Blogging (Page 16)

It’s always puzzled me that enforced chastity made such a big change in our marriage. Before we started this, we were extremely close and in love. We had a great marriage. We struggled with sex. Our libidos are vastly different. That difference caused some unhappiness but not so much as to threaten our strong love and friendship. That was the situation in the fall of 2013. We were not successful discussing sexual issues; so we simply avoided them.

I’m an explorer by nature. I love to find and learn new things. In the early 1990’s I discovered enforced chastity. It fascinated me. Thinking about it got me aroused. I won’t go through the entire story, but I learned everything I could and began writing about it. Manufacturers sent me devices to review. I tried them but none were comfortable or practical to wear. Besides that, even though the concept of enforced chastity turned me on, I had no real interest in having less sex, or for that matter, submitting to anyone.

I rediscovered enforced chastity in the fall of 2013. It still really turned me on. I found devices that looked reasonable to wear and ordered a few. I asked my lioness to lock me up. She immediately agreed. This wasn’t unusual for her. I had been proposing and she had willingly tried many things she considered weird over the years.

Enforced chastity wasn’t an immediate success. It took some time before I found a comfortable device. For more than a year Mrs. Lion stayed with it only because it made me happy for us to be doing this. Slowly, for our own reasons, this kink became part of our lifestyle. We had agreed to reconsider enforced chastity in March of 2016. But by mid-2015 we had agreed we were in this for good.

This long-winded explanation sets the stage for the question I keep asking myself: What about enforced chastity caused us to have improved sexual communication and physical satisfaction? I’ve ruled out that the reason is that keeping me from having as many orgasms as I want is why. It’s not In fact,  before enforced chastity we had much less interactive sex than we do now. I masturbated every few days and I got a hand job once every month or two from Mrs. Lion. So, enforced chastity gets me less orgasms but a lot more sex with Mrs. Lion.

As I mentioned, I’m an explorer and Mrs. Lion describes me as a suggestophile (def: someone who can’t help making suggestions even if damaging to himself). She’s right. I explore, discover something new and shiny, and bring it home to Mrs. Lion to try. Before enforced chastity, my suggestions just made things worse for her. She believed that she was letting me down if she didn’t try everything I found. The sexual chasm between us widened.

When she agreed to try enforced chastity, we were at risk for yet another opportunity for her to feel that she disappointed me. We didn’t realize it at the time, but enforced chastity is different. Unlike other suggestions like spanking or CBT, enforced chastity couldn’t just fade into history on its own. We couldn’t just “not” do it. I had something locked on my penis that denied me any sexual activity, alone or with her. So, as long as it was in place, Mrs. Lion had to be an active participant. I was also forced to communicate with her about my wants and needs since I was powerless to play with myself.

We still might have just taken the device off and let it sit in my sock drawer forever. While my enthusiasm was very high, I decided I wanted to write about enforced chastity again. Instead of adding to my static website, I decided a daily journal, a blog, would be more interesting since I could go back in time to see changes in my life. It didn’t hurt that I had seen the movie “Juelie and Juilia” (2009) where Julie, an aspiring cook, starts a blog about her learning to cook all of Julia Child’s recipes. The idea of a daily journal felt right in terms of our enforced chastity.

Shortly after I started the  blog, Mrs. Lion agreed to post daily as well. We were both keeping journals and were reading what we wrote each day. Lots of other people have found this interesting and have been following along and commenting. We discuss each other’s posts and the comments we get every day. We also email each other about my suggestions, what we are doing, and what we can improve.

I can’t claim that all our sexual issues are now behind us. Mrs. Lion still gets worried about my “new” ideas. She is still concerned that if the new thing doesn’t work out, I will be unhappy. Since she announced Lioness 2.0, this is less of an issue. She will try new things but will do them with her own spin. So far, her spin is a lot more painful than my idea. So be it  I like this change.

Like most counselors say, communication is the key to a good relationship. We are proof of that. This blog, to a very large extent, has put us on a path we both love. I am asked why we write every day when other bloggers post much less frequently. The answer is that we decided that daily posts will force us to maintain an open channel dedicated to enforced chastity and FLR. Searching for a topic each day will help us discuss things we might otherwise keep to ourselves.

I’ve been writing a post every day since starting this blog 693 days ago. It surprises me that I’ve still got anything to say. Don’t do it! Don’t say I stopped having anything to say 692 days ago; it would hurt my feelings. Mrs. Lion has been writing daily posts nearly as long. The reason for all these words (my average is about 700 words a post or nearly 500,000 since I began), is that I wanted our blog to become a part of our readers’ lives. I don’t know if we succeeded or not. Lots of people read us, but I don’t know if we’ve managed to do that.

