Escaping the Regret Cycle

In findom, there’s a concept known as the Regret Cycle that a lot of finsubs wrestle with and which some unethical findoms actively encourage. A lot of finsubs seem to feel that it’s a problem that is fundamental to this kink, but I don’t agree. As I see it, it’s more a sign of findom done wrong than an inherent component of findom.

The Regret Cycle is a cycle of tributing, running away, and eventually relapsing. Typically, a finsub tributes to one or more cashmasters and initially finds it to be an intense sexual high. But eventually they begin to feel bad about their tributing. Often this regret emerges from a sense of sexual shame; they feel guilty that they’re indulging homosexual desires, or they feel ashamed of being submissive, or they feel ashamed that they are expressing their sexuality through money. Just as common, if not more so, they regret the amounts of money they are sending. They feel that they are wasting money, that they “have nothing to show” for their erotic activity. Perhaps they’ve tributed too much and are struggling to pay their bills.

So they try to run away from findom. They block their findom they tribute to on social media or they delete the accounts they use to tribute to them. They force themselves to give up their tributing because they feel it’s harmful to them, either financially or emotionally. But after a while–maybe a few days or maybe a few months–they start to feel the urge to tribute again. They fight the urge but eventually they give in. Maybe it just happens or maybe they have a rough day or see something that reminds them of tributing and so they seek out their old findom or a new one. They set up a new account to go looking at findom posts. And eventually they find someone who hits their sweet spot and they start to tribute again.

Typically, this becomes a cyclical habit, hence the name. And after they’ve gone round the cycle a couple times, they start to feel that they’re “addicted to findom”. (I have huge problems with the concept of ‘sexual addiction’, most notably that it’s not actually a recognized mental disorder by groups like the APA, but I’ll leave that for another post.) They feel bad about failing to control their tributing and they start to feel that they’re broken on a deep level. They may feel they’re “buying attention” because they’re too ugly or pathetic to merit attention in other ways.

So the Regret Cycle looks like this:

Some unethical findoms actively exploit the idea of the Regret Cycle. They often employ the language of addiction to encourage finsubs to “relapse” or to “embrace their addiction”. This is a useful tool for them because it implies that, like alcoholism, finsubbing is a condition one can become trapped in, so why bother fighting it? They talk about their finsubs as “losers” (or “lo$ers”), as being so weak they can’t control themselves, and so on. That’s not to trash the whole idea of the finsub as being inferior–that sort of language can be a lot of fun for those who enjoy this kink, but it can also be used to exploit subs in ways that harm them. When a finsub tries and fails to escape the Regret Cycle, they feel more like losers, confirming the messages they hear from their findom.

The Regret Cycle is a real thing for some finsubs. I’ve spoken to many boys who wrestle with their ‘addiction’, and there are some kinksters who consider the whole practice of findom as illegitimate, as not a real kink, precisely because it can be so harmful when it’s done unethically. (Needless to say, I’m not one of them, as I explain here.)

As I see it, the Regret Cycle isn’t an inherent element of findom play. Rather it emerges from a lack of trust between findom and finsub and because of unethical forms of findom. The boys who experience this sense of addiction are doing findom the wrong way. And it’s easy to do findom the wrong way because there are so many unethical findoms online, men (and woman) who are not using findom to establish a genuine respectful power exchange dynamic with a sub but rather are merely doing it to make money and doing it unethically. There’s nothing wrong with doing findom primarily to make money, but there’s a lot wrong with doing it in ways that actively harm the finsub. (And remember, there’s a huge difference between hurt and harm.)

The Regret Cycle arises when a finsub tries to control his own tributing. This is a fairly logical thing for a finsub to do. Excess spending can create huge problems for finsubs–I knew a boy who cashed out his retirement account and sold his car to please an unethical findom. So it makes sense that a finsub would want to regulate his tributing. This is especially true when dealing with a findom who actively pressures his subs to tribute more and more. The sub recognizes that the findom will simply demand more and more and responds by trying to limit what they’re sending.

But that desire to restrain themselves, to exercise control over their actions is exactly the problem for some finsubs. Subs by their basic nature don’t want to have control over themselves; they eroticize lack of control or the giving over of control to their dom. So they find themselves in a situation where their desire to tribute is warring with their desire to not be in control. So they can exercise restraint for a while, but eventually the urge to not restrain themselves gets the upper hand and they tribute and then they feel shitty about doing what they said they weren’t going to do, and that failure seems to confirm that they’re total losers.

