Is she in control?

This is a tricky one and I think it comes down to personal perception and attitude towards chastity and control. Yes, I gave my Wife control of my orgasms, when I am locked or when I am released. I willingly submit and I am proud that I have broken the habit of trying to beat the system, something I was guilty of when we first started. I do not have any say in when or how we have sex, that is utterly up to Elle. I think it is nonsense to say that I am the one who is in control just because I gave her the permission she needed to take that control.

I have also read that I could quit this 'game' whenever I want. That is absolutely true. I would irrevocably damage our relationship if I did so, and I cannot think of a quicker way to find out who is really in control as she slams shut the door to any sexual access with her. Her sexual appetite is now directly linked to the control she has, the lack of control I have, the way she can decide whether intimacy turns to sexual play, or whether anything happens at all. She is more adventurous and more open about what turns her on. The revolution in her approach to sex is nothing short of amazing.

So who is in control in my relationship with Elle? She is. Is it an absolute control? No, because that isn't what she wants. She didn't marry a mindless lump and she doesn't want me to become a mindless lump. But when it comes to sex and intimacy she is absolutely in control.

 

This is a great topic and like Jasmic68 says a tricky one. Can I say no, take my ball and go home? Absolutely! Would I be willing to change the dynamic we now have after engaging in Chastity for over a year now?.....no. I gave her control over our sex life and my orgasms, we've seen the benefits that have come from this. There are times I do think about taking that control back, but if I'm honest with myself I know it's much better for our relationship, she really loves having the control now and unless something major happened, I would take it back from her.

So for me the answer is yes, she has control in this one aspect of our relationship and I'm fine with that.

 

Chastity has opened up the ability for us to communicate in ways that just weren't possible before. Elle knows her job is an important one due to my tendency to become obsessed about things, she is literally in control of that aspect of me, much more than she is of my orgasms. I have told her honestly about how genital modification still gets to me, and she is now using that against me when she teases me. I cannot imagine that happening if i wasn't wearing a chastity device to hide what I had done to myself.

That is just one aspect of this I would be sacrificing if I gave this up, or I would lose if for some reason Elle was to give up. The most obvious reason for her to give up is if I do something stupid and ruin what we have established.

 

I have been into BDSM for over 40 year. 7 years ago we moved away from my Mistress of 30 years. I basically am a switch. It depends on what the female wants me to be. Definitely the sub is in control. I would be crazy to just let someone do whatever they feel like doing to me. There may be people who psychologically feel a need to be punished without taking any pleasure from it, but that is not me. I set limits and a safe word. We even discussed what she could and could not do. I did not have fine control over my Mistress or wife, but I did have control in general terms like they could use impact toys but not specifying what kind. My actual limits, within the structure of our D/s understanding, were simply not do anything that would result in me needing medical care. I had already undergone surgery because I was young and new to the game. I learned my lesson from that.

If a man is locked in a prison cell but can get out simply by uttering a word, is her really a prisoner? I think not. I view it as submitting to someone rather than them dominating me as the prisoner would be allowing himself to be locked up knowing he can leave anytime he wants to. Another way to look at it is that a dom is nothing without someone to submit to them. They cannot just start dominating a person as that would be illegal, no matter how many times guys living their sex life on line post to the contrary. Yet I sub can both start and stop being dominated. In effect, the dom is limited to the submissives limits and permission to be be dominated.

 

Setting limits within a relationship is a clear demonstration that there is cooperation, but in my mind those limits are not a demonstration of control. This personal difference of opinion about what constitutes control is exactly what I meant when I said this is a tricky topic.

I have absolutely no say whatsoever what sexual or intimate activities happen. I am not even allowed to suggest that something, anything, sexual happens, I am not allowed to make my own desires known. We have a shared Tumblr in which I share media examples of things I like or I think she would like. This does not give me any rights whatsoever, it just helps my Wife understand where I am in terms of those limits and wishes that are a part of the cooperation.

My Wife decides what happens and this is her hard limit. My payback for ceding this control is she has relaxed into her role of keyholder and Mistress, is much more adventurous and the sex we are having so much better than previously. Our sex life had been atrophying due to my attitudes which chastity and our development of an FLR has helped me modify.

Of course I could say a word and end it all. Such a brilliant display of control would end everything we have. It would possibly even be bad enough to end our thirty year relationship. It is simply nonsensical to me that I am the one who is in control. The simple fact is I have handed that to my Wife. It was handed with a list that says what she cannot do, I certainly don't want her to shit on me for instance, but she is in control.

 

No party is actually in control, it has to be mutual even in a pro dom/domme sub relationship. Either party can stop or run away to police if blackmailed/threatened. Only scenerio I can think of is an actual sex slave but it only works the other way since men generally being stronger are able to overpower almost any women and use them for sex or sex trade. Basically the only control the KH have is whatever the sub allows him/her to have.

 

In vanilla peer relationships, both partners have the legal/theoretical freedom to cheat and/or walk away. But on the whole, people don't because they don't really want to, because they have internalised the constraints of the relationship, and because it would damage the relationship.

In the same way, as the submissive partner in our FLR, I have theoretical veto over what happens. However, most of the time I don't want to exercise this control and it's hard to think outside the frame of reference of our power exchange: the F/m relationship feels real to both of us.

Occasionally, Xena pushes me well outside my comfort zone. For example, she went through a phase of leaving me kneeling in the corner at night while she went to sleep, meaning I had to wait 15 mins before joining her in bed. And other times, she pushes my orgasm denial period well beyond what I would volunteer for.

When this happens, I think "This is stupid. I don't want this." However, I know that if I push back - safe word - I'll damage Xena's assurance of being in charge and may lose the whole FLR dynamic. So I go along with it.

And, of course, that powerlessness turns me on.

So, overall I'd say Xena was in charge.

 

I have been thinking some more about this, and I think a lot of your perception of who is in control is definitely linked to your overall perception of what you are participating in.

As I understand it @Vinny is a very experienced man. He has seen and done things I can only imagine, much of it with an extreme level of BDSM. He is married, his wife is in control of his orgasms but not in control of the relationship. Chastity has come about as a means of bringing them closer together due to her lack of interest in having sex with him, due to how she is more interested in women than in men. I can totally understand how Vinny is in control. He has given his wife the right to decide when he has an orgasm but knows he could stop the game whenever he liked. He hasn't said how Important the game is to his wife but reading between the lines I can guess that she enjoys it to a point but it isn't critical to their relationship.

My own experience is vastly different. I would love to be taken into a BDSM environment but wouldn't know how to find one, how to get into it and what to do when I got there. I have had sex with only my Wife for the past thirty years and only had a handful of brief and rubbish sexual experiences before her. Before we started using chastity our sex life for most of our marriage was good but mostly very Vanilla. As I mentioned the amount of sex we were having was reducing largely due to the pressures of performance my Wife felt under.

We never expected chastity to do anything for this situation. The development of our FLR is a huge surprise to us. We have transitioned from using a chastity device just for covering up my penis, to full orgasm control, to her becoming more my Mistress than my keyholder, to her being in full control of the relationship. This isn't a game. It is critical to our day to day life. It has introduced a depth to our intimacy, a richness to our lives that I would never have discovered without the introduction of chastity and the FLR.

The simple reason for this is Elle doesn't feel that just because I am spending time learning how to give her pedicures and apply nail varnish that I expect sex in return. Before chastity anything I did nice was met with suspicion. And with good reason, because if I did something nice invariably I was doing it to try and get her in the right mood for sex.

So as I said earlier I could say stop, I don't want this anymore, but I would be giving up so much. It would be a hollow victory and I want nothing to do with that perception of being in control.