Dominance and Submission

Again and again. I see nice guys make the same three mistakes. First, they try to get it right with their wife by asking her to make the call. Second, they defer to their wife to try to avoid making a mistake that they're going to be in trouble for. And third, they put themselves into a role of performing and being either accepted or rejected. And they put their wife into the role of judge, jury and executioner. They usually don't actually result in feeling great about yourself or or feeling great about your wife. All of these dynamics play out in same sex and non binary couples too, but not as often and in different configurations. Hi, welcome to Sex Love Power. I'm your host Michelle Lizenberry Christensen. This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love and sex that help powerful women and those who love them to create the intimacy and intensity they really want in bed and in life. Together we navigate the tensions between our desire and our devotions, between our wildness and our security with our eyes wide open. This podcast is designed to help you create more closeness, ease pleasure and justice in your relationship. And we do it by blending wisdom from the fields of sexuality and spirituality, trauma and self regulation, and intersectional feminism. I'm so glad you're here. Maybe you feel like you're always in charge, you're always handling all the heavy lifting in your shared life and you want to feel like your partner can take charge and lead at least sometimes. Or maybe you feel like you'd like to lead more, but your partner is so dominant and frankly kind of scary sometimes in how controlling or perfectionistic they get that you do not want to wade into those shark infested waters. So you tend to kind of hang back or maybe you're hungry to have a time when your partner just handles you handles the situation so you don't have to make decisions or tell them they did a good job, they're just in charge. All of these experiences relate to one dynamic I call everyday dominance and submission. This is how power plays out between us as a couple. It's how we each use our driving power and our receiving power. And it's how we experience ourselves and each other as a result. I'm not going to talk about dominance and submission in the erotic arena today. That's a whole other field I work with some of my clients on in accordance with their desires. But you don't have to be at all into anything related to dominance and submission in the bedroom to have these dynamics play out in the kitchen and the driveway and over email when you're trying to make sure that both of you are there for your daughter's orchestra concert. By the end of this episode, you will not have learned anything about handcuffs or blindfolds or floggers, but you're going to know a whole lot more about how your own energy works and how to get more of what you want. You're going to be able to understand why you get cranky always having to be in charge. You'll see why the woman in your life needs you to stand up to her, especially if she's feeling scary to you, like you can't stand up to her. You'll learn to see polarity at play between you and your partner, you and your assistant, you and your boss or any other two people. This knowledge is going to help you have better connections and create more satisfying outcomes with less jockeying for power and less frustration and resentment. These tools have literally saved marriages. Like my client who was considering leaving because her husband would just not assert himself and make unilateral decisions even on little tiny matters. She was losing respect for him until I taught them both how to see things differently. Or like the man who felt so disrespected and beat up by his wife that his love for her was starting to die until he learned the real reason she was so domineering and how she actually needed him to handle her so that she felt safer and could be a safer place for him. I hope your marriage isn't as on the brink as theirs were, but regardless of how painful it's gotten, these tools are going to help. And almost every couple shares the challenges of simply not understanding how to see through a lens of power, how to understand who's using power and how, and how to work together in a collaborative way to create a fun, polarized connection between you. Once you learn this, there's closer connection and more joy and satisfaction. So if you want to go from frustration and jockeying for position or avoiding conflict over to playful sizzling with energy, effective interactions with each other, listen up, here we go. Again and again. I see nice guys make the same three mistakes. First, they try to get it right with their wife by asking her to make the call. Second, they defer to their wife to try to avoid making a mistake that they're going to be in trouble for. And third, they put themselves into a role of performing and being either accepted or rejected. And they put their wife into the role of judge, jury and executioner. They usually don't actually result in feeling great about yourself or feeling great about your wife all of these dynamics play out in same sex and non binary couples too, but not as often and in different configurations. So please, if you're not in a heterosexual relationship, but this does resonate for you, listen for what matches your situation and I know the tools will help even if the pronouns don't match your particulars. In male female marriages, women often make the same three mistakes as well. When they don't feel well supported by their husband, they just take over the