You're listening to the Loving BDSM podcast. Kayla Lords here with the one, the only, the amazing IT man. You just need a purple cape, John Brown's time. Okay. We we as in family, the kids and I used to, call JB IT man whenever we needed him to fix a tech thing. Yep. And this day that we are recording this episode is filled with tech things. Oh my god. Need your shiny cape. Mhmm. Your superhero cape. Something like that. Mhmm. Mhmm. We're not talking about that this week
though. No. No. No. This week, we're answering a question from a submissive who wants to know how to plan ahead and negotiate for when their long distance relationship goes in person. Welcome to the Loving BDSM podcast. If you're new here, we help kinksters like you have happy, healthy power exchange relationships. At the podcast, your favorite podcast app, so you never miss
an episode. And if you'd like us to answer a kinky question that you have, in a future one of these episodes, you can send that question to us, through our contact page that's labeled, literally, ask your questions on our website at lovingBDSM.net. That's lovingBDSM.net, or you can find the link in the show notes for this episode. Okay. Let's get into the question. I am a newer submissive who's in a long distance relationship with a daddy dom. We've met several times to get to know each
other and play. We clicked right away. We are now talking about moving closer or in together in the future, but want to negotiate how our power exchange will look. He has a 13 year old daughter who we definitely don't want to know anything about it. We discussed my current daily tasks previously, and he gives me regular tasks throughout the day. My question is, even though we communicate amazingly, what is the best way to approach our power exchange negotiations?
Just to note, he has more experience than I do with this, but and I trust him, but I want to protect both of us. What things should be decided before we take that step to move in? I see myself as a service sub, so things will need so so those things will need to be added in. Can I sound like an old lady for a while? For a minute? Go ahead. It feels a little early Yeah. Based on the description. Yeah. It does. You know, the closer together,
yeah, the moving in, I think. But but anyway, you know, the whole long distance thing. Long here's what I'm gonna say. Long distance and moving in, completely different animals. Yeah. So whatever you're doing long distance, most of it's not gonna translate to in person. Most of it, you're gonna have to toss out the window. Right. And you won't actually know what's going to truly work for in person or even just moving being closer physically together until you're in that position.
Yeah. We we thought we were so smart. Oh, man. Yeah. We're planners from way back. That we were we were on top of everything. Mhmm. And and before we moved in together, we sat down and we talked about and, you know, hammered out this whole list of stuff that that's gonna be part of our DS when we're together. All the tasks. Mhmm. Mhmm. Yep. And and, you know, how everything was gonna be relatable to us and all that. And it took two, maybe three days, and all that shit was tossed out the window.
Yes. And then we ended up having, we ended up having, like, some life stressors happen right after we moved in together. In the middle of a Florida summer, the AC went out in our rented town home. And so we had to deal with that. We felt the overwhelm from thinking we knew what we were gonna do when we moved
in together. Mhmm. And it was so overwhelming, we literally put our power exchange on hold for about two weeks to get through the stress that had just occurred in the apartment, this brand brand new to us apartment. Because thing thing is this, we moved in, meaning we rolled up and we had a bunch of people there to help us unload. Mhmm. And did we got the unloading, went went very well. Put everything in its all the boxes in their respective rooms. Went to bed that night and woke up
to an overheated apartment. Yes. So you can plan, and I respect wanting to try to map things out, have a plan. For me, having a plan even though even if I don't follow it is very comforting. There's nothing thinking about it, trying to imagine it, but I think the the biggest thing is understanding Yeah. That plan might get completely thrown out. Right. And and you know that that's what I was just gonna say, you know, we're not telling you not to plan. No. Yeah. Okay?
Have a plan. Have some ideas. Sit down, talk, communicate, talk about your expectations, your wants, your desires, and all this, both of you. K? And realize that a good portion of it can go 10 sheets to the wind. Oh, yeah. Once it hits, you know, what is that? No bat no plan survives battle unscathed? No plan survives contact with the enemy. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, just be aware Mhmm. That you can plan this out. You can go down to the nth degree. Okay?
And and there's nothing wrong with trying to do that. But again, be aware that you're going to have to most likely be fluid about this, and that things are not gonna work out the way. And and I know for us, even when we first reinstated our DS, we were doing weekly check ins. Every Friday night, we'd hop in the car, and and we would head out for a cup of coffee, and we would sit and be like, so
how's this working out for you? We also the thing we did when we reinstated was what we had tried to do first day living together, I had about 10 things I was supposed to keep up with that I had never had to do with a partner living with me before. Mhmm. When we restarted, we started with, like, one or two things Right. And gradually added things in. So Mhmm. Or two things Right. And gradually added things in.
