Our Journey (Or: Another maybe way to get more women into chastity)

I wanted to start a thread about our experiences and what we have learned on our journey over the past year and a half. I should have done this a while ago, but didn’t feel comfortable posting real-time day to day personal experiences. But now, in hind site have some experiences and things to share for men interested in chastity and feeling the draw of wanting something different from their relationship, intimacy and sexual experiences.

(Note that this is what we did and what has worked for us. There are as many paths and reasons to do something as there are people and couples. I think our background and experiences will resonate with a certain population, and I hope this helps give some ideas. I know for others, their motivations for things like chastity may be vastly different.)

My wife and I had hit a wall, after having had children, raising them, work life, school life, all the day to day. Our “us” relationship had all but disappeared, with all of the typical symptoms. Lack of desire, distance, lack of communication, distractions like masturbation and porn, emotional disconnect (from ourselves and each other), and we had no idea what to do about it.

A few years ago we did start working on ourselves, understanding our history, learned scripts from childhood and why we behaved the way we did. Why we weren’t able to talk about our needs and desires, me disconnected from my emotions, her from her sexuality. We had no idea what we needed for ourselves, much less for each other.

Then, a little over a year ago I found Devotional Sex (http://www.devotionalsex.com/), which provided a great framework for us to begin to build a dynamic between us that started to re-balance our masculine and feminine energy and sexuality, to focus less on male penis/orgasm driven sex and start to put her needs and desires more as the focus. We struggled with this because of…well, learned behavior. The foundation of Devotional Sex has 4 commitments for him and 4 for her, and says:

Devotional Sex is when HE commits to:

K1: having far fewer ejaculations than he used to, and letting her (or their agreed Spell) decide when he does so,

K2: taking primary responsibility for keeping his erotic energy under control,

K3: fulfilling all her sexual and sensual wishes (within what he is willing to do), and

K4: openly and honestly communicating with her on all aspects of this lifestyle,


whilst SHE commits to:

P1: using the control he has given her to enhance HER sexual, sensual and intimate life,

P2: enhance HIS sexual and intimate life so that he is equally happy,

P3: always respect his arousal and to use his erotic energy to enhance the relationship, and

P4: not having him ejaculate at most Sessions.


This sounds great on paper, only she wasn’t comfortable expressing her desires, much less knowing what they are. For Devotional Sex to work, each partner needs to focus on their commitment. Which means he must communicate his emotions, desires and challenges. She must use his energy to fuel her desire and use that energy to enhance her sexual and intimate life. But how do we each do this? Her belief being “having desires is bad, women aren’t allowed to be selfish in this way”. And for me, I can’t express my emotions. Hell, I don’t even know what they are, much less feeling comfortable expressing them.

But, unless I can express my feelings and desires, she won’t feel safe and protected. And if she can’t relax into herself and feel pleasure, the dynamic won’t work. It falls apart.

So, back to the drawing board. How to change our old scripts, how to heal from past trauma and for me, learn how to connect with y emotions and express myself. How to simply be honest about how I feel, what I need, what I desire. This builds trust so she can relax into me and feel safe that because I am expressing my real self. She knows what she is working with. Some she may like, some she may not, but in either case, at least it’s real.

This lead us on another journey over the past year and we explored the following:

I listened to a bunch of the Kink Friendly podcast with Mistress Alisa (https://www.podbean.com/player-v2/?...0035e22&btn-skin=7&size=315" allowfullscreen=)

Season One is for men, Season 2 for women and Season 3 for couples. She warns that she is often a complete turn off for women, and this is true for my wife. Totally doesn’t relate. But for me, Alisa made some really good early points about “selfish sex”, letting our [very strong] masculine energy drive our sexual activity…in a very selfish way. Over time, a common theme, and that of chastity (first time I’ve said chastity in this post), helps shift the focus to her needs, desire and pleasure.

