Aftercare for me as a Pro Dom

So much emphasis is placed on aftercare for subs and especially in lifestyle dynamics, which makes complete sense when there are far more lifestyle dynamics than professional dynamics. Today, I want to share more about my own journey with you with regards to aftercare for me as a Professional Dominant.

I started professionally dominating under the Domme Claire brand roughly two years ago, as lockdown was starting to ease slightly in South Africa. Back then, I didn’t know about aftercare. None of the subs that I initially played with asked me for it and I could never understand why I felt so shitty afterwards. I dropped almost immediately as each session ended. I felt awful. I had this nasty cocktail of emotions: guilt for taking money for what I was doing to people; shame for enjoying it; doubt that they didn’t enjoy it. At this point, I didn’t know about the term “drop” either. I was new and had nobody to teach me. My best bet was to research everything and learn from experienced subs. And so I did that. I can’t remember how I learned about aftercare, it was around three or four months in. From there, I implemented aftercare with each session and it made the world of difference.

On several Tiktok videos, I advise folks to base aftercare on their own and their play partner’s love languages. My primary love languages are acts of service and physical touch. This means that I feel loved and appreciated when someone does something meaningful for me (doing the dishes, cook me dinner, water my plants, make my bed, bring me coffee in bed) and through physical connection (holding hands, hugs, cuddling) and vice versa - I show someone love and appreciation through doing those kinds of things for them too. It is important to understand the difference here between how you receive love and how you give love. They won’t always be the same. My love languages are great - when I’m with loved ones. I can’t practice physical touch as a love language with my professional dynamics, that crosses my own boundaries. So how do I overcome it? Simple! I just use a combination of the love languages that I feel comfortable with.

Acts of service: 

Submissives can help me clean up the dungeon after a session and bring me water to drink.

Quality time:

I like this one in the sense that it enables me to connect with my submissive on a human level, sort of outside the scope of a dynamic. It’s just two people chatting casually, enjoying each other’s company, focused and present. It could be as simple as eating a snack while talking about what our cats have been up to lately.

Words of affirmation: 

This is linked to my praise kink and can actually take place continuously from the moment the sub enters the dungeon straight through to when they walk out again (or from when the Zoom session starts and ends). This can look like the submissive telling me they’re nervous or scared in an exciting way, that they’ve been looking forward to playing again, when they beg for something or tell me how good something feels (even if it hurts), or when they worship me verbally while simultaneously degrading themselves, or telling me about the things they enjoyed during the session, or how they’re still dazed a few days later, or that they love their bruises. I like to include the review and talking about the scene under words of affirmation too, as it really helps me - regardless of whether the feedback is positive or negative.

Gifts: 

I’ve never really felt comfortable with gifts, up until so many of my dynamics were online. I realised that a lot of submissives do want to show appreciation and because of obvious challenges, gifts are often a good solution for them. It doesn’t matter how small or big the gift is. What makes me feel appreciated here is that they make the effort of getting to know my preferences, they make effort despite challenges - I’ve even received gifts for my birthday or whenever I needed a pick-me-up or snacks for studying. And so I’ve come to adore gifts from my submissives.

What I’ve learned is to be open to how different people show their love and to appreciate it in all its forms, and not just feel unloved if something doesn’t happen according to my love languages.