Hello to all. I am semanticus, a male submissive married to Mistress Cherie.

Lady Bleu asked me to write a column for Dom-sub Lifestyle, and she was pretty open as to expected content. She wrote me, "One of the things I find most lacking on the internet is support for male submissives. Oh, I know there's foot fetish sites, and chastity sites, etc. But from what I've been told.. and from what I can find, there really is not very much Q&A; type of things, or suggestions, or "this is what I've learned."

I hope to find topics of interest to support all male subs, straight and gay, and will try to pose topical questions of depth that we can explore together. I will probably lean toward the Socratic method, approaching most topics with a provisional answer or opinion, the provision being that the answer or opinion leads to other questions. In this way, perhaps we can guide each other to the self discovery of some good truths about ourselves as male submissives. All I ask is that I not be poisoned.

I think an introduction is the first order of business.

Mistress Cherie and I have been married 5 years after going together about 2 years following an 18 month friendship before that.

I have always been sexually submissive towards the current primary woman in my life. In all other areas I am very aggressive. My earliest remembered sexual fantasies were of a powerful, sexually experienced woman to take charge of sex. I still have the first female domination-male slave book I ever found, "The Insatiable Claudette," and it opened my eyes to the fact that others must have the same sexuality as I have. But until I was 33 my Femdom scenes were all in fantasy with my only guidance the pornographic books popular before the Internet. Are you old enough to remember those Bill Ward illustrated paperbacks?

I had my first Mistress/slave relationship in my second marriage, but we played Mistress-slave in the bedroom only. Eventually after 17 years that marriage failed. I was terrified without her to handle my emotions and afraid that I would never have another mistress. I was horribly codependent and unsure of myself and my ability to find an emotionally healthy Mistress. And I was in my late 40's. It was obvious that I had to learn to take care of myself emotionally, so I set out to learn how reading every book, going to every seminar or workshop, listening to tapes, and developing my new-found spirituality through meditation and several far out practices. In that process I met the future Mistress Cherie in a very off-beat church (Church of the Lunatic Fringe, I lovingly call it) where She was in the process of networking 6 churches and running very big single's parties. She was firmly in charge, and I was Her right hand man (slave right off the bat). As our friendship grew, and we talked about the failed relationships of our pasts, and how we could each separately do it better next time, i told Her of my submissive, masochistic side. Rather than running away screaming, She said that sounded kind of fun, and that She had tied up a boyfriend or two. And although She had never used it, She had a whip hanging on Her bedpost.

As a spiritual exercise when I knew I was emotionally healthy and ready for a new relationship, I wrote a 5 page, narrow margin, small font, single spaced written prayer wherein I declared the exact characteristics of my Love-to-be: Spiritual, Femdom sex, emotional health, Femdom sex, financial non-dependence, Femdom sex, loving, Femdom sex, willing to grow emotionally, Femdom sex, open and honest, and Femdom sex. Eight (8) days later we started our romantic Femdom relationship.

Before marriage we did FemDom only in the bedroom, but because of my temper and refusal to give up power, we never considered 24/7. we got married and after 2 years that marriage was failing as a result of my control and raging and her compliant, conflict avoidance personality learned from an life-threatening abusive childhood. At that time we did three things that saved our relationship. We got help in a 12 step program for relationships, I stumbled across a Femdom List on the old eGroups, and I was diagnosed ADD, the bad temper, raging type. The emotionally healthy principles we learned in the 12 step program were invaluable as was the ADD medication. My life changed with the first pill. The raging ceased, and my frustration level dropped dramatically, so I no longer absolutely had to control just to hang on. And through reading of Femdom in the lives of others in the eGroup list, Mistress Cherie and I decided that She should become Mistress-in-fact, 24/7, and take charge of me in certain ways to eliminate the chaos and remaining frustration caused by my ADD. Since then we have grown and grown in the Lifestyle and our relationship has blossomed. She sees that I take my pills, and Her organizational talents have been such a relief for me, freeing me to be creative and visual and do my far out ADD global thinking and creating.

Mistress has benefited from Femdom by assuming Her rightful power, and found a way out of her compliant behavior. She was always strong, independent and capable, but the fear left over from the childhood abuse made Her fear conflict, so She was very compliant. No more! She also has a lot more freedom to follow Her bliss. I also don't try to control Her (nearly as much, anyway), so She has the freedom to expand and use Her talents. And She has developed her bitch side, standing up for herself and has become the family Matriarch, replacing my mother! She is benevolent, but can be a real slave driver! And I love it. All of it.

As for Femdom activities, we have a dungeon which She decorated and for which I built the equipment. Mistress whips me with crops and quirts, a rubber cat [ouch], single tails and finally a cane for fun and punishment. The fun is sensation, punishment is real pain, and She stops when Her anger and judgement tell Her to. i don't enjoy the last 2/3 of a punishment session, but it does give me peace and completion, for She is always very forgiving and loving immediately when it is over. She also enjoys anal play--Her play, my anus, enemas, and She wants to try milking me. We go to 3 or 4 big fetish balls and dinners a year, dressing in leather, latex and so on. We also throw 3 or 4 parties a year for our fetish friends that we have met at the public events. But the parties are just for fetish dressing up with no real BDSM play. Our particular fetish friends don't admit to BDSM activities and we do not have any Femdom friends that live nearby, and that is a problem for me without close male sub friends. Just as Lady Bleu noted when she asked me to write this column, perhaps male submissives do not have the support they may need. I feel that way, and I wonder if other male submissives feel a tiny bit looked down upon by some in the Lifestyle.

Mistress and I are monogamous, we rarely play in public, and only with each other. But at this moment She is upstairs dressing for a Fetish Halloween dinner and dungeon party, and I expect a lot of welts and some blood. I am a real exhibitionist at fetish events or in a public scene. Mistress did not like to play in public until recently when others complimented Her on Her prowess with a whip. Now She plays eagerly in public if it is the proper place. That's my life. Perhaps through this long rendering, you picked up some very weird ideas--I know at one time they were weird to me:

--Sometimes we believe women will be a Mistress only in exchange for being "kept.
--You can meet a Mistress anywhere, even in church.
--It is OK to pray for a Mistress. God likes sex, any sex, just as much as math.
--Except for the Mistress/slave sexuality, our relationship is pretty normal, which is to say we have the same problems and solutions that vanilla folks have. Femdom is no magic potion for unremitting joy. Sorry.
--You don't have to propose marriage or suggest a Femdom scene between the salad and main course on your first date.
--You don't have to jump in bed immediately to have love or to have a Mistress.
--We both, Mistress and slave, think we are emotionally healthy, and our marriage is strong.

I hope you can see, I believe Femdom is OK, healthy, moral, and generally a good thing for some folks. As good as the people doing it, anyway.

If you want to write me, my address is semanticus@mediaone.net. I'll close with this thought:
"If I have a dollar, and you have a dollar, and we exchange dollars, we each still have a dollar. But if I have an idea, and you have an idea, and we exchange ideas, we then we each have two ideas."

semanticus,
beloved slave of the benevolent and beautiful
Mistress Cherie