because of it. I remember thinking, “Oh, no, what’s wrong with me?”  

Fast-forward a couple of years. I’m now 13 and competing in a state fitness challenge at my middle school, and everyone on the track team is being timed for 50-meter sprints. For expedience, boys and girls are tested at the same time meaning that sometimes, a girl and boy would be lined up at the same time since only individual times were recorded and we weren’t racing each other.

I walk up to the line and this gorgeous girl lines up next to me. She has this exotic look of slightly dark skin, long curly hair and a body that was far more mature than the rest of the girls our age. We’ll call her Alexia…and I’m pretty much in awe at this point. The gun goes off and would you believe it if I said that she smoked me? I mean, I was a pretty darned good athlete all through school, and this girl beat me in a straight-up sprint. Something that all of our classmates in attendance didn’t miss out on.

She and I would go on to be great friends, and there were times in high school that we actually trained together. And it doesn’t matter that Alexia already had national junior Olympic gold medals or that she would go on to capture Division I college national championships. She whooped me. To add to the legend, Alexia would go on to Harvard Law and to this day is the absolute epitome of an alpha female in my mind. My first real “crush” was on a girl I viewed as superior to me. But surely, I was just confused, wasn’t I? This had to be some kind of immature phase, and before long I would start to have “normal” feelings toward women… wouldn’t I?

The night that I lost my virginity occurred when I was 16, the week before school started. My best friend and I were both working the closing shift at the restaurant and had told our parents that we were sleeping at each other’s houses. Instead, we were going to a party at a friend’s house. We’ll call her “Erin.” By the time we arrived it was after midnight and the party was beginning to quickly die down. We drank fast and furious to “catch up” and somewhere around 2:00 a.m. it was just the two of us and Erin left. She said we could crash at her house since we had been drinking, and both John and I crashed out on the two couches in the living room. But a few minutes later, she came out of her room and pulled me off the couch and dragged me to her bedroom.

Erin stripped me naked, threw me down on her bed, climbed on top of me and took complete control of the situation. She asked if I had a condom, but virgin that I was, I wasn’t even sure what that was. No problem. A drawer opens, she feels around in the dark, rips it open, puts it on me without ever stopping her kissing and fondling and grunting. In retrospect, I remember being amazed at how good she was at all of that. Needless to say it was my first time and I’m quite sure that it was terribly fast and unsatisfying for her; but for me, lying helplessly beneath her as she held down my hands and had her way with me, I was in heaven. I had no control over my first time with a woman. And I loved it.

Despite all of these seemingly obvious signs, somehow I didn’t catch on. I would maintain these submissive fantasies and feel guilty about them over and over for years and years. All of my most successful long-term relationships were with vanilla women who were attracted to my “alpha male” personality. You see, for whatever reason, I’ve always felt a very natural inclination toward leadership and I have an extroverted personality and an easy smile that enables me to relate to people in a very comfortable way. I can be gregarious, and people who meet me professionally get a very pointed glimpse at my leadership characteristics whether I intend it or not.

Examining all of those vanilla relationships over the years, I see that I was playing the part I thought they wanted me to play. I was so focused on making them happy that I pretended to be happy in a “male-led” relationship for their sake. In a sense, you could say that I was “bottoming from the top” so to speak.

But ultimately, I left each of those relationships because I wasn’t truly happy and didn’t feel authentic. Yet through it all I repressed my submissive desires. Or tried. In reality, my submissive fantasies went from “occasional” to “part-time” to “most-of-the-time” to “always”; and what was left was a feeling that I wasn’t being myself by pretending to be happy in these vanilla relationships. All those years I thought I could pretend to be vanilla so that I could find a woman to love me. And yet, it wasn’t the real me they fell in love with, and so I continually found myself isolated and immune.

At the age of 40, still confused and conflicted about why I couldn’t find a long-term, sustainable love, I realized at long last that I hadn’t allowed myself to explore the one thing that felt the most natural and authentic—those inescapable feelings of wanting to submit to the opposite sex.

Eight months ago, I decided finally to pursue my submissive desires. As a result, what was once inner conflict has been gradually replaced by self-acceptance. I understand my needs and have a renewed sense of self. I was never more free and empowered than the first time I knelt before a woman. And I look forward to sharing my continued journey to find a female led relationship.

­—Alpha-by-Day (who writes his own blog, My Journey Into FLR)