When we started out, I made the decision for better or worse, that we would not spend a lot of time describing our sexual adventures. I think it was the right decision. There are many blogs that do this far better than we could. Also, in the beginning my thought was to share what we know and learn about enforced chastity in a way that is woman friendly. So much of what I found on the web was porn with a chastity device. I could imagine how a guy would ask his wife to lock him up and then point her to sites that he used to jerk off. I suspect a lot of women decided to forgo enforced chastity after reading this source material.

So, the lofty goal here was to provide a stable reference (all those links across the top of the page) as well as a blog that told our real-life story in a way we would tell a friend. That friend, of course, is you. These posts also turned into one of the important ways that Mrs.Lion and I communicate. Most of the time she learns of my latest ideas for us in my posts. I read her reaction a few hours later in her post. So it goes, the sexual tennis match of our lives unfolding on the main court of The Male Chastity Journal. It’s worked surprisingly well.

I, for example, serve an idea about using a doggy shock collar as a way to express displeasure at my misbehavior at the same time I commit the offense. She returns the serve with a very tentative yes curving toward the right boundary with doubt about how this could work. I return her shot with one down the line letting her know I ordered the device and we could try it. Enough tennis! She responded in her post we could try it that weekend.

So its gone. Propose, try, react, try again or quit; all chronicled here. I think that one reason we have been successful is that we have this daily opportunity to test the waters and course correct. Everything we have written about us and our lives is true. I know that means it isn’t always bodice-ripping sexual adventures. In fact, it almost never is. But it’s real and it’s us, warts and all. Thanks for staying with us.

One of my favorite things about writing daily posts is that I have the bandwidth to comment on other bloggers and offer unsolicited advice. This is one of those occasions. Thumper wrote a post the other day about how his ability to bottom to Drew has changed. If you haven’t been following the thread, here’s the quick summary: Thumper is a caged male  (like me) who is married and his wife is his keyholder. He has been doing this a long time. A little over a year ago he met a guy who topped him. Now, a year later, Thumper can’t accept him as his top. Ok, this is a very short and detail-starved account, but it gets us to the point where I want to put in my two cents.

I spent over thirty years in the New York leather community so what Thumper is describing is quite familiar to me. You may note that I don’t use the words “dom” and “sub” or “submissive”. They are adjectives and don’t really define a three-dimensional human. In the world I come from, there are roles; in this case “top” and “bottom”. A top supplies the sensation and generally gets sexual satisfaction as either part of the play or afterward. The bottom receives sensation and gives sexual pleasure. It’s optional whether or not the bottom gets off too.

I spent most of my adult life as a top. However, I always enjoyed bottoming. That would make me a “switch” since I like both roles. In my experience, most people into power and sensation play are switches. Very few spend their lives entirely as a top or bottom. You’ll note that I make no mention of the gender of either player. That’s irrelevant and a personal preference. I can be a heterosexual male and still top another male. I could also bottom to one without losing my heterosexual status. The reason for that is in the context of topping and bottoming, any agreed action that isn’t dangerous or life-threatening is allowed if both people agree.

Anyway, when two people become regular play partners, like Thumper and Drew, things can become much more complex. For one thing, it may be important to the scene (the bottom’s and sometimes the top’s too) that there be no real emotional connection between top and bottom. The bottom may want to feel “used” by the top. He may want to be simply an instrument of pleasure that is used and then sent on his way. That’s a form of objectification. It’s very hot for some to be simply toys with no connection to the top. It’s equally  hot for some tops to treat the bottom like a Kleenex to use and discard. The feeling of submission can be based on this emotional disconnect. Once a real connection is made, the very foundation of that feeling can disappear.

If your partner is just someone you make play dates with, then emotional connection is limited to concern over having a good time or after care. The problem is that many of us don’t realize how important objectification and an emotional distance is to the heat of the action. In my case, I accepted a 24/7 service slave (her title for herself). She lived with me and did anything I wanted or needed. I played with her and in the beginning treated her as someone who did what I wanted and got nothing in return. This is exactly what she wanted. The problem was that as time went by, I came to feel love for her. This made it harder for me to treat her as an object and deal with her in the harsh ways she craved. Over time, nearly a decade, we became like a vanilla couple more than master/slave. This didn’t work for her at all. It was an alienating process since I could no longer give her what she really needed and I was frustrated with her unhappiness in the face of my caring.

I realized that I could never sustain that sort of lifestyle. Moreover, the bottom side of me needed to come out. My “topping” tank had been overfilled and I needed the balance of bottoming. Arguably, my real needs have always been to have a strong, loving woman in my life and that topping was more physical recreation with a nice orgasm at the end, than something I needed emotionally. I think I am in the right place for this time in my life and Mrs. Lion is learning to provide the authority I need in the context of a loving marriage.