I read No More Mr. Nice Guy to learn how I got here.
https://www.amazon.com/No-More-Mr-N...1676992609&sprefix=no+more+mr+,aps,138&sr=8-1

This book does a great job tracing the path many of us (Gen X and younger) took in learning about our masculinity and sexuality. How we view our own masculine identity, how that has been shaped, and also how we grew up to have the sexual view point that we do. And how it creates problems aligning to and supporting the feminine.

We both read Unbound: A Woman’s Guide to Power (I learned about it on this site)

https://www.amazon.com/Unbound-Woma...qid=1676992772&sprefix=unbound,aps,365&sr=8-5

Here you will learn how to say and receive NO, and how to navigate it. Holding boundaries. Kasia teaches women how to re-claim their power, discover their desires and pursue those desires. As well as teaching the tools to navigate resistance (Locate, Accept, Influence), and drives home the concept of “Smush”, this middle space where mind and body are out of alignment. Often shows up when we’re trying to make someone happy, but it doesn’t match what we want. This book is fantastic for men and women, my wife and I read it together, did the exercises and it was eye opening and powerful. Life changing for my wife to be able to pin down things she experiences and how she acts, and where it came from. Now in day to day life I encounter smush every-friggin-where. Indecision, wishy washyness, ambiguity, lack of decision making. At work, in the community, call it out on each other, and things we've taught our kids.

Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure
https://www.podbean.com/player-v2/?...0035e22&btn-skin=7&size=315" allowfullscreen=

This was a good book to go through the “mechanics” of female arousal and sexuality. Women often don’t learn about themselves and their sexuality. This book helps open that up and explore. It also does a good job to introduce and describe the masculine and feminine. The differences and complementary nature of each. The yin and yang symbols represent that interrelationship and when we think about men and women containing both but leaning towards one or the other, we can start to see how the puzzle pieces fit together to complement and support each other.

Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow: From Habit to Harmony in Sexual Relationships
https://www.amazon.com/Cupids-Poiso...1676995348&sprefix=cupids+pois,aps,213&sr=8-1

We read this several years ago, and came out of it (at the time) with “yeah, whatever”. But in retrospect it’s an important step in understanding the hormonal cycle for me and why to regulate ejaculation. This is a fundamental thing learned in a chastity dynamic, around how teasing and denial works, the drop, losing focus for desiring her.

This is a good article about providing “Masculine Contentment”: https://tealswan.com/resources/articles/masculine-containment-r443/

While this may sound like a ball busting idea, think about it and some of the ideas presented. We men need to understand what women need. Not want, but need. How does the masculine provide “containment” and safety for the feminine? How do we create that safe environment? What does it mean to ‘contain’? For years my wife described what she needed from me and it made zero sense to me. Not only could I not relate, I had no idea what specifically to do. This article cleared that up for me. The masculine is powerful, goal focused, think of a river bank. The feminine is fluid. Like water, it flows with energy based on emotion and the moment. It also gets lost on the journey and makes endless to do lists and full of ideas swirling around. It needs containment, to flow…it needs a river bank. We need a purpose, and to be that riverbank and provide containment gives us the satisfaction that we have a purpose in our woman’s life. Build on that and add the richness of nuance, emotion, sexuality and the enmeshment of this together and you get a magical environment that feeds itself.

It takes work, self awareness, and practice to get there.

I proposed the idea of chastity around Thanksgiving of last year. To change up our stagnating Devotional Sex dynamic. To physically force us to push on in our exploration and growth. For me to express my desires, to push within myself to say what I wanted to explore and experience. And for my wife to grow and become more confident in her feminine and, through her feminine power, really embrace my masculine sexual energy. And to be comfortable challenging me. Women love to challenge, to have us show our true grit. With that, they know our true strength to provide for and protect them.

We needed to make it abundantly obvious that nothing intimate or sexual was going to happen unless we worked together to make it happen.

