Rewarding good behavior: ideas to reward your submissive
This guest article was written by The_Branded on Fetlife originally titled “Making The Most Of Obedience p.2”
You can also read the other installments here:
I recently wrote a blog giving some hints and tips about how to get the most out of the Obedience App, so I've decided to do a bit of a deeper dive and give a few extra hints and tips on getting the most of Obedience and helping keep all parties engaged with the app.
That last sentence is really important. Keep everyone engaged. If you don’t make using the app enjoyable, you won't get the most out of it!
Again, I will refer to this as Dom and Sub, just for ease, with the Dom being the controller of the app and the sub receiving the tasks, but this can work in many, many relationship styles
Create reward messages for your sub
When setting up a task or habit for your sub/bottom/partner, there are various settings that you can play with, one of these is the Reward Message.
Here you can set up a notification that your sub receives when they complete OR fail a task.
By default, this is just set to "Good Job", but you can add as many custom notifications as you want including text, emoji, photos AND voice notes.
To keep this interesting, I have added around 15-20 custom notifications for each of the tasks, each specific to the habit itself. This means my partner gets a random message to raise the dopamine rather than the same "Good Job" over and over again, keeping them interested and engaged.
A quick example of what I mean: One of our primary habits is to 'Drink Plenty', which instructs them to drink enough water/juice each day to keep them hydrated. This needs to be ticked off twice a day. So, each time they complete the task, they get a Reward Message, some of which I've listed here...
Hydrated as a fishy!
It makes me happy when you drink enough!
Daddy is proud that you are practicing self-care*
Glug, glug, glug! Keep going babygirl!
Hey! What are you? A Mermaid?!
You get the idea! I also try and add a couple of new Reward Messages every couple of weeks, again just to keep things fresh and not predictable.
Give your sub bonus points for completing tasks
I could have included this in the Reward Messages tip, but really it's a thing of its own.
On each of their daily tasks, there is a Reward Message that says
"When you see this, screenshot it to Daddy for a bonus point!"
When I get my screenshot, I always congratulate them and go straight into the app and add the bonus point.
This is one of the reasons that I have 15-20 Reward Messages for each task, it stops the bonus points from coming up every single day, but they come enough that it keeps my partner going, but still rare enough that they get a nice dopamine hit when it comes up!
Give your sub special tasks and keep them engaged
I mentioned in my first post that I often add extra tasks on the fly or for special occasions, again to keep things fresh and to stop my partner from getting bored of the standard 5 tasks they have to complete at any time.
These can be a one-off task, something that lasts a week, a month, or anything in between.
In my last writing, I used the example of Christmas time. The habit I had was an "Advent Calendar" where on each Monday, Wednesday and Friday of December I would text my sub a one-off task to complete to do with Christmas. Again, this could be something sexy like "take a naughty picture with the Christmas tree" OR something self-care related like "take a bath with some Christmas scented candles and a good book"
Because this is a fun task for Christmas, I have still assigned a Punishment if they fail, but in the holiday spirit, it's more of a funishment that, they kinda want. So, she chooses whether to take the 5 points that I'm offering or to add to her funishment that she'll receive in January...
Other ways of using one-off tasks could be to help with something that your sub needs to do and is either procrastinating on or you think they'll forget, add it as a task!
Do they need to change the battery in their fire alarm?
Are they supposed to call the bank?
Have they got a huge pile of laundry they haven't done?
Add that as a task on the app and reward them when it's done!
Get creative: how to reward your sub with tasks
In my previous posting, I spoke about how many points my partner gets for each of their tasks or habits, however, the reward doesn't have to be points.
You can set it so that certain tasks earn a set reward from the Rewards list. I tend to use this with one-off tasks or a task that I know is going to be particularly hard for them to complete.
Again, this is just another way to keep them engaged. Points are great because they can save them to redeem whatever reward they want, but sometimes a set reward will work just as well and give an extra push, for example, "If you eat well every day this week, I will take you for ice cream on Saturday"
You create a task for eating well every day (whatever this looks like for you and your sub) and a reward for 'taking you for ice cream' and when setting up the task, rather than assign a points value, you just select the reward.
Try out this helpful community advice. Update your sub’s rewards, tasks, and punishments by logging in or signing up to Obedience App.
