Vanilla FLR

when you say its not for her if you want help with that you need to explain in more detail

Do you find your relationship fulfilling?  Does it increase the intimacy, bond, and openness between you and your wife?  What, exactly, are your needs that are being satisfied by this relationship?  Is it making you both better people?

My wife has always wanted to be the dominant partner in our marriage.  The marriage became a wife led marriage when I told her that I will let her be in charge and obey her.  She always wanted this. Our marriage is better. 

It would be great to be spanked for being a bad boy, lick her pussy every day, get pegged ...  That's not going to happen.  She lost her sex drive after menopause, and she is fine with that. She does order me around more because she knows that turns me on.  She plays along with the tease and denial.  Yes, she doesn't really care if I masturbate.  If I don't masturbate and rely on her for an orgasm it will be weeks or months between orgasms, so it does work for us.  I clean house nude with a butt plug inserted.  To my surprise it doesn't freak her out. I revealed a side of myself to her that she had not seen, and she is Ok with it. Yes, it's fulfilling to serve her.  

The reason I posted was to connect with other men in a similar situation. 

@ksk I am glad you find it fulfilling and that it is important to her that you are fulfilled.  I think connecting with other guys in similar situations is a fantastic idea.  It would have helped me in my first marriage.  

I am certainly not predicting that something similar is going to happen to you.  But my marriage went through a similar phase and the outcome for us was not good.  The end took a long time in coming, mostly because I was working overtime to find a way to keep the love going while ignoring the writing on the wall.  What was once a mutual relationship became completely one-sided sometime after I accepted that she was not interested in sex.  As you say, that happens and it can be perfectly fine.  But once it was clear that my ex couldn't have cared less about me (sex or anything else, for that matter) except for what she could get from me, I realized there were two distinct relationships; the pretend one that I was making up in my mind to try to justify a loveless marriage and the one that died when she decided she was unwilling to be vulnerable to anyone, especially her husband.  She closed off and I was left to fend for myself. I had no one to give me a reality check to help me see I was in denial.

You don't have to have a lot of sex to be intimate.  And intimacy is far more important than sex.  Just keep communicating.

@ allabouther I am glad to hear you are happy in your new marriage.  I understand what you are saying about your previous marriage.  I am curious if you told your ex-wife you liked to be submissive? If yes, how did she react?  

I don't have a loveless marriage.  It's a sexless marriage except for tease and denial.  My wife is having hot flashes, trouble sleeping, and lost sexual desire.  Classic Menopause for many women. It has been more than a year.  Her family doctor is aware and prescribes medication. Maybe later she might get interested in sex again.  I hope so.  I don't think of my orgasm denial and service to my wife as pretend.  It's part of our marriage now.  Yes, I choose the orgasm denial and my wife benefits from it.  She also participates.  She makes me cum occasionally.  I don't like it when she does make me cum.  So, maybe it is her choice after all.  She makes me cum when I don't want to.

Thanks for sharing.  You can PM me if you want to chat more in detail

Posted by: @allabouther

You don't have to have a lot of sex to be intimate.  And intimacy is far more important than sex.  Just keep communicating.

There is so much truth in this.

I thought that I could build a bridge to increased intimacy with my ex-wife if I showed her my willingness to be vulnerable and by showing her that my commitment to her meant that I would be submissive to her.  I did offer submission on my part.  It did require that I expose vulnerability.  It resulted in ZERO increased intimacy.  She just was not interested in exposing any vulnerability of her own or in improving our intimacy.  She just exploited it and found a way to turn it into a completely one sided thing that actually reduced intimacy.  Once she knew I was willing to be submissive, it was like she decided that she didn’t need to try to work a relationship any more.  She could just make me do all the work.  She only became more selfish and self absorbed.  

Now that I have what I consider to be a very successful FLR with the best sex of my life, I see that the only way it happened was because the intimacy, trust, and mutual willingness to be vulnerable was established first.  That permitted an FLR to develop (as opposed to a D/s relationship that could develop on a different path) and then the off-the-hook sex rose from the FLR.

I don't equate intimacy with FLR with D/s.  It is possible to have them all at the same time, but it doesn’t have to be.  I think you can easily have a D/s relationship without having true intimacy.  But I don’t think you can have a meaningful FLR without having true intimacy first.

The thing about menopause is difficult for most women. Above all, you really don't know how it will go on and when.

In the meantime I would see it like this:
1.) You have a wife in a stable marriage
2.) Your wife is not repelled by your kinks.
3.) She rules your marriage, is dominant.
4.) She makes an effort to meet your needs from time to time.

So far, that's a lot more than most men who want to live an FLR have! I really wouldn't call that vanilla.
Actually, you don't really miss anything to be able proudly to say: I live in a FLR.

OK, it just doesn't happen in that sexual way you'd like it to. But Your problem is more the amount of sexual content than the denieing for the others sexual needs. Many vanilla marriages have even less sexual content than your FLR and needs / kinks are undesirable and are acted out in secret. So Compared to others, you are a winner!

I would be patient if I were you and see how things develop once the menopause has settled down. Maybe it will get better, maybe not. Please keep trying to actively determine your wife's sexual interest! Even if there will be gasoline one day, it will not ignite without a spark!

In the worst case if a person no longer "functions sexually" well due to hormonal disorders, then unfortunately you have to accept that. In my opinion, drugs don't help in the long term either, because they generally cause other problems. But thats another topic.....

I'll keep my fingers crossed that things get better for both of you! Don't give up!