Practical Dynamics & Meaningful Purpose

You know it’s my suspicion that a great many men desire a Female-Led Relationship (FLR) for the sake of kink and eroticism, but if they looked at my life closely they’d see little more of either than any ‘traditional vanilla’ couple. ‘Course we’re not in an FLR for those reasons (in so much as the label accurately applies to us), so perhaps it’s all apples and oranges.

I’ve made a joke out of complaining about exercising, about the exercising itself mind you not the fact that my wife has told me to do it everyday (and told me on multiple occasions including when she made my New Year’s resolutions for me). So I’ll call her up before, during or after exercising and say something like, “people who do this for fun are either insane or part of the conspiracy of aliens trying to take over the world.” She’ll laugh and say, “yes but you’re doing it anyway because it’s good for you and I don’t want a saggy flabby man who dies of a heart attack at 50.” And I’ll jokingly hem and haw, and finally say something like, “Aye Captain, obeying orders.” And she’ll say something like, “Good. And you should. I have good ideas and you need me to make sure you stay on track.” (Yes, I often call her ‘Captain’, but sometimes when she’s delegating she’ll call me ‘Captain’ too.)

Well there’s a kernel of truth here: I don’t particularly care for exercising all that much and probably wouldn’t be as diligent about exercise as I currently am without my wife’s expressed interest –she’s always been more health conscious than I. But on the other hand: I certainly don’t really NEED her to “take care of me”, I’d merely find some slightly less rigorous standard of maintenance and stick with it because **I** don’t want to be flabby, saggy and dead at 50 either. And neither is she forcing me in any to do that extra bit of exercising (up from my standard to her standard), I’m choosing it because I know it makes her happy, because doing so feeds the fiery self that she is and that I love so much.

You know, most of the things that she actually tells me to do (which admittedly often takes the grammatical form of asking but again it’s about an understood dynamic) probably boil down to she and I having slightly different standards on something. We’ve just agreed that when this happens that ‘we’ll compromise’ by my ‘obeying’ her (fiery, willful, want, desire for her own) standard instead of my own –instead of oh say, me **arguing** for my standard and both of us ending up unhappy. Though again admittedly my opinion, ideas, and feelings are heard first, and admittedly we’re both certain that if I felt strongly enough about something (also admittedly rare) that she’d bend to my standard simply because she wants me to be happy too.

Perhaps a lot of this is simply about getting and staying on the same page as it were. Perhaps our dynamic is ultimately just a way to maintain mental and emotional closeness throughout more aspects of our lives together than the closeness we’d manage without this dynamic. Perhaps it just gives me a reason to call her up in the middle of the day and talk for fifteen minutes about something so uninteresting and mundane as exercise.

There’s a thread on the She Makes the Rules forum titled “sexualizing the mundane” which at first blush again might highlight slightly different motives –kink/eroticism vs emotional intimacy– but honestly I think of people’s focus on kink/eroticism as their way (path/manner/symbols) for achieving emotional intimacy. The kernel of truth I see is that the meaningful and abstract (‘transcendent’ if you will) experiences of love and intimacy between two people that we may WANT in a relationship must still happen amidst a daily context of mundane, material, NEEDS. The integration of of these semi-dualistic aspects (mundane v transcendent, need v want, meaning v. drudgery, etc.)  probably happens differently from couple to couple, to varying degrees, incorporating different and varying aspects of their relationship, and of course with varying degrees of perceived satisfaction. But perhaps the process of working out the manner of that integration might be more directly labeled “making the mundane meaningful”. Or “making practical life a basis for meaningful relationship intimacy”. Or something along those lines, and to this extent perhaps ‘kink’ and ‘vanilla’ isn’t all so “apples and oranges” after all.

Um, let’s see, my wife told me on Thursday evening (and reminded me Friday morning) to clean out the fridge and make a preliminary shopping list as she was doing the shopping Saturday morning. I used to do the shopping during the week because I wanted to spend more time with her on the weekend and not have her run errands after working all week, but she usually does it now –because she’s more naturally more health conscious, she enjoys making health choices more than I do, and she likes having her standard met more than I care about not having mine met. So when she tells me what to do to help her get dome what she likes doing I of course say, “Aye Captain” and just do it. But we still discussed the myriad grocery choices, ideas and planning for the week before the final list was made this morning and our conversation was probably indecipherable from any other couple’s conversation about such a thing.

Aaaand just now she stopped back in after hitting two stores and I can see that she changed the bread I’ve been using in my diet regimen. I might have made up my diet regimen, but just now she –without asking, without consulting– changed the bread I eat. Because she decided her choice was more healthy than mine. Aaaand she only told me to try it, and after I expressed my sincere concern that I mightn’t like it she said ‘then we’ll freeze the rest, I’ll eat it eventually and you can go back to your less healthy bread’. I tasted it and true to form I don’t think it’s as tasty as my bread, but I also think it’s tasty enough to eat instead of the bread I choose –because it’s not something (i.e. as a standard) that I care enough about to change. Especially when her choice means so much to her, when her choice has such clear reasonable benefits, and when I enjoy participating in her fiery, willful existence so intimately.

So how different is this from and vanilla couple’s dynamic? Possibly not so much at all. But it’s what works for us. I figure some people find more kinky dynamics to be easier for expressing their emotions and intimacy, some don’t, and some are in the grey area in between the spectrum’s poles. For functional relationship intimacy in the “making mundane meaningful” area, whatever works –well, works. And I think that’s the point.