Relationship Advice for 21^stCentury FemDom Relationships

December Letters of the Month

From Deb:

Dear Paige,

My name is Deb and for many years I was a frustrated wife living in New England with my husband and two children.  I was sexually pent up and over time my marriage seemed to have lost its luster as my husband and I drifted and we grew apart.  Is this it?" I asked myself as I turned 40 a few years back?  I had become reliant upon my  vibrator for sex and in my frustration knew I needed to seek counseling;  I had lost my libido, and I realized I was living in what was the sexual equivalent of an intellectual wasteland, and I was too young to let entropy have its way with me.

I did not get the counseling I self prescribed; instead I had an affair with a very alpha Dominant male and became his "well-owned and well-loved" woman.  This lasted but a short time but I then knew I wanted to try to put this into place in my marriage.  It was something that I now understood was missing.  It took my affair to realize what was missing.  My husband and I now have a redefined our marriage and although I still have maintained contact with my former lover we have limited contact and have shared in a very unique triangle.  That was all then, a little over two years ago.  That experience taught me something – and my sexual life made a whole lot more sense when I realized what I was missing wasn't a man in my bed, but a man at my feet!

Sexual dominance came later in life to me and I'm not sure why. Yet I know it was always there.  Perhaps it was the lack of a female role model who told me that men-in-submission involved having a slave husband at my beck and call.  Sure, I'd seen the occasional leather-clad, whip-in-hand dominatrix photo as I grew up, but it was a shallow, meaningless icon and submission, what little I knew of it, described women succumbing through bondage, never men squirming in agony. So despite a cunning sexual wakefulness at an early age, I was clueless and undefined in my sexuality until my late thirties.

Somehow, clueless didn't render me entirely incapable. I had plenty of unrealized Dominant experiences. My first boyfriend, a shy, older virgin, underwent many interrogations from me about why he wanted sex from me – I wanted to know what he read, what his friends talked about, what he fantasized about. By all outward appearances, we progressed like all teens of the early 70s did: base-by-base. However, I commanded him to show it to me, ordered him to touch me there, and finally, orchestrated the mutual loss of our virginities. He became adept at pleasing all of my sexual whims, even though we didn't know the words Mistress and slave, even though we didn't know the first things about leather trappings and ritualized play.

Funny to think back on it now, but I never let him come in me. Born of necessity, and marginally safer than coitus interruptus or Vatican roulette, it was, nonetheless, I who took rudimentary control of his orgasms. And I unknowingly trained him well: We reunited for a Summer fling when I was in college and, although I was pill-protected then, the dear soul hadn't forgotten. It took a remarkable amount of fucking and several tries before he was sufficiently able and I then allowed him to come within me.

I went through my college years sexually active but wise. I didn't squander what was between my legs, taking lovers only occasionally and usually made my lovers from other neighboring towns, and leaving the local boys wondering. I quickly found that teaching men about sex was a lot like training horses: Impart your expectations to them with genuine affection and pride, and they will be loyal and thankful. Long ago when the first boy lowered himself to French-kiss my pussy lips, I discovered sensuality throughout my whole body and loved the long ride. When clit and his kiss met in a mutual clench of pleasure, I never looked back If only I'd known just how far I could've extended that horse metaphor.... Well, at least I had sensed that the air and the mystique of being sexually active smelled of power, even if I didn't know to claim that power fully.

"So close, yet so far" characterizes the history of my sexuality. I orchestrated and controlled much of my sex and sexual partners. Yet I did not know the language of dominance and submission. I knew I had power between my legs and that my sex made men weak in the knees and vulnerable in their cocks. Yet I didn't know I could put them on their knees and make them beg for bliss. I knew a little about kinky sex, repeatedly and always unsuccessfully cajoling partners into lowering themselves before me. Eventually I learned to be on top and in control. The few, early dominant fantasies I had involved women -- I longed for a strap-on phallus before I knew they existed. Yet when I did have an experience with a woman lover it was largely the vanilla notion of bedding her to please me raised my awareness of how dominant I could be.  Often I think of that time as I know women make the most beautiful love in the world.  Penis envy; I think not as it was recently suggested that I had a desire for a penis.  My having a penis is will never be something that I could identify with as an extension of my being or who I might be.  I am a woman and have no thoughts of ever wanting something so foreign or earthen being a part of my deeply femme identity.   