Presenting chastity was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. So out there, vulnerable and kinky. Vanilla couple us putting this on the table. My god, she's going to turn blue, laugh at me and walk out the door. Yet once I started to put the words out, it flowed like magic. And my wife was quite open minded and receptive. Everything we had done to this point, the self work, learning about each other, trying to re-create the “we”, set the foundation for chastity as a tool to help. Help me focus, help make the commitments defined in Devotional Sex work, and as a reminder and physical symbols of our commitments and role to support each other. There is absolutely a kinky element to it, but that’s the point. That’s where we are. Bring it on! My wife knows I am working to make myself the best I can, working to support her, and her trust in me is growing. My adoration and desire for her is growing as her confidence grows.

To get started, we read “Chastity: A Guide for Vanilla Wives” (https://www.amazon.com/Chastity-Guide-Vanilla-Milyssa-Morrisette-ebook/dp/B094D1CQKN) together. This gave us a foundation for the dynamic and look at different reasons to do it, and archetypes. If she does this, who does she need to become? Some whip cracking dominatrix? No…she can be herself, and as it turns out, incorporate this role into the woman she wants to become (see the next book). Chastity plays a balanced role in our lives, for me as a way to reign in the lizard brain and more easily put my focus on ‘us’ and other things. It polarizes my sexual energy and focus on her. I feel less ‘scattered’. It’s like putting a leash on a pet lion. Suddenly that beautiful, powerful lion can be tamed. It will roar and chase prey or tackle threats when it needs to, but can also calm down and sit by her side and be her calm protector. It’s hard to describe, but just works.

We also read articles on the “Evolving Your Man” website (https://www.evolvingyourman.com/ )

and adopted the rules from the Happy Marriage website (https://happy-marriage.neocities.org/) to establish clarity that a) we are agreeing to do this and b) we’re going to follow some rules so when we slip back to old habits and “smush”, we can call each other out and get back on track. Without knowing where you’re going and who you want to become, it’s easy to fall back to old habits, “lock and forget”, or for him to get resentful. Resentment is OUR responsibility. We feel resentment because we are not expressing our needs. We need to own that. Lock and forget can be because she doesn't see herself in this role, she doesn't understand and isn't seeing the point. Guys need to explain it, have a higher vision for themselves...don't resent, take action and explain.

I think for many couples exploring chastity, it does start as “his kink”, and over time they learn and back into the lessons we’ve learned. We built up to chastity as part of our growth and exploration. Doing some of that foundational work to understand yourself, your scripts from your past, understand the dynamics in your relationship and focusing on improving those fundamentals will help with improving intimacy, communication and sexuality and pave the way for things like chastity. And make exploration easier. Looking at it in reverse order, we built up to chastity, whereas many couples start with chastity. Then they see a dynamic grow and benefits unfold as they learn and make discoveries in themselves that very much align to our journey. I wonder if they kind of stumble into him learning how to meet her needs, and her learn the power of teasing and denial and how just ‘right’ that is in the flow of masculine and feminine.

Theoretically we could completely forego chastity and get to this same point. Thinking about Tantra and learning control of sexual energy, ejaculation control, and circulating energy. Just having a vision, making a choice and having the will power to "just do it".

Or for serving women, and attuning to feminine needs and desires, and how to complement the feminine because it's the right thing to do. Or take the religious context of unity of man and woman and commitment to each other.

I go back and forth about chastity, sometimes it feels perfect, other times I question whether it is me taking the easy way out of really confronting my old concepts of male sexuality and I need to ‘man up’ and go it straight on.

But chastity so perfectly aligns to where we are and as a force multiplier in helping me focus on what I need to do. So right now I’m an advocate.

I recently started reading the Evolved Masculine
https://www.amazon.com/Evolved-Masc...3601&sprefix=evolved+masculine,aps,141&sr=8-1

“The Evolved Masculine gives a strong and flexible roadmap for healthy masculinity and relationship success for men that embraces our innate sexuality. Full of hard-won wisdom and revolutionary insights, Destin reveals first-hand how the treacherous waters of male sexuality can be navigated with integrity in the post #metoo world. A must-read for any man that wants to be part of the solution AND have deep sexual and relationship fulfillment.”

