Rika’s Lair-Autonomous Submissives

I hope you have been enjoying Rika’s Lair, my monthly column dedicated to thoughts and experiences regarding power dynamics in Service-Oriented D/s relationships. Look up “Ms. Rika” in the search box for links to all of my articles in KinkWeekly! 

This week, I was looking through articles on autonomous vehicles and started to think about my submissives. Strange correlation, you say? Well, maybe not as strange as it seems! 

We have cars because it’s really difficult to walk long distances and it’s quicker and more convenient than riding horses or bicycles. Our goal is to make our lives easier and to get where we’re going in as efficient and effective a manner possible. We COULD choose not to use a car, but using one is much easier on us physically – gives us more free time – and is generally more comfortable. 

When we drive a car, we have some decisions to make: Where do we want to go?…What time do we want to arrive?…Which route should we take? Then, as we’re driving, we steer our cars, redirecting the energy and power of the vehicle to get us where we want to go. Steering a car does not require a lot of physical work, certainly not when compared to the energy levels necessary to transport us there, but there is some work and planning required. 

Emotional connection to my submissives aside, I find the utilitarian nature of having a submissive to be particularly analogous to that of my automobiles. Like planning a trip, there is work for me to do: I know what I want, I spend time (energy) introspecting and determining direction, I communicate that to my submissive – and EXPECT my submissive to work to get us there. I adjust the sub’s energy, not much differently than how I make micro-adjustments when I drive my car and the car starts to drift out of lane. I’m “working” by direction setting, planning, and adjusting, but just as the car is doing the physical labor of moving us, I look to the submissive to generate the labor energy to get the tasks complete. 

Reading about autonomous cars brought this analogy to the next level. In the near future, we are going to tell our car where we want to go – and our car is going to figure out the most efficient and most effective route, suggest the best time to leave, and then make it happen, keeping itself in lane automatially. Could we override and adjust those decisions? Sure. But, as any of us who’ve “disobeyed” Waze has likely already concluded, most of the time, it will be easier and better, to let the car do what it needs to do to avoid traffic and get us there safely. 

I have always viewed my subs in a similar way. I believe that two minds are better than one, when it comes to problem solving and execution. My sub has a brain, I choose to use it. As my sub gets to know me – my tastes, and my preferences – he becomes more and more like an autonomous vehicle. I communicate my preferences, and then he does the work to figure out what will be the most effective and efficient means to get that done. Sure, I can override his decisions and am free to make adjustments along the way (I may feel like taking a specific route), but most of the time, it is far more practical (and far less stressful) to allow him to do the work to get me where I want to go. 

Having a sub, like having a car, makes accomplishing a task easier. I still need to decide where I want to go – and I still need to monitor and adjust – but the better my sub understands and internalizes my preferences and expectations, the more autonomous he becomes, the more valuable he becomes, and the easier life becomes for me. 

Rika. 

Ms. Rika is a lifestyle dominant, educator, and author; living in the suburbs of NYC with her husband/slave. She has written several popular books on her approach to adding Dominant-Centric, Service-Oriented D/s to relationships. You can find her books (in both print and eBook formats) at Lulu.com (http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/msrika), or at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the iStore, Books-A- Million, Kobo.com, or anywhere books are sold. Search for “Ms. Rika”.