Priority 6: Loving from the Bottom of the List

The quiet cruelty of low‑priority love in D/s power‑exchange relationships

"Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.”

… A mistake I’ve made time and time again.

It’s so easy to make them your world. The power exchange, the training, the rituals, the deeper you go, the more you surrender, the more intoxicating it becomes. You want to submit. You want to please. Deference becomes second nature. You place them on a pedestal, not because they’re inherently better or more worthy, but because something in you needs to kneel. Not out of obligation. Not because it was demanded. But because nothing else feels right.

Submission, by nature, is a generous act. We give. We meet expectations. We uphold protocols. We co-create a dynamic where a good submissive works just as hard as their Dominant. There's a common misconception that Dominants shoulder all the responsibility, that they carry the physical and mental load. And yes, sometimes that's true. But in my experience, particularly outside the bedroom, it’s often the submissive who does an equal, if quieter, share of the emotional and logistical labour.

In fact, our role can feel even more demanding than our vanilla counterparts. We’re wired to give. To please. To attune ourselves to another’s needs. And because of this, I’ve seen far too much misuse, where a Dominant doesn’t understand how to truly handle the devotion of a real submissive. Or worse, they exploit it.

And for us, those who kneel, it can become a cruel kind of education. We learn the hard way about the dangers of not enforcing boundaries in a world where we’re expected to let them be tested. Again and again, we find ourselves teaching the consequences of our own unmet needs.

Love Blindness

It’s natural to become blinded when we’re in love, or to watch our friends do it, walking into something we know is a car crash in slow motion. We warn them, they hear none of it, and later, inevitably, we’re proved right. Emotions: love, infatuation, obsession, limerence, have a way of distorting reality.

Now add the complexity of power exchange, alternative structures, or non-primary relationship dynamics, and you’ve got a melting pot of emotional imbalance.

How many times have we allowed ourselves (or worse) volunteered to be deprioritised in the name of love, loyalty, or self-sacrifice? We tell ourselves it’s just temporary. His work is intense. Her elderly parents need care. The ex is fragile. There are the sports commitments, the exams, the kids, the business trip. It’s fine. It’s all understandable.

So we wait.

We believe that once the exams are over, the divorce finalised, the house sold, the kids settled, or the job stress eases, we’ll finally reclaim our place in their life. We tell ourselves we’re understanding. We want to be the safe place they land in a world of demands. Our patience means something. Our devotion will be seen and appreciated. Won’t it?

But what if, by waiting, we’re silently setting a dangerous precedent? What if, by stepping aside, we’re showing them exactly how little effort it takes to push us to the bottom of the list?

We hold tight to the belief that in a perfect world, we’re their number one. They just can’t show it right now. Maybe they don’t even see it. Or… maybe they do.

And as submissives, we have to ask: How far down that road should we really go?

Can You Handle A Real Dom Or A Real Sub?

This subject deserves a post of its own. So often, our fantasies are wildly at odds with our realities, something we only begin to understand with time, experience, and the kind of wisdom that usually comes with painful lessons. Fantasies are intoxicating because we control them. In our minds, everything goes exactly how we want it. Even as submissives, we’re still controlling the narrative: we control how we give up control. But reality doesn’t work like that, but that’s the risk, the fun, and where the real magic happens, but it’s also where the cracks begin to show.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in power exchange is to know the difference between what you want and what you can actually handle. Many scenes have gone catastrophically wrong because someone blurred the line between fantasy and reality. Let’s be honest, Brad Pitt probably isn’t the one restraining you at the Four Seasons. And your real-life Dominant? He, or she, might not have the finesse, skill, contacts, or emotional intelligence required to take care of what they’ve awakened in you.

The same goes for submissives. A real submissive is a rare find, but in the wrong hands, a deeply dangerous one. There’s a romanticised idea that submissives are easy to lead, easy to mould, easy to dominate. But the truth is, we aren’t playthings. We require a staggering amount of responsibility, communication, and care. Without that, we don’t just break scenes, we break hearts, minds, and sometimes, spirits.

We’re all under-resourced when it comes to experience, expectations, and emotional maturity in this space. That’s not a judgment; it’s just the truth. Which is why it's so essential to go slowly, listen deeply, and understand the real weight of what you’re stepping into, whether you're on your knees, or holding the leash.

Candlight And Cold Truth

He looked beautiful in the candlelight. Tall, dark, with a face women noticed, the kind of man you could imagine having had the world handed to him in his youth. Even three years in, I was still caught off guard by his looks. When he smiled, it felt like the room smiled with him. And yet, his demeanour was a cold contradiction: socially awkward, disinterested and mildly irritable, especially with anything inefficient, including me.

He used to tell me he liked to judge, not realising it came from a place of deep insecurity rather than from the corporate perch he’d placed himself on. A gilded cage of wealth and power, constantly requiring self-validation by putting others down: a cyclical form of ego maintenance dressed up as discernment.