This book rolls up everything needed to re-envision yourself and provides a path to becoming that new man you envision. My wife and I started re-reading it last night, and she loves the visualization exercise, and how Destin writes. Instead of being mired in “self help” and retrospective analysis of “why am I the way I am”, he says yeah, learn all that, but then go forth and become the person you want to be. Have fun with it, play with it, try on different personalities, envision who you want to be and internalize and day by day, step by step adopt new habits and become that person. We’re having fun with this now as we continue our journey.

This is all I have time for for now, but wanted to get these thoughts down as a starting point for future posts on our journey. Lots of "woo woo" here, but it's all come to make sense to us. There are several members here whose stories I really relate to, so I think there are more who have found ways to improve their relationships, rediscover themselves the the “we” of their relationships.

 

I almost forgot one. Sierra Parker's book "Restart Intimacy. A Unique Approach to Male Chastity". I haven't read it fully, but in skimming through, it looks like what my wife would write if she were to write a book about male chastity.

https://www.amazon.com/RESTART-INTIMACY-Approach-Chastity-Intimacy-ebook/dp/B00GUDSXXC/ref=sr_1_2?crid=ZM9WIQLOQ05C&keywords=Sierra+Parker+romance&qid=1677012800&sprefix=sierra+parker+romance,aps,115&sr=8-2

Side note - I know this thread so far misses all the juicy bits, of which there are many. Maybe I'll post more of them as time goes on. Or the details and mechanics of moving into 24x7 chastity, the dynamic between us and how that has evolved, etc...

We've also been reading the "Ultimate Guide to Tease and Denial" (https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Tease-Denial/dp/1517362148/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1L5ZFLJRM129B&keywords=ultimate+guide+to+tease+and+denial&qid=1677013272&sprefix=ultimate+guide+to+tease+and+denial,aps,73&sr=8-1) as my wife asked...ok, I need ideas, what can I do to learn more?

Layla Martin has been a mixed bag of suggestions https://www.youtube.com/@laylamartintv

And Shameless Sex https://www.youtube.com/@ShamelessSexPodcast has some great speakers and covers a range of topics.

Maybe I write from a male-centric and chastity-focused perspective, but remember, SHE COMES FIRST!

 

We had the realization several years ago. Thinking about the phases of a marriage, starting with the early years of fun being together, building a life together, settling down, having kids. Then all the attention on the kids. As they started becoming more independent it freed us up to have a little more time. Work-wise, I had been traveling a lot, which then slowed down (this was 5-6 years ago). But during that time, between 5-6 years ago and around a year prior to COVID we had time to spend together, but realized we weren't good at it. While we are best friends, fantastically compatible (maybe too much so in what were some challenging ways), we realized we struggled with intimacy, communication, emotions, and our sexuality. As it turns out, this is incredibly common, especially these days.

We were finding it really hard to connect with each other, be open, share our thoughts and feelings. Lots of nights sleeping on the opposite sides of the bed, putting up emotional walls, you name it. Everything in the Unhappy Marriage Handbook. Slowly we realized we needed to address this and change. I had recalled learning about the concept of working on the "Inner Child" (our inner critic, ego, fragmented parts of our self, etc) and healing from childhood trauma. That took us on a path to explore that within ourselves, which over time revealed all of the reasons why we had so much resistance to connecting and expressing ourselves. Each of us had issues around connecting with emotions, expressing our desires, connecting with and expressing our sexuality. Slowly, piece by piece, we learned more, uncovered more, and learned how to heal and then re-connect with each other.

All of the communication that folks talk about on here is spot on. And it was very hard for us at first. My wife lead the charge on the inner child work and healing, then I'd take the lead for a while on exploring and healing, we'd explore some more, that would reveal new things, we'd try some more and grow. It's a life long journey, we hit roadblocks all the time, but are much faster at identifying and addressing issues.