So you did not ask how to move in together, so I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole, but that's that's our reality. Mhmm. And we have talked to many other, people in relationships who went from long distance to either close together or living in person, and they found something like that to be very true for them as well. Because what you're doing when you plan before you've gotten there is you're imagining what you think it will be like, and we all know, we're all adults here, life
loves a good curveball. Oh, yeah. And the things you can't even imagine, you couldn't have planned for, are going to happen when you least expect it. Now what I will say for the the dreaming of what might happen in the future, the planning for if and when it does, the big thing I would say is each of you needs to have your own individual idea of what that would look like and then come together to figure out the Venn diagram of that. Right? Like, what do you imagine being a service sub to to
this partner to be like? What are the things you would like to be able to do for them? What are the things that you're currently doing long distance that you'd like to somehow maintain, just in a different way? What is it that your daddy dom wants from a submissive living with them? And, yes, absolutely, how do we do this with a child who we don't want them
to know anything's going on? Now the thing to know about that, and you can kind of plan it now, but it's it's gonna make more sense to live it a little bit and figure it out. But the thing about being power exchange and not having kids clock it or not doing anything so overtly, air quote, kinky Mhmm. That it's noticeable is to do very subtle
power exchange. And when I say subtle, it means the meaning is there to you of what it means, but what you're physically doing looks like normal, air quote, normal vanilla behavior. You know, you could negotiate it that, serve you know, making your partner's plate. For a meal. I'm sorry. Meal and and serving it to them, getting their drink, you know, anything like I'm making a coffee, do you know, any dessert, anything like that.
Having their lunch prepared for them. Right. Having, if and I'm I'm picking things that are very domestic. Yeah. It's not always gonna be true if, like, you're also working Mhmm. You know, your own job or whatever. It it sounds mundane, but we have a lot of that stuff incorporated into our our power exchange does not look like power exchange from the outside. The kinkiest thing we do is our bedtime routine because that is behind closed doors. Right. And we when the our the kids were young, they
were very sound sleepers. Nothing woke them up. As they got older That started to shift. That shifted, but, like, the home we're in now, they're completely across the building from us, and one's not even here anymore. One one's in a whole different city now. But, I mean, when they were both living here, they were completely across the house and they are teenagers and this teenager might be similar, once they're in their own little world of their room of doing their thing, they do
not care what you're doing. So behind closed doors, you can do a lot more. But for example, some of what I do that is meaningful to us but does not look like anything. I always make JB's, iced coffee. He makes his own morning coffee. I get the coffee pot ready for him, so all he has to do is push a button. But I make his his more post coffee coffee. He drinks a hot cup of coffee when he first wakes up. He drinks iced coffee next. I make that every time. You make it happen.
And that's that's one of my jobs. And a fine job you do, girl. When we are in places where there's serving up of food, maybe, family, meals together, holiday meals, buffet style meals with with people we know, not you know, I will make up a plate for him and put it down for him. I have the luxury of being Southern and that is kind of expected of Southern women. So my family doesn't think there's anything wrong with that. Right? They don't even notice it. Preak disguise. Absolutely.
For things that aren't, like, that domestic, if that's not a thing that will impact y'all's relationship very much, JB opens my car door for me. Mhmm. Yes. That looks very chivalrous and polite from the outside looking in, but that's a power thing. Mhmm. I don't leave the car until he wills it to be so. Right. He holds doors open for me. Yes. That looks very respectful and sweet and chivalrous, but, also, he controls where I am. I walk on a specific side of him
when we're walking out somewhere. Mhmm. The one time got your hair pulled in parking lot one time for not being on the correct side. I might have been a little sassy about it. I I might have been pushing buttons there. If we go out to eat, I we have not done it as much recently, but we're in in flux with some of our power changer. We're negotiating things. When we go out to eat, if it's a breakfast, I I get his coffee ready. He orders a hot coffee. The server is always very
confused. I might grab it and start putting cream in it. But if we're having diet Coke or water, I'll put his straw Yes. In his cup for him. Right? It's these small things that nobody is gonna think twice about. The coffee thing does throw some servers off. Oh, yeah. But not they don't really care. They're too busy. Right? Right.