task or that whole area of life themselves. Even though they feel resentful and they wind up losing respect for their husband as a result, they complain and attack their husband or his performance rather than keeping their attention and communication focused on their own feelings, needs and desires. And third, they stay in dominant energy themselves. Even when what they long for is for their husband to be more assertive or dominant so that they can relax and feel partnered with and receive. They crowd out their partner's leadership. So if you want to go from frustrated and disconnected and lopsided in your marriage to feeling satisfied, balanced and like equal, well respected, well loved partners, this one simple recognition about dominance and submission can make all the difference for both of you. If this sounds like you, you're going to want to hear the rest of today's episode as I show you how to stop making these mistakes and what to do instead. Every marriage is like a pair of magnets. Your connection to each other relies on polarity, on the positive or assertive side of one partner connecting with the negative or receptive side of the other partner. What happens when you put the like ends of two magnets together? They push away from each other, right? That's what happens to us too. We either move apart or one of us is going to need to flip around to the other pole so that we can really connect. The thing is, we need to do it intentionally, to deliberately choose which pole to take, driving or receiving. Are you going to be in the lead or are you going to follow on this particular drive to the movie theater, on this home remodel, on this conversation about your day, you can absolutely both be in charge sometimes and both follow other times. But you definitely can't both do the same thing at the same time. Two leaders always results in a battle. Two followers results in a standstill, one of each. I call polarity, complementarity, synergy, connection. I'm going to teach you three keys to creating this arc of polarity in your relationship. Even single handedly. This is a great episode to listen to with your partner, but that's not at all necessary especially to begin making these changes. So here we go. Key number one, pay attention to your attention. Your attention will be in one place if you're going to be in the dominant role in this interaction. And it's going to be completely different if you're going to be in the more submissive or receptive role. So to have dominant attention, pay attention to the other person, put the focus on them. So, for example, if you're paying attention to what your partner's doing or not doing, you have dominant attention. You're going to be the dominant pole or you're going to be in a pissing match. They cannot dominate you while you have all your attention on them. But if you put your attention on the other person, on how they're responding to how you're being, on what they're thinking, on inviting them to put their attention on themselves, then you are in a clear dominant role. Rest in what you're inflicting. And this sounds kind of sadistic, and it is. You know, sadism is not just inflicting pain, it's inflicting sensation. And inflicting sensation is so much of what sharing pleasure and truly giving love is about, inflicting sensation sometimes of feeling cared for, of feeling handled, of feeling received, seen, heard. So rest in what you're inflicting on your partner, the experience you're providing, the tone you're setting when you want to have dominant attention. And then third, speak in penetrating ways about what you see in the other person, what you want them to do and what you're going to do. So, for example, you look tired. I invite you to go lay down and rest, or I'm going to bring you a cup of coffee. Would you like cream in it? Those are ways of speaking in penetrating ways, being directive, looking at the other person with your attention on them. And so you can talk about what you're going to do, but your attention is on how it's going to impact them and the reasons for doing it have to do with what's going on for them. Now, on the other hand, submissive attention, where your attention is going to go if you're in the submissive role, is inward. You're going to pay attention to your own sensations. Your own experience is the first key. Attend to what things feel like inside you, what emotions are arising, what desires are arising. Rest in what you're feeling, sensing and desiring. Lie back into that as opposed to pushing forward into the other person, what they're thinking, what they're feeling, what you're going to do with them, what they're going to do. Stay right here with you and your inner experience. And third, if you want to be in the submissive or receptive role, speak in self revelatory ways. Share from that inner experience. Report from the inside what you're feeling, what you're sensing, what you're desiring. Do not put your attention and your communication over on the other person. You need to do this. You're doing that because get out of their head. Stay inside your own head and even more importantly, body. Communicate from your own feelings and sensations. Key number two for changing the polarity in a relationship. If you desire to be led, stop leading. Only one of you can be in that penetrating, dominating role. Submit to the leadership that's there now, whatever it may be coming from your partner. Breathe more life into it by taking that receptive pull. Share your feelings, but do not lead yourself. Do not take charge. Do not tell them what to do. Share how you're feeling and