One of the words that I see tossed around a lot in female-led relationships is the word devotion. On the surface the word sounds good. This man is pledging that he is going to be devoted to the woman that he has chosen to be in a female-led relationship with. What I’ve noticed, however, is that while it’s easy to pledge devotion, the actual practice requires something else altogether.
Devotion is the first step.
What you need to turn devotion into reality is commitment. One of the challenges that relationships face is how do you stay committed and connected with each other especially in the face of being in a relationship where you may have been with that person for years upon years and one day you wake up and you realize I’m really bored with this relationship or I’m not feeling in love right now with this person. It’s easy to profess love when you first get into a relationship or when you’re having an incredibly hot and sexy moment with the person. But lust in and of itself is not love. Lust is a feeling, an expression, an experience, but it is not the actual presence of love.
Devotion is a lot like lust. On the surface it looks like love but in reality it is the hot, quick thrill of the moment. It’s easy to feel devotion when you’re first meeting somebody. You don’t know them yet in a very real sense. The devotion you feel is to the projection of that person. You don’t know what they look like when they’re sick or when they’re having a rough day. You don’t know what they sound like when they’ve come home stressed out. You don’t know any of the things about them that will tell you whether or not you can really be in relationship with this person.
Welcome to sovereignty through submission, leadership through service. This is the website for submissive men who value presence over performance and the dominant women who love them.
Curiosity, Devotion and Commitment
Devotion, in and of itself, is not relational and this is something that may surprise you. Devotion, much like lust, is objectifying. In the moment it feels good but the reality is that you are pedestaling the person that you are devoted to. On the one hand she may want that. On the other hand it may actually prevent you from really getting to know her. In a female-led relationship devotion can be an expected part of the experience. Yet something that I would recommend is that devotion, in and of itself, isn’t enough.
The reason I take this particular stance is because what I have come to recognize about devotion is that devotion cuts off a fundamental element of being in a relationship. Simply feeling devotion for someone ultimately creates a static perspective of who that person is. The element that is essential for being in a relationship is curiosity. Can you be curious about this person that you are in a relationship with?
Curiosity asks you to look beyond the objectification of devotion and discover the actual contact with the person that brings you into alignment with them. For example one of the practices that I apply to my relationship with my mistress is a question of the day. This practice is a commitment to staying curious about her. Instead of holding on to a fixed notion as to who I think she is, I ask questions.
It’s not always easy asking questions. There are days where I can’t necessarily think of an easy question to ask. It requires a level of commitment and focus on finding a question to ask. And the asking of the question is what keeps us in contact with each other. By taking the time to ask a question and listen to the answer, what we’re doing is continually discovering something about each other. This is part of what it can take to really maintain a relationship.
How to come up with creative and imaginative questions
I want to encourage you to employ this practice of question of the day in your own relationship. Here’s an exercise that you can do that will help you come up with questions to ask your beloved(s).
One pattern I've noticed across highly generative questions is that they don't simply ask for information. They reorient attention. A good question changes where awareness is looking. In that sense, a question shifts consciousness before it ever receives an answer. The practice is really about learning how to move your attention through different dimensions of experience until a question naturally appears, and an answer is invited in.
There are patterns to questions that when observed and understood can help you come up with more creative and imaginative explorations of yourself and other people.
Pattern 1: Questions emerge from changing orientation
Instead of asking someone what happened, change your orientation. Creative questions come from deliberately standing somewhere else.
What would my future self ask?
What would a child notice?
What would a tree ask?
What is this room asking of me?
What question would silence ask?
If this emotion had language, what would it ask?
Orientation changes perspective. Change your orientation to discover different questions.
Pattern 2: Every question has a direction
Questions move in directions.
Try applying a direction. It could be inward, outward, up, down, sideways or something else all together.
Pattern 3: Questions arise from tension
Good questions aren’t random. They offer the chance to explore the dynamic tensions of life.
They can be awkward…they can also be illuminating.
What’s something you’ve pretended to know in your life? is a question that will challenge each person and it could be fun.
Pattern 4: Every domain has hidden questions
People usually ask about objects. Creative questions ask about relationships and are relational.
Instead of asking “What book changed you?” try “What relationship do you have with books?”
Instead of asking “What do you fear?” try “What does fear help you protect?”
Pattern 5: Good questions invite imagination
Notice how these questions change when you apply imagination to them.
“What did you do today?” versus “If today became a landscape, what would it look like?”
“If this week had weather, what would you be standing in?”
The imagination can bring us fascinating insights through questions, if we apply it.
Pattern 6: Questions become richer when they shift scale
A fascinating pattern appears when moving between scales.
Microscopic
What’s one tiny habit changing your life?
Personal
What part of yourself feels most alive today?
Relational
What conversation are you avoiding?
Community
What does your neighborhood teach you?
Planetary
What season of humanity do you think we’re living in?
Cosmic
If the universe wanted your attention today, how might it get it?
Changing scale changes perspective and invites curiosity in.
Pattern 7: Let the environment generate the question.