When I was in my late twenties I chose to marry a man who learned to capitulate to my decisions and desires, a man who was attracted to my strong, outgoing nature. Yet I didn't know at that time about lifestyle power structures.

It took that early 40-something libido kick to knock some awareness into my head, a time when masturbation was all I had and that left my body mildly satiated, but my mind and soul frustrated and incomplete. It wasn't until I began to read about FemDom that I had a label for my basic nature and a language through which I could seek sexual definition.  And I made up for lost time, big time. I educated myself about dominance and submission and all this type of relationship entailed; discovered fully -- and with all the trappings -- the joy, power, and pleasure from taking a man's sex and demanding my complete satisfaction; sometimes toying with it; and it uncovered a deep love and inherent renewal as I negotiated my marriage into a Female Dominant relationship with an open, kinky and power structure -- and finally, I understood myself.

In all ways, it was a journey worth taking. I don't regret my affair as it awakened me and brought me an awareness of what I needed.  I now have a deep appreciation for what I've gained by waiting. I'm not at all certain that, had I discovered Female Domination in my twenties, I would've valued the discovery and made the transition.  Thanks to certain life experiences, I have an emotional intelligence that rivals my rational intellect, and bringing both facets into my marriage has brought me great satisfaction and spirituality.  I now wear the pants in my relationship and if not for my awakening, I'd still be zipping up my pants in frustration.

Is my sexual Dominance, in part, a personal feminist statement?  I find myself wondering this as I realized that I embrace sexuality far more assertively and joyfully than women of preceding generations, especially among those women closely related to me.   While these women have provided some influence as I chose my path, whether they intended to or not, they also represent all the confusion and conflict over a woman's right to power and happiness.

Repeatedly in our lives, women face conflicting "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations, usually centering on some course we're about to chart for our lives, and often at the hands of other women.  I sometimes want to come out to my mother about my Dominant lifestyle. However, I wonder how she'd take it. She'd probably be fine if I declared I am sexually dominant; that's a clear-cut power statement if ever there was one.  Being Dominant and on top in sex meshes with being on top in life.   I no longer am willingly to put myself under the thumb of a man who orders me to do humiliating things, to follow at his beck and call? That I once exposed myself through sexual vulnerability and, even worse, that doing so is exceptionally erotic for me? That I submit? That might be beyond her ability of understanding.

I use to call my mother a closet feminist because she believed in the call yet she defied the social code of her time only within the most modest of parameters. (However, even her modest feminism forays reaped criticism from many in our family, so I can't minimize her bravery too greatly.) Through time, though, her feminism's grown and I've changed my assessment of her. Now, she readily embraces the social dynamics of women's rights, but because she hasn't explored the sexual ones, I consider her a "frigid" feminist. I say that without condemnation though because she intellectually understands a woman's right to pleasure.  However, her own unresolved issues of personal sexuality keep her from actualizing her own sexual fulfillment, so she can, at best, only struggle to envision how women implement their joys.

My mother and I have discussed sex and she is amazed that her daughter considers sexual fulfillment a major hallmark of my life and relationships.  I have tried to at times share my "tamer" sexual philosophies with her. But this is usually is lost in the translation.  Still, if she were the proverbial fly on the wall while I lunch with my girlfriend and discovered what renegades we are -- talking openly about how and when we last had our orgasms and signaling the server for more wine as we chat -- she'd grow faint of heart, at the very least.

