HOW TO ASK YOUR MATE FOR AN FLR

I have had a few (up to 5 or 6 now) men ask me about how they can get into an FLR. All of them are already married, or with a committed partner, which I am thankful for, and most seem to live outwardly vanilla lives with no experience in D/s relationships. I would have no advice for a single man except this: Find a woman you love and spend years getting to know and trust her and then get back to me.

Of course, others may do this kind of thing right off the bat with a woman, but I can’t quite wrap my head around that, so I’ll just admit that I have nothing to offer to those folks and move on to my area of (Limited) experience.

Here are some primary things to consider when contemplating an FLR with a spouse/partner:

1) Trust. This is the number one. You must trust HER! Trust is paramount because you will quite literally be putting your life and/or some aspect of your well-being in her hands. Mrs Fillmore and I have a Total Power Exchange or Total Authority Transfer, which means she is in charge in all things. Any decision I make can be countermanded. She respects my professional needs, but I trusted her to do that before I made the leap. If push came to shove, it’s her over my career. Now, you may be in a position where you are NOT reliable or worthy of her trust, because you have spent your life together making bad decisions or being inconsiderate. See my post on Terry Real’s podcast visit to LoveLink. If you haven’t listened to that, do it now.

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2) Love. You two must share love. This can be strong, as ours was when we started this FLR, or it may be somewhat faded, but there must be real love between you. If you do this effectively and it suits your lady, that love WILL blossom. Whether or not you have an active sex life, or whether you are emotionally well connected is another story. Often, we men are emotionally stunted by societal pressures (again, see the Terry Real podcast) and women generally don’t have this handicap, but we must have this love, even if we don’t know how to express it. An FLR should help with that.

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3) Privacy. Whether it is just your bedroom, or a whole house to yourselves, you need to have a place to commune every day. Mrs Fillmore and I tend to retire early and spend a lot of time together talking, being romantic (usually me showering her with physical affection), or making love. Having that space to share is essential for when you first start out. I don’t doubt that you will end up considering it her space, but most of you will end up considering the entire world her space.

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4) Solid communication. And no, I’m not saying two opposite things. You WILL probably have difficulty expressing and feeling emotions, if you are a typical man raised in Western culture, but what you should have is the ability to focus on your communications with her, and she with you. For us, that is not just in the privacy of our bedroom, but via various communications platforms. We use text, email, Facebook Messenger, and more. We are in nearly constant communication throughout the day. And it’s not so she can micromanage me. It is so I can be constantly available to her if she needs something or wants to talk. Not everyone can or will spend half their day on the phone or messaging with their wife but that open line is essential not just when you are together. It keeps you focused on her needs. In my case, I will text or message her to see if she can talk, and she will call if she can. When she needs me, she just calls, and I answer unless it is impossible. I see this situation as ideal. Your mileage may vary.

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5) What you will bring to the table in an FLR. This could be many things. In my case, I thought about all the things I did that my wife did not like, whether minor annoyances, true dislikes, or major breaches of trust/love. You will not be doing any of them anymore, even the ones where you think she is being silly. You also could think of the things you do that she DOES like and let her know you will be focusing on them. Some of you will keep it restricted to certain aspects of your lives, like the bedroom, or finances, and others will have something closer to what I have, but the things you put on these two lists should be pertinent to what you are giving her. I included a third list of chores that need to be done, and how often. This was more to let her know I would be taking them over, but also allow her tell me what else to do. To sum this section up, you are iterating lists of the actual features of your new relationship that will be positive to her. It’s as if the FLR you are giving her is a new car, and these lists are the reasons why the car is awesome. This helps frame it as a pragmatically positive thing for her and articulates your commitment on a day to day basis. You are not just saying “I’ll be yours to command!”

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6) What you need, and want, from the FLR. This is a tricky subject. For me, I needed her to protect me from emotional issues I am not equipped to deal with, and to take the burden of leading the family off my shoulders. I needed a relatively strong guide to what she wanted from me for her happiness. I also needed to give up absolute control of sexual activity. I literally never wanted to make a decision about our sex life again. I wanted someone who would use domestic discipline to keep me in line. This was not a deal breaker. If she had been incapable of it, we would have moved on without it. I wanted someone who would dominate me in the bedroom. The two forms of physical interaction are similar on the surface, but wholly separate emotionally, however neither was an absolute need, just a strong want. You might have others, and I encourage you to think about them ahead of time. I also thought I wanted enforced chastity, but apparently I didn’t really want it or need it to keep sexually focused on her.

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7) What your limits are. Remember, this is a negotiation. No, not an adversarial one like buying a used car, but you are still working out details. I brought up my job, but in the context of letting her know I trusted her to manage that priority. You may have kids from another marriage. You may REALLY hate washing dishes. This section is hard for me, because I have complete trust in her (and a safeword if I really need it) so I really didn’t have any limits that I articulated. Remember, you will still be able to say no, and to negotiate in the future, but you are forging a partnership with new rules, and it would be good to let your partner know what you wouldn’t want, or what really scares you.

