The Sub Has The Power

“I’m getting tired of having to tell you to dominate me”, Adoring Slave said last month after a long stale mate, whereby I didn’t pull any FLR stuff and he didn’t ask for it.

But I need him to tell me. Bossing around my own husband violates every kind of social conditioning I have experienced throughout my life. I have been scolded for being bossy, needy, or selfish. I have had giving, pliable female characters modelled for me on television and in movies.

It’s not that I can’t be selfish. It’s that I need to be urged to do it, or I am going to keep falling back on old habits.

The only thing that gives me the ability to dominate is not even his permission – it’s his active encouragement.

Sure, a lot of this violates the spirit of female domination, and I am sure that one day I will be forcing him to submit without any encouragement. But that day is not yet here, and it never will be unless I am handed the reigns again, and again, and again, until I finally feel like I have the right to behave this way.

 

Can You Have A Disabled Slave?

I really can’t figure out a way to work around Adoring Slave’s health. On days when he is feeling okay, he is happy to serve me. But much of the time, lately, he just can’t. So what am I supposed to do, then? I can’t punish someone for being ill, surely? So I mostly accept that he does as much as he can and I let the rest slide.

…Which doesn’t feel very much like an FLR, honestly.

I’m supposed to be setting rules and making him follow them, and rewarding and punishing, but I never know where to draw those lines. We’ve talked about assuming that is is able to do everything unless he specifically calls a time-out for health reasons. But then when do I end the time-out? Do I just wait on him to say, “okay, I’m ready”?

I can tell that he is getting a little tired of him saying “okay, go” or “okay, stop” because after all, it puts him in charge and not me, which defies the whole point. On the other hand, it’s hard enough for me to assert myself at all, let alone walk around threatening to punish someone who is obviously unwell.

Suggestions, anyone?

I’m A Queen, Not An Orifice

Adoring Slave and I had some great sex the other day and I wanted more. Unfortunately, a fussy, frequently-awaking baby doesn’t make for a great love life, so the opportunity to interact when we were not exhausted had still not presented itself.

And then one night we made the mistake of looking at the On Demand options in our cable package.

It started out as fun.

We noticed the Adult section and decided to check it out. We had a good laugh over the XXX Parodies (Game of Bones, Down On Her Abby, etc) and I boggled over the prices – the adult films, as ridiculous as they looked, cost twice as much as the Oscar winning movie options.

We scrolled through more and more selections, expressing amusement at the fact that the cable company’s idea of “fetish” seemed to simply mean women with big bushes or who were overweight/older, and so on.

But the language was starting to get to me.

“What is with the male obsession with holes?” I asked Adoring Slave after yet another description along the lines of “watch giant cock destroy nasty slut holes”. The word “holes” came up with a frequency which struck me as bizarre. I have never heard the men I was with use the word “holes” in a sexy context. In fact, to me the word “hole” seems distinctly UN sexy.

But in the porn world, apparently holes are where it is at. Women simply seemed to function as hole-providers, and I began to wonder why they didn’t just use doughnuts or drywall instead. In fact, the porn descriptions seemed quite annoyed at the women – they were dirty, nasty sluts whose holes needed to be “slammed” or “destroyed”.

Why was everyone so angry at these women’s orifices?

Maybe because they were so messy. The holes were frequently described as being dripping or oozing or squirting or full cream pie.

All of this made the women sound less like women and more like some kind of kitchen accident.

I tried to imagine finding any of this remotely sexy and failed utterly.

“Men are strange creatures,” I mused.

“What about women?” said Adoring Slave. “Look at this one – giant Thunder-rod slams pink pussy holes. Are thunder rods a turn on?”

“That description is for the men, too,” I said. “Men seem to love imagining their penises as various weapons.”

“Porn is for women, too,” he said.

“While I am sure that there are many women out there who enjoy porn, they are NOT the target audience here,” I said. I’m sure there ARE many women out there who enjoy porn for its own sake. I haven’t met one, though. The women I know who have watched and enjoyed porn did it only with their partner, as a sort of mutual-erotica thing.

Adoring Slave looked like he disagreed but didn’t dare voice it, and kept flipping through titles. All of the women in the films, whether they were MILFs, or GILFs, or BBWs or Barely Legals or Step Daughters (I was surprised by the frequency of step-relative sex. I really don’t get that at all. Why is it sexier if they are related by marriage?) were never anything but slutty orifices.

