The importance of begging

Begging you

There is an undeniable rush when someone is kneeling before you. A steady flow of begging, pleading, beseeching tumbling from their lips. Great, big, imploring eyes looking up at you helplessly.

But none of this matters if it isn’t real!

I want to see genuine fear, regret and helplessness mixed on that face. I want them to mean it when they beg me, not play act, not pretend, it must be earnest. They need to know that they had better mean every, single, pathetic word if they want to have any hope.

Begging is not a cute manipulation, a coy way of getting what they want. Begging is the final step in the total abasement of self and acceptance of one’s own pitiful helplessness.

Riding high, when I was king

There is a weight of cultural history behind the idea of begging. It carries with it a far greater impact than asking, requesting, petitioning… all of these are forms of imploring which allows the supplicant to retain some dignity, not so with begging. To beg is to identify oneself as absolutely without power, entirely unable to achieve the desired outcome without the help of the one we are beseeching.

We associate begging with the lowest, the most helpless, the image of a peasant before the King. Begging never happens when standing, and certainly not while looking someone in the eye. Begging should not just be an expression of helplessness but also a physical representation of it. In the same way that a dog will bare its throat in surrender, begging should have some human parallel.

The most common position we might find across cultures and time is that of kneeling with the head down. Being lower, unable to move save for an awkward shuffling, unable to see those we are talking to. By matching actions to words we emphasise the true helplessness of the supplicant.

Now we understand how it should look, and why, we can examine the deeper meaning when genuinely begging.

Put your loving hand out

Commanding someone with the phrase “Beg me!” says a number of things beyond just “Get on your knees and ask!”. The first message is that whatever form the request has taken so far is insufficient. It is possible that some bottoms can develop a sense of entitlement and no longer fully appreciate that a request is not enough. They must never forget that whatever they may be granted is at your sufferance.

My partner has to ask to sit on the sofa, and sometimes I do not let her. If I always let her then the ritual of asking loses all meaning, it is simply a pointless step, an action she has to go through that does not have an actual effect, the outcome is preordained. Not letting her sit on the sofa when she asks to is a reminder of my power and the fact that there is a value to the asking, and asking nicely. If I do not teach her that what she is asking for has a value then she will not be properly grateful when I grant her desire. It is this value that is important to us in the consideration of when it is time to make them beg.

I need you to understand

The greater the value we have attributed to a request the more they must pay. In a D/s dynamic the top controls more than the bottom, owns more, has more rights. The top sets the market rate because they control the market. The bottom can only enter as a consumer, they have less control, own less, have less rights. There is an economic relationship here that we can exploit as the top.

The currency of the transaction that is taking place when begging is dignity. The one who is begging is sacrificing more and more dignity in exchange for the desired boon. They abase themselves before us, but they cannot, and will not, do so unceasingly. For begging to be a valuable lesson we have to be the ones to bring it to an end.

There is no safe word to end begging, so the only recourse to the bottom is to beg more or to give up. We do not want them to give up, rarely does that end well, often it ends with them feeling shit. They have failed to please us and they have failed to achieve their objective. There is no lesson learnt there, just disappointment.

We do not want them to feel that they have humbled themselves for no reason. Once they have called it off, decided they can go no lower we cannot then accept their debasement, then it would be too late. We have to carefully judge when they are at their lowest point and then end it. Our objective is not resentment but rather gratitude.

If we want to encourage this self-degradation then we have to show that it is worthwhile. We cannot grind them into the dirt, force them to beg and beg, and then not rewards that, not give it a value. If we want to encourage an acceptance of their degraded state of existence then we need to provide a positive reinforcement. We need to positively encourage the contradictory correlation between helplessness and gain.

We are teaching them a pattern of behaviour and an acceptance of this method of interaction, as such there must be the reward.

I don’t want to lose you

We set the value of a thing by dictating how much must be given up to satisfy us. It is on us to carefully price what our bottoms are hoping to gain. They need to work for it, but it has to be within their grasp, if they just beg a little harder this time.

If there is something they truly want but they need permission or help to achieve then they need to learn that it can only be achieved by satisfying our desire for their total submission. It is important that they become comfortable with begging, it can take a while to overcome the social taboos in place and break through the barriers of pride. We can make this easier for them by gradually acclimatising them to it. In the same way that a subscription service has a high value low barrier to entry which slowly changes over time we can gently ratchet up the intensity of the begging needed from out bottoms.

When we become accustomed to having something and are use to paying for it then it is easy for the price to slowly increase without us even noticing. Before we know it we can be paying far more than we realised for exactly the same thing. My partner is used to a number of things, she is also very use to having to ask for them, so if she has to ask a little harder this time it isn’t as much of a shock. Bit by bit she will need to try harder, ask nicer, plead more, until that which use to be received with a simple “May I Sir?” is now only granted after the most desperate begging.

They must become use to being helpless, to being weak, to begging their kind and merciful owner for even the smallest thing…and they must be grateful for it.

About the Author

Will Hunt has been involved in the UK kink scene for the last 10 years; running clubs, teaching workshops, performing and generally encouraging naughty behavior wherever possible.
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