Leveling Up: Inside One Female-Led Relationship

As the name of this space suggests, it is mostly focused on the exhilarating, and sometimes confounding, experience of being married to a Hotwife. Miranda and I do indeed enjoy a one-way open marriage. However, there is another descriptor to our relationship. It is female led, an element separate from, but complementary to Hotwifing. The female led aspect of our life stands alone from other dynamics. Hotwifing, for us, would have been much more complicated without first establishing a matriarchal marital power structure. However, that power structure can easily exist without Miranda ever taking another extramarital lover.

Being a devout deviant, I was well aware of the concept of female led relationships and, perhaps, if pushed, may have admitted to being FLR-curious. That said, I never saw my marriage heading in this direction until the moment the words came out of Miranda’s mouth. Not in a hundred years. Maybe a thousand. We met in the kink scene where she was in search of submissive experiences and she allowed me to assume the role of her Dom (which, oddly but comfortably, I still assume when we are engaged in a BDSM scene). It just wasn’t a side of her I saw developing. My guess is that she would have told you the same thing. But a few important somethings changed in the last few years that led to where we are today.

The first was a career change. She gave up steady, yet unfulfilling, work in an office to go back to school and learn a new trade. It was a turning point for her in many ways, but most specifically for this story, is that she learned, with initiative, she can have what she wants in life on her terms. It was her first taste of true empowerment. Not a false empowerment given to her by another, but true self-initiated empowerment generated by her own will and hard work.

The foundation laid, she was ripe for the next big step in her part of our journey. I was out of town for work, so Miranda flew down to California to spend a few days with her Hotwife friend, mentor, and hunting partner (whom I just call Diva here). It was a Hotwife hunting trip for them, but more impactfully, she spent some time with Diva and her husband at their house and observed their routine. Diva is the head of her female-led household and, although Miranda knew intellectually what that meant, it was the first time she had observed it in person. And she liked what she saw!

She liked how Diva commanded her husband’s full attention. How he remained on his best behavior at all times. She ran her household like a tight ship, ensuring that all of the household needs were being met. Her leadership of her husband was an obvious element of that outcome. They were connected through her leadership in a new and fascinating way. They were married. They have kids and jobs and responsibilities, yet nothing about her was taken for granted. He was still courting her as if they had just met. He doted on her and made it his mission for her to feel like what she is to him: the most important woman in the world. Most of all, it was obvious how much mutual love and respect they shared and how healthily that love was expressed.

Miranda witnessed all of it, and when she got home, decided that she wanted that too.

Shortly after our reunion she summoned the courage to request changes from me. She was loving and kind, but firm in what she expected in our relationship. She spoke from her heart and her glow enraptured me. She was a changed woman and I knew at that moment that I would follow her anywhere.

We are still relatively new in formally recognizing Miranda’s position as head of our household, although looking back it’s clear that the dynamic has always been present. At this point it represents less than ten percent of the time we have been together, yet we both took to it naturally, like any other energy that’s in harmony with the universe. It has been, and will be, a winding path, but we are finding our way much more easily than either of us expected. I’m not her slave. Or her property. Or her servant. I wouldn’t even call myself her submissive. I’m simply her husband. A husband that has recognized the value of feminine leadership. We don’t struggle for control and I don’t fight her authority. Instead, I immediately found myself leaning into it. Embracing it. My loyalty to her leadership, female leadership, is not earned thorough fear and intimidation but through love and compassion. She creates and not destroys. Elevates not humiliates. Making her the true center of my world and trusting her to lead our family is not an act of submission. It’s an act of understanding and enlightenment. An act of accepting, deep in my being, her love and her value of my worth.

Our formal female-led relationship my still be in its infancy, yet I have already grown more during this time than any other in my adult life. She has given me deep, meaningful gifts in the form of significant human experiences heretofore unknown to me. Each one adding a richness to my experience that weaves me deeper into the collective fabric of humanity. They were all located on too high of a shelf for me to reach without her lift beneath me. It’s as if embracing the power of the feminine is key to accessing the peaceful, loving bass lines that keeps the universe’s time beneath the usual chaos of the overly amplified masculine lead guitars.

One of the first new experiences she has led me towards is the value of discipline. I was a good kid raised by relatively lax parents. Discipline, both in the focus on my actions and consequences for my behavior, have long been only intangible concepts. I was never in the military and I’m not someone who mastered music or martial arts. I knew people found great personal value in discipline, in the concept of personal sacrifice to master a craft, but it never played a role in my life. Things have always came easy to me and, if I’m honest, I quicky lose interest in that which doesn’t.