Instead of thinking of a question, let something outside you ask it. Walk through a house. Whichever object attracts your attention becomes the source.
The chair asks or the doorway asks or the shadow asks.
The doorway might ask:
What threshold are you standing in without recognizing it?
The world becomes an active participant rather than a backdrop. It also gives each of you a chance to ask and answer from your orientation.
These patterns show that questions are not primarily invented, so much as they are discovered through shifts in orientation. The more ways someone learns to orient themselves in relation to time, space, scale, perspective, relationship, and imagination, the more original and meaningful their questions become.
Give this practice a try and watch how it changes your relationship with yourself, your beloved(s) and the world.
Commitment begins with yourself
Another element of successful relationships, which I’ve already mentioned, is the word commitment. To truly be in a relationship with someone else requires commitment. Devotion is easy because you are devoted to the projection of the person. Commitment requires actually getting curious about the person and discovering who they are. This is a never ending process. Commitment also requires turning toward the person at any given moment in the relationship. Sometimes that’s easy to do and other times it can be hard. You’re not just turning towards the other person. You’re also turning towards the relationship itself and you’re turning towards yourself.
That last part may sound like a contradiction. I maintain that we can’t really be in a successful relationship until we learn how to choose ourselves first. A relationship that is based on choosing someone else over yourself will inevitably fail. The reason it fails is that you’re abandoning yourself. When you abandon yourself for somebody else, you are hoping that that person will fill in the gap that is within you and that creates an unstable relationship.
When you base your own sense of happiness and contentment on whether or not you’re in a relationship with somebody else this creates a fundamental imbalance in the relationship. You are putting a lot of pressure on that person and the relationship itself to fulfill something that needs to come from within yourself. On the other hand when you learn how to be content and happy with yourself, this brings you a level of stability that you can bring to the relationship because you know that you are basing your sense of happiness on yourself and on choosing yourself. This allows you to choose the relationship as well.
In the last couple of years, I’ve been on my own journey around this realization. I’ve made a commitment to myself to choose myself and choose my happiness and contentment. This has actually allowed me to commit even more deeply to the relationship that I’m in because I’m choosing that relationship from a place of choosing myself. I know that I’m happy with myself and I’m content and it allows me to be more present and aware in the relationship.
I’m not basing my sense of happiness and contentment on the person that I’m with. I’m basing it on discovering a deeply intrinsic recognition of joy around my life and the choices that I’ve made for myself. I’ve actively committed to be in relationship with myself. This presents itself in a number of ways. For example I am committed to my martial arts practice, which has brought me a connection with a community and other people but also, just as importantly, with how I value myself. By learning to value myself and be committed to myself, I am able to authentically commit to the relationship that I’m in with somebody else. I’m not putting my sense of happiness and joy on that relationship. Instead I am treating the relationship as a complement to a deeper relationship that I already have with myself. The relationship I’m in with somebody else enhances the relationship that I have with myself and so I can give myself more fully to both relationships.
Bringing this back to a Female Led Relationship
Devotion is the first step. Commitment is what actually makes the journey possible for being in a female-led room. The commitment that you have to your desires and what brings you joy and happiness and contentment is part of that process. The commitment to her happiness and joy, and orienting yourself to her is another step. Choosing yourself first is not mutually exclusive with choosing her. On the surface it may look that way, but in reality, choosing yourself first allows you to choose her wholeheartedly because you already know what you truly want. You recognize that you want her and that you want to be in a female-led relationship with her.
This is an important choice to make and it’s a choice that you’ll be making every day and every moment of your life. I think this is one of the things that people take for granted about being in a relationship. They think that once they’ve chosen to be in a relationship, that the choice has been made. Relationship is a continual choice. Each day that you’re in a relationship, you are choosing to be in that relationship for that day. You could change your choice tomorrow. There may be consequences that come with making a change in that choice. Nonetheless, you could make that choice.
When we take our relationships for granted, we also take that capacity to make the choice to stay in a relationship for granted. Your capacity to stay in a relationship becomes conscious through commitment. Your choice to be in a female-led relationship is a commitment to accepting her leadership and trusting her in that leadership. This is even if she trusts you in the ability to follow her and to take action as needed to orient your life around her but also around the relationship itself.
In the Sovereign Code cohort we explore the relationship between devotion and commitment in depth so that you can fully understand the choice that you are making. Devotion is easy but commitment is where the action occurs, where you follow through on that devotion. And if you don’t have the necessary foundation in place, your relationship will have a faulty foundation. I help you build that foundation by exploring the paradox of holding both your desires and values in alignment with each other so that you can express what you desire and you can live a life of values that aligns you to both your desires and the relationship itself.
Our values speak to our character. Your commitment is a choice that is made from integrity when you are consciously aware of it. When you are unconsciously operating from devotion, the commitment may not be there. In the Sovereign Code we differentiate between devotion and commitment so that you have a better picture of what each brings to the relationship and you can use them both to help you choose the relationship and her over and over again, while still honoring yourself.