He had spent his entire life in corporate: a CEO who worked from five in the morning to past ten at night. Weekends were just another inconvenience. No more sacred than the hours in between.

The Dark Side of Giving

But I’m submissive, and I chose to submit to him. We had a dynamic. I did my part. I took risks. I gave. I went against my own instincts. I gave from a place I should never have been asked to give from. I trusted. I let him in.

He wanted to see me, I cleared my schedule. He wanted to explore domestic discipline, I complied.

That was another compromise. And a huge one. I wanted to be taken on a journey, not navigate one alone. That does so little for me. But out of love, duty, and submission, I accepted it, in good faith, with a view to long-term potential.

Yet you didn’t guide, you took.
You didn’t support, you used.
What you said didn’t match what you did.

So what am I supposed to do?
And what, exactly, did I do wrong?

Tables For Two, Hearts For One

The tables were tiny, and manoeuvring with any dignity required strategy. Between winter coats on laps, handbags and rucksacks wedged under chairs, oversized wine glasses (promptly removed just as you’d made room for them), cutlery, and theatrical condiment jars, it felt less like dining and more like competitive placement. Tetris, but with judgmental waiters.

We were packed in tightly, rows of couples in front and behind, while condensation blurred the windows and a cold wind battered the pavements outside.

Despite everything, my rationale was based solely on potential and patience. And the potential; that was all in my head. The basic ingredients were there, but how can you really expect someone to be reading from the same recipe sheet as you? I was sold a dream and fell in love with a fantasy. Forever chasing the carrot, in a complex relationship structure, waiting for the ‘right time’.

But surely, if you want something badly enough, you make that time?

I mistook his arrogance for dominance, aloofness for control. I didn’t realise what I was dealing with, not until much later, when I found myself trapped in a coffin of my own making. Even with all our so-called potential, I knew we could never claw our way out. The only real way out, of course, was alone.

I knew it was the end. It was just a question of when I could put that beautiful face behind me, and finally put to bed the idea of potential.

The Moment I knew

It was spontaneous, almost as if someone else said it for me.

“What priority am I to you?” I smiled as I asked, a tone of playful sarcasm just light enough to hide the truth behind the question.

He looked at me with those big brown eyes. I don’t remember if he was mid-bite or if a call had just buzzed in. But instead of answering, he simply raised his hands and silently held up six fingers.

“Six,” he said. Like a dice roll, I had no control over.

I laughed because the weight of it would’ve crushed me otherwise. To be seen, however dimly, however fleetingly, still felt better than being invisible. Or so I thought at the time.

I was Priority Number Six. Tucked neatly between fixing the leaking tap and catching up on spreadsheets. After work, mum, sister, the gym, and probably his Uber rating.

It wasn’t personal, he assured me, just practical.

But the heart isn’t practical.

It doesn’t want to wait its turn.

The Currency Of Care

I gave him my best hours. I shaped myself around his schedule, softened myself for his moods, folded myself into the gaps he left behind. I thought it was devotion. I thought it was love. I thought it meant something.

But care is not always received as care. Sometimes it’s seen as convenience. Sometimes it’s taken as permission.

I thought being accommodating meant being cherished. The more I gave, the more value I held. But I wasn’t being valued, I was being spent.

What I offered was presence. What I got was postponement.

I kept paying, in time, attention, in emotional attunement, hoping it would afford me safety, consistency, a deeper dynamic. But that kind of love is a con: a slow siphoning masked as connection.

I thought I was investing in us, but I was underwriting him.

And that’s the trouble with care, when it isn’t met with protection, it turns into a transaction. One you keep hoping will clear, but never does.

Maybe that was the lesson in loving a man who prized money above all else. When everything becomes a return on investment, even intimacy starts to feel like a negotiation. And if so, what was I paying for with my devotion? And what, exactly, was I buying with my obedience?

Reclaiming The List

The turning point didn’t feel like thunder. It didn’t come with a door slammed shut or a dramatic departure. It was quieter than that. Like a click inside. A page turning. An internal shift where the cost finally outweighed the craving.

I realised I’d been waiting to be chosen. Waiting to be lifted from the bottom of the list. But the truth is: I’d put myself there.

I confused submission with sacrifice. I thought enduring made me strong. But what’s the point of devotion if it erases you?

Submission isn’t about disappearing. It’s about offering, consciously, willingly, to someone who sees it for what it is. Not to someone who pockets it like spare change.

So I stopped asking or wanting him to move me higher. And I started putting myself back on my own list.

Right at the top.

Priority Number One

Submission isn’t about disappearing. It’s about being seen. And when someone won’t lift you from the bottom of their list, perhaps it’s time to stop waiting and rise.

Submission isn’t silence. It’s a language. And if they won’t listen, speak it elsewhere.