What's Possible?

I love AAT's blog SheIsInCharge for its unstinting look at the successes and challenges of bring and FLR into an existing marriage. In "Despite much advice and discussion", he talks about the frustrations of feeling half-way to an FLR - much satisfying activity in the bedroom and occasional expressions of FLR outside the bedroom, but nothing consistent enough to feel satisfying to him.

I'm afraid I left him a rather flip comment about his ambiguity as to what is enough, but thought that he deserved a fuller comment.

Over at subservire - Diary of a Female-Led Husband, subservire has given up on an FLR. While the whole story isn't relevant here, his valedictory post (with comments, here) is worth a read.

And now I find that I'm in an ambiguous place with the FLR my beloved and I are exploring. I think there are common themes from all three of these things. I hope I can find them.

Regarding AAT's sense that whatever is happening is not enough, I think that we who are pursuing FLRs are doing so for some reason - a reason that isn't, I think, directly related to the FLR itself. The way I characterize it is that we're trying to scratch some itch. The "Female superiority" crowd deals with this by asserting that there's an objective reality that says that women are superior to men, so FLRs would be the natural order of things - it has nothing to do with they themselves. Maybe that works for them, it doesn't work for me, so I can't go there.

For me, we're trying to build relationships that work. I need to serve my beloved for a number of reasons, some of which I understand and some of which I don't. But honestly, it's about how I feel. Total contrary to the "ideology" of the FLR but true. If it were all about how my beloved felt, we wouldn't be doing this at all.

So what makes me feel better? Her allowing me to serve her. Her telling me what to do. Her wanting me to be lusting after her.

How does she know that these things make me feel better? If I don't tell her, there's no way. But if doing these things is offensive to her, then we have a problem. If doing these things is a chore for her, then, as someone who wants me to be happy, she'll indulge in them for me. But the addiction metaphor AAT uses in his post is apt: I'll want more and more of that drug until I drive her away. Not a good plan.

Only by finding things that work for her and work for me do we get to a place where our FLR is viable.

We're not there yet.

As Subservire puts it,

Forget the advice of the female supremacists who espouse that the way to a successful female led marriage is to give yourself to the Domme totally with no regard to your own wishes. It simply doesn’t work that way.

Most submissive men have a sexual desire to be submissive. Unless that sexual desire – or need - is met, very few men are happy to simply cook, clean and concede for their wives or partners.

Again, it's the mutuality that is missing.

He's pretty pessimistic about this working out for him. I've read his post over and over again trying to pick out the relevant threads of the argument, and I think it comes down to four (very good, IMHO) points:

• Most male submissive's submissiveness revolves around their sexuality
• Most males aren't "service submissives" where the serving itself is the end
• Most women are happy to have "their guy" do more around the house and dote on them in some ways
• Most women aren't (and don't want to be) sexually dominant in the way most submissive men fantasize about

Regarding this list point, "P" (the dominant wife of femdomwife.blogspot.com) describes a woman's approach to a d/s relationship as very different from a man's:

a D/S relationship is often far out of the context of how you might normally think of approaching and evolving within a relationship. I think women inherently come to the relationship table with needs and perspectives which are very different from their male counter parts; namely that they want an over the top romantic version of reality, a manly man to take care of them (in all senses of the word), to be adored, cherished for all time, the list goes on and on....

Dunno. This isn't hanging together as well as I had hoped it would. But I thought subservire's comments were distressingly relevant.

More later on Work and Play.