I’m just learning and exploring my style of dominance with husband. When doing a scene, I find my husband does not want to communicate with me when things are not going right. Like he sees it as his job to “power through” and suffer for me. Even when I check in with him, he replies, “I’m fine, mistress.” Today I gave him an example of if I have him tied up and I’m spanking him, I want him to power through the spanking (unless he needs to use his safeword), but if he had a cramp, he needs to communicate that to me. The cramp is not the kind of suffering I want for him. I don’t want to find out after the scene that he suffered the whole time in a way I didn’t even know about.

Skilled doms can many times read their submissive’s body and expression and can tell something is wrong even when they don’t say it. I don’t feel like I am as skilled at that yet as I want to be.

Do you have tips for getting your submissive to open up about how they are doing during a scene? My husband seems to think he’s a better submissive if he’s quiet about it, but then he tells me later. I HATE that.

EDIT: reading initial responses, I need to clarify my thoughts. I think he will communicate to me when things are unsafe or his boundaries are being pushed, but what he doesn’t communicate to me is when he’s uncomfortable (in a non bdsm way) and it’s detracting from being in a submissive state. When small adjustments can be made.