Rule #3: Look after the Vanilla, because that's where the Femdom lives

12 Rules of Malesub Life: An Antidote to Being a Loser or a Pest (articles unlock every Sunday)

COMING SOON!

For who exactly I mean by malesub, see the Introduction.

The other night, I gave Xena a long foot rub. Then she beat me until I squealed, played with her vibrator while I watched, before calling on my tongue and fingers. Finally, after a nice orgasm, she despatched me to sleep in my “cell” (her dressing room). In the morning, I woke still wearing my steel collar. I brought her breakfast in bed and got her off to work, did some chores, then unlocked the collar and settled down to my own work. Oh, and of course, I was wearing a chastity device throughout.

Rule #3 is about that unpacking the vanilla things you need in order to emulate my twelve hours of wallowing in Femdom.

Can we agree that none of it would have been possible without Xena, my very dominant wife of a quarter of a century?

So, first of all, you need an established relationship with a dominant woman.

We met as students, which required some real world competence on my part just to be there, and social skills just to approach her. I was reasonably groomed and dressed, and came across as having my life together, and was genuinely fascinated by her and her life. There was kink almost from the start, but the whole falling in love and getting married process is markedly vanilla and requires vanilla things.

Then there’s staying married. That entails the business of growing into adult life, and adulting successfully, of living up to responsibilities, of shaping your shared future, and of maturing and continuing to be an attractive person as you age. OK, a happy sex life is part of that, which does mean mutually satisfying kink. However, most of that is vanilla.

So no vanilla, no marriage (or equivalent), no Female Led Relationship, no Femdom as a routine part of your life, no deep spiritual satisfaction of submitting to the woman you love.

Next, there’s economic stuff.

We have space and uninterrupted privacy. There’s a big bedroom with room to swing a cat (o’ nine tails, of course), a dressing room that doubles as cell. There’s the audio privacy that comes from having your own place without thin party walls — it’s easier to relax when you’re not worried about the sounds of a whipping or a vibrator carrying to the ears of neighbours or roommates. And there’s a house that’s ours that I can wander around in with my collar.

(And yes, if you have a family, you’re limited to the bedroom, but your adventures will be uninhibited in proportion to how well laid out and constructed your house is, and how spaced out the rooms. You probably also want an en suite.)

Sex toys are not that expensive these days, but are still expensive discretionary spends. Good chastity devices don’t come cheap. Larger items of dungeon equipment — cages and spanking benches — are surprisingly affordable, but you need a private space to keep them. An actual dedicated dungeon? That requires a whole extra room in your home.

All of that costs money, the kind of money comes from vanilla careers in the vanilla world.

Finally, there’s the action itself. It was mostly about satisfying Xena’s vanilla needs.

There’s nothing innately kinky about being a good masseur and lover. Femdom doesn’t make you magically skilled at them, they are vanilla skills you have to sometimes research, and always learn. Physical attractiveness is a vanilla thing, and being submissive doesn’t give you a free pass from watching your waistline and going to the gym, or whatever. Aside from satisfying Xena’s sadism, the expectations I brought to that evening, the broad limits Xena enjoyed, were all about her relaxing and winding down after a hard week at work. She enjoyed a massage with a non-penetrative happy ending, then had the bed to herself for the night, with breakfast in bed in the morning. Those are vanilla wants satisfied by Femdom — but more of that in a later Rule.

And the domestic service I performed? The clean bedroom, folded away laundry, the tidy house, the meal I cooked earlier, the nice morning coffee? Those all relied on the kind of skills you learn from Marie Condo and Martha Stewart, but they satisfied my need to really serve the woman I love, and maintained her sense of control, feeding a dominance that’s become casually automatic over the last ten years.

So, this kind of Femdom takes place in the real world between real people, with real world constraints. As a baseline, it demands vanilla skills and traits to satisfy vanilla needs. Even at its most intense, there are vanilla prerequisites, and vanilla benefits.

If you’re young and starting out, chase Femdom, yes, but also chase a good career, or work towards building a life that comes with built-in with time and space and privacy. If you’ve found an amazing relationship with dollops of Femdom, pay attention to the vanilla side of it, and don’t neglect your studies or your early career.

Similar applies if you are middle-aged, whatever your relationship status, but situations are so varied and individual, you’ll have to work out the details for yourself — though some of the other Rules may help.

Just remember, look after the vanilla, because that's where the Femdom lives.

(See the other rules for malesub life.)

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While you’re waiting for the next Rule, tale a look at my manifesto…