‘Soft domming’ is growing in popularity as men say they’re tired of steering the ship

One Saturday night in September, as I was half-watching a cooking show, half-scrolling on my phone, a request from a client called Iain landed in my inbox (after a night in the pub, no doubt).

He was 32 and single, a London-based digital executive, who wanted something a little… different.

As a dominatrix of 30 years, I’m well-versed in men asking to be shouted at, insulted or put in their place. But Iain didn’t want to be humiliated, degraded or made to feel small. Instead, he asked if I could be firm, but kind. Confident, but reassuring.

He’d just had a promotion which left him anxious and suffering a sense of imposter syndrome. So, he wanted to be told he was doing well. He wanted structure, calm authority – and, at the end, a few kind words before I packed him back on to his train.

In short, he wanted to be dominated. But softly. It’s what we in the industry refer to as ‘soft domming’.

If you think domination is all latex, cruelty and barked orders, a sort of angry aerobics, you’re not alone. That’s the stereotype most people have absorbed from pop culture: kink as something harsh, extreme and vaguely alarming.

But over the past year or two, I’ve noticed a clear shift in the requests I receive. Increasingly, men aren’t asking to be broken down. Instead, they want to be held together.

In fact, I’d estimate that a third of men who contact me now explicitly ask for this dynamic – that’s 30 guys each week, compared to virtually none back in 2023.

This ‘soft dom’ style of dominance isn’t about pain or humiliation. It’s about reassurance, praise and emotional containment. I’m asked to be decisive, calm and in control – but also warm and maternal. 

It’s a far cry from all the clichés. And it didn’t come out of nowhere.

The men making these requests are often exhausted. Many are in their thirties, forties and fifties. They’re juggling work pressure, financial anxiety, family responsibilities and a constant low-level sense of failure.

The pandemic didn’t create this stress, but it certainly sharpened it. Add a cost-of-living crisis and a dating culture that leaves many people feeling disposable, and it’s not hard to see why being told you’re enough has come to hold erotic appeal.

I guess what might surprise some is that this still counts as domination.

In traditional narratives, domination is assumed to mean aggression, while softness is equated with submission. But dominance is never about cruelty – it’s about responsibility.

It’s about holding authority, making decisions so someone else needn’t. For men who spend their lives being expected to cope, perform and lead, the chance to hand over control, without being shamed for it, can be profoundly relieving.

Thus far, it’s been only men who’ve requested this. My female clients usually just want a giggle, some frivolous playtime. But many of the men I speak to say they feel there’s very little space for vulnerability in their everyday lives.

They’re either expected to be stoic, or emotionally fluent in a way that still doesn’t quite land. In a soft dom dynamic, they don’t have to explain themselves. They can simply exist, knowing someone else is steering the ship.

That sense of rest is key. Reassurance has become the latest taboo fantasy. I’m not pretending to be a therapist, but I am providing something that looks a lot like emotional safety. And increasingly that’s what people want. Not excess, but respite.

In that sense, some sex workers are filling gaps left by overstretched mental health services, rigid ideas of masculinity, and relationships that don’t always allow men to be uncontained.

This runs counter to the idea that kink is inherently damaging or extreme. In fact, when done consensually and thoughtfully, it can be one of the few places where people negotiate their needs clearly.

Boundaries are discussed. Expectations are explicit. Aftercare, the process of checking in afterwards, is normalised. In a world where emotional communication is often vague or awkward, kink can be oddly precise.

Of course, not every request is this gentle, and not every client wants reassurance. But the trend is noticeable enough that it feels like a cultural shift, rather than a coincidence.

We’re living through a period of collective burnout. Work bleeds into home. Bad news is constant. Social media keeps everyone slightly on edge. Against that backdrop, fantasies are adapting. People aren’t reaching for more intensity in their downtime, but containment.

A month after he sent his email, I finally met Iain. He wanted me to role-play as his aunt. An aunt with firm, exacting standards, whom he’d disappointed; who needed to punish him, while reassuring him throughout it was entirely for his own good, would build character, and that he would still be loved afterwards.

He left the details to me. I decided he’d cut short his cross-country run to fiddle with a girl his age behind the bins. The details didn’t matter. The sensations and feeling did. I spanked him for an hour, gently but firmly, whispering words of reassurance throughout.

Afterwards, Iain was quiet for a moment, then visibly lighter. He told me he hadn’t realised how tense he’d been until the tension was gone. The most meaningful part, he said, wasn’t the spanking itself but being reassured — being told what was happening, why, and that he was still fundamentally good.

He described it as comforting rather than arousing in the conventional sense, and said he slept better that night than he had in weeks.

The idea that dominance can be nurturing still surprises people, but perhaps it shouldn’t. Intimacy doesn’t always look like passion.

Sometimes, it looks like someone else taking the weight for a while.

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