Do You Have To Be Submissive?

[Note: I wrote this post before reading Mrs. Lion’s post yesterday. It just shows how much we think alike.]

This may seem to be a silly question. If I surrender sexual control to my lioness and also allow her to make rules and enforce them, does that mean I am submissive, at least to her? At first glance it seems obvious. But it isn’t. Consider a knight in shining armor. He was a fierce fighter who would fight to the death. He would also obey any request from the person to whom he pledged loyalty.

Obedience is an act of will, not submission.  The relevant definition of submission is: the action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person. So, there are at least two ways to think of obedience. One is part of submission which implies accepting a superior force. The other is the decision to obey another. Submission never means submitting to everyone. It always refers to a specific superior force or person.

The more general flavor of submission suggests that the superior person will be followed and obeyed regardless of the nature of the direction. Willful obedience has boundaries that are negotiated and agreed upon. I agreed to surrender sexually to Mrs. Lion. This agreement includes permanent use of a chastity device. When we discussed FLM, the agreement extended to everything pertaining to our relationship. It didn’t affect my professional life or the way I interact with the world at large.

This may seem like quibbling to you, but it isn’t. Submission in the sense that we usually discuss it, is actually an agreement to submit within specific context. Some people self identify as submissives. This label can have a very different meaningsfor each individual. There is no accepted definition others can apply. Some people say I am submissive because Mrs. Lion controls so much of my life. But then how is it that I am generally the leader? Even Mrs. Lion accepts my leadership in many areas of our relationship. She doesn’t think of me as submissive.

I think that’s where we got tripped up with a Female Led Marriage (FLM). Over our years together we have established a comfortable working power exchange over non-sexual matters. We generally consult with one another about things that affect us both. We act largely individually with personal money and with things that won’t affect the other. When we started experimenting with FLM, our interpretation included my asking for permission to spend money on anything but necessities. I was to ask Mrs. Lion for decisions about almost everything where there was a choice. That was our understanding of what we should do. Since our relationship has always functioned differently, it was a strain to consciously reassign power. We were “fixing” things that weren’t broken.

In reality, what I want is to feel sexually dominated by Mrs. Lion. I want her to enforce rules that she has given me. I love how it feels with that power exchange. But that doesn’t mean she should take over the bill paying or dictate what we do all the time. She doesn’t want to pay the bills and I like being the lion about deciding what we do. Of course, Mrs. Lion has to agree with my decisions, but she doesn’t have to make them. That may seem to be a fine distinction, but for us it isn’t.

I just don’t have a submissive personality. I never will. It’s not in my genes. But I need the Yin/Yang of offsetting power exchange to balance my headstrong nature. Enforced chastity and a strict rule regime does it for me.

Over time I am sure that we will continue to evolve our power exchange. You’ve been reading about this evolution for the last couple of years. It’s not going to stop. We will try things, accept some and reject others. We may try again something we previously rejected and then adopt it. That’s the way it works for us. We only get into trouble when we try to copy what we think we need to do to conform to the label for what we are doing. Stay tuned. I’m sure we will be evolving more as time goes by.