Sometimes FLR Is Sad

First, for the record, I am sitting here in a diaper (dry) writing this post. It is late Thursday afternoon and Mrs. Lion is due home any time now. Her orders were to be diapered when she arrived. I’m not taking any chances. Tonight is punishment night and so far I have nothing that rates a punishment. I intend to keep it that way. Mrs. Lion’s spankings are no fun at all.

I’ve been reading the FLR / enforced chastity blogosphere. There are lots out there. I find some by looking at two blog aggregators that have related blogs: keyheld and sheheld. It’s obvious which is which. They are both run by Tom Allen who is also a blogger himself. Most of the blogs he references also have lists of blogs that their owners like. The blogs I regularly read are listed in the right column of this page. It’s easy to traverse a lot of blogs this way. I find it interesting, sometimes sad, and often entertaining.

Many bloggers are painfully honest about their progress in their chosen kink. The chastity blogs offer interesting and amusing insights into how people approach enforced chastity. The FLR blogs are sometimes quite different. Like enforced chastity, almost all of the FLR blogs say that the male requested the female led relationship. That makes sense to me. After all, FLR is consensual and it is a rare wife who would spring FLR on her husband. They are out there, but they are the minority.

A significant minority of these blogs relate, often quite painfully, efforts the wife make to use FLR to help heal a broken marriage. The seem to reason (sensibly, I think), that when their husbands asked them to take charge they really wanted their wives to help put things back together by taking control. As far as my reading goes, these women took the request at face value and tried to use their dominant roles to improve their relationships. In some cases it appears to work, at least for a while. Issues crop up where the husband doesn’t do what he is asked and reverts back to old patterns of sullen silence and ignoring his wife’s attempt at being dominant. Very few women can stand up to this sort of pathology. The husband is returning to his old ways and his wife doesn’t really have the tools to correct him.

I think there is a good reason for this. Remember that FLR is consensual. Few wives can physically overpower their husbands, so if a husband doesn’t want to obey and refused to accept discipline, his wife is stuck and FLR is done. Since we don’t live in communities that support FLR, the wife can’t expect external support to get her husband under control. Posts that recount these issues often draw worthless comments like, “Spank him. That’s what he needs.” If she could do that, she would. Some of the stories are really painful to read. It’s clear to me, at least, that FLR is not the last resort in a bad marriage.

The opposite is true in a good marriage. I think we are an example of that. My lioness has my agreement to take charge and discipline me as needed. Recently, there have been times I truly didn’t want this. I don’t like disciplinary spankings. Nope, not one bit. But I can’t refuse to submit. We made a deal and Mrs. Lion gently reminds me of this as I, sometimes ungraciously, lie face down on the bed to take my medicine. My point is that since we are in a good place as a couple, not honoring my agreement, no matter how distasteful honoring it will be, is not an option. If we didn’t have the trust and love needed to surmount my rebellious, lion nature, FLR wouldn’t work here either.

I’ve also learned that there is a process to all this. Like any critter, I need to be trained to do what Mrs. Lion wants. With enforced chastity, if my first wait was much more than a few days, I would have been miserable and regretting my decision to be locked up. Because my waits gradually lengthened, with lots of short waits too, I am much more comfortable waiting for my orgasms. Training. FLR is no different. I am learning to accept punishments. I’m very sure that over time discipline will get tighter and punishments more severe and uncomfortable. But I will be able to accept them because I am developing habits: I’m learning to be unquestioningly obedient. I’m learning to accept punishment that I hate. I’m even learning to do things that amuse Mrs. Lion but don’t amuse me at all, like wearing a diaper and having my toenails painted. Yuck!

If a marriage is not really solid, the couple doesn’t have the luxury of a gradual glide into FLR. There are real things to be done that he hasn’t been willing to do in the past. She has important problems that need help getting solved. FLR looks like a way to get cooperation from him now. Of course, he has only thought about his hot fantasies of sexually submitting to his wife. He didn’t consider all the extra work he will have to do without question. He isn’t ready to face that. He needs time. She can’t give it to him. FLR has to fail. The marriage may crumble too.

The point I am trying to make is that if you delve into the various blogs, at least the ones that aren’t fantasies, you can learn a lot about what doesn’t work. Sometimes, happily, you will also find people who are successful and happy with FLR. One of the coolest things about the Internet is this opportunity to learn what others are doing with just a click of the mouse. I would love to hear what  you have learned in your own life and on the Web. This is just one diapered lion’s opinion. What’s yours?

3 Comments

  1. Author

    It is always difficult to tell what the whole picture is in a relationship based on blog posts. We all blog about events. It’s like when you are catching up with people. You tell the good news and the bad news. You don’t talk about what you had for breakfast. There is really no context in blogs to what happens except for the pieces we are privy to.

    From the time we had children we have had an FLR. It wasn’t called that, but I worked from home so I was there to make the decisions. I was in charge of the scheduling. I was the final word because it made sense. Now that the kids are gone, the relationship has evolved into a different kind of FLR but it hasn’t been a massive switch.

    It is necessary to have consent. Any of our “alternative lifestyles” (I hate that term, but it gets the point across) require consent. Snake is submissive but there are hard limits that we’ve agreed to. Our marriage was strong before we started delving more into the D/s realm so it wasn’t a fix for that. It was a fix for our sex life that wasn’t what we wanted it to be.

    I can’t answer to how an FLR could fix a relationship because that hasn’t been our experience. I can only answer to the D/s and chastity side which has definitely fixed the rest. But, I feel strongly that communication and consent are tantamount to all of it.

    1. Author

      Thanks for the very thoughtful reply. You bring up a very interesting point: For years you were providing leadership without any conscious structure. I think a lot of women find themselves in that role. Some, like you, are comfortable with it, others aren’t. Once you formalized it, something changed. For one thing, you both agreed on the authority you have. You gained the right to control his sexuality and to discipline him (I imagine). Implicit consent was converted to explicit consent. Your power was formalized. I also hate “alternative lifestyle” as a term. Would you agree that the only ingredient that makes FLR an alternative lifestyle the fact that you have explicit consent and that consent gives you expanded power?

  2. Author

    I don’t know. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of our life as an “alternative lifestyle.” It isn’t really an alternative for us. This is the right direction for us as a couple. We’ve realized that this works and makes both of us happy. If it is working and the other wasn’t, where is the choice or alternative? The power dynamic is in every relationship and the fact that it explicit just gives boundaries.

    I think FLR is considered an alternative lifestyle because it sounds scary to the Muggles. Look at how kinks and D/s are portrayed in the media. Anything that is considered outside of the traditional relationship is an alternative lifestyle to people choosing to label. For those of us in these relationships, they just are what works for us.

    I feel like the term “alternative lifestyle” is really there to be divisive. The us and them mentality, which is so pervasive. I just find it sad.

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