8 BDSM Tasks to Give Your Submissive to Help Them Grow

Looking for tasks to give your submissive? Use these 8 types of BDSM tasks for improving your D/s dynamic, helping your submissive grow, and having a lot of sexy fun along the way!

What are BDSM Tasks?

A BDSM task is a task or assignment that you as a Dom can give your sub in order to help them grow in some capacity, make your life easier, make the relationship and dynamic better, sexually train them, or just to have a little naughty fun while you two are apart.

Why assign BDSM Tasks?

If you’ve read my writing on 7 Essential Behaviors for Dominants and 7 Essential Behaviors for Submissives, you’ll know that I don’t like giving rules or protocols just for the sake of having them. If we set rules, they are in service of making each of us and the dynamic better. They are in service of the vision we have set together. 

Tasks are no different. I don’t assign tasks as homework just for the sake of it or because I think it’s what I should do as a Dom. That would make me as tyrannical as the education system… No, sex homework is meant to be fun (I mean come on, it’s sex homework!) and help my submissive in whatever goals we have set together for our dynamic.

Submission and Personal Development

Kink, and particularly submission, actually offers a wonderful opportunity for personal development by harnessing the power of behavioral conditioning. Conditioning is a behavioral process whereby a response becomes more frequent or more predictable in a given environment as a result of reinforcement, with reinforcement typically being a stimulus or reward for a desired response. 

As a Dom, every time you assign sex homework or a task and repeatedly give reward for the behaviors it produces, you are helping to condition your sub. Obviously this could be used for manipulation, which is why I admonish the point in 7 Essential Behaviors for Dominants that you learn what goals your submissive actually wants to reach, and use this power of conditioning to help facilitate her attaining those goals. In that way, you’re using her own psychological hardware to support her. With great power comes great responsibility.

Staying connected while apart

Tasks are also particularly helpful for partners who don’t live with each other or see each other infrequently. It’s a way to still feel connected while you're apart and to still practice the power exchange in the dynamic. Depending on the task, it can also be part of foreplay, getting you even more excited to see one another.

How to assign BDSM tasks?

Step 1: Understand your goals as partners

Before assigning any task, it’s important to understand how your submissive wishes to grow, what you both want your dynamic to look like, and what’s important to you as a Dom for your submissive to better serve you.

Step 2: Give a task in the form of a system, not a goal

I want to point out a mistake that many people make when setting goals. Oftentimes, people set a goal with an outcome in mind (ex. get a new job this year) when creating a system to reach that goal would be more beneficial (ex. apply to 3 new positions each week.) A system means that you do the same X tasks every Y amount of time. Giving a task in this way gives your submissive clear directions about what they should be doing and how often they should be doing them. Not every task can be assigned in this way as some are one time things, but it's helpful when they can be.

Step 3: Set a deadline

Submissives want clear directions, so don’t skip out by not telling them when you expect this task to be completed. You’re welcome to be aggressive about it and set hard deadlines, but just saying you expect the task to be completed by the next time they see you is sufficient.

Step 4: Rewards and punishments

If you truly want to harness the power of BDSM tasks for behavioral conditioning, then you need to set up an optimal incentive structure for her to complete the tasks. Being that this is BDSM, I find both rewards and punishments to be appropriate to use for the same task. If she completes the task, she is rewarded for good behavior. If she doesn’t, she is punished for behavior you dislike. 

When setting rewards and punishments, there are some important points to keep in mind. First, consent should be given by your submissive beforehand that you can use certain acts as rewards and punishments. You should also keep in mind what the limits of your dynamic are and how much control you have to exert with particular rewards or punishments. A total power exchange relationship will have a lot more options available than a casual, only in the bedroom dynamic.

Which leads to the second point, rewards and punishments should be specific to your submissive. You’re more than welcome to try to come up with your own rewards and punishments, but I find it easiest to just ask my sub what acts would be most rewarding for her, and which ones would be appropriate as punishment for her. Obviously if your sub is a pain slut, using pain as a punishment is not going to work.

Lastly, be attentive to the fact that when an act is labeled as “reward” vs “punishment” it will carry either a positive or negative connotation the more times it is repeated. That may or may not be a good thing depending on your sub’s goals. For example, using a cold shower as a punishment may not be right for her because cold showers can actually be highly beneficial for health, so building negative experiences around cold showers may make it more difficult for her to do them in the future if she starts focusing on health goals.

Here’s some examples for both rewards and punishments.

Examples of rewards for completing sex homework: 

• Praise & Affection
• Naughty texts
• Sexual gratification or orgasm
• Receive your cum in her favorite way
• Special dates
• Favorite types of play
• Massage
• Gain of privileges in dynamic

Examples of punishments for not completing sex homework:

• Lecturing
• Cold Shower
• Hard spanking with paddle or crop, no warm up\No masturbating for a week
• No masturbating for a week
• Denied orgasms
• Denied favorite sexual acts
• No touching of your cock
• Chores with cuffed ankles or wrists
• Grounded (not leaving house for period of time)
• Loss of privileges in dynamic

8 Types of BDSM Tasks

The following tasks are broken down into categories for the types of goals they might serve. Far from an exhaustive list, use these tasks as examples to help you start brainstorming tasks that would serve you and your submissive’s goals.