As @Ms Angela’s Sub said recently in the thread https://www.chastitymansion.com/for...-my-kh-to-be-more-involved.49954/#post-592940 being able to sit down over a glass of wine and honestly share thoughts and feelings (about chastity or whatever) is so important. Women need us to be straight up open, honest and clear. And getting rid of the ambiguity, guesswork, nuance, and assumptions makes things so much easier. We're at a point now where things are flowing much easier, its easier to bring up new ideas, express feelings, and we both are much more open to exploring new things.

By the time I brought up chastity, we had grown to a point where my wife wasn't "threatened' by it. Where a year prior it would have been an instant NO, because it would have been deemed "bad", or not something we do, something only weird people do, etc. It instead was met with curiosity, openness to explore and support. Lots of questions to wrap her head around it, internalize the idea, and "try it on".

I had to grow to a point where I wasn't ashamed to share my interest and she had to grow to a point where she didn't have a little voice in the back of her mind telling her this isn't what "good girls do". No pressure from me to force it on her, I gave her some context, explanation, and ideas and let her decide if she wanted to try it. We've gone through what I'd call several phases, the first being the initial mechanics of it all. Getting used to day to day, how it fits into life, our intimacy, etc. We worked out all of the basic details, and then realized the emotional aspects weren't there. I still had too much resistance to expressing my desires and feelings about it. Which left her thinking "what's in this for me?" She needed the emotional connection, and to really feel the desire from me. Not running around the house saying "I'm horny" all the time but me really channeling my energy towards her in the way she could feel desired and ignite her femininity. I've had to really attune to her needs and desires. I wonder if so much of the "lock and forget" is tied to this. Put a cage on and expect the world to change. Nope. We have to grow and attune to what our women need from us and bring our masculinity to the show. Then the magic will start to happen.

All of the books I mentioned above provided a little piece of the puzzle. One thing I love about your story, @IB-Chaste is that you took the opposite approach. You guys are in your bodies and let them lead. We are in our heads and have needed to flip that around to be more in our bodies and in the moment.

 

You're welcome! I hope I can help. After a lot of working on this, and overwhelming one particular person on this site (you know who you are with lots of my journaling over the past 9 months, I think I'm in a good place to articulate and share what Ive learned. It also helps me to practice and hone all of it. Smart people learn from their experience (and mistakes), wise people learn from other's experience (and mistakes). I've been doing both.

If your wife has any specific questions that could use another female's perspective, I'm happy to share with my wife and get her thoughts.

 

Day 24 (or is it 25?):

There is a common axiom that marriage is based on compromise. I just did a search and there are numerous articles about how important it is to do things like communicate, listen, have empathy, be fair, weigh options, and ... compromise. One article goes so far to be titled "Marriage is not about your happiness, is about compromise".

Great, so I'm supposed to suck it up and not get what I want? While I support someone else who has to suck it up and not get what they want? That sounds like a wonderful life.

If you are communicating (sharing needs and desires), listening (to your partners needs and desires), having true empathy for where both you and they are and where each of you coming from, and being fair, etc, why do you need to compromise?

Compromise suggests a zero sum game. If you win, I lose. You get what you want, I've compromised and I don't. Or I get some lesser version of what I wanted. Fantastic foundation for a life full of resentment and unmet desires.

Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the growth?

Teal has a good article explaining this dynamic in more detail here https://tealswan.com/resources/articles/compromise/

For us, we had to explore why we were compromising. Sometimes negotiated, sometimes (too often) just quietly accepted “that’s how it is with him | her”, unexplored and not discussed.

But why compromise? Because it’s easy. If we don’t go to those scary places, open up, be vulnerable and both share our feeling and needs and listen to the others, we stay safe. But we lose out. We lose out on growth, connection and getting what we want. I want my wife to get what she wants! I want her to grow and become who she truly wants to become.

In order for us to become better at doing that, we had to understand ourselves. Why don’t I open up and share my desires? Why doesn’t she? Because of shame, fear of rejection, fear of not being worthy or good enough. Why doesn’t she or I want to try certain new things, explore kinks and enjoy our sexuality? Because we’re taught it’s bad, it’s not what “good girls and boys” do, we should feel shame for wanting this, etc.