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8) Honesty. You need to commit to total honesty. This may be clearing ongoing deceits, or it may be moving forward, but an FLR does not work if the partners are not honest. She may, within the bounds of your arrangement, decide not to share things with you, but most men will need (and want) to become an open book to their partner.

Once you have considered all this, it is time to broach the subject with Herself. In our many conversations Mrs. Fillmore and I have realized I was subconsciously working toward this since our last major blowout. I was making serious changes and striving to focus more on her. I had come close to losing her and was making a real effort. It was months, really, and only about a month and a half ago that I did what I advised above in terms of introspection, etc. You can read the play by play on my blog.

You need to sell this, not in a skeevy or manipulative way, and present it to her in stages. I outline my steps on the blog, so I won’t talk about it here, but if you have a logical mind, you should be able to present an argument that shows her the benefits of trying this out.

If you come right out and say, “Hey babe, I essentially want to be your slave and have you beat me if I don’t dust the ceiling fan every day,” she’s probably going to be ambivalent at best. However, if you START by dusting the ceiling fan every day (or whatever it is that needs doing), or making her coffee, or being sexually attentive, or whatever it is that you can do to show her that you not only love her, but respect her, and want to give her joy in her life and the time to do what she wants, you are making a silent argument for FLR.

So, start by committing in whatever regard you want your FLR to encompass.

The next step is to present your argument. For me, I wrote it to her, because I am MUCH better with a keyboard than I am with spoken word (at least with her). Start slow. Lay out what you have to offer. Don’t say “Female Led Relationship”, as if she googles it she is getting her information from a random source on the internet. What I did, and I think it may work for most, is to ask her “If I made these changes and stuck to them for the rest of my life, would your life be better or worse?” She will hopefully notice that you have made some of these changes over the last few weeks or months.

Now, an important aspect of this negotiation is that you aren’t trying to FORCE her into anything. You aren’t saying “agree to my terms or I’m just going to do all these shitty things again.” You are presenting a positive argument. If you lay out the benefits to her, and then give an overview of what you would hope to get from her in return, it is a starting point. You can move slowly from here. Maybe a week trial period. For us, it was about three days before we had settled on our power dynamic, and five days before we were pretty much as we are now. Your experience will be different. I was fortunate in that my wife had been working on herself for months and had started asserting herself in nearly all aspects of her life (me included). So, SHE was ready.

Your partner may not be. There are good books you can get her. In particular, I recommend Jen Sincero’s You Are a Badass. It’s on Hoopla (free from most libraries in audio book), print, or Audible. Just say someone recommended it to you (your friend Millard 😉).

The reason I recommend this is that you will have habits formed from years of interaction. If your partner is the one who has done most of the cleaning and deferred to you in decision making, or had counted on you to initiate sex, she is just not going to be ready to jump right in. If you are reading this, you probably have put a lot of thought into this and have expectations on what to get out of it. In short, you’ve essentially started working out, training the behaviors you will need to be obedient and submissive, while she will be unused to running the show or being dominant, you can’t her expect to run a marathon right away. Give her time to grow into the role, or the parts of it she is comfortable with. You may not get everything you want out of the relationship change, but what I’ve found is that I don’t really care, because all I REALLY want is for her to be happy and content. So, let her figure out how to tell you that.

If this is just an “in the bedroom thing” then it is a different conversation, but still really the same. Because if you are asking for a change there, it means she is probably not the one that’s in charge right now. You are offering her complete control (within your negotiated limits). That may mean she gives you a long kiss goodnight, pats your ass, and then tells you to go to sleep. Or it may mean something wicked and debauched. You have to be ready to be happy with either. And I don’t mean ready to tolerate either. For the relationship to work, you have to trust that her decision is not only what makes her happy, but what is best for you. It may take some getting used to but what I’ve read, and personally experienced, is that the submissive man will essentially have his brain rewired to take joy in her joy, and to thrill at her whims.

The last thing, and perhaps the most important, is the punctuation mark. You need to come to an agreement as to what you will be doing (the nature of the transfer of authority to her) and any limits that you will operate under, limits on both your behavior. And then you need to set a time limit. Ours was a month. You will agree ahead of time to talk frankly, outside of the rules of your power exchange, about what is working, what is not working, and what you would like to see in the future, and set the date for the next such conversation. Be prepared for frank conversation or be ready for it to be virtually perfect. I was inexplicably depressed when there turned out to be not much of substance we needed to discuss. Of course, the Light of My Life showed me that this was a good thing, and with the aid of her riding crop, I was happy once again.

Let me know if this leaves you with any questions. As I stated at the beginning, this guide is for men in relatively long-term committed relationships with women that they love.

Cheers,

Millard Fillmore

13th President of the United States of America

“I know nothing!”