Uxorious, Female Led, Other

All animals are equal – but some animals are more equal than others.
~George Orwell, Animal Farm 

I have somewhat discussed before how ‘uxorious’ is different than ‘submissive’ (on basis of ‘passion’ versus ‘power’ and on basis of ‘my disempowerment’ versus ‘her empowerment’), yet neither word seems to quite be adequate or accurate to my experience and even ‘female led’ in many ways doesn’t seem to be a very accurate symbol for our relationship. Now over the past few days I have been having an unprecedentedly wonderful conversation with my wife about a great deal many things I discuss here – mostly on the themes of differing interests and differing love symbols in our relationship and love symbol negotiation.

On one level it’s unprecedented because my wife is a very holistic, compact and immediately experiential person, that is to say not even remotely close to as unendingly reflective, introspective, philosophic and differential as I am (see compact and differentiated). She likes enjoying her relationship rather than constantly talking about it and reflecting on it – she certainly is not interested in a forum on relationships (such as She Makes the Rules) or anything else (books, CDs, other websites) about relationships of any kind, and even regarding my own blog, she perfers I engage her in (the ‘higher’ experience) of artful conversation about anything important to our relationship rather than (the ‘lower’ experience of) simply reading my opinionated monologues. (Though I honestly do not think experiencing enjoyment and reflective communication are necessarily mutually exclusive, I know there are downsides to my point of view, and since her viewpoint well suits her I naturally respect her wishes as a matter of general course.)

But on another level it’s unprecedented: Whenever I have broached the subject of a ‘female led’ relationship, she has from the very beginning maintained a fairly skeptical or even negative attitude since she prefers the way experience works things out rather than resorting to any sort of systematic set of ideological rules. And, even though I have often thought the female led symbol and dynamic could work well for me, I also know how I would need to be selective and limiting in its application and so I often hesitate to use it for us. And hesitation is not only where we agree, for my wife also admits of her dominant personality, of my deferring personality and that she does like me the uxorious, doting, and ‘foolishly fond of’ her way I am. But she appreciates that my deference is aimed at her and her happiness rather than merely at an (eroticized) power differential, or even at just the (eroticized) power dynamic, and ‘uxorious’ does not differentiate well enough between power (possibly tending as far as ‘obsequious sycophancy’) and emotion (say, the happiness ‘doting’ is ‘foolishly’ aimed at).

And so the surprising part to me is that we also agree about the lack of available accurate and adequate symbols and the cause of this lack. The labels and phrases generally used (especially on the internet) such as “female led”, “wife led”, “submissive,” “dominant”, “topping from the bottom” etc. all have the feel and indication of an inequity of personhood; they focus on gender and the relative position of power within the relationship – or the (agreed upon) restriction or enlargement of ability to directly exercise power within their relationship. (Not that I think there’s anything necessarily wrong with those who do kink on power. And as a side note: the freewill option of kinking on power is different than Orwell’s piggish cooption of power. )

My wife and I feel it’s a more holistic (and possibly a more romantic) perspective to view a relationship, regardless of the ‘dynamic’, as an emotionally functional single unit. A unit comprised of two individual parts, granted – but on the basis of emotional functionality neither is whole without the other and the two people are as equal when together (one ‘half’) as when apart (one ‘half’). Thus we want relationship symbols that are focused on this ‘equality of emotional functionality’ rather than the ‘unequal distribution of power’, and want labels and phrases without any feeling or connotation of inequity of personhood.

Even though we’re left wondering the answer to something like, as ‘submissive’ is to ‘dominant’ and female led, ‘doting’ is to _____ and _____, I do think we surely still have, and will continue to have, a relationship dynamic others are going to label ’female led’. And if in many instances the differences won’t even be worth noting or significant enough to point out – I’m also sure these are labels and phrases we just won’t be using ourselves. And lest this brouhaha over labels seem either overly exacting or too intensely important, I attach here my very first post for some fascinating perspective; perhaps like everyone, I not only want the relationship I want but also the symbols I want to represent it with.

 

Why Female Led?
December 2, 2009

They call it a female led relationship, or wife led marriage, or who knows what by someone else – I’ve seen enough terms, phrases and acronyms to realize there is no hard and fast codification. Sometimes when I think about all this, I just end up wondering why all the descriptive baggage. Let’s face it, it’s only called female (or wife or woman, or whatever) for the contrast with traditional ‘male led relationships’, or ‘husband led marriage’. Yet making either distinguishment, male or female, has always seemed unwieldy to me, perhaps because when it comes to what I want to do in my personal relationship I just don’t really care so much what is or isn’t ‘traditional’ by the majority or what even what the rest of the minority might be doing. I just want what I want. 

And as far as names go, I want to believe this defies perfect codification precisely because there are more shades, tones and variables within what people want for their personal relationships than can be accounted for in the base ideology and gendered stereotypes that lie behind such a woefully inadequate grouping of words. That is rather than simply believe it’s because so few people have ever heard ‘female led’ differentiated from the leather clad dominatrix before. Perhaps I’m really bothered by how lackluster ‘history’ and ‘tradition’ seem as excuses for the false dichotomies used to represent human experience.

And of course on the other hand, sometimes a label is just a label, just a temporary net designed to catch just enough meaning and haul it across the void between persons and sometimes what we receive isn’t quite what was sent. After all, although it is something slightly different for me, when I start describing what I want with the one I love, I still start with this thing, this concept, however it is people name it.