“I’m getting less and less turned on with every description,” I said.

By the time we turned it off, I felt like I never wanted to have sex again. I don’t want to be seen like that or thought of like that. I know – or at least I hope – that adoring slave sees me as more than a messy concavity, but I can’t help but feel like I want to be as far removed from that as possible.

I think my psyche was better off before I had that little insight into the masculine mind.

Turn Ons Are For Everybody

A lot of kinky people are ashamed of their fetishes. They keep them under their hat for years, afraid to tell even their own partners about what really turns them on. So, when the conversation finally arises, and they get the opportunity to talk about their kinks, it is easy to let this overtake the relationship.

Suddenly the conversation is all about what the kinky person wants, and how the vanilla person can give it to them. The internet is full of kink lists, where people can go over all of the different kinks and say what they want, what they don’t want, and what they absolutely will not do.

You SHOULD go over lists like that together, take kink quizzes like this one to see what is and is not possible to do together. It is a vital conversation. Too many kinky people have their desires dismissed as weird or gross by a vanilla partner who feels that his/her own desires are more “normal”.

It isn’t okay for a vanilla person to dismiss a kinky partner’s desires just because they seem strange or incomprehensible to you. If you care about your partner, you need to take their feelings into consideration, even if you aren’t comfortable with them or can’t understand them. Find out what they want, and see what you can do to meet them half way, at least. Take that same quiz above yourself, so your spouse can see what areas you are least averse to.

But sometimes the vanilla person’s feelings get left in the dust. The kinky person is so focused on getting what they want that they forget that the vanilla person has needs of his or her own. Dan Savage sometimes has to chide fetishists for forgetting to consider their vanilla partner’s feelings.

We have needs and turn-ons, too. They may not be kinky, they may seem boring or square, but that doesn’t make them less important or valid. The strength of a person’s needs or desires is not related to how mainstream they are perceived to be.

A partner’s need for affectionate caresses and romantic dates can be just as strong as someone’s need for good spanking now and then.

I would like to stop seeing a divide between BDSM/Kink and the Vanilla mindset, because I think it sets us against each other. I would like to see turn-on quizzes that include romantic gifts and strap ons, full body massages and cuckolding, because I think they are all equally valid.

One of the things I love about setting up a Female Led Relationship is that it gives me the opportunity to specify exactly what I want. My desire for romantic touching, pampering, clean dishes, and declarations of adoration gets full attention. I even get to write it out in a contract, as part of daily expectations of my Adoring Slave.

And his needs and desires also get a lot of attention. We have spent hours going through possible rewards, punishments, and that nebulous category of “funishments”.

It’s funny, but setting up an ostensibly kinky relationship has actually made me feel more equal as a Vanilla. I am actually going to get more of the vanilla stuff I need by entering into a relationship that is inherently BDSM in quality.

Because in this marriage, desires are equal and will be attended to.

New Year, New Steps Toward Queendom

We just got back from a visit home with family, and our FLR was unofficially put on hold during that time. First of all, we aren’t ready to be open about it to family. Secondly, my husband’s health was poorer …

My Demands Make His Life Better?

My first, hesitant steps into being the “Queen” in our relationship probably look pretty pathetic to a lot of women, but for me they were huge. It sounds stupid but I have always really hated demanding what I really want.

I might ask for what I want in a diffident sort of manner and then just leave it at that, and that’s only if I really wanted it really badly.

Basically, this is how I dealt with my wants before we started the FLR:

Want something a tiny bit: Not worth bothering someone about it.

Want something a fair amount: Might mention it in passing and if no one takes me up on it, well, then it probably isn’t worth their time.

Desperately want something: “Hey, uh, would you mind please doing X for me? If you don’t mind?”

If my tentative request was rejected for any reason, I would leave it at that. “Okay, no big deal”, even though the fact that I asked at all meant that it was a big deal for ME. But I didn’t want to be a nag or a bother so that would be that.

So in our first couple of weeks, my biggest task was to simply state what I wanted. His job was to make it happen.

With much deliberate effort on my part, I started requesting anything I wanted, even a little. If I desperately wanted something, I would try to state it as a command, although most of the time I would compulsively add “please” to the end of the order. “Get me a drink. Uh. Please.”

