It was early in our connection the first time my Romantic Friend placed his hands gently over my eyes and asked “do you like this?”
My answer was neutral. The action did nothing for me—positive or negative.
I didn’t answer right away, and so he offered up a truth: “It makes me feel safe.”
I understood instantly that he didn’t mean doing it to me. He meant having it done to him.
“What does it mean to you?” I prodded.
“If I can’t see, I must let go. It means you’ve got me. It means I don’t have to think or try or work or watch for something going wrong. I can just be.”
It was an early glimpse of something essential. The rest he craved. The trust he longed for.
I saw it early. We found moments of it often.
But.
But.
It took a long time for him to fully sink into it.
Because when the world has taught you you must pay attention, you must be “on” all the time, you must perform dominance—shutting down those habits to exist as you really are takes time.
Dominant women understand this in our bones. The stuff we’re made of comes from pushback against societal roles. Many of us have been doing it our whole lives.
As my connection deepened with my romantic friend, so the moments of surrender, of truth, of finding himself elongated. Laying his head on my lap as I ran fingers through his hair. Sitting at my feet when I was in a chair. Asking to be little spoon.
And because he’d revealed that little trigger, when I could see he was struggling to surrender, I reached gently down to cover his eyes.
I didn’t say a word. I didn’t tell him relax. I didn’t command him to trust. I simply covered his eyes and then covered them again and then covered them longer.
Sink in, darling. Rest. Exist. Trust.
If you fall asleep in this lap, the lap will still be there when you wake.
And then the trust went deeper. Every time he showed his true self and found that I didn’t run. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t try to force the world’s ideas of him back onto him in this quiet space we were building.
I told him to give me his full weight and he found that he didn’t crush me when he did.
He collared himself and found me still standing there, still coming closer.
He surrendered and surrendered and surrendered, until it became habit. Until walking into my space, feeling my hand on his head, hearing me say his name became a spell. Permission to rest. To be fully himself. To leave habits, anxieties, and shame at the door.
There are moments in this journey where you sink a little into your true self and it feels euphoric. It’s the thing you’re chasing. It’s the thing that drives you here again and again.
But if you want to go deeper, moments turn into habits, into days, into being at peace with your true self no matter the pressures of the outside world.
That kind of transformation requires time, patience, practice, and discipline. And it requires someone who can hold your truth, hold your space, hold your weight.
This is core to how I see my own dominance—not as a demand for submission, but permission for it. Space for it. Safety for it.
So, kitten, I reach out and cover your eyes. And when you surrender, you will find this:
I am still here.