EP: 0406 - Female Led Relationships - Exploring Female-Led Relationships and BDSM

0:00:01 - Speaker 1
Welcome back. Fuck, it's been a hot minute since I've said those words. Let's get back to basics a little bit. Today we're going to talk about what is an FLR, is BDSM part of a female-led relationship, how to make a female-led relationship work and tips for keeping communication lines open. Before I get going on that, let's dive into some housekeeping. 

This will not be lengthy. There isn't a life update. I'm done doing those. The last three episodes have been life updates and no more. The meet and greet or get together, whatever I was talking about doing in Vegas in May is going to be postponed just because, well, there's multiple reasons. But for now I'm just postponing it. Maybe next year or maybe in the fall, I'll see what we can figure out. Maybe we can all get together. Currently we're in Arizona. If anybody's in Arizona and wants to meet up, I'm game. Just let me know. Reach out, but for now the Vegas trip is postponed. 

We just got back from Orlando. It was a nightmare. That's all I'm going to say. I did a small update on my Patreon. We were there for PodFest. Podfest was good. We were at the Owwll booth. Hopefully we get some leads for our business. I'm excited. I feel like I might be getting sick. Too many flights I think it was five flights in total to get from Phoenix to Orlando. It was ridiculous, it was a hot mess. But we're back in Arizona, everything is fine. I just feel a little stuffy, a little sneezy. Hopefully I'm not getting sick. 

Our ladies group is coming up. You have to be a member to the $10 tier on my Patreon and you will get a Zoom link and you can join me and my ladies talking about life in a female-led relationship. Struggles, wins, victories, whatever it is. It's a good place to ask questions. If you're new to a female-led relationship and very kind, kind ladies in my ladies group, I appreciate each one of you. I think that's it. Let's dive in. So we're going to throw back and refresh. That's my plan. 

So what is an FLR? So FLR stands for Female-led Relationship. What is a female-led relationship? The female is in control of the relationship. Each relationship that looks different. You make it your own, you figure out what works for you, but at the end of the day, the female is in charge. 

Now, the most common question that I get when I say that I'm in a female-led relationship is if BDSM is part of a female-led relationship or FLR, and there's also you can call it an FLM Female-led Marriage, and that's fine. And I think this is one of the topics circling back. You don't have to have the dom sub names to your. You can be in a female-led relationship and you don't even have to call it a female-led relationship if you don't want to. But you can have whatever works for you. It doesn't have to be Dom/sub. 

Some people do mistress-slave. Some people don't like that. I personally don't like the mistress-slave. I don't know why. I just can't get on board with that one. It just doesn't sit well with me. But you make it your own. You have whatever affectionate name you want for your partner. I personally love Subby. He does not call me his Dom. Usually it's Mistress Krystine or Miss Krystine. When he's responding to me it's usually Miss Krystine. Goddess is another one that I don't hate. I enjoy that one. You have to make it your own. 

And back to is BDSM part of a female-led relationship? It sure can be, and I know I've said this in the past on my podcast. The female-led relationship is like a scoop of ice cream. It can be whatever flavor ice cream you want it to be. But the scoop of ice cream is the base of the dynamic. So you add to that whatever you want, whatever toppings, whatever elements to that that you want, and that can be BDSM play, that can be, that can be the whips and chains and handcuffs, if you so choose. There sure doesn't have to be. That is absolutely your choice on what works best for your relationship. You could do, you can participate in pegging, chastity, cuckolding. There are so many other elements that you can add to your scoop of ice cream to make your dynamic exactly what you want it to be and what makes you happy. Life's too short to be unhappy. Find what you love and fucking run with it. So BDSM, yes, can be a part of a female-led relationship. 

I do think that there is a stigma attached to any type of dynamic that is outside the realm of normal. I mean if somebody says their a swinger, that people don't automatically assume that there's BDSM involved. But anytime you say female-led relationship, anything like that, I don't know, maybe it is just more with the female-led relationship, because if you tell somebody your poly, they don't ask if there's BDSM involved. So maybe it is more attached to a female-led relationship and maybe there's a reason for it. I don't think it's necessary. BDSM does not have to be a part of your female-led relationship. 

I think that more people are living female-led relationships than even realize they're living. I think women are the backbone of most marriages, whether they're the dominant or not, and that might ruffle some feathers, but I don't give a fuck. That's how I feel. I mean, even when I was in a vanilla relationship, I was the one that held everything together. I was the one that made sure people got where they, kids got where they needed to go. People my husband at the time Made sure he was where he needed to be. I took care of everything. It took care of the house, I took care of the bills. So essentially, I was living a female-led relationship before I even knew what a female-led relationship was, and I was reaping none of the benefits because my ex-husband well, we're gonna drop that there. 

So the next thing I would like to talk about a little bit is what does a female-led relationship look like with kids, or is it even possible? We currently if you've been here for a while we are currently living in our camper in the desert in Arizona. Now this does make it a little tricky. My 14 year old son is with us and currently, like I'm recording this podcast right now, my subbie has him. They're going to get water and run a couple other errands so that I have a quiet camper to take care of recording. 

You just have to modify and adjust and, that being said, having kids can absolutely affect your libido, your well, it just affects everything. I mean, there's days that my 14 year old just absolutely fucking exhausts me, and it's not his fault, he's just very high energy and I need time to recharge. So you have to get creative and if you're listening to this podcast for the first time, the biggest thing I would love to get across, or the most important thing, is communication is key. Stay in communication with your partner and let them know how you're feeling. Your female lead relationship is going to ebb and flow with circumstances. 