Accepting Miranda’s leadership as the head of our household has challenged that reality. Feminine authority cannot be fully embraced without discipline. It takes great mastery of self to match the effort and passion she puts into her familiar role. Constant awareness of my thoughts and actions, together with a singular focus on her, is required to satisfy her expectations of me and our relationship. I have had to learn discipline, as a new skill, to put my socially engrained behaviors and physical wants behind those expectations. The first of my new lightbulbs was illuminated in that process. Discipline was no longer an intangible concept. I started to get it. I started to get why others find such value in outcomes that only result from sacrifice, focus, and practice. I, for the first time in my life, understood why the value of discipline is an elating and important human experience.

Discipline, of course, has two meanings, both of which were absent in my biography. True consequences for my actions, consequences that feel true to my experience, was the next new experience that appeared. Much like discipline, the concept of penance, in a positive and constructive form, was another foreign concept. Humanity is littered with those seeking the value of penance in their life. The fulfilling reparation of a harm that not only expresses true regret to the other party but that is significant enough to allow the perpetrator to absolve themselves. I had never given much thought to the concept and, in retrospect, am not sure I truly apologized for anything I had done. A true apology that fully accepts the wrongness of my actions and recognizes the hurt caused.

Missteps in a female-led relationship cannot be remedied by hollow apologies. Little missteps are easily forgiven, but they are not the concern. Deep acceptance of female leadership requires full trust of the one appointed to lead. A prerequisite to Miranda’s ability to open her heart to me in her selfless leadership is my willingness to return her passion with my all. She must trust that I’m open to what she has to share and will give as much to the team effort as I can muster. She’s putting herself far out on a limb and, with each small step from the trunk, the stakes are raised. The corresponding magnitude of my mistakes are magnified, and when I really misstep, I mean truly mess up, penance is my only path to forgiveness. She may forgive, but she knows that penance is my personal path to self-forgiveness. It’s a tool she wields infrequently and never with anger or malice. Penance is a gift she gives me out of love to help lead me further down our path towards the full realization of what our marriage can grow into being. Penance, or the value of it, was the next new, important human experience I didn’t expect when I accepted her offer to lead our family.

The value of service came next. I have long heard of those who find self-satisfaction through service. Service to community, service to a country, service to a god, service to others. I was raised an only child, resulting in an adult who learned independence and self-sufficiency. I found success in life through my independence. Insular pursuits bearing the sweetest fruits. I thought I appreciated the value of service, but I know now that I never truly felt that value until my attention, my service, way exclusively dedicated to Miranda. Sacrifices that, before, were made only for my personal objectives suddenly grew richer when made in service to her. To her vision for our family. Soon they were not even sacrifices. They became opportunities for service. Cleaning up from dinner is no longer a chore. No longer a solo sacrifice of my time. Doing the dishes is now a small act of service. Anything done with service in my heart is something that we are doing together. I wasn’t prepared for the joy that service would bring. I quickly shifted my mentality from grudgingly completing tasks asked of me to being hungry for more. I’ve become greedy for opportunities to serve her.

My joy of service is directly related to compersion. Miranda never takes advantage of my commitment to her. She would never ask me to do something that is frivolous or beyond my ability. Her asks are carefully tailored to help me move closer to satisfying her expectations. My completion of her asks adds to her happiness. Her happiness fuels my compersion. Her observation of my compersion leading to additional asks. A loving upwards spiral feeding off itself and bringing us closer and closer.

The final lesson thus far learned is the value of devotion. I have long observed, if not envied, those who experience devotion to an outside entity. I was raised in a non-religious household. Devotion was another foreign concept. Foreign until our home dynamics changed. For me, devotion was a culmination of all of the previous experiences. It’s the totality of discipline, penance, service, and compersion. All of those values rolled up into one exhilarating commitment to something bigger than me. Devotion not just to Miranda, but to our family and her vision of it. Devotion to the reality she is creating and to the power of her gentle leadership. Devotion that drives me, like a drug, to seek ever deeper levels of our dynamic.

The risk I run by following my ever-deepening path is that Miranda will be starved of her own devotional experiences. She came into my life as a submissive and, I know, her own service experiences have led her to the knowledge she uses to guide me. Now that I understand the depth of my experience, I worry that part of her misses, or will miss, her own experiences. She has sacrificed her own service in service to me. But perhaps therein lies the magic. That said, she’s finding her own devotional service in guiding me towards mine. Her facilitation of my devotion an act of devotion in its own right. We are feeding off each other; a formula for long-term success.

The most exciting part of all of this is that we are just getting started. We will inevitably experience the waxing and waning of our dynamic’s energy during stretches when one of the two us just don’t quite have the necessary energy. Overall, however, I sense there is really no going back. We have jumped off a cliff, hand in hand, knowing that wherever it leads, we will be doing it together.

Today’s message from my barista seemed spot on. It reads: I trust in the happiness, success, and abundance that is already headed my way.