The concept of sexual Dominance and submission seems to confuse most women and I sure it would confound my mother.  Yet I am confused, how can a woman find pleasure in giving up power? How can a woman submit to a male in bed and still dedicate her mind to strong thinking? Perhaps she would listen long enough to understand that I chose not to submit to a male because sexually I have found my power as a woman. That I am exercising my womanly freedom of choice when I decide what my sexual pleasures will be and that I exercise power when I act on those decisions. That my Feminine power is how I l now lay claim to my erotic territories. 

My mother has made it clear through the years that sex is a "thing" best left hidden -- a message that not only offends me but has affected the quality of my life as well. It's a message that left her sons clueless in youth and confused as they grew into adulthood. Though my husband's much older, oldest brother took him aside when he was in high school and told him about sex, the tight-lipped moral prudery of her generation had already done its worst: My husband's legacy of sexual inhibition is something that he's only just now, at middle age, beginning to overcome.

Yes, I resent my mothers moral code. I resent the fact that sex simply isn't acknowledged, as if it's entirely too uncivilized a subject to ever have a place in conversation. By extension, a woman isn't entitled to enjoy carnal pleasures, a man's sexuality lacks positivity, and alternative orientations merit immediate condemnation. That sexuality isn't discussed with children as they mature, and that, by default, ignorance equates to innocence.

I am convinced that my mother’s sex-negative attitudes spin as much out of the puritan ethic of self-control as any outright shame. To her way of thinking, society suffers when indulgence wins out over moderation, when people think only of themselves and their own pleasures and forget their greater obligations to society and family. To her, any unbridled behavior is orgiastic and grotesque, full of pride and greed.

In some respects, she's right, but I cannot help but observe that she doesn't practice moderation herself. Her emotional and sexual repression is an extreme of the pendulum that's every bit as strong and detrimental to society as utter hedonism would be. And I must admit, when I look back on my personal history with the messages of her generation, I jump on the pendulum myself out of frustration and defiance.

Today, I am mutinously sexual, but it wasn't always that way. For well over a decade, I shelved my erotic self to be the good wife and play by the old rules. However, mid-life showed me the misery of those ways and from the tears of that misery I reclaimed my sexuality, rediscovered myself, and lived on. It wasn't easy. My husband has overcome some but not all of his inhibitions. It remains unclear just how submissive he is capable of being; but his lust runs deep as I have discovered. Our redefined marriage has helped preserve and improve the marriage we share. 

My Dominant attitude toward my husband fly’s in the face of my mother's sensibilities my renewed sexuality -- bold, brazen, unrepentant – also confronts her prudery. I will no longer withhold myself from the heat of things carnal and lustful. I will not abdicate my right to be sexual, to embrace erotic expression, and to believe in its power to enrich and enlighten me.

I will not be silenced by the repressive voices. I will, if I must, remain silent to my older generation. I am audacious enough to rank sensual living high on my personal agenda. I have my husband serve my sexual appetite, freely and with lust coursing through my veins. And why not?  In coming to this point in my life, I bring an appetite all my own, and in need of quenching.

Quenching, but not silencing.

P.S. Recently, on a week long trip home I took a small step in coming out to my Mother.  She chided me for how I Dominated over my husband in her presece.  I am totally dominant with him in all areas of life and my mother was offended. So I wrote her a letter.  We're both writers and, as such, we've always discussed the process of writing. But discussing the substance of my writing -- beyond the fact that I wrote my thoughts about my sexuality and showed it to her -- was something that I felt I needed to do.  So, I took some baby steps; mom now knows there's "whips and chains" involved. Yes, a proverbial and trite description, but one I can build on when her next batch of questions, concerns, and curiosities come along. She knows, too, that I like the "whips and chains" because they best keep me on my creative edge, to keep me focused and sharp. That I think she can understand, artist to artist.

Although I have now broached the subject with my mother, I suspect I will keep most all of my sexual life from her, even my writing, because the generational differences are simply too vast and we are each entrenched in our own existence. The pendulum that I mentioned earlier swings between us, sharp, and dividing us; but I am comfortable in at last reaffirming my feminism, defining my dominance and acknowledging my femininity. I have found my voice and my strength. Perhaps, in the end, that's enough.

