Domdrop

What is domdrop?

Domdrop (in English usually written Dom drop or Top drop) is the emotional and physical crash that can hit the dominant partner after a session. The blow sometimes comes within an hour, more often a day or two later, and feels like emptiness, doubt or guilt. Domdrop is the counterpart of subdrop.

What domdrop looks like

A typical course: the session went well, the other person went home content, and two days later the dominant is sitting at the kitchen table for no reason, chewing over whether what happened was right.

That doubt is the most recognizable part. Where subdrop is more often about missing and emptiness, on the dominant side a question surfaces that is hard to wave away: did I go too far, did she really want this, should I have stopped sooner. Sprott and Randall name guilt and regret explicitly as part of the late form of drop, and ask whether people afterward think it should have gone differently.

There is another variant that catches dominants more often than housemates suspect. After a whole weekend at an event, the crash is not tied to one scene but to the loss of an environment where you could be yourself. Sprott and Randall describe that as event drop, and it is the form nobody plans aftercare for.

Why domdrop works differently than subdrop

The usual explanation of drop fits the dominant side worse than the receiving side, and there is measurement to show it.

Sagarin and colleagues took saliva samples from 58 BDSM practitioners around their scenes and published it in Archives of Sexual Behavior. Cortisol rose during the scene in the participants who were tied up, received sensation and followed orders. In the participants who gave the sensation, the orders and the structure, it did not rise. So the story about adrenaline and endorphins dropping away mostly describes what happens on the receiving side.

What is left as an explanation, then? In the Journal of Positive Sexuality, Sprott and Randall argue that the later drop is not a biochemical process but rather a response to loss. What a top loses, they describe as a state of flow: that condition of full concentration in which you become absorbed in something difficult. Afterward that view is gone, and missing it is something other than being exhausted.

On top of that comes the bill for the role. The dominants in the interview study by Hébert and Weaver named more work and more responsibility as the hard side of their position. An hour of watching breathing, color, tension and voice does not stop on its own the moment the rope hits the floor.

Why domdrop gets so little attention

Because the dominant is the one expected to take care, and not the one being taken care of.

The encyclopedia on aftercare is clear about it: aftercare is not limited to the submissive role, and the one who was in charge can need as much support or more, depending on the intensity of the scene and their own experience. In practice, exactly the opposite happens.

Honest about the knowledge: this phenomenon is described across the whole scene and is almost never researched. Sprott and Randall establish that no study exists that has ever tested the physiological explanation of the immediate drop. Their own account of the later form, loss and grief, they present as a proposal and not as proof. Everything you read about this, this page included, therefore rests on stories plus one hormone study.

Misunderstandings about domdrop

“Domdrop only happens to sadists who went too far.” No. Sprott and Randall link the later drop precisely to peak experiences that were good, and not to what went wrong.

“If you have domdrop, the scene was wrong.” The doubt afterward is a feeling, not a verdict. Whoever wants to know if something went wrong asks the other person.

“Domdrop and topdrop are two phenomena.” It is the same phenomenon under two names. Topdrop puts the emphasis on who carried out the act, domdrop on who held the authority; in the literature Dom drop and Top drop stand side by side.

What I see of it myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, in the BDSM world since 1990 and with a background as a psychotherapist. Aftercare is the part of my work I have learned the most from, and my own landing belongs to it.

My own dip comes late and is small, but it always has the same shape: I start counting back. Was that one decision right, should I have taken that moment sooner. After a few hundred sessions I know the chewing means nothing, and knowing that does not make it go away.

What helps is banal. Food. A walk. And above all: one message from the other person saying it was good. That works better than anything I can come up with myself, and it is exactly what a dominant never dares to ask for.

What you can do yourself

• Agree to send each other a message the next day, in both directions. For domdrop that is the one thing that really works.
• Plan your own landing. Do not get straight into the car or load the dishwasher; give yourself the same half hour you give the other person.
• Ask out loud afterward how the other person found it, because the doubt that comes later feeds on what you did not hear.
• Count on a delay. If the evening itself feels fine, that says little about Tuesday.
• Find someone who gets it if the dip lingers or returns; that can be someone outside the scene too.

More on domdrop

On this site, the care around it is at aftercare, the side of the submissive is on the page about subdrop, and the role itself is at dominant.

Beyond this site, the article by Sprott and Randall is the only serious piece that takes drop apart into an immediate and a late form. It is free to read and written for therapists who know little about this.

Sources

• Black and Blues: Sub Drop, Top Drop, Event Drop and Scene Drop. Richard A. Sprott & Anna Randall, Journal of Positive Sexuality 2, November 2016. Provides the terms Dom drop and Top drop side by side, the collective label x-drop, the finding that no study tests the physiological explanation, the late drop as a response to loss with guilt and regret in it, and flow as the peak experience a top loses.
• Hormonal changes and couple bonding in consensual sadomasochistic activity. Sagarin, Cutler, Cutler, Lawler-Sagarin & Matuszewich, Archives of Sexual Behavior 38, 186–200, 2009. 58 participants; cortisol rose in those who were tied up and followed orders, not in those who gave the orders and the structure.
• Perks, Problems, and the People Who Play: A Qualitative Exploration of Dominant and Submissive BDSM Roles. Ali Hébert & Angela Weaver, The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality 24(1), 49–62, 2015. Provides more work and more responsibility as the hard side of the role named by dominants themselves.
• Aftercare (BDSM). Wikipedia. Provides that aftercare is not limited to the submissive role and that the one who was in charge can need as much support or more.

Related terms

• Aftercare. The care that domdrop is the argument for.
• Dominant. The role that this dip comes trailing after.
• Dom. The word that domdrop is built from.
• Domina. The same role, a different title, the same aftermath.
• Dominatrix. Those who do this professionally know it too.
• Drop. The overarching term, with the four forms that fall under it.
• Domspace. The peak that domdrop follows, and what has been measured of that state.
• Femdom. The dynamic in which the aftercare of the leading side is skipped most often.
• Pro Dom. The aftermath also hits those who earn a living at this.
• Topdrop. The same phenomenon named after who carried out the act, with the name the literature keeps.
• Subdrop. The side of the one who went under, with the figures on postcoital dysphoria.