Switch

If you enjoy both sides of a power exchange, leading sometimes and following at other times, you’re a switch. “So which one are you?” is the question you’ll get eventually, usually from someone hoping to file you in the right drawer, and the answer is “yes.” People want a tidy label, and you’re standing there explaining that you like breakfast and also dinner.

Yes, both, and it’s allowed to stay that way

Everything beyond that definition is detail, and the details vary a lot. One switch leads with one partner and follows with another, and it would feel odd the other way around. Another switches by mood, deciding at the end of the week what kind of week it has been. A third will happily trade the lead in the middle of a single evening, and a fourth sits at about eighty-twenty, mostly one thing with a soft spot for the other. All of those count, and you don’t need to have tried both sides in equal measure, or to feel the same intensity about each, to use the word. The old idea that switches are undecided people on their way to a “real” role has aged badly, given how many stay here for life because it’s simply where they live.

How it tends to show up

A common early clue is getting restless. You had a great time being told what to do, and a few weeks later you find yourself wondering what it would be like to hold the reins. Or you notice that the fantasies you return to don’t agree with each other, and that doesn’t bother you much.

Switches also often have a good ear for the other side. When you’ve been the person waiting for an instruction, you tend to give better ones. When you’ve carried the responsibility for a scene, you tend to be more forgiving of a partner who gets it slightly wrong. If your scores on the test come out high for both dominant and submissive, that’s the pattern, and the method page explains how those two numbers get calculated.

Trying each side without tangling them up

Decide who’s doing what before you begin, at least for your first several times. Trading roles on different nights is the simplest way in. It gives each side room to feel like itself, and it spares you the awkward moment where both of you wait for the other to start. Keep the same safeword whichever side you’re on, so there’s only one to remember.

Once that feels easy, you can experiment with switching during a scene, but agree on how the change gets announced. A pre-arranged phrase works, and so does a simple “my turn.” Each side also leaves its own kind of tiredness behind. You may want quiet after following and a long conversation after leading, and the low mood that can come a day or two later isn’t reserved for subs, as our guide to dom drop explains. Take breaks when you need them. If anything physical is involved, like restraints or impact, learn it from trained people, and learn it from both ends.

Explaining yourself to the people you date

Say it early: a partner who only wants one half of you deserves to know, and so do you. It needn’t be longer than “I enjoy both sides. With you, I think I’d mostly want to follow, but I’d want to lead sometimes too.” If a partner only ever wants to lead, you’ll need to work out whether the other half of you can wait, find an outlet somewhere that you’ve both agreed on, or call it a mismatch.

A shared kink list helps a lot here, because it splits most activities into giving and receiving. You can see at a glance which direction each of you wants, and there’s usually more overlap than you’d guess.

Who switches get along with

Another switch is the obvious answer, and those pairings can get pleasantly unpredictable, though you’ll occasionally both want the same thing on the same night and have to flip a coin. Dominants and submissives make good partners for someone who switches by partner anyway, and if your favorite part of all this is simply trying things, you may have a lot in common with an experimentalist.

Handing over the remote is a fun way to feel out both sides, and interactive toy shows on cam let you try one of them tonight. Affiliate link.