But I digress. Based on Thumper’s post, I think he may not have considered the impact of a strong emotional friendship on his desire to be used and abused. I’ve had play partners who were also friends. We started out as play partners at D/S parties. We grew to be friends over time. In some cases the play stopped entirely. In others, we treated the S/M aspects of our relationship as a way of giving a needed service to the other. One woman and I live quite far apart and we occasionally met at large leather events. We took turns topping one another. When I bottomed to her, I looked at my experience as a way to get some needs met. When it was her turn  to beat my ass, stick things in it and do lots of cock and ball torture to me, for that time she wasn’t my friend. Shew was a cruel mistress who loved seeing me in pain. When the beating started, I truly believed it. Afterward, she became my valued friend again. It was fun. We laughed and when she topped, I screamed too.

I think it is a matter of context. The fantasy of a disconnected, harsh top may be part of what made your sessions with Drew so hot. The question I would ask you is whether you can treat your scene as something outside the friendship? While he is using and abusing you he isn’t your friend. He’s a guy who likes you enough to make you suffer to your limit. The way I thought of my play partner was as someone who may like me a lot, but who likes torturing me more. She may rock me to sleep later, but right now it is all for her and she wants to hurt me. Since I am helpless, I have to accept it.  It may not work for you, but it always works for me. When she is playing with me, I think of Mrs. Lion as someone who loves me so much she will stop at nothing to make me feel the pain and humiliation I need. In this context, the more she loves me, the more she hurts me.

I think it is nearly impossible to sustain a long term relationship that limits itself to topping and bottoming. From my perspective and experience I can understand how deepening feelings can destroy the desire to bottom, or as some say, submit. It’s particularly unfair to the top to have such a limited relationship. While it’s fun, topping is work and the rewards of the activities themselves are fairly transient and superficial.Yes, the orgasms are nice; but they are still just orgasms. This is in sharp contrast to the bottom who is receiving intense satisfaction from the sensations inflicted on him. Topping is a game of skill, bottoming is an experience, often a profound one. I may not be saying this as clearly as I would like, but in my own way I am saying that as a top if I had to choose between dominating someone or being his/her friend, being a friend would win hands down. As a bottom, for me at least, it would be a much harder decision.

This is the third time I have written this post. Each time just as I am about half finished, something else comes along that demands (in my mind, at least) my response. My first attempt was about how our relationship keeps evolving because enforced chastity has pushed us to communicate more. The second was about ruined orgasms and why I can’t seem to sense them coming, and now this, and hopefully my last attempt is about communication.

The ESP in the blogosphere seems to be working overtime. Steeled Snake wrote a post about improved communications in his relationship. Then, a few hours later, Thumper’s post was about the damaging effect of “drive by” comments. And, Mrs. Lion’s post was about our improved communications and her take on how to handle a no-play night. These may not seem closely related at first glance, but I think they are. Each post, in its own way, discusses changes, mostly positive in communications. Steeled Snake and Mrs. Lion discussed how our relationships have improved because of enforced chastity. Thumper wrote about how he has been hurt by thoughtless, or at least clueless, comments from readers.

Comment spam eventually infects every blog. As Thumper pointed out, his blog is about him, not reviews or discussion of external events. Of course our blog is about us and some of the most intimate details of our lives. The big thing all three of the posts have in common is to  state that communications from people we know and trust tends to add to our lives. So, we all agree that our relationships and lives have been improved by a combination of our kinks and the very beneficial side effect of good communications the kinks provoke.

All of us, who blog on these subjects, for one reason or another exposed our lives to a great many strangers. We’ve invited these strangers to comment on what we write. When I started this blog, I hoped that comments would provide valuable feedback that would help our relationship get better. To a pretty large degree that has been the case. I’ve gotten most of the bullshit comments  on our static pages (How to Get a Good Fit, etc.). The reason is that almost every reader gets directly to those pages as the result of a search.

Search traffic is great. It’s how a lot of our regular readers got here. But most of the traffic driven here by search engine queries is hit and run. These people read what they searched for and then leave. Some, feel the need to offer comments of generally poor quality. So, my reasoning is that by not allowing comments on those pages, the casual reader won’t get a chance to write clueless, frequently hurtful comments. Search engines also drive traffic to our posts as well. We do allow comments to our posts. I did some analysis and found that comments from people who know us and decide to respond to a post, do it within the first week of the post’s publication date. So, we automatically turn off comments after two weeks.

These changes have made a big difference in quality. They don’t seem to have affected people who have taken the time to get to know us. Like Thumper, our readers can also send us a direct message via Contact Us. I am on twitter (@thecagedlion) and I read it regularly. Every post is tweeted within a few minutes of publication, so responding to that tweet is another way to chat. If you follow me on Twitter, you will get a tweet each time there is a new post.

I like getting comments that offer constructive feedback, even if we disagree. I have no plans to turn them off. I am very hopeful that my fellow bloggers will choose to post about some of the things we write and open up a community dialogue. My decades in the real-life leather community have taught me that there is tremendous value in community. We bloggers read each other’s posts. I hope that Thumper shining the spotlight on pingbacks will prompt all of us to open a blogger dialogue.