Responsibility. I've yet to play on a casual basis, although I would like to (oddly, that requires more confidence, more on that in a second). My play has been in the context of relationships with at least some level of commitment, and that commitment as a Dom has meant that I have a great deal of responsibility for the emotional well-being of my partner. In many ways, that's an incredibly egotistic thing to take on, and it is something that scares me every day. It's bad enough to start a vanilla relationship and worry about whether you really love them, whether it will fall apart, how it will impact them. But when you do that in a D/s relationship, there is a lot more at stake.

Secondly, I'm intimidated to some degree by experienced Doms, but that has fairly quickly dissipated, because unless you're there to put on some gorgeous rope show for the crowd, or show off your skills with a single tail, the true measure of the Dom is the reaction of the sub. My focus right now isn't on technique, it's on sensation, and I pretty much stop being aware of anyone else when I am in a scene.

Thirdly, experienced subs intimidate the hell out of me. (Yes, that *definitely* includes you Mollena :). I'm not worried about doing things "wrong", but being clumsy, stepping over boundaries, being compared to others, and simply not satisfying, are all issues. It's all the things guys worry about in terms of sexual performance, magnified 100 times. In my limited time, I haven't played with too many people with much more experience than myself, so this hasn't been a major issue. What I've generally found is that I go too easy on my partner. *That* I can solve if given a second chance. ;)

Related to that, I worry that my partner will want to push limits that I'm not ready to push. However the things I want to push seem to be growing far faster than my opportunities to top, so *that* hasn't been much of a problem yet! LOL.

Oh, and penis size of course. :)