Types of Submissives: Which One Will You Choose?

What are the different types of subsmissives, and how do you discover which one you truly are? Explore common archetypes, uncover your unique desires, and learn how to craft a submissive persona that feels authentic, powerful, and fully your own.

One of the beauties—and headaches—of BDSM is navigating your way through the many ways to express your submission.

Not all submissives are alike. In fact, there’s no single way to be a “sub.” There are countless types of submissives, and if you don’t neatly fit into one of the predefined roles, you may feel lost or like an imposter. But being submissive isn’t about fitting into a specific role—it’s about submitting in a way that feels authentic to you. You may even find that you resonate with multiple subtypes or evolve from one to another over time.

In this article, we’ll explore several common types of submissives and then help you create your own—one that reflects your desires, personality, and all the kinky things you want to do.

What Is a Submissive?

A submissive is someone who willingly consents to relinquish control, authority, and decision-making to their Dominant partner. They take on a role that is obedient, compliant, and responsive to their Dominant’s wishes and desires—within the agreed-upon boundaries of the relationship.

Submission is not people-pleasing. Being submissive means consciously choosing to give over control, influence, or authority to another person because they have the sub’s best interests at heart—and because the sub wants to serve them.

People-pleasing, or being a doormat, is different. It means serving others while disregarding your own needs, often driven by unconscious patterns, insecurity, or a desire to be liked—even when you don’t actually want to serve.

The key difference is that, in submission, your needs are actively considered and addressed (whether they are ultimately met is something negotiated between the Dom and sub). A submissive consciously chooses to be subservient, rather than allowing others to take control of their life without consent.

Related: Hinting, hoping, and holding back is exhausting. If you’re ready to stop guessing and start communicating with confidence, the Assertive Desires Masterclass gives you clear frameworks for expressing desires, boundaries, and limits—without awkwardness or fear. Get instant access here.

A Sub vs. a Bottom

A bottom is someone who has the skills to receive specific acts. A submissive, on the other hand, represents the why—the intention and meaning behind those acts. Of course, if you’re engaging in BDSM, it’s important to develop the skills of a bottom alongside your identity as a submissive.

A good submissive has a solid understanding of BDSM principles, techniques, and safety practices. They continually educate themselves to ensure safe, enjoyable experiences for both partners—and to advocate for themselves during negotiation.

A bottom is not necessarily a “submissive” archetype. While they may receive kinky acts similar to a submissive within a scene, they don’t have to engage in power exchange or fulfill the duties typically associated with Dom/sub dynamics.

Learning to advocate for yourself and stay safe as a bottom is an excellent place to start if you’re interested in becoming a submissive. And if you decide you’d rather not hand over authority to someone else, you can remain a bottom and still have a deeply fulfilling experience.

Submissive Archetypes

Before diving into common types of submissives, it’s important to understand the concept of archetypes. This will help you do the deeper work of creating a submissive persona that is truly your own—rather than becoming a copycat of someone else.

The concept of archetypes is most commonly associated with the psychological theories of Carl Jung, who described them as universal, inherited patterns of thought or imagery present in the collective unconscious. These archetypes represent fundamental symbolic figures that influence human behavior, personality, and storytelling.

In the world of BDSM, similar patterns emerge. People are drawn to certain kinks, aesthetics, and ways of expressing themselves. As a result, recognizable submissive archetypes have developed—clusters of behaviors, desires, and personality traits that tend to appear together.

Common Types of Submissives

The acronym BDSM—Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission, and Sadism & Masochism—points to several classic submissive archetypes.

These include:

