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Rewards and Motivation

Ritualize it

You should have a formalized reward system for your submissive. (Yes, in addition to the head pats.) As they do their chores, or whatever you’ve assigned them, you should give them some form of reward. I suggest getting some kind of physical ‘currency’ like poker chips, gaming tokens with values on them, or even just marbles. Anything they can hold and touch and be reminded that they did good things.

Then come up with an exchange table for them to redeem their tokens for some kind of prize. The exchange can be anything you like: 100 tokens for a fancy dinner, $1 per token, whatever.

Do not take away rewards

Doms: You must never take away rewards that have been earned. You’ll use a different system for punishment and it must not be by taking away a sub’s earned rewards. Subs usually grow up with things being taken away from them all the time. So they learn not to value things because they know they’ll all get taken away eventually anyway, so why care about anything, right? 1

This relationship with you needs to be different. This needs to be the one relationship where they finally feel ‘safe’ and that they can enjoy their gifts knowing they’ll never be taken away from them. Believe me, it’s a huge deal to finally feel safe.

If you need to punish a sub, instead use proper punishment. Don’t take these rewards away!

What I use

This was a campaign on Kickstarter a long time ago. I bought these for use with my submissives and set an exchange rate of 1 = $1. This makes it easy for the submissive to pick out whatever rewards they want. On average, I like to give out 15-30 tokens a week as payment for chores, and extra stuff done each week.

coins from Kickstarter

Other possible tokens

All of the following, and more, would work just fine

  • Marbles
  • Bottle Caps (Maybe for fans of the Fallout video games)
  • Poker chips
  • Puzzle pieces

Next: Read about the D/s Household

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  1. This shouldn’t be taken to be something that arises from trauma or only in subs who have been the victim of trauma. It can, and often does, arise in those who have not. Parents may have taken their favorite toys away as a punishment. Bullies may have taken things away at school. Or they may just have been asked to give up things they didn’t want to, but were unable to say “no”. ↩