Our female lead relationship right now looks nothing like it did a year ago, and I've talked about that before too. It is going to ebb and flow. Is this our finest moment? Probably not. However, we're still on the same page, our communication lines are open and we are still very much in love with each other, no matter what situations, troubles, things like that are being thrown at us. We're just working through it one day at a time, sometimes one breath at a time, so keep that in mind. 

I find that it seems to be more the men that come to the women wanting to live this dynamic, that's how it was for me. My husband came to me early on in our relationship and said that he wanted to give this dynamic a try, and I was very overwhelmed and I hope that this podcast is out there to help people who are new to this and are struggling or maybe don't know what to think. It's just different perspectives on something, because sometimes, sorry guys, you are not the best at explaining things, and that's not all men, but a good portion. Don't speak women. Well, tips I can offer for being successful in your female lead relationship. My husband and I have been practicing a female lead relationship for probably eight years. I think it is. I don't know. I'm terrible at time, distance and geography, but I think it's going on eight years. 

You have to communicate, even when it's uncomfortable. Communication is key. You will hear that in probably every single episode I've ever put out. Communication is key because it is. You can't have a solid foundation in your relationship without open communication. There's nothing I wouldn't tell my partner, nothing. There's nothing that I would feel ashamed, embarrassed, anything to tell him. 

One area that I do struggle a little bit is explaining how I feel in a moment. Since we've been in our camper full time, there has been some pretty high stress times and I think we have maybe separated a little bit on how we communicate and not communicated as well as we needed to. But I think the benefit of us living this dynamic like we have, we recognized it right away and we were intentional about sitting down, having the conversations and figuring out how to get back on the right track. All of that being said, for me personally, this dynamic has taught me so much about how a healthy relationship works. That doesn't mean we don't have our struggles, however. I think because of this dynamic and being in it for as long as I have, I'm much more intentional about recognizing when there's a void or there's a we call it a disconnect. When we're disconnected, we recognize it, both of us, much quicker than I have in any other relationship and, to be honest, in past relationships when there was a disconnect, I would just avoid. I would avoid because I didn't want the confrontation and with this dynamic, because it's been so front and center always, communication is key, and you have to communicate with your partner. We're very, very intentional about making sure when something goes awry, we talk about it right away. Communication, it's so, so important. 

Showing each other some grace is another tip that I would have. There's going to be fuck ups, there's going to be missteps, there's going to be moments where you feel embarrassed about something that you did. I can't tell you in the beginning how many times I tried to assert my dominance and it came out all wrong. It just everything went wrong. You have to take those experiences, learn from them and move on. I like to replay everything in my head over and over and over and over again, and that's a terrible way to live. It's in the past. The rear view mirror is smaller than the windshield for a reason. Don't look back. Learn what you needed to learn and move forward. That would be another tip. I can't tell you how many times I fucked up and looking back now, I mean you'll look back on it and you'll probably fucking laugh your ass off. 

Be open to change. That's a tough one. This relationship any relationship is going to evolve, or maybe it's not going to evolve, but things are certainly going to change, and you have to be ready for that change, or be open to that change. Now, it could be for the better, it could be for the worse, but as long as your communication lines are open and you're comfortable talking to your partner, at the end of the day everything's going to work out as it should. I think I mean, really the biggest tip I have for making a female-led relationship work is you have to have communication. You have to have communication, communication, communication, communication. My last topic that I kind of want to touch on here is tips for keeping those communication lines open. 

I think the biggest tip I can give for keeping communication lines open when you're starting this dynamic, I would make sure that you are taking 15 to 20 minutes, or not, even even if you do 10 minutes daily, and just check in. What did you think? How are you feeling? All of I mean set everything aside and just it's just you and your partner and you're talking about things. How did you feel today went and you don't have to do it every day, I mean, if that might be a bit excessive. When you're starting, though, things are so all over the place. Like I feel like daily is important, but even if you just did 20 to 30 minutes a week where you both sit down and you talk about different things, now the problem with me doing weekly is I would forget about something that happened on Monday if we did it on Friday. So maybe every other day or something, or you jot down, you know what it is you're concerned about or something that you want to talk about in your weekly daily. Every other day check in, and I know it seems like it's more work to do this, but once you get into a rhythm, it's. 

I mean, I think this relationship is still rewarding and, like I said, it's the healthiest relationship I've ever been in. Does it make me uncomfortable at times? Yes. Does it sometimes feel like work? Yes, but don't you have to work for all the good things in your life? I feel like you do the weekly check-ins circling back Let me get off my soapbox. Circling back to, like you know, weekly check-ins. 

As you get more into the relationship, maybe you don't need weekly check-ins, but I will say, even if you just take five minutes a day to just hug your partner or have that five minutes where it's just the two of you and you're just focused on each other. I think that that makes a world of difference, whether you're in a female-led relationship or not. Just taking five minutes a day out of the rat race that is life, to just focus solely on each other, I think makes a world of difference, and we have fallen off from doing that. We used to do that. My husband would come home from work and we would literally have 15 minutes where we would catch each other up on what happened throughout the day and just be intentional, and it always started with like a one-minute hug. He had best hugs ever, best hugs ever. 

Whatever you can do to make that routine easier, it can be so simple. It doesn't take much For me personally. I'm a very simple creature. If my husband goes to town to get something and he comes back and has brought me a Celsius, I'm like, oh, that's so. It's the little things that make me happy. He knows what my favorite drink is, he knows how I make my coffee, he knows a lot about me and he will do little things just to make my day easier and I sincerely appreciate that. That's just my thought. I think by nature, society just views men as being dominant and has put it in their minds that if they're anything other than dominant, that they're weak, and I think that's wrong. So that's my TED Talk. I hope you all have a fantastic week. Stay healthy, stay safe, be kind, be good humans Love you.