• Rope Bunny: Enjoys being tied up or restrained, whether in rope or other forms of bondage. This may be for the tactile experience or for the artistry and intricacy of rope as an art form, such as shibari. Rope bunnies often pair with riggers (the person tying them).
• Brats: Subscribe to the idea that rules are meant to be broken. They take pleasure in being defiant, mischievous, naughty, and cheeky. Brats often crave attention and may misbehave intentionally to get it, leaving it to the Brat Tamer to uncover and address the deeper need beneath the behavior.
• Service Submissive: Finds pleasure in performing acts of service for their Dominant. They derive joy from offering practical assistance, anticipating needs, and expressing care and devotion. They pair well with Dominants who create structure and opportunities for service.
• Littles / Middles / Babygirls: Crave nurturing, guidance, and structure. While some may engage in ageplay, age regression is not always present. These submissives often pair with Caregivers or Daddy/Mommy Doms. (It’s important to clarify that these dynamics occur between consenting adults and never involve minors.)
• Slaves: Consensually agree to give complete or near-complete control to their partner in agreed-upon areas of life, often within a Total Power Exchange dynamic. They may be treated as property within negotiated boundaries. Masters pair with slaves.
• Pets: Take on the role or headspace of an animal—such as a kitten or puppy—while the Dominant acts as their owner or handler.
• Masochists: Find genuine pleasure in pain, deriving erotic or emotional satisfaction from intense sensations others would consider painful or “bad.” This can include physical pain (impact play, needle play) or emotional pain (humiliation). They often pair with sadists.
• Finsubs: Sometimes called paypigs or human ATMs, they center their submission around financial servitude, following rules or commands related to money and access to resources.
• Pleasure Subs: Revel in being directed in how to give or receive pleasure. They often pair with Pleasure Doms who take control over when, where, and how pleasure happens.
• Primal Prey: Enjoy roughness, physical control, and being “hunted”—emotionally or physically. They often tap into instinctual, animalistic states during play, allowing the rational mind to turn off.
• Degradees: Take pleasure in emotional belittlement through humiliation, degradation, objectification, or being made to feel less than human.

These archetypes are simply starting points. The landscape of BDSM is vast, and you are free to mix and match elements to create a dynamic that is uniquely yours. In fact, I encourage it—this is where things become deeply personal and powerful.

I also recommend trying different archetypes. You may discover desires you didn’t even know existed. For example, you might believe you don’t enjoy pain—but once you understand how pain can transform into pleasure, you may find yourself exploring masochistic territory.

A Note on Brats and Topping from the Bottom

Both brats and submissives who are “topping from the bottom” often get a bad rap because they can appear difficult. While these are distinct dynamics, they share an important truth: the behavior is usually a signal of an unmet need.

Rather than reacting defensively, a Dominant can approach these moments with curiosity.

For a brat, the underlying need might be attention, a craving for discipline, or a desire to feel the Dominant’s presence more fully. For a submissive topping from the bottom, it is often a sign of a breakdown in trust—an indication that something in the dynamic needs to be addressed.

Neither of these behaviors is inherently bad, and neither negates someone’s submissiveness. Both are invitations to deepen understanding within the dynamic.

How to Create Your Own Submissive Persona

I want you to temporarily forget everything you’ve learned or seen about what a submissive is supposed to be (well—except for what you’ve learned in this article!) No one gets to determine what your submission looks like but you. Even when you begin submitting to a Dom, it’s imperative that you speak up about what you need in order to feel authentic and fully expressed in your submission.

While archetypes can be a helpful starting point, they can also become overgeneralized—and even limiting—when it comes to expressing the full complexity of your personality and sexuality. Most people will find they identify with more than one archetype, and some won’t fit neatly into any of them at all.

That’s where it becomes far more powerful to start crafting your own persona: one built on archetypes as inspiration or foundation, but infused with what is uniquely you.

A persona is a kind of social mask—made up of the parts of ourselves we choose to show the world in order to gain acceptance, validation, or status. We consciously shape this persona as a way to relate to others, embodying a specific role that bridges our internal, authentic self with the expectations of the external world.

In BDSM, we step into a chosen role with intention. We amplify certain aspects of ourselves while temporarily quieting others in order to engage more fully with a partner.

For example, you may not identify as submissive in your everyday life—but you might lean into that part of yourself during play, consciously crafting a little persona to connect with a partner who leans toward caregiving. That’s a relatively simple expression. But you’re also allowed—and encouraged—to become far more nuanced.

You might be a bratty, primal submissive who loves to poke the bear and run—only to be chased, caught, manhandled, and made to surrender. That’s a layered persona, rooted in both play and personal truth.

When most people first think about personas, they jump immediately to how the persona looks—the outward image. That’s the easiest part to visualize and conceptualize.

But here’s the problem: if you start by chasing a look, you’ll likely just copy someone else’s style without understanding the why behind it. This can lead you to adopt motivations or intentions that don’t truly resonate with you. As a result, the role feels off. It’s incongruent. It’s inauthentic.

Instead, start with your internal landscape—your personality, emotional wiring, and deepest desires—and work your way outward.

Ask yourself:

• What’s behind the persona?
• Why is this specific persona being crafted?
• What aspects of myself am I choosing to amplify, and why?

Only then should you shape the image, the aesthetic, and the style that expresses it on the outside.

