How to Train Your Submissive: First 10 Days

Nov 6

written by Micah Brown

This guide assumes that you have had the conversations and all agreed upon creating a D/s dynamic that includes a Dominant and a submissive. If you haven’t had these conversations, I would encourage you to do so before jumping into a serious training routine.

Simply for ease of understanding, I’m going to be talking about a dynamic that has one Dominant and one submissive. Other dynamics with more partners are just as valid, and hopefully, this is written in such a way that it can be easily adjusted to meet whatever dynamic may exist out there.

Now, all that being said and done, the process of training a submissive is going to vary greatly based on the type of dynamic you’ve agreed on and the individuals within the dynamic. Please note that what I’m putting in here is not the ONLY way to train a submissive and I encourage you to take the ideas you like and toss the ideas you don’t and let inspiration be your ultimate guide.

Days 1 – 5: Establishing Rules, Protocols, and Rituals

When you’re first starting down the path of having a D/s dynamic, everything about it sounds exciting and fun. You cannot wait to try having your submissive kneel at your feet and call you their Mistress/Dom/Daddy/Mommy/Sir/etc. And the submissive cannot wait to let go of so much of their own stress and allow themselves to relax under the watchful eye of their Dominant.

These first few days are going to be very intense and feel almost fun. As the submissive, your immediate desire may be to please your Dom, so you will be on your best behavior in the hopes of providing your Dominant with the best possible submissive in the world. As the Dominant, you want your submissive to feel cared for, even when they are being punished. The first few days are likely going to feel like an all-you-can-eat buffet of kink!

This is why it is imperative that before you begin these first five days you create a plan and set expectations for what this first chunk of time will look like.

Make certain that you have communicated clearly with each other. To this end, I recommend creating a living document that you can use over the course of the full thirty days to make adjustments to during each check-in period (I’ll talk about those in a minute).

Sample Morning Devotions and Task Ideas for New Submissives

As the Dominant, you want to give your submissive a clear understanding of your expectations for them over the next five days. While this should be a conversation and negotiation to ensure everybody is on the same page, you want to make it clear what you expect of their behavior, what protocols you expect them to follow, and provide clear instructions on how to follow those protocols. This document should also have whatever Safe Word protocol you’re going to use included so there are no questions around Safe Word usage.

These first five days will also be heavy on building routines that you want your slave to follow. For example, if a task of your submissive is going to be making coffee every morning, but you want them to go through a specific process to make the coffee, start out by just getting them into the habit of making the coffee.

As an example, my slave performs devotions at an altar every morning in service to me. It was something she wanted to do, and I came up with how she is to perform those devotions. I would not recommend starting with something this involved in the first five days, but here is the shortened version of how she is to perform her devotions to me every morning:

Approach the alter nude and kneel
Thank Master for owning you
Light a candle
Take Five Deep Breaths – Inhale: “I am owned” – Exhale: “I am loved.”
Place both hands over your pussy and say: “This is not my cunt. This is my Master’s cunt to use when and how he desires.”
Place your hands on your tits and say: “This is not my body. This is Master’s body to mark and use in any way he desires.”
Place both hands over your heart: “This is not my heart, it is Master’s heart. In its place, Master has given me his heart to cherish and take care of as well as he takes care of mine.”
You will then bow your head and place both hands on your forehead and say: “This is my mind and it is my own. I give Master my submission of my own free will and trust that the decisions he makes for me are what is best for me.”
You will then stand, bow to the alter, and you may now continue with your morning

If this were the only thing you were focused on for the first five days, it would be an okay place to start, but you may feel better starting out with a wider range of things and then expanding on them. Instead of having your submissive do an entire devotional routine every morning, maybe you start with having them kneel before you first thing in the morning before they are allowed to start their day.

The next piece you want to put into your document will be the rules and expectations for these five days. Include punishments for anything that’s missed. Make certain that punishments are memorable, but they do not have to start out being incredibly painful or emotionally trying. Start light and work your way up over the full thirty days.