I felt guilty about this… until one day.

I was complaining to Adoring Slave  about how tired I was, because the baby hadn’t slept well the night before. Since the baby is hooked on nursing to sleep, there’s nothing he can do on nights when the baby is restless, and I thought this had always been clearly understood. But when I was done complaining, he said:

“You know, I feel really able to just sit and listen to you sympathetically now. A month ago, 80% of my brain power would have been dedicated to trying to figure out if you wanted something from me. I’d be sitting there wondering  – Is she saying that she wishes I had helped her more? Is she implying that this is partially my fault? Is there something she wants me to do today to make up for it? – But now I know that if you want me to do something, you’ll tell me. If you don’t tell me to do something or change something, then I don’t have to worry about it. So now I can just sit and sympathize and not worry than there’s something I’m doing wrong.”

I hadn’t fully realized how much of a burden I put on him by simply trying not to be a bother.

I was so busy trying not to be demanding, trying to make his life easier by minimizing my own desires, that I didn’t realize how important it was to him that I be happy. So he was simply working overtime trying to figure out what I wanted.

But now that I am officially the boss, my position comes with a certain responsibility: If I want something, I need to state that clearly. This actually relieves him of a burden – if I don’t ask him for something, he doesn’t have to worry that maybe he should be doing it anyway. It has taken away a layer of guilt and worry that I never fully understood even existed.

My next step will be learning how to reprimand and even punish him, and I can see now how that will also reduce his emotional burden, because if he messes up he doesn’t need to self-recriminate or feel guilty. I will assign a consequence, he will suffer it, and then all will be forgiven and he can move forward with a blank slate.

…But I think that’s still going to be a hard lesson for me to learn.

Book Recommendation: How To Set Up An FLR

So, when Adoring Slave and I decided to start a Female Led Relationship, he went a little overboard and ordered a TON of books on the subject from Amazon.

Of all of them, only one was really helpful, so I thought I’d share it with you.

It’s called “How To Set Up An FLR” and it is fantastic.

I mean, it is clearly self published, and the grammar errors on the cover page alone are enough to make an English major scream, but the content is worth it.

The tone of the book is respectful toward all parties involved. She advises Safe, Sane and Consensual techniques, and she has some great quizzes that will lead to hours of interesting conversations. You can tell that she is coming at it with the intention to make both partners happy, and not simply to indulge a fetish (although she also gives great detail on how to do that, too).

It’s great. Check it out.

Limits Are For Everybody

One of the first things you need to work out when setting up any kind of BDSM relationship are limits.

Some people think limits are just for really extreme couples, where someone might actually bring up the possibility of one person pooping on the other. That’s not true. Really, the limits discussion is a discussion of tastes and attitudes. What does he want? What does he not want? What does she want? What does she not want?

Because yes, the dominant person can have limits, too.

For example, I am completely against the possibility of ever bringing another person into the relationship. No cuckolding, no threesomes, nothing like that. As the Queen in this relationship, none of those things could happen without my express consent anyway, but I think it’s best to get that out in the open right away. Otherwise he’s going to be hoping for it.

If anything, as the vanilla in the relationship, I have far more limits than the Adoring Slave does. Sure, he has limits but I’m never going to push those, since right now I’m still working on getting the “please” out of my demands. On the other hand, I have LOTS of limits.

Some of those might soften or change over time, others probably never will. For now, though, at least my Adoring Slave knows where he stands, and he is comfortable with that because he wants me to be comfortable. He knows that if I am not comfortable, this is never going to work.

I have heard of couples where the kinky submissive refused to discuss the limits of the more vanilla partner, because “limits are for BDSM only, and you’re vanilla.” This attitude is really unhelpful, because you can’t have a BDSM relationship all on your own. It takes at least two, and if you want your vanilla partner to venture out of his/her comfort zone, then you had better show a TON of respect for the lines he/she does not want to cross.

Imagine you have a child who is terrified of the dentist. With much cajoling and encouragement, you manage to get the child to agree to a dentist visit as long as you PROMISE that all the dentist will do is clean the teeth. But once you get there, you tie the kid down and fill three cavities.

Do you think that child will ever trust you enough to go to the dentist again? Of course not.