Step 1: Understand Yourself

The first step to creating a persona is to better understand yourself and ask the perennial question: What do you want?

Everything else will stem from answering that question. For example, if you love the feeling of being restrained and completely immobile and at the mercy of another person, then crafting a persona as a rope bunny is probably the path you’ll take.

There are three areas I recommend considering in this step: desires, personality, and values.

Understanding Your Desires

Exploring the erotic mind—that is, the thoughts, memories, fantasies, activities, etc., that turn you on—is a key component in uncovering your core desires and creating the most satisfying sex, tailored to your unique fantasies.

To begin understanding your erotic mind, I suggest starting an erotic journal—a place where you can thoughtfully explore personal desires, fantasies, and arousal patterns. The act of journaling is therapeutic in itself, providing a safe space to explore your inner desires without judgment or inhibition.

Starting with an erotic journal allows for the purest expression of what turns you on, free from outside influences telling you how you should be turned on.

In this journal, create four columns: Turn-Ons, Feelings, Activity Triggers, and Partner Triggers.

We’ll begin with your Turn-Ons. In this column, write down:

• Fantasies
• Favorite sexual experiences
• Thoughts or mental images that really turn you on
• Types of porn or erotica you enjoy

By writing these out, you’ll start identifying recurring themes and patterns that resonate deeply with you.

As you do this, try to avoid questioning where these desires came from. Just because you have a particular desire doesn’t mean you ever have to act on it. This process is about understanding your erotic triggers so you can incorporate them into your sex life in a safe and fulfilling way.

Now, take one fantasy, sexual experience, thought, or favorite piece of porn/erotica and examine it in closer detail. Visualize it as vividly as possible. Through this visualization, explore the emotional and sensory details that make it arousing. From there, identify how this erotic image makes you feel—or what emotions it evokes.

For example, the feelings and emotions I most often experience in my eroticism include:

• Naughty
• Desired
• Appreciated
• Primal
• Respected
• Worshipped

Why do we care about emotions? Because some fantasies may be difficult—or even impossible—to fulfill in real life. Some may be too dark or unsafe to act on, and that’s perfectly okay.

However, if you understand the emotion behind a fantasy, you may be able to replicate that feeling through different, safer acts. For instance, if you have a capture-and-takedown CNC (consensual non-consent) fantasy, you might evoke the same emotional intensity through light bondage and heavy dirty talk—without needing to go full CNC. Unless, of course, you want to.

Next, identify what exactly in the erotic image triggers the emotion you feel. Look for the elements that make it exciting: the environment, your partner’s attributes, what acts are happening, the language being used, and so on.

Now, think about other activities or partner qualities that might trigger that same emotion—even if they weren’t part of the original fantasy. Write those in the Activity Triggers or Partner Triggers columns. Continue this process with the other items you listed under Turn-Ons.

When I first did this exercise, I started noticing patterns that aligned with archetypes like Daddy Dom, Primal, and Pleasure Dom—but I also found subtle traits connected to other archetypes. You’re likely to discover something similar in your submission.

Understanding Your Personality

Knowing your personality can also illuminate the types of submissives you might enjoy being—or not.

For example, if you’re someone who’s high in agreeableness and loves feeling useful, being a service submissive might be very rewarding.

To explore personality, I recommend using the OCEAN (Big Five) traits model, which is reliable and well-studied. These traits include:

• Openness – Affects how willing you are to explore different partners, kinks, or protocols.
• Conscientiousness – Influences your ability to adhere to rules, carry out duties, and understand where role fits into the greater dynamic.
• Extraversion – Impacts how and when you like to interact with your Dom (e.g., only in private vs. at play parties or in group settings).
• Agreeableness – Affects how much pushback you might give your Dom (obedience vs. confrontation).
• Neuroticism – May determine how easily you’re able to surrender control, how much structure you need, and how closely you want to be managed by your Dom.

Additionally, if you're neurodivergent in any way, your style of submission may look different. For example, the lack of structure in Primal Play might be terrifying—or deeply liberating—depending on how much predictability you need.

Also consider other aspects of your personality that you’d like to emphasize in your submission.

My Dominance carries flavors of kindness and compassion, but also stern expectations. I’m inviting rather than forceful. Focused on pleasure rather than pain. I’m often grounded, calm, and collected—but can also be assertive and commanding in the right moment.

Think about the adjectives that best describe the personality you want to bring into your submissive persona.

