Ask Beastly: What If the Daddy Needs to Be Held?
Even in dom/sub dynamics, love and care should go both ways.
I’ve read your stuff online and am currently rereading “My Love Is a Beast.” I am fairly new to kink and find daddy/sir-son/boy play particularly appealing. BTW, I’m a dad, 68 years old. I have been in a 6-month-long relationship with a 38-year-old son. We have hit a rough patch, and in the course of an extended text battle, I commented, “Sometimes daddy needs aftercare as well.” He responded to me saying “Boys can’t be expected to take care of daddies in the same way. It’s the basis of the dynamic. Daddies get support from their peers.” (Side note here: my best friend of 35 years had just died that very day and he knew that, although in fairness to him, that was not the basis of the argument). I felt blindsided. Question: Is it wrong to expect a daddy/son dynamic to be something of a two-way street?
Hey there,
I am so sorry to hear about your friend. I can’t imagine such a loss after a long friendship like that.
You want my honest opinion, since you're writing in, so I’ll give it, but it will likely rile some guys in the “daddy-boy” scene.
Fetish dynamics—like daddy-boy, dom-sub, master-slave, and so on—are pretend games. They are role-playing. They can connect to you on a deep level, much like cosplaying as your favourite superhero at a comic book convention can bring out your confidence and reveal parts of yourself that you like—but it’s still cosplay, still pretend. A game should not trump the most basic human decency.
Too often, kinky people use this game, the roles of “dom” and “sub” (and, I’ll say it, this is especially true of dominant men), as cover and justification for what is simply bad, toxic behaviour: being a bad partner, bad person, bad friend.
Your boy is being all those bad things. If he can’t recognise the human behind the role, the man (not the “daddy”) who is mourning the loss of his friend and needs care, love, and tenderness as much as anyone does, then he is getting too swept up in the role—and, frankly, that makes me wonder about his deeper values, his character, and the quality of person he is. Care and love should always supersede the roles.
Because, of course, you are right. Of course. All humans need to break against someone—to be soft, held. You need your wounds licked. You need to be small sometimes, wrapped in someone’s arms. That’s true if you like dominant sex or submissive sex, if you’re a “slave” or “master,” if you’re a “daddy” or “boy,” and the good slaves and masters in the kink world know this. They know how to incorporate tenderness into play and when to come up for air, step out of the roles, and be real people.
That is a mental health necessity. This is why I am somewhat opposed to 24/7, round-the-clock kink, like live-in slaves. I simply don’t think living in an uninterrupted role-play dynamic with someone is good for the mind. Humans have proven across time that we dehumanise each other easily in the right conditions, and 24/7 role-play is such a condition. (Remember the Stanford Prison Experiment?)
Let your guy read this because this reply is also for him. If he loves you, he should be willing to undertake the emotional labour of caring for someone and being a big spoon (mentally and physically) from time to time, because all humans need that. If he’s just looking for someone to be a daddy with him, particularly in sex, that’s fine, but that means you can’t build a real, healthy relationship together: you can just be role-play buddies, sex mates. You can meet once a week or so to have a fun session or spend time together, but you can’t grow together as real people, as doing so requires occasionally stepping out of the roles when someone just needs love.
Love, Beastly