Hello Mistress Lynn and welcome to this forum. It's good to see you here.

I think it is admirable that you meet and communicate prior to an actual session. Sometimes this has worked for me and sometimes it hasn't. Occasionally a perfectly communicative and expressive sub can walk into the dungeon and just go blank. I will say that having that prior connection allows me to know that they are probably enjoying themselves, where if we did not have that connection you would have no idea what was going in in their heads.

Thankfully this doesn't happen often.