Do Dominant Wives Need Whips and Chains?

This question stands in for a lot of questions women ask about Female Led Relationships:

Do Dominant Wives Need Whips and Chains?

Well, a nice whip or two can be useful. But the real question here is whether FLRs have much to do with the BDSM world. And like most questions, this one has a variety of answers.

My FLR has very few of the leather and chains elements. We don't have a dungeon. We do have a bit of bondage gear and I am partial to having a couple of sets of police-grade handcuffs close to hand if I want elliot, and occasionally Mady, to be reminded of their positions in my household.

However, in actual fact, the BDSM world, both amateur and professional is very different from the world of FLRs and dominant wives. The essential difference is that BDSM is about a scene or series of scenes which can be very intense but from which the participants emerge and resume their daily lives. (And, yes, I am aware that there can be situations where one person makes a permanent commitment to a Mistress/slave relationship but even here the day to day intrudes.)

In FLRs there may be moments of great intensity - just ask elliot when he is silly enough to be cheeky, much less rude - and punishment can be quite severe. However, those moments fit into a full time commitment of obedience, deference and submission. Part of that commitment is sexual. A man's acceptance of chastity as his natural and permanent state, the re-enforcement of that chastity with a cock cage or other, more elaborate, chastity belt. Most of all, the husband's or boyfriend's recognition that a woman's sexual gratification is his real sexual objective and that his little messes are of no great interest means that the woman is firmly in charge of the couple's sexuality.

So the "whips and chains" question really comes down to what a dominant wife enjoys. And here is a hint, very few women, dominant or otherwise, find much interesting about the theatrical elements of BDSM. It is a conversation I have had online with many women and directly with a few close female friends - it turns out that some of the reluctance that many women have about assuming the dominant role turns on the fact they don't find pulling on thigh-high leather boots and a fantasy land leather corset very appealing. Sure, they might act the role of dominatrix for fun on date night or Halloween, but it is not a common lifestyle choice.

As you might expect, there can be a real disconnect between what a submissive man is expecting in a FLR and what his wife or girlfriend actually does. The elaborate rituals of BDSM may be fantastically erotic for a man and leave his wife wondering what the fuss is about. However, a clever wife can use the erotic cliches of the BDSM world as wonderful teases for her chaste husband. If she wants to.

As I discussed below, men have the most particular fetishes. These can be obsessive and, if left in the closet, can actually impair an otherwise solid marriage, female led or not. Yet very few male fetishes are particularly revolting or, for that matter, difficult to indulge.

Men also are remarkable in their ability to construct elaborate fantasies. "Whips and Chains" are usually part of a larger concept of genuine helplessness in the face of a dominant woman. (And, yes we can speculate where that comes from; but origin is less important than intensity.) While an untrained husband might procrastinate about building you raised vegetable beds, he will be more than willing to turn out the whipping rail of his dreams. Or buy dual purpose furniture which can double as a spanking bench. Weight bearing eye hooks can sprout in the most unlikely places and one wife I know has a beautiful dressing room which artfully conceals a full toy chest - lots of different sized dildos adapted for pegging - a cabinet for her collection of dog sticks, riding crops and dressage whips. It has several nicely concealed fixed points for bondage and a lovely chaise with a single, high, round and padded arm. But her pride and joy is a large dog crate. She owns a large dog but he's never been inside the crate.

"tom has always been deeply into the idea of close confinement," said my friend. "Another friend of mine was "crate training" her dog. Well, I put two and two together and when I had tom build my dressing room, I ordered a large, rather nicely made, furniture really, dog crate. Now, when tom gets on my nerves, or I want to have a nice read in bed or really for any reason at all, I have him strip to his cock cage. Then all I say is "Crate" and in he goes. It has a cute little lock but I had him add a real padlock hasp. Once he's in I go in and snap the lock shut. Then I just forget he's there. It isn't punishment exactly. And my dressing room is hardly a dungeon, but tom knows if he is sent to my dressing room he is entirely at my command. Usually, I will just crate him; but if he needs a whipping or I feel like pegging him, well everything I need is close to hand. And I got a wonderful, very girly, dressing room out of it."

Dominant wives are all about training their husbands. Sometimes that is a matter of punishment, sometimes reward. And sometimes the rewards look an awful lot like punishments. But for both a dominant wife and her submissive husband, the whips and chains are all about working towards creating an obedient, attentive and loving man.