When my slave and I first began the process of coming up with rules and expectations, this is what I had for her in those early days:

Send Master a picture of you kneeling for him every morning – you must be nude
Send Master three positive affirmations about yourself
When serving Master food or drink, you must kneel and present it to him and wait for him to take it from you
You are to be on the floor at Master’s feet at all possible times when sitting in the living room
You will always refer to Master appropriately using either “Sir” or “Master”

These were easy for her to do without having to worry too much about learning a bunch of protocols as she would for the devotions later. After she had gotten used to kneeling for me, I trained her on the intricacies of on how I want her to kneel for me (this is a personal preference, and you may choose to have your submissive kneel for you in whatever way works for your dynamic).

Making Consequences Effective

When you come up with your punishments, make certain they fit the failure. For my slave, if she misses her journaling one evening, she has to write 25 lines of my choosing the following day, for example. If you’re going to use physical punishments like spanking, keep them to a low number to begin with. You do not want to overwhelm your submissive, especially if they are not used to punishments outside of “funishments” in the bedroom during play time.

Which actually brings up my next point – don’t let punishments become “funishments.” This is especially true if your submissive has a bratty streak and likes to get into trouble for the sake of receiving punishments. In these cases, it’s likely best to get creative with punishments, but I’ll save that discussion for another article.

As you go through these first five days, keep the rules and expectations posted somewhere you can both see them. If possible, keep a physical copy posted somewhere in the house. If not, keep it on a shared digital file you can both access through your phones and/or computers. Both of you should feel comfortable making notations on it as you move through these first days about what works and what doesn’t.

First Check-In: Reviewing Tasks, Punishments, and Submissive Behavior

At the end of your first five days, you want to set aside some time to check in. Look over any notes you’ve left on the document you created and discuss the parts that really worked for you and the parts that didn’t work for you at all. Find out if there are any areas that you both are in harmony with as well as areas where you might be on different pages. A common disconnect is often around the amount of pain being inflicted. I’ve seen a submissive who wants more pain, but the Dominant is reticent to cause more, and I’ve seen it the other ways as well.

During this first Check-in, you will edit the document and put together an updated version for the next five days that will increase the expectations on the submissive and the expectations on the Dominant. The updated version will include more detailed tasks and harsher punishments for failure to complete them or poor performance.

It is okay at this point if you need to adjust your expectations for what type of submissive you have. It is not uncommon to get so excited about the fun aspect of it all that some possibilities aren’t considered. Is your submissive just a “toy” for pleasure (nobody is a toy; it’s an agreed-upon dynamic between two adults), or will they have domestic duties as well? It should not be a surprise if your submissive wants to change the ways in which they submit. This is not a bad thing. This means as they become more comfortable allowing their submissive nature to be at the forefront of who they are, they will want to embrace it in different ways.

At the same time, how you want them to submit and what you want from them as a submissive may also evolve, which is why these check-ins are very important over the first thirty days. Be open about what you want and how you want to serve or be served.

Once you have updated your document and everyone is on the same page for going forward, you can begin the next step in training your submissive.

Days 6 – 10: Refining Routines and Increasing Expectations

Days six to ten are going to be about refinement of task execution and increasing expectations. The excitement and giddiness of the first five days have likely begun to cool down and you’re beginning to fall into your roles more easily with each passing day. That’s not to say there won’t be excitement and trepidation and moments of dizzying amounts of pleasure (and pain, if you’re into pain). These next days are going to firm up the rules, expectations, and consequences so that your submissive has a better understanding of what is expected of them, what is needed from them, and what happens if they don’t do something or don’t complete something to your satisfaction.

Understand that being a Dominant in a 24/7 dynamic isn’t easy. I’ve stated as much before in this article and I’m going to state it again. The amount of responsibility that you are going to have toward your submissive is going to be very high. That means creating consequences and punishments that work for your submissive and help them to adjust their behavior and meet their goals.