But they have meaning for us. Now I'm not saying you need to do those things, but those are the kinds of things, especially this works out really well seeing as you are a service submissive because there's a lot of of service you can do that can look very domestic or just look very helpful. When we the only time we were ever asked, the kids were younger than 13. Okay? And one of them said, why why do you do this stuff for mister John? Because
that's what they call him, mister John. I'm like, because it makes him happy and because I want to. Or and sometimes I'll say because it makes me happy to do it. So there's no, oh, no. And now I have to explain power exchange to the kids. No. They just noticed me doing a little bit extra for him that they had never seen me do for their biological father. They were curious.
And so what we do with having kids is and we did not know to plan this at the time when we were working on, well, how do we want our relationship to look after long distance. But the kinky stuff is behind closed doors. It's at the end of the day. It's mildly kinky because we're old and tired. He gives me permission to go to bed. I bend over the bed and I might get a butt rub. I might get my my butt spanked. Now leading up odds be ever in my favor. Right. Now now leading up to that, she
pulls the bed and prepares it. I do. I pull down the sheets. I get the pillows ready. And I I read in bed at night before I go to sleep, so she sets my pillows. So they're all where I want them to sit and read in bed. So what those negotiations look like and this is true for anybody who's just going into power exchange and trying to keep it subtle, trying to keep it, like, nobody really clocks it. Mhmm. Or you're moving in together. Right?
The it's when it can be about service, to me, that's the the easiest thing because it's then the conversation is from sub to dom. What can I do for you that will make you happy, that helps you, that will make you feel more in charge, that allows me to feel, like, in you know, whatever your submissive headspace feels like? What are those things? And then the negotiation part is, what are you willing and able to do, and what are you not willing or unable to do? And you do get to say
no to those things. You just have to find the balance. There's nothing wrong, like we said at the top, of planning what you think this will look like. I think there's nothing wrong with having lists or, ideas or daydreams about what best case scenario might look like. But the realistic part is, one, start slower than you think you should. So Lola agrees. You might have 10 things. Will that first little bit when you first move in start with one or two, right?
You might have best case scenario and then life throws you a curve ball. And it might Lola agrees. It might be a while before you can get to your best case scenario. You might never get there. There are some things that on paper sound great, and then you start doing them. Yeah. And you're like, I hate this. This does not work. And and I think that's the most important thing. Mhmm. When, you know, when when you are someone who is in a long distance relationship Oh. That was close, I know.
Laura walked under the tripod. You know, when when you're coming together from from a a distant relationship, and you start putting together your power exchange, you have to be fluid. Because what sounds really great on paper right now Mhmm. Okay. Once you put it into practice, well, we need to tweak a few things here. This is not what I expected. I can't do this all the time. You know, you have to be fluid. You have to be able to work and compromise and get to where you
want to be. It just doesn't happen. Flexibility is the key here. You can, for the planning purposes now, talk about what your day typically looks like. So if you're long distance, who's moving to whom? Mhmm. If you're both working, whose job is changing? Is anybody's job changing? If your jobs aren't changing, how do you work? Do you both leave the home? Do either of you work from home? What will that look like? When moving in together, are there pets that need to be taken care of?
Are there other obligations? Does anybody take care of a parent? Does anybody, you know, volunteered? Like, what does the whole part of your life look like, and how do you imagine meshing that together? Mhmm. That for some of us, I'm a person who when I'm in the mood to plan, I fucking love this shit. Some of us, this makes our eyes glaze over and we hate every second of this. So you have to know yourself and how much in-depth you're
gonna go with this planning. But it is a we're gonna take our two individual lives where we have, prior to this, temporarily come together in basically vacation mode because the rest of your, air quote, real life typically takes a break when long distance couples get together Right. For their fuckery. Right? This is okay. We're not gonna have anywhere near as much fuckery at some point, maybe you will in the beginning, as we did during long distance. And now it's the mundane
parts of life. It's the parts of life that you might have maybe you talked about before, but maybe you didn't. Do either of you have bathroom habits or routines that maybe other partners have clocked as being not typical? That might be a thing to talk about. Do either of you have pet peeves that when you've lived with people previously have driven you fucking crazy. These are great things to talk about. It is entirely possible that your pet peeves are not things that
they do. It's entirely possible that their pet peeves are things, you know, that you're willing to adjust on. But these are the things you can't actually know until you're living together. But if you love to plan, it's those kinds of things that I would recommend talking about way more than what are the rules gonna be. What is submission gonna look like?
