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These relationships may not be monogamous but, I came to realize, they are in fact, reverse dating. Some couples start out with a dinner here and there and eventually, if all goes well, a fantastic sex life emerges. For a few, in time the sex begins to get stale, and the whole relationship starts to pull apart at the seams. They find themselves watching porno flicks or frequenting strip clubs to bring some type of spice into their lives and many find themselves entering into the world of D/s. It's a last-ditch effort to save their relationship, but it rarely works.

With most D/s couples, respect, admiration and trust is at the core of all emotions. Love and friendship aren't considered necessary components, and lies are just not tolerated by either party. Some believe if you incorporate "vanilla" romance into a D/s relationship, it will destroy its carefully constructed integrity. It's hard for a man to cater to a woman in public by opening doors for her, helping her with her coat, picking up the check for dinner, when the roles take a 180-degree turn when they get home at night and shut the door.

I spoke with 27-year-old "Beth," who is a graduate student, and a submissive female currently working as a bartender. She had been in the lifestyle for only a year when she met a Dom on the Internet who frequented Charlotte on his business travels.

When I asked her why the Internet, which seemed to be the common denominator forum in which Dominants and submissives meet, she said, "Where else do you find one? It's not exactly the question you ask on the first date, and you won't meet them in the produce department at Harris Teeter." She had a good point.

To some, being able to achieve the degree of skill these people look for when finding a partner is essential to any relationship they enter. It's not up for negotiation, although some couples find their own individual arrangements.

There are many women and men like Beth who are in the "lifestyle" long before they actively participate. Beth thought her sexual needs and desires were perverted and dirty; she thought there was something wrong with her because she had never met another like herself. Beth had boyfriends in the past that made sexually aggressive suggestions to try things such as tying her up; although wanting to, she could never bring herself to comply because she didn't believe that "ladies" engaged in that type of play. She believed it was an activity that only promiscuous females or prostitutes engaged in, so she learned to hide her preferences and kept them on the back burner.

One night, she stumbled across a chat room on the Internet and was dumbfounded to find there was an entire subculture she knew nothing about. The people she found, and soon came to meet offline, were not only all over the United States -- there were large groups of them right here in Charlotte. She learned from others where her intense need to be a submissive came from. She was taught how to find her Dominant partner, how to be safe, and what to watch out for. She learned that being a submissive did not give any man the right to degrade her or treat her like a doormat.

Unfortunately, many inexperienced female subs don't have a mentor, and find themselves in situations that are nothing short of rape -- and that's a very difficult story to get the police or a jury to believe. Almost all of the episodes that are not consensual go unreported.

Beth refers to D/s as the best "therapy" she could ever get.

"There was always something missing from my relationships," she said, "and this was it."

Beth explained that her Dominant male was 15 years her senior -- 42, and had been in the lifestyle since he was in his mid-20s. He is divorced from his wife, because like Ted, he had a need for control in the bedroom that his wife had no intentions of catering to. To this Dom, it was worth ending a marriage over.

Beth's need to become a submissive was in sharp contrast to Ted's need to become a Dominant male.

"I always have to be in control of everything, my schoolwork, I'm a supervisor at my job, my house, the bills, I have to take care of everything by myself," she explains. "Sometimes I just want to come home and have someone to take care of me. I don't want to make any decisions. The feeling of total and complete release of control is like renewing my inner spirit. Until I became a submissive, I didn't know who I really was."