But what underlies all this thinking? Where does it come from? Society taught us standards and “values”. Our parents taught us how to behave, what is good and bad, and what we should or shouldn’t do. And we accepted it. As kids, if we deviated from what appeared we should be doing, and how we should be acting, we’d feel like we did something wrong, we were bad, this lead to feelings of rejection, thus pain, and we fell back in line.

Over time, over and over we swallowed the pain of rejecting our true selves and foregoing our needs and desires. We became out of alignment with ourselves and rejected who we actually are.

To undo this takes time. To find and come to grips with the pain, understand the source of it, reconcile it and become OK with who we are, our thoughts, desires and deepest needs to express and be accepted for who we are. It’s still a journey.

Some of the most profound milestones were me understanding my masculinity and sexuality and coming to grips with it being OK. No, great! Not to feel ashamed for it, but celebrate it. Not hide in the dark with suppressed fantasies and desires. But express them.

For my wife, much has been exploration of herself, acceptance that she is worthy of pleasure, getting over “good girl” scripts that her sexuality is to be enjoyed, cherished and celebrated. Move past “this isn’t who I am or what I do…I’m a good girl.”

I say this because, in line with the theme of this site, chastity can push every sensitive button a couple has. “This is not what good girls do…and I’m a good girl”, “what is wrong with him, why would he want to do this?”. For guys it’s overwhelmingly scary to propose it. Shame, guilt, not feeling like we deserve to have our desires met. Fear of confusing and hurting someone we love for admitting our own pain and how we have surpassed it for years through things like self soothing and masturbation. Shame for the things we’ve done and likely hidden. Shame for being men...the horny, sexy, beasts that we are!

All of this builds into resentment for not expressing ourselves, and being heard. And accepted.

Why live in that and “compromise”? I think many more couples are actually far more compatible than they think they are, once they bring down their walls, reconcile with and heal from their pasts, grow into their adult selves not led by shame or what we are taught is “good” behavior. The simple fact that they are often stuck in the same broken walled up dynamic means they have the opportunity to help each other heal and grow…that actually makes them rather compatible!

So why the hell not be kinky? Why not feel good, be playful, and explore? What’s wrong with it?
How many times are we playing along, unchallenged, with what we learned from others? Instead of challenging it and exploring WHY we think that way, and how we could think and behave differently.

Through that growth we can get to a place of self and mutual understanding that we can negotiate to win win. Challenge ourselves to create something better than we individually came up with.

In your journey, for some “how has chastity been a compromise situation and ultimately not worked”? What has left you stuck where you are? What hurdles do you need to overcome?

For others, what specific things have taken your chastity journey to places far beyond what you could have imagined in the beginning? What enabled you to get there? What hurdles did you have to overcome?

In keeping with self help culture, I feel like I need to close with a good…

“Namaste”

I’d love to get your thoughts about your journey.

 

Absolutely! Was this a compromise? Or are you in a better place than you thought? Do you feel resentment or contentment? Deep down, is this win win for you and her? Or is one really compromising? And if you are compromising, what is (not was, because you have evolved to a new place) the compromise?

I think the journey towards win win includes the exploration and communication of desires and needs. And mutual evolution of each others needs and desires to a place that is good for both, not good for one and a compromise for one.

From everything you write, this generally sounds like where you are. And, if there is a place where you feel there is a (often short term) compromise, you two work through it and evolve to a mutually good place.

For example, doing chastity solely "for him", she doesn't have the opportunity to gain confidence and grow into her true feminine self. (Which is what we actually desire and need). So it ends up as a compromise. Ok, I'll lock him up if he wants, and he'll run around like a deprived baby who needs an orgasm. She's not able to take control of the situation in a way that empowers her. And while his kink need is kinda half-heartedly met, it's really not serving him either. He's topping from the bottom, she's not really into it, not seeing the benefits for her, etc. Ultimately lose/lose and the dynamic dies off (see various threads on this site).