what you desire. The other side of this coin for key number two is if you want to stop being assessed, judged, told that you're not doing it right, afraid that you're not measuring up, start assessing yourself. You can turn down your partner's evaluations of you and your anxieties about that by beginning to have a standard for yourself. It might be a higher standard, it might be a lower standard. Begin to measure yourself on your own terms. You begin to decide what good enough is authentically. Not defensively, not just trying to get your partner off your back, but truly what feels good for you, what expresses your values, what do you want to inflict on your partner, on the world, on your family, whatever that may be. So this may relate to your employment or income. This may relate to how you use food or drugs or alcohol, how you use your time. This may relate to how you show up for dates or for sex. If your partner's standard has become oppressive for you, set your own standard. Begin to march to the beat of your drum. If you have a drum beat that is authentic for you, it will inflict something very different on your partner from what you've been inflicting by trying to march to their drum beat or rebelling against the beat that they were setting. So that's key number two. If you want to be led, stop leading. And if you want to stop being assessed, start assessing yourself. Key number three is to follow the sensation. Whichever role you're in, find the turn on in what's happening even as you lean toward more of what you Want what you desire to have happen next. Find what's sensational about what's happening right now. It might even be that there's sensation in your frustration. It might be that there's sensation in feeling judged or put down or like you're not enough. And I know that that's provocative to say because there's a lot of these things that we put in the box of negative. Don't want this. But I invite you to really drop your judgments about the sensations you're experiencing and just notice where the intensity is. Intensity is turn on. And I mean that in the sexual sense, but also just in the emotional and the aliveness sense. This life is meant to be an embodied experience. And what all of us really want, when it really comes down to it, out of our relationships is more aliveness. And yet we tend to reject so many of the sensations of aliveness that arise because we put them in that box that we label bad sensations things I don't want. So tear the label off that box and follow the sensations that are arising now. Feel what you feel. Report on that. If you're in the receptive role, share with your partner what you're feeling. And if you're in the dominant role, speak to what you see in your partner. What do you notice in the sensation they're experiencing? You're frustrated, you're tired, you're turned on. You like this, you don't like this. Observe carefully, either within yourself if you're wanting to be in the receptive role, or over there on your partner's side if you're wanting to be in the dominant role. But either way, follow the sensation. So those are the three keys. I'll recap really quickly. First, pay attention to your attention. It's going to either be over there with the other person or it's going to be internal with you. If your attention is focused internally, you are in the submissive role. If your attention is focused externally, you are in the dominant role. If you and your partner are in the same role, you're going to be repelled from each other. So one of you needs to flip key number two. If you haven't been enjoying the role you were in, then switch up what you're doing. If you want to be led, stop leading and submit to the leadership that's there. If you want to stop being assessed, start assessing yourself. And key number three, follow the sensation. Find the turn on in whatever's happening and continue to lean toward more of what you want next. So those are the three keys to cultivating polarity in everyday life. Now you have a choice to make. Do you want to keep repeating the same patterns of frustration, conflict or stalemate? Keep having those headbutting contests where you're both trying to lead? Or those masochistic bouts where you do everything, resenting the heck out of your partner the whole time? Or the confusing heart pummeling situations where you feel like nothing you do is good enough? Or are you ready to create real partnership through deliberate dominance and submission, choosing to lead or to follow and create delicious connections and deeper love. Let's go create some delightful polarity this week, experimenting with the keys I've given you so the both of you can each express your greatest gifts in your relationship and in your lives and fall more in love with each other than ever before. I cannot wait to hear how this goes. I'd love to hear what you're taking away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? My free Conscious Couples Circle is the place to continue our conversation. You can share your experiences, ask questions, and get more actionable ideas for creating the love and sex you deeply desire in ways that evolve you both. It's all happening@society.lizenberry.com that link is in the show notes for you. You know, new listeners need to hear what you're taking away too. Podcast reviews are what really help others recognize how this podcast is different from other relationship and sex podcasts. So thank you in advance for leaving a review right now in your podcasting app while you're thinking of it. Before you forget with just a few words about what this show gives you. And hