What is the Executive Household?
As a kinkster leading a D/s relationship, I have the luxury to choose what the dominance and submission looks like. I call my style the Executive Household. I'm slowly developing my understanding of it as time goes on in my relationship with my dearheart.
This flavour of D/s has its distinct roles styled after business roles. The Dominant is similar to a business executive with managing responsibilities and ultimate accountability for getting everything done. The submissive is given the task of supporting the Executive, though how they serve can vary depending on their skills and interests.
Central to the Executive Household is my belief that I should run my life like a business, often by re-purposing business tools to fit personal life. That business mindset informs how we allocate resources for projects, how we build and retain value, and how we implement our triple bottom line.
Another aspect of the Executive Household is branding. We're building trust and respect with people, and trying to develop communities.
To that end, we consciously manage our honour and reputations. My submissive is an extension of my personal brand, and his actions reflect on me as a Domme. Thus I demand he act in a gracious manner, wherever possible.
For now I also lead the majority of our branding affairs – tasks like updating the family on our lives via blog posts, emails, and photos. Or interacting with social media, and meeting new people or kinksters. One day this responsibility will be shared by my dearheart as well.
Finally, a useful aspect of the Executive Household is that we have a central endeavour to focus on. We work together on that endeavour, whether it's entrepreneurship, building an estate and community, or simply accumulating wealth and skills.
This endeavour is external to the relationship, which is different from focusing D/s dynamics on the relationship itself. It's still a way of structurally building a life together, but more suited to people who enjoy ambition and external achievements.
If you're interested in reading more about my personal ambitions, there's a post that details my big plans.
What does the dominance look like in my Executive Household?
First and foremost is that I'm not a mommy domme. I don't cater to my submissive, and it's largely his own responsibility to sort himself out. I support him how I may, but I have high standards for autonomy.
My dearheart likes it "rough but gentle," so despite not being a mommy domme I do bring nurturing kindness to the relationship. It comes with praise, reassurances, and attachment.
Nurturing also means that I aim to develop my partner, to make him more capable for having known me. In the article below I mention several ways I attempt to accomplish that:
Mistress
Loosely summarised, I seek to transform him with my leadership. In part it is to shape him to my satisfaction, but largely it's to make him a whole and competent person.
To embark on this transformational process, I use my dominance to be a visionary. The first step to any journey is figuring out which direction to head in – though it may not always be the eventual direction you stick to.
Thus those central endeavours of my Executive Household are dreamt up by me – sometimes with input from my dearheart. My ambitions are mostly about gaining power so that I can give back to the world. We'll see how that changes with time and experience.
Going hand-in-hand with being a visionary is that I'm an outcome oriented Domme, not dictatorial. I don't want to waste my breath micromanaging when I can instead wave my hand to get what I want.
I don't have many rules or orders to give, just the general expectation that my wishes will be carried out in a timely manner. Thus there's only a few limited sets of rules in my household: collaring, for instance.
As Domme I also get to establish the narrative surrounding circumstances. This parallels the responsibility of executives and general managers to manage optics and messaging surrounding their decisions.
For instance, one narrative is that I'm a shy introverted woman who dislikes being around strangers. I don't like this narrative, truthful as it may be. Instead I prefer to reframe the narrative:
I prefer people getting only limited access to me, on my own terms, to preserve my precious brain space for important responsibilities. I don't want to have any random person off the street demanding my time and attention, so I insulate myself from that with my submissive's support.
Both narratives are truthful, but the latter is more striking and lodges better in my submissive's head – it gives him a clear problem and purpose.
What does the submission look like?
Submission in my household primarily involves being tasked with things to handle on my behalf. It's about stepping up and saying "Hey I have these skills, please use me."
The less routine responsibilities I waste time on, the more time I spend on the irregular and difficult responsibilities. It's a division of labour.
As mentioned in the prior section, one important task my submissive handles for me is being the buffer for dealing with other people. He's the face of our household, capable of putting on the friendly mask when talking to contractors and others.
This introversion is specific to my household, of course – the idea is that the submissive handles tasks that unduly detract from the Domme's resources.
My dearheart also handles the dishes, runs errands out in public and shops for groceries, cleans the condo, handles phone calls, and cooks many of our regular meals.
This dedication to routine is commendable for anchoring me. Importantly he does these things with very little input from me. Thus I don't need to fret about trivial distractions and overload myself with arbitrary decisions. Instead I focus on breadwinning and strategic thinking for our household.
Many of these tasks can be grouped together and referred to in shorthand with business roles. A submissive could be an executive assistant, secretary, chief of staff, project manager, and so on. I go into this in some detail in the following article:
Mistress
There's also a physical style to my kind of Executive Household. I love formal fashion, with tasteful palettes and fabrics inspired by business wear.
Suits are sexy, whether I'm wearing them or my submissive is wearing them. Likewise dresses are sexy, though I have trouble encouraging my dearheart to get into them again...
I established a house uniform for my dearheart to match my own wardrobe. It provides him a zero-thought solution to having good-looking outfits that complement mine.
Closing thoughts
The Executive Household is yet another way of divvying up roles and responsibilities. I find it useful as a communication and coordination framework.
Being able to define our household jobs is a creative freedom we enjoy sharing. On our daily walks we've discussed what kinds of tasks my dearheart is comfortable learning, and which I'm comfortable giving up control over. Our roles are something we take pride in and develop together.
Besides the structural parts of the relationship I'm building, if you wish to see my thoughts about the romance of my relationship then I invite to your attention this article:
Mistress