I know in a sense from where my sense of sexual dominance came: my girlhood equestrian days. Simply put, train a horse, school a horse, develop that sense of command that comes from earning and keeping its loyal obedience, and... well, I am sure you get my drift. The training approach for a submissive isn't all that different. Going through adolescence and puberty wearing my boots, spurs, and a crop was a definite plus for me!

Defining me as a woman didn't take long when I started realizing my power.  Relating to my husband as I do now gives me such a heady surge that I know I’ll never turn back.

Deb

Dear Deb,

Your development into a more dominant woman is typical, and may become more pronounced especially as you advance toward age 50.  Alternatively, the submissive desires within males intensify as they mature and as they hit age 50 and many men are often at a point of vulnerability and will obtain more sexual fulfillment from being dominated than they do from having sex. Women are just the opposite.  As women mature, their orgasms can actually peak and gain in pleasure and intensity, especially if she did not experience the pleasure of oral servitude at a younger age.  Additionally the female dominance emerges in many ways. Men, on the other hand, lose intensity and pleasure in their orgasms as they age. Many men become impotent on some level as they age but genuinely submissive men obtain considerable mental fulfillment from being taken into subspace by being dominated.

Dwelling on the past usually does none of us any good. I encourage you to focus on the present.  I accept that  my actions might leave my mother bewildered, they certainly would leave my even older mother-in-law aghast.  She is nearly eighty years old, a solid generation older than my mother, and her views about women are stiff and stilted, conservative and parochial. Ironically, she's actually quite an assertive and opinionated personality -- not at all meek.   But I accept her and I think this is important to understand.  Do not offend your mother’s sensibilities with your views on sexuality.  No matter how repressed you feel she has made you, it is for you to now discover your life and to live it. 

Your marriage was headed for doom and the two of you were likely headed for separation. As to your affair, I make no judgments. I have encountered all kinds of different behaviors from those in relationships and one never can tell someone what they ultimately should or should not do.  Fortunately your affair taught you some thing’ and it awakened you to some inner needs.  If you have been married for as many years as your letter indicates, then obviously something about this relationship is satisfying to you both. 

Generally a Dominant Female relationship falls into one of several categories. There are some women who love to dominate her husband only and have no need or desire to play with other men. Then there is the woman that has no need or desire to have sex with another man other than her husband, but her dominant nature is so strong that she needs to dominate other men. She enjoys having sexual Dominant involvement with other men but she never crosses the line and she never engages in sexual relations with anyone other than her husband.  Hers is a need to dominate.

Then there are those women who have such strong dominant urge’s that she desires to cuckold her husband to experience that kind of liberation and control. This type of a dominant woman and her submissive husband enjoy intense humiliation play and cuckolding accompanied by the denial of the husband adds a powerful element to their FemDom relationship.  Female Domination takes on all forms and there are many different variations to a Female Dominant marriage.  

Yours is a type of relationship many women are engaged in with their husbands. Your husband being able to worship you as his Goddess while being cuckolded is his fantasy.  This is a common fantasy of many submissive men. Men write me all the time asking where they can meet such a woman. The book "Venus in Furs" deals with this subject. Although cuckolding is not for most couples but these types of relationships do exist and are practiced within the FemDom world.   

You confirm what most women tell me and that is they prefer oral servitude over penis penetration.  Servicing a male is not something that Dominant women typically perform for their submissive male and strap-on play is becoming more common, as it quickly breaks down the male ego and is very effective in Female dominated relationships.

You are on a path toward a very exciting and interesting life. And to think that you were afraid that you were destined to a sexually boring life?  Your affair opened the door to a whole new and exciting world.  I hope you have many more Female Dominant filled years ahead of you and I hope that you and your husband enjoy life and each other to the fullest. Thanks for sharing your story with us.

November Letters of the Month