Sexual Polarity in Dominance and Submission: David Deida Explains it All

Ten days into being seized by D/s fever, my sweet Daddy and I are determined to better educate ourselves in all things BDSM.  We had, of course, been scanning the internet, picking up ideas and inspiration here and there through many helpful websites.  But now we are going to study it.  Books arrive in Amazon boxes:  SM 101 by Jay Wiseman,   The Ultimate Guide to Kink by Tristan Taormino.  And my favorite:  Screw the Roses, Send me the Thorns: The Romance and Sexual Sorcery of Sadomasochism by Philip Miller and Molly Devon.  (Love that subtitle).

I delve deep into the vocabulary of D/s, concepts like “scenes” and “safewords,” and “sub-drop,” and “aftercare.”  Again, I find this immersion into a well-known structure both comforting and off-putting.  It is helpful to know so many people have gone before us and made a map of territory.  We’d be completely lost and strange without that map.  The books validate our desires, warn us of pitfalls, and give us ideas of things to try we might never have come with on our own.  But the books with their similar themes and words and descriptions also make us feel like we have joined some kind of fetish cult, and are now being pushed to participate in an elaborate game full of rules and protocols.  In trying to establish a structure to free our lust and journey of discovery, it sometimes feels we are trapped within it.  Suddenly, there is “right” and “wrong” way to go about it.  And we are comparing ourselves with others.

There is also one important thing I am not finding from the books I’m reading through:  A deeper explanation of why we have found ourselves in this territory at all, and why it is impacting us the way it does.  These how-to books are wonderful at explaining the effects of BDSM – as in greater communication and trust – but not the deeper cause of our urge to go there.

Sexual Polarity

I finally recall the lecture Michael and I heard several months earlier on the work of David Deida, and the idea that equal 50/50 relationships tend to drain the passion from sex.  At the time, I had been ambivalent on the content of the lecture, yet intrigued enough to order one of his early books, Intimate Communion: Awakening Your Sexual Essence.  By the time it arrived, I’d lost interest and stuck it on my bookshelf and forgot about it.  Now I go looking for it, pull it out and open it up to read what Mr. Deida has to say.

Three hours later, I am still reading, hand over my heart in gratitude.  While nowhere in the book is BDSM mentioned, I find such a precise explanation of what has been happening to us, that it is almost as if Deida has been sitting in the orange chair in the corner of our bedroom to study us.

The basis of all Deida’s books is his theory of sexual polarity, which he describes is something very different from love or romance.  Love, he says, is about opening one’s heart and relaxing one’s sense of separation.  There is no limit to love, it is inclusive: one can love anyone and everyone.  Romance, however, is something else.  It is very exclusive, focused on one person and feelings of familiarity, or “at-homeness” with the other.  It is the soulmate feeling, the I-feel-like-I’ve-known-you-all-my-life feeling.  (I feel both an open-hearted love and an exclusive romance dynamic with my marvelous Michael, which is why I married him.)  But sexual polarity, says Deida, is a third way of relating, and it is impersonal.

Sexual polarity is the “arc of energy,” or the essential magnetic pull, between the masculine and the feminine.  Deida describes it as working like electricity or magnetism, which is generated between a positive and negative pole.  This sexual energy generates itself effortlessly when the conditions are right.  One might call it chemistry, or the “energetic juice” of passion and sex.  One can experience a jolt of sexuality polarity with a stranger.  (I have always wondered about the occasional flash of instant attraction I have felt with certain men who cross my path.)

“We are affected by sexual polarity from head to toe,” Deida writes.  “A natural and energetic force flows between the masculine and feminine poles, and your body-mind is reoriented just like a compass.”

Masculine energy, Deida goes on to say, is active, purposeful, assertive, directed and focused.  Feminine energy is free-flowing, open, yielding, receptive, definitely more passive.

I feel a definite sense of recognition as I read him describe how a yielding, receiving woman increases the strength of the feminine pole, and thus increases the flow of sexual energy.  “Radiating feminine energy magnetizes masculine energy.”  And, deep submission to a man allows a woman to experience her own “uninhibited sexual essence.”

It seems clear to me that practicing dominance and submission is a direct way of cultivating polarity between masculine and feminine.  It encourages each person to align almost exclusively with their respective poles.  And this explains why Michael and I have been experiencing such a great surge of sexual energy and passion.

Deida adds that “to encounter the opposite of what you are is healing.”  And oh I feel that too, it feel very healing to me when Daddy penetrates me and takes me and invades me with all that thrusting energy.  Or maybe the healing part is that I can fully experience my own feminine energy?  I wonder if it feels healing to him to be able to sink into me while I am being so open and receptive.  Or maybe the healing part for him is that it allows him to fully experience his masculine energy?

Reading all this is so revelatory to me that I have to put the book down and take a brisk walk to burn off energy.  Finally, someone has provided a philosophical – even spiritual – framework to help me understand why I have felt so thrown into a new sexual universe by what has been happening between us.  And, if Deida’s theories are right, then Michael and I are not just having hot kinky sex, we have headed into a whole new evolutionary stage.