Do Dominants Experience Fear?

I had a moment recently where I had a boy that I wanted to come and serve. He was kinda nervous about service. We weren’t going to do anything particularly out there kink wise and to be honest, I shortchange new boys on the intensity of the first session. It puts me at ease to know that I’m just using the first time as a way to find my boundaries and learn what he can take and what he enjoys. Nonetheless, he was coming across as quite scared of being tied up, of submitting. In the end, he succumbed to fear and I angrily sat cursing him under my breath. I started thinking back to how far i’d come when it came to kink.  

I remembered that I was once scared to have submissives serve me too. I remembered how scared I was going to Magnitude during Folsom 2014 (made scarier by the fact it was my first time in San Francisco and the neighborhood was a bit intimidating at night.  

I’ve written a bit about fear because not only is it something I’ve grappled with from time to time, but if you asked any dominant who is being honest I think he’s been scared too.

• New Dominants - From the men I’ve spoken to, this is THE scariest moment in a dominant’s lifetime. It is nerve-wracking because at the moment we fear a bad reaction from a submissive. We fear he’d spread the word of any mistake we made. Or possibly very worst of all, that a boy might know EXACTLY how afraid I am and that my dominance while genuinely felt, is bravado in that exact moment we first met. 
   
• Experienced Dominants - Men who have been playing regularly or have had several submissives over the course of the year would qualify as experienced. They still get afraid of complicated situations or when they are stretching their skills from time to time. The difference here between a new dominant and an experience dominant is that an experienced dominant has already messed up and it was ok. (see here for my first experience messing up) Failure teaches lessons and that knowledge steels us against worry in the future. We’ve been through a tough time here and there and it made us capable of handling more. 
   
• Masters of Dominance - When I say Masters, I mean that these dominants have at least 20 years of experience. The first person I ever broached the topic with was my mentor about this but won’t quote him directly. I’ve spoken to some other men to whom his name provided access to. Masters of dominance do sometimes experience fear but it’s usually in very limited circumstances when something goes wrong with a complicated scene (take suspension for example). In the few men I have spoken to, they came across as unshakably confident. They are more than prepared to handle EVERY eventuality that comes across their path and are outright relaxed, able to fully enjoy their play without holding back.