The actual reason "careful what you wish for" is true
How Kinky Power Exchange becomes real #9
It’s maybe fifteen years ago, and I’ve just spent two hours massaging, then fingering and licking my wife. The conversation goes something like this:
Xena props herself up on the pillows, face still flushed from orgasm. “Can we always do it like this?”
I’m still strapped into my DIY chastity belt, hard and drippy, with her juices drying on my face. “Um…”
I flannel and say I don’t really want this to be the whole of our relationship.
But here I am now — 2024 — in my fourth year of permanent chastity, and ten years into a Female Led Relationship.
Remember where we came in with this series?
To make your partner feel more dominant: Identify vanilla things that your partner already likes that can be unreasonably improved through power exchange, and then suggest and deliver them.
I did that.
Xena — being more than somewhat assertive — also did that for herself.
Many of those “vanilla things” Xena liked morphed into very kinky tastes. She already had the kind of sadistic streak that came out when “helpfully” tweezing my unwanted back hairs. She quickly discovered that the whip was even more fun. For similar reasons, she enjoyed my sexual frustration. Throw in some fastidiousness and we ended up with me in chastity as the default. The same fastidiousness, plus her preferring to be in being in charge, gives us the domestic service. And preferring being in charge translates to her always controlling the intimate action. Underlying all that maybe she has a need for structure… but well I’ll come back to this.
We very much treated the dynamic as real, partly because Xena would get irritated at some gut level when I didn’t. So over a couple of years, we evolved a kernel of unfiltered femdom that always applied in the bedroom, and increasingly applied outside it…
Oh, the stuff about firewalling to prevent the kinky leaking into the vanilla? We didn’t really do much of that. There’s more to say about FLRs, but right now, I want to talk about not the scope of your power exchange dynamic, so much as what happens inside that scope.
“Careful what you wish for” sounds like a fappy cliche, but turns out to be true.
Vanilla versus Femdom: the rematch
Last time, I talked about how a kinky dynamic is vulnerable to contamination by the vanilla. However, even earlier, I talked about the way that, without a firewall, kink could leak into the vanilla.
Which is it?
Both!
It’s complicated. Let’s start with the bedroom and work out from there.
In her book Come As You Are, Dr Emily Nagoski makes the distinction between a woman’s erotic accelerator and her erotic brakes. So a tight pair of buttocks might trigger the accelerator, but dirty sheets might trigger the brakes.
If we think of how to apply this, then we end up with turn ons and — let’s call them — free passes that remove turn offs. It’s an important distinction because turn ons are potentially additive — if tight buttocks are a turn on, how about sculpted biceps? — whereas free passes hit diminishing returns — an ironed sheet isn’t going to get her any hotter and wetter.
Looked at this way, a particular kink can be a turn on, but it can also be a free pass. In our relationship, male chastity does both. Contemplating my predicament sometimes turns Xena on, but it’s also a always a precondition for sexual activity; a free pass for the turn off of my messy erect penis and maybe the possibility I might just jerk off or ask for sex.
The thing is, free passes are almost impossible to take back.
(Article unlocks Sunday. In the meantime, catch up on the rest of the series.)
How Femdom overwrites the Vanilla (if you let it)
Generalising from our experience and a few conversations with friends, this is what I think is common.
In an established relationship, kinky turn ons are optional extras. Back when we started out, Xena discovered she liked beating me. However, when I made the kink too complicated — essentially invoking the vanilla by too much negotiating — she simply stopped doing it. We still had the rest of our relationship.
Kinky free passes, however, tend to overwrite the original activity.
From the dominant point of view, the kink is simply better. Worse, having experienced the activity with free pass, it becomes harder for her to ignore the turn offs when she faces them without it. Thus, once Xena had become used to “oral where Giles shuts up and does as he’s told and doesn’t expect any reciprocation after”, she had no reason to go back to the vanilla version. If cunnilingus happens, then it’s with her in charge.
I suspect free passes are most compelling for the kind of erotic activities where couples would otherwise take turns. (Remember the Equality Matching and Market Pricing relational models?) The activity was already an exchange of service, now she doesn’t need to take her turn or make it more interactive than she wants.
So gradually, Femdom overwrites all the purely recreational intimate activity. For example, after a couple of years of femdom, the only long massage Xena wanted was one “she doesn’t need to talk unless she feels chatty and Giles keeps strictly to the designated areas and does not try to seduce her or go off and masturbate after” kind.
“That’s fine”, you say, “but we’ve still got good old passionate fucking!”
But do you?
What about love making?
I think it’s a common experience that spontaneous love making becomes rarer after the two-year honeymoon period, and even rarer as couples enter middle age. She may also experience physical changes that put her off intercourse, and hormonal changes that make her more irritable and less tolerant — more likely to slam on the brakes.
Meanwhile, kink may turn out to be a more reliable source of raw intimacy than sex.
So far, we’ve been thinking about sexual activities as specific mechanical ones. What about higher level ones?
If “experiencing visceral intimacy” is an activity, then whips and chains are maybe a free pass around the messy uncontrolled business of fucking. Similarly, if “feeling loved” is the activity, then sadistic games are maybe a free pass around the unreliability of “love making”.
Some women, given the choice between meat-and-two-veg sex with their partner of maybe decades, and beating him until he squeals, choose the latter as the best way to authentic connection.
How do you go back from that?
“I tell you what, darling, let’s have mediocre sex tonight?”
All this applies beyond the bedroom as well. Once Xena got used to getting her way on domestic standards without an argument, she would no longer take no for an answer. A Female Led Relationship is a free pass from having to deal with the various things that would otherwise irritate her about being married to me!
So, really, be careful what you wish for!
So, Femdom overwrote almost our entire relationship. There are still very normal and vanilla corners, but even there Xena can pull rank.
I’m left with a choice between femdom intimacy or no intimacy, and taking orders around the house or having lots of stupid arguments. That’s no choice… and the lack of choice is itself a turn on, so not only is there no realistic way to dial things back, but I’m not capable of trying to do that anyway.
Hence, really, careful what you wish for!
There’s a darker sting in the tail still yet to cover, but maybe I’ll finally get to that next week!