Because all of those mundane parts of your life are going to impact when and how you get kinky, when and how you're, you know, in your dom self, when and how you're in your subhead space. Like, all of that impacts the power exchange. So every part of your air quote real life has to be able to work with the power exchange. The power exchange has to be able to work with it, which means there's a lot of adjustments. And that means there's a lot that you
cannot plan for. How many times have we said that there's a lot you cannot plan for? That is a thing that I would take away from this more than anything. Plan if it makes you, you know, feel more comfortable. If it's just fun to do, it's nice to talk about the future, but stay flexible Yep. Because it's the only way that you're gonna make it work. Now as a shameless plug, we do have a workbook on our Etsy shop, I'll link it in the places, about
long distance relationships. The majority of it is making the long distance relationship work while you're long distance. And it's not the what do we do, it's the how do we do it. But there are sections about, when you're there's there's a section, I think, at the end when you're ready to start that process of moving closer together, moving in
together, and things to think about. The other thing that I would say to consider doing, again, shameless plugs, we have, thirty days of DS volume one is really more for beginners of what does dominance mean to me? What does submission mean to me? But thirty days of DS volume two? That's the, oh, we're in a power exchange. What happens when one of us gets angry at the other? What happens when one of us is sick? What happens when we're not in the mood for sex? What
those kinds of things. There's more air quote and big air quote here, real life kinds of situations. That might be something to to consider doing together as well. Thirty days of DS volumes one and two are you can either do them as journal prompts where you just think about the answers to yourself privately, or they can be conversation starters in relationships. So it's like, hey. Let's take this one topic this on this one conversation, keep it narrow. How does this work for you? How does
this work for me? How do we imagine this working when it happens to us? Because it's not an if. It is 99% of the time a when. So that could be another thing that aids in the planning portion. But be the broken record here. No matter how how much you plan, no matter how many conversations you have, no matter what you envision, you will likely have to be very flexible Yeah. In what you decide to do. And the best thing we did was to put a complete halt to the power exchange for
a couple weeks. And it gave us it gave us time to fully move in. It gave us time to breathe. It gave us time to get the AC fixed. Right. And by the time we came back to it, I felt settled because I was moving in with JB. I felt settled with where we lived. Mhmm. And then I could focus on what do we do now. Right. And and, you know, it's funny, you know, what whatever it is that you decide, originally, we had talked about me moving to where she lived. Yes. That was
the original plan. And and I had even started interviewing You had so many interviews. Yeah. Mhmm. And and I could not get and that's when we decided to go the other way. That was the first shift in the plan. Yeah. We spent two or three months where, yeah, you tried and tried and tried, and you were not getting a job. I would I would get the interviews. Yes. They'd be good interviews. Yeah. Nothing would come of it. Mhmm. So we shifted because, yeah, we could keep trying for another
six months to a year. I think eventually you probably would have found a job, but we didn't wanna do that. And quite frankly, the one of the other big shifts, I had been working in an office, you know, had just, like, a whatever
whatever job. And when we made the decision I would move, it was with the understanding that for a while, JB's income would pay all of the bills, including for two children, and that he would support me, emotionally and, you know, all that, but also, like, financially support me while I built a freelance business. So can you imagine the overwhelm? I have picked my two children up to live in a completely
different city. I've quit my stable job that paid for health insurance, and now I'm starting a freelance business and I have no money to call my own. Can you imagine why maybe I was overwhelmed? So Right. That would be another thing that you need to think about. Whose life is having to alter the most for this move? Mhmm. And what kind of time are you gonna give for that adjustment period as well, and what are those changes probably going
to be? Mhmm. So it's a very boring answer of you could plan, but it's probably not gonna go that way. But I get why there's that urge to try and plan too. And and, you know, yeah. Go ahead and plan, but just realize that you're gonna have to adjust the plan on the fly. Very well possible. Yes. You're gonna write the plan, start the plan, execute the plan, throw the plan out, and then replay it. Something different.
So, yeah, it's not it's not the most satisfying answer, but from our perspective and from conversations with other people we know who have gone through something similar Mhmm. Is the most realistic. Yeah. So just just stay flexible is the thing. Thanks for listening to this week's q and a episode. If you want us to answer one of your questions, just use the contact page on our website at lovingbdsm.net, or you can find the link in the show notes. Big thanks as always to our
kinky community over on Patreon. We're able to do this podcast and keep it going and help kinksters due to your support. If you'd like to be part of our community and get access to extra content and a Discord server with a group of super cool, super nice kinksters, you can do that. Just join us at patreon.com/kaylalords. That's patreon.com/kaylalords, or use the link in the show next.