Sunday, July 19, 2009

What's in it for her? (continued): Dark Side Safari

Earlier, I asked "What's in it for her?" and got this anonymous reply:
For my Wife it means that all of my desire is kept intact waiting for her to use it. I can't steal it by masturbating and I certainly can't have an affair.
She now knows that after week of chastity I become needy and I dote and serve her like I am her servant. I also never talk back or raise my voice to her when she has me locked up.
I means she gets a perfect husband, or at least the ability to mold me into one.
Taking this at face value, the Mr Anonymous paints a picture of a very normal couple....

No, really, there is a lot that's normal about them: she worries about his fidelity... they both think of sexual energy as finite so have an issue with his masturbation... both have negative feelings about masculinity... and both feel she needs some extra leverage to make him behave attentively.

A lot of people are like this.

The normal thing would be for them to be dysfunctional. Their marriage should be a merry-go-round of trust and distrust, intimacy and frantic distancing, love and hostility. The options should be expensive therapy and/or even more expensive divorce.

Instead, they've addressed their issues directly and used a male chastity device to secure his mental and physical fidelity, and as leverage to resolve the conflict between his old-style machismo, and his urge to be a nurturing husband.

So, now - assuming the goalposts don't keep moving - they're not dysfunctional. But he wears a chastity belt. You can't even call it unhealthy, since they probably have a darn sight more intimacy than most couples. It's not even dark - it sounds positively fluffy.

Strange...

They've done what geeks call, "a hack" or perhaps "workaround". No need to tangle with complex emotions, just slap on this piece of hardware and all will be right.

As a lifestyle, this can't possible work unless both partners have very similar values and feelings about gender and relationships. (So don't try this at home...) But, perhaps it points to something less 24/7 that the rest of us can enjoy: experiencing erotic roles authentically and in earnest rather than in play.

Let's call it the Dark Side Safari.

According to Families and How to Survive Them, we tend to pair up with others who share similar issues by the very act of trying to avoid them. (How this is supposed to happen deserves a different blog entry.)

If you look around you, you'll see that relationships usually go either to the Light Side, where the couple resolve each other's issues, or to the Dark Side, where their matching fuckedupness locks them into a private couple hell.

Mrs and Mrs Anonymous are actually in their Light Side, but for most of the rest of us, that sort of power exchange belongs firmly in the Dark Side. (For myself, had I met somebody like Mrs Anonymous, I would have been sucked in, but would always have been yearning for something more... normal as a baseline for our relationship.)

I think the issues that lure our relationships to the Dark Side don't ever go away. Once in a while we give into the pull - admit defeat - and wallow in them. The safest - and healthiest - way to do this has to be through taking on BDSM roles.

So me, I have mixed feelings about masculinity, a nagging feeling that I am unlovable and incompetent at intimacy. Most of the time, real world experience renders these feelings irrelevant. But, when I take a Dark Side Safari into erotic slavery, I get a holiday from the (very) low level guerrilla war.... and it feels good.

As for what my other half gets - you'd have to ask her. Logically, though, there's lots of authentic benefits that a chaste lover can offer his belle. It all depends on the lady...
  • Freedom from performance anxiety - she never knows whether or not he is hard.
  • Freedom from penetration by penis - let's face it, chastity belt sex with a prosthetic is about as safe as you can get... it's also clean - nice, even - and not really "sex" (for those harbouring guilt).
  • Freedom to indulge - there's no worry that he will run out of steam and lose interest.
  • Freedom from being "used"or "giving in" - unless of course you get too clever about the whole thing.
  • Freedom to be hostile - sex as a way to cause hurt is normally reserved for men.
Of course she also gives up things she likes about vanilla sex - mess penises squirting everywhere, the two-way intimacy of mutual pleasure, his vulnerability when he comes, and the immediate sense of giving sensually.

But then, this is the Dark Side, we'll be home safe in the morning.

Monday, July 13, 2009

What's in it for her?

Normal women enjoy relationships because they are relationships: two-way intimacy, with give and take and a sense of the other's personality. They like sex with men because they are men, with masculine traits and penises.

So why on earth would a woman want a slave, or a chaste lover?

The answer would be useful not just for selling the idea to our partners, but also because it will give us some idea of how to support the resulting action.