So if your vanilla spouse says “I don’t want to involve other people” and you immediately start pushing to attend a dungeon party, what do you think that is going to do to his/her trust in you? Instead, you should be showing the kind of respect that your partner deserves, working with what he/she is willing to try, until their comfort zone begins to expand. Build the trust, don’t knock it down.

It’s helpful for me, as a vanilla, to know his limits, too, because if I know what he doesn’t want, then I can assume that he is at least open and curious about anything else. That helps reduce my worry that I’m actually going to try some of this stuff (which feels so mean to me) and that he’s going to suddenly get angry and rage-quit the whole enterprise.

Besides, it’s an interesting topic. I recommend doing some quizzes, discussing various kinds of kink and rate (on a number scale or similar) how much you like or dislike the various possibilities. And if a certain kink is RIGHT OUT for you, say so. Write it down. And expect your spouse to respect it.

 

The Golden Rule Doesn’t Apply

Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You

We’re constantly explaining the Golden Rule to our kids – don’t do something to someone if you wouldn’t like it done to you. Treat someone the way you would want to be treated.

But really, that’s a lie.

It works when you’re five. When your kid comes crying to you because their friend won’t play with them, and you have to tell your kid to stop pestering their poor friend who clearly needs a break… only to have your kid come crying to you five minutes later because a different friend won’t leave them alone… that’s when you remind them of how they felt FIVE MINUTES AGO.

The Golden Rule assumes that you lack basic empathy, and that you need to remind yourself that other people have feelings, too. If you don’t like to be punched in the face, your friend probably won’t like it either, imagine that! But once you have achieved simple empathy, the Golden Rule stops being useful, because there are a LOT of exceptions.

Maybe you are an extrovert, and when you have had a bad day, your best cure is a fun night on the town. But if your coworker is an introvert, then the worst thing you could do is bully them into going out with you after a bad day, because their cure is a quiet night in their pajamas with a book.

Maybe you are a cuddler, and you love to give and receive hugs. But if your best friend needs a large bubble of personal space, then you are disrespecting her feelings and needs if you insist on constantly putting your arm around her.

And if you are a Star Wars fan but your friend hates it, would you give them a Star Wars themed shirt for their birthday? Of course not.

Treating others the way you want to be treated, instead of the way THEY want to be treated, is at the very best insensitive and at the very worst, abusive.

The real rule is this:

Do Unto Others As They Would Have You Do Unto Them

That’s easy enough when it comes to respecting someone’s personal boundaries or buying them a Christmas gift that they would really like. But when your spouse wants to be treated in ways that you would consider abusive, it’s pretty hard to wrap your head around.

I can’t begin to describe how much I would abhor being ordered to fetch a drink, scolded for being sassy, verbally degraded, or punished with a spanking. Like, I-would-leave-the-relationship levels of abhorrent. So it is really hard for me to try and treat my partner that way. It sets off all of my empathy alarms.

It’s hard to understand that they are false alarms. Those alarms are tripped by decades of following the Golden Rule. I have spent most of my life trying to be nice, trying to be considerate, trying not to be selfish or hurtful or demanding or cruel. I have done this partly because society demands it, especially of girls and women, and partly because I am so deeply hurt by a cutting remark, and I don’t ever want to make someone feel like that.

But here I have my husband ASKING me to do those things. Hell, he keeps buying me books about how to do them better!

It’s hard. It’s REALLY hard. It’s hard to overcome years of conditioning, shut down those Golden Rule/Empathy alarms, and actually remember how HE feels about it, and what HE wants.

It’s going slowly. I know I’m being too nice. I keep saying please when I tell him to get me a drink. I make excuses for him when he slacks on his chores. I fret over his feelings. Is this still okay? Does he really enjoy this?

He has to keep reminding me that he wants this. He has to keep making a point of telling me, “I really enjoyed that. That was good.” I have explained to him that I need to hear this – that I need him to validate every tentative step I make toward being the domineering, impatient, insulting Queen of his dreams. I have warned him that it will be slow going. You can’t overcome three decades of social conditioning overnight. But I believe that I will get there. I believe that deep inside, I AM selfish and impatient and domineering. I’ve just kept that self suppressed for a very, very long time.

If I’m going to draw it out of myself, I need my Adoring Slave by my elbow thanking me for doing it and assuring me that yes, this is how he wants to be treated.

Even though it isn’t the way that I would want be treated myself.

The Golden Rule is no longer valid here.