Expect some pushback from your submissive during this time. It’s normal and to be expected. What you don’t want to do is let any indiscretions slide because you feel it’s too early to truly punish your submissive. That doesn’t mean that you give them the most extreme possible punishment, but it does mean that you shouldn’t let things go and that punishments should be a little more severe.

During your check-in, talk about what punishments will look like. If you want the punishment for orgasming without permission to be ten spankings with the belt, it’s probably best to start out with either a lower number of spankings with the belt or bare-handed spankings as your sub works up their pain tolerance.

Don’t think that because you have a masochist for a submissive that pain can’t be an effective punishment. My slave is a huge masochist and we delve into extreme play such as piercing, knife play, blood play, and other forms of edge play. That being said, using a belt or a paddle on her for punishments provides a sudden and intense pain that she does not find at all pleasurable. Does she like spankings otherwise? Very much. Does she enjoy having her ass and thighs bruised? Also, yes. But when we’re approaching a scene, I never start out at the highest intensity of pain, allowing her body to adjust to the sensation and her endorphins to start pumping into her blood. Punishment spankings are given a much higher intensity right from the start. There’s no buildup, just ouchies that she doesn’t enjoy.

Of course, there are those out there who can go straight to the intense pain and get pleasure out of it, so know your submissive and gauge what will be a good punishment for them.

One more quick note on brats and punishments: Have them kneel on rice for a minimum of 5 minutes. It may not sound bad at first, but it’s a discomfort that grows and one that I, personally, have never seen anybody enjoy. If rice works out, you can always invest in a kneeling board, which works like rice, but looks fancy.

For these next five days, you want to add a few additional tasks and/or expectations for your slave to follow through on. In addition, this is also a good time to add steps to any multi-step tasks you have assigned. I used the example of making coffee every morning earlier. If you have a specific way you want coffee to be made, these next five days will be the time to really work on that process and hold your submissive accountable to it.

And just to clarify, I don’t mean how you take your coffee. I mean if you happen to be a bit of a coffee snob the way I am and have specific steps to go through from grinding to pouring.

When you’re training your submissive on more intensive tasks, walk them through it step by step. Allow them, or encourage them, or order them to take notes so that they’re as prepared as possible to tackle these tasks on their own.

If they do have questions, don’t punish them for asking. They want to make sure they are doing something correctly to please their Dom (you) and it’s best that they ask instead of getting it wrong.

Second Check In: What’s Working, What Needs Adjusting, and How to Move Forward

On day ten, you want to settle down for your next check-in and negotiation session. You want to spend time reviewing all the various pieces from the past five days and really touch base on what worked.

Spend a good deal of time talking about punishments and how they worked out for both of you. Did the punishments feel as though they were appropriate? Did you submissive do better after having experienced a consequence? Did your submissive feel as though the punishments were effective and appropriate?

This is also the time to discuss ramping up punishments to a level that you want to see them at. Instead of five spankings, now would be the time to move up to ten, for example. Don’t get stuck on the exact numbers even now. You may end up finding that your submissive responds to eight spankings, or perhaps they really need fifteen. It’s all very individual, and you will likely be looking at it again in your next check-in.

Punishments aren’t the only thing to check in on, however. Be sure to talk about tasks, how your submissive is doing over all and where they need improvement. Allow your submissive time to reflect and listen if they feel that something could change that would help them to succeed in specific tasks.

This is also a good time to discuss sex. Being open about sex and how both sex and scenes are playing out in the dynamic will help inform how to move forward with both those topics. If you’re experimenting with a “Free Use” dynamic with your submissive, see how they are doing with being free use and available for sex at the drop of a hat. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you’re dealing with a chastity situation, talk about how that’s affecting them.

Just remember, as I will say again in Part 2, no topic should be off limits during these check ins, and if you need to backtrack and start your thirty days over, don’t consider that a failure, but the opportunity to do better and learn more about each other.

When we pick up again, we’ll be looking at days 11-30, and talking about the final steps in the training process (not that training is ever really over as there is always learning and refinement to be done).