So the problem lies in the finsub trying to exercise control over what he doesn’t want to exercise control over. The reasons for exercising control are sound, but the approach to the problem is not.

The way to escape the Regret Cycle isn’t to run away. It’s to find a cashmaster who is trustworthy and ethical. The finsub should talk to the cashmaster and explain where he’s at with findom and what kind of healthy budget he can offer. The cashmaster agrees to stay within that limit (exactly the same way am impact play dom would agree to not use a bullwhip if his sub isn’t comfortable with that) but within that budget, the finsub agrees to send as ordered. That way the finsub gets to surrender his control over his tribute exactly the way he wants to, knowing that his findom will not actually harm him with excessive tribute demands. I typically suggest basing the budget on the finsub’s monthly entertainment budget or a fraction of that, so that if the dom claims the whole thing, the worst consequence for the sub is that he has to skip entertainment activities for a month or find cheap alternatives.

What setting a limit does is it forces the findom to actually develop a relationship with his cashslave. He has to learn what the sub does and doesn’t like and what things get the boy horny and eager to send. He has to teach his sub what behaviors he wants to see–begging to tribute? a respectful message every morning? Sending humiliating photos with the tribute?–and the two of them start to work as a genuine power exchange relationship. A lot of unethical findoms don’t like to do this, because that sort of serious engagement with a boy takes time. It’s hard to build that sort of dynamic with lots of boys at once, and that means it’s harder to make a living doing this.

But it has the huge advantage that the finsub doesn’t feel like he has nothing to show for his tribute, because he has a genuine power exchange dynamic with a dominant man that he trusts. Sending a tribute becomes an important, erotically charged moment with his master, but it’s not the totality of the interaction. He’s not “buying attention”; he’s engaging in a service relationship that respects and validates his submissiveness even if humiliation and verbal abuse are part of the total dynamic.

So how do you find a findom that you can trust with control over your tributing? Finding a findom is easy, but finding one you can genuinely trust is much trickier. The first thing to do is look at how they advertise themselves. Do they seem like they actually like their subs or does the dynamic seem rooted in disrespect? Being verbally abusive isn’t automatically about disrespecting your subs as humans, but if the findom’s social media is mostly talking about subs as ‘faggots’ be careful.

Look for signs that they are interested in ethical kink and kink safety. Genuine doms are aware of the ethical challenges kink can raise, and they want novices to understand that healthy kink is not just what you see in porn. Guys that post lots of stuff about white supremacy, Nazism, or straight supremacy are almost never going to be ethical about findom, because they’re not being ethical about other stuff. Similarly, guys who’s social media presence is all findom all the time are usually looking to make money more than practice their kink, because guys into the kink of findom are usually interested in other kinks too. Is their social media feed mostly middle fingers and foot soles? Then they probably aren’t very ethical.

Look for evidence they have on-going dynamics with their finsubs. Do they celebrate their finsubs when they do something challenging? Do their finsubs seem to like serving them? Ask their finsubs about their experiences with that dom. Are they understanding when a sub isn’t able to tribute because they’ve run into an unexpected expense?

And just talk to the findom for a while before tributing. The unethical ones aren’t interested in chatting with kinksters; they just want to make money. So they resort to things like “unblocking fees” and “first message fees”. If he takes the time to seduce you into tributing, it’s probably a sign he’ll spend time on you in general, whereas if he quickly starts demanding tribute, that’s likely to be most of what you’ll get from him.

Most (though not all) of the 20-year old findoms are guys chasing money. It takes time to understand kink well enough to get the mental game of dominance and submission, and to grapple with the ethics of kink. Skilled doms tend to be older (although some guys pick it up very young). And these guys have to resort to copying what they see other doms doing because they don’t understand the essence of kink. That’s why they all do the same half-dozen photos of their feet and their middle fingers. Is he talking about how much he needs money? That’s pretty much a dead giveway he’s not going to be a good findom (in part because he doesn’t get that begging isnt dominant).

There are exceptions to most of these cues–a good dom can take a photo of his feet and talk about his fags. Many findoms boast about a big drain because finsubs like seeing a findom being successful–as in some many erotic activities, people look for people doing the thing they want to do. So just because a dom has one of these flags doesn’t mean he’s untrustworthy. But if he has two or three of them, keep looking for someone else.

Findom is a great and exciting kink when it’s done well. Its bad reputation is not a sign it’s a bad kink; it just a sign that money often attracts unethical people. You can leave the Regret Cycle behind by finding a findom you trust enough to actually give up control to.