But, if he truly submits to her (not become "submissive" but submit, and give her the space to truly be in control of herself, her desires and her femininity, he will get the playfulness, strong feminine energy and expression of herself. win / win. But it takes us working on ourselves to express our masculine self, gain our own confidence, our own self control to use our sexual energy, not be controlled by it. In that we provide a safe space for her to grow. We create win/win by learning what she needs and providing it. And of course that will evolve, refine and become more clear over time.

I find it interesting that what is going on with chastity, when done well, is far more and far deeper than the "game" itself. Done poorly it's a zero sum game full of confusion and resentment. When done well both blossom into their potential.

Cheers!

 

Ok, now you're introducing a new topic. Just to be clear:

"The main difference between sacrifice and compromise is that compromise is done in order to receive something, whereas sacrifice is not coated with any kind of selfishness. Compromise can bring some irritation sometimes, whereas sacrifices are pure in this context, which generally bring peace of mind. Unlike compromise, sacrifice does not want anything in return.

Sacrifices are often driven by emotions, whereas compromises are generally driven by brain statistics. While sacrificing, one is not calculating the loss and gain out of it. On the other hand, compromise calculates everything, and therefore is more biased towards making a compromise which is still more beneficial than being a match looser."

https://www.differencebetween.info/difference-between-sacrifice-and-compromise

 

I think of it as:

Sacrifice - I did something/gave up something and am happy I did
Compromise - I did something/gave something up and was not happy to have to do it.

"I went into chastity as a sacrifice for my overall relationships (I wanted to do it, but also gave up something in return...for a greater reward for both)"
"I stopped doing chastity because my wife didn't want to (compromise). "

And the point is that instead of having the hard conversation to come to a win/win scenario in the compromise case, someone settled on something less desirable.

 

Thanks for the thoughts. I'm trying to wrap my head around all of this. Thinking about compromise vs sacrifice vs desire to do something.

I sent a note yesterday afternoon to my wife that I'm in a new space, feeling very connected to her. The first several weeks (on day 29 now) was the typical mix of horny, charged up, frustrated, etc. Now it's full on almost desperation for release which is created an interesting draw and almost dependence on her. Dependence isn't the right word, it's more of a connection and need for her. I dunno how to describe it.

Now, is this the result of sacrifice for her and us? Early on, compromise perhaps would have been to half-heartedly try chastity, maybe with less strict rules, or shorter duration. Or her feeling guilty for making me hold out for what seems like a long time (which was often a week to 10 days).

When we talked about my note last night, as I brought it up and asked what she thought, she stopped me mid-sentence and said "yep, I totally get it, I feel it, too." I have been different (in a good way), more connected to her, more attuned, etc. Part of this is what I have been consciously working on, but also I think the hormonal effects, and focus directed on her because of chastity and orgasm denial. While I go through these waves of urgent need for release, and out of my mind horny much of the time, I love the feeling and love how it makes me think...of her, of life, etc.

I described what I've read about this from others, and how women describe evolving from being ambivalent about orgasm denial/chastity to turning a corner at some point when they feel the effects. Maybe that's what we are approaching and feeling the effects of? She said she very much likes where we are.

She made the comment that I have to have an orgasm at some point, what do we do next/where do we go from here? I said I don't know, I like where we are, but it does get crazy frustrating at times. so, she said, I guess we keep going and see where it leads.

How to navigate compromise vs sacrifice vs "must haves"? Are we navigating new territory, giving it a fair chance to evolve and play out? Giving each other time and space to grow into it, find our way and what we like? It is very much a dance of communication, trying things and being open minded, learning to attune to each other, and understand each others desires and needs.

This inevitably leads to sacrifice. Giving up one thing we believe we want for something much better. Having the freedom to have orgasms any time I want to this wasn't a compromise, it was a sacrifice. While I miss it, and the frustration gets crazy, the results of the trade off are beautiful. This is, as you say, much more rewarding, more fun, more meaningful. While being conscious not to compromise. I think compromise leaves us in the gray, unfulfilled.
We need the dance of intimacy, communication and exploration to take us to a win/win place that is better than compromise would leave us.