Understanding Your Values

It’s equally important to understand your values, because they’ll influence which behaviors you’re willing to engage in—and which ones you’re not.

For example, while I enjoy degradation play, I hold a strong value around building people up and helping them flourish. Because of that, I could never make Degrader a prominent part of my persona. I also maintain a clear boundary: I won’t engage in degradation with someone who’s using it to reinforce negative self-perceptions. But there are still meaningful ways I do engage with it—intentionally, and within my values.

Your values as a submissive will influence how you would like to express your submission.

Step 2: Decide What You Do

Here, we’re talking about the actions you take as a submissive. Think of this in terms of the sexual acts you want to engage in and your behavior while engaging in those acts.

Choosing Activities

You started this process in Step 1, but now let’s dig deeper into the types of kinky activities you may want to explore as a submissive.

One especially useful tool for this process is a sex menu—a communication aid that includes an extensive list of sexual and BDSM activities, allowing you to rate each one based on your level of interest or comfort. It helps you express your desires, turn-ons, and limits more clearly to your partner.

Next to each act on the menu, you can use categories like:

• Hard Limit
• Soft Limit
• Try It
• Occasionally
• Indifferent
• Love It
• Need It

Here’s a free sex menu created in Google Sheets that includes over 350 kinky sex acts for you to choose from. Curating groups of activities that genuinely excite you will help develop a thematic throughline for your submissive persona—whether that’s a Primal sub, a Pleasure sub, or a submissive who integrates Tantra.

Choosing the Energy in Your Behavior

Every kinky act can be expressed in a multitude of ways, each evoking different feelings for both you and your Dominant partner.

Take spanking, for example. A submissive might respond to it through several distinct energies:

• Rebellious: A bratty submissive may challenge a Dom’s authority to invite more spankings, or struggle against their hold to provoke a more primal, physical overtaking.
• Devotional: A slave or service-oriented submissive may surrender completely—either to receive discipline for their transgressions or to fulfill their Dom’s desire for that kind of play.
• Playful: A little-type submissive might giggle, squirm, or kick their feet while receiving over the knee spankings, bringing a light, mischievous energy to the experience.

Of course, all of these expressions can come from the same person, depending on the intention behind the scene. Think back to your personality and what feels most authentic to you.

How do you want to show up in a scene?

The energy behind your behavior will shape everything—from the way you obey to the sounds you make.

Step 3: Craft How You Look

Now that you understand your internal landscape and know what you want to do as a submissive, it’s time to think about how to communicate that to others. Your image should be an expression of that internal world—a signal to others of something they can’t yet see. 

The way you look will always send a message—even if you don’t intend it to. So, it’s far better to influence what’s being communicated than to leave it up to chance.

Craft Your Wardrobe

When considering your wardrobe for scenes, play parties, munches, and other BDSM-related events, know that while fashion varies within the community, there are definite staples: lingerie, latex, leather, bondage harnesses, body jewelry, and of course all black everything.

But what I’d invite you to do is think about what feels most fitting for you. For example, I know most people wear all black, so many of my outfits in the scene are all red. I also like to incorporate Tantra into my Dominance, so some of my looks are all white, and I’ll wear my hair down in dreads. I often wear a suit to events, but I won’t wear a shirt underneath my vest. It’s sophisticated but rebellious—much like my personality.

So, take the classics and make them your own. 

Craft Your Environment

The space in which you have a scene can also enhance—or detract from—your persona. Not all of us have access to a personal dungeon, but we can all curate our bedrooms to support the vibe we’re going for.

A hardcore industrial look with chains hanging from the ceiling is going to feel like you’re entering a torture chamber, while earthy tones, incense, plants, and cozy bedding will feel more like a sexual sanctuary. Neither is wrong—just make sure the space is congruent with the rest of your persona.

A little attention to detail can go a long way.

Make It Yours

The most important thing when deciding what kind of submissive you want to be is to avoid letting labels and kink jargon paint you into a box that limits your full expression. You are far more nuanced than any single term—and your submissive persona should reflect that complexity.

You’re also going to evolve. Who you are today may not be who you are a year from now, and that’s not just okay—it’s expected. Growth is part of the journey. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Try things on. Drop what doesn’t fit. Refine what does. The more aligned your persona is with your authentic self, the more powerful and magnetic your presence will become—both in and out of the scene.

To quote one of my favorite lines of all time:

“Absorb what is useful. Reject what is useless. Add what is essentially your own.”
—Bruce Lee

Make it yours.