BDSM Tasks for vanilla goals

I'm starting with vanilla goals because it will illustrate the point that BDSM can be a powerful tool for reaching goals, and that you as a Dom can help your submissive improve both inside and outside of the bedroom.

Vanilla goals are the ones that we all have for bettering our life in some way. For example, getting a new job, working towards a healthy body, learning a new skill, and so on. What turns these goals into opportunities for tasks are how you frame the tasks to be completed, and what the reward or punishment might be. For example, a mundane task such as doing yoga everyday to improve her flexibility could be framed as doing naked yoga everyday and sending you a short video of her doing so.

Example BDSM tasks for vanilla goals:

• Workout at the gym 3x this week and send me a photo of your sweaty cleavage
• Apply to 3 jobs this week and for each completed application your allowed an orgasm
• Practice your Spanish for 30 minutes each day and afterwards send me a voice not in Spanish of one of your fantasies. 

BDSM Tasks for improving sexual skills

One of the benefits of a D/s dynamic is you can train your sub to please you exactly as you’d like to be pleased. Sometimes though, this means improving their skills. These skills could be for a particular type of play (ex. Learning how to keep herself safe during rope bondage), learning how to communicate her desires better, or learning how to perform certain sexual acts.

Example BDSM tasks for improving sexual skills:

• Complete one lesson each week in a sex course (such as the ones on Beducated)
• Read one chapter in the Erotic Mind each week
• Learn the risks of rope bondage on the Duchy

BDSM Tasks for sexual training

Practice makes perfect, right? Having her study new skills is drastically improved if she actually practices them. So assign homework that allows her the opportunity to do so.

Example BDSM tasks for improving sexual skills:

• Practice anal training each day
• Practice deep throat training each day
• Each time you masturbate, use Sensate Focus for self-pleasure (trains her to be more in tune with sensations and pleasure)
• Each time you masturbate, do so with a dildo in your mouth to train an oral fixation (and tie oral to orgasms)

BDSM Tasks for self-awareness

Particularly if your submissive is new to BDSM or sexually inexperienced, giving sex homework for her to learn more about herself and understand her desires can be highly beneficial.

Example BDSM tasks for self-awareness:

• Spend 15 minutes each day understanding your desires in an erotic journal
• Complete the BDSM test or similar quizzes and send me your results
• Complete the sex menu and send it to me

BDSM Tasks for self-care

All of us can be pretty hard on ourselves. Submissives can be particularly hard on themselves if they are living up to your expectations and being a good submissive. Women can be particularly hard on themselves about their appearance and their body. Sex homework can be a wonderful tool for fostering self love, self acceptance, and nurturing a positive self image. So the next time your submissive is self conscious, try assigning one of these tasks.

Example BDSM tasks tasks for self-care:

• Using body safe markers, write positive affirmations like beautiful on the body parts your most self conscious about. Take a photo. Open that photo every time you are feeling self conscious.
• Masturbate in front of a mirror with a full view of yourself and your vulva.
• Write a list of 25 things you like about yourself. Keep this list in your phone and pull it out every time you have negative thoughts.
• Pretend I was there to care for you. Do the same tasks I would do for you for yourself.

BDSM Tasks for foreplay

These tasks can be used to help get aroused days before you even see each other so that when you finally do, you’re ready to rip each other's clothes off.

Example BDSM tasks for foreplay:

• Between now and the next time we see each other, send me one new nude photo a day in a new pose, new location, or creative way.
• Wear your butt plug in public today before you see me.
• Starting 3 nights before you see me, edge yourself to orgasm each night but do not let yourself orgasm.

BDSM Tasks for getting into a submissive headspace

Sometimes you submissive wants to enjoy the headspace of being submissive even when you're not around. It can be helpful to assign rituals and tasks that help her sink into that mindset. For submissives that find it difficult to submit or relinquish power, these tasks can also be used as foreplay to help her start the process before seeing you.

Example BDSM tasks for getting into a submissive headspace:

• Meditate for 20 minutes a day in a kneeling or similar slave position
• Wear your day collar every day when you go out in public
• Do not wear your panties all day before seeing me

BDSM Tasks for making the Dom’s life easier

Part of the submissive's role is to support you and make your life easier. It really helps if you tell her exactly what she can to make your life better. Let her in and let her help you!

Example BDSM tasks for making your life easier:

• Write a list of 5 scene ideas you’d love to do next and send them to me
• Send me 3 outfits you find yourself very sexy in and send them to me to choose
• Clean our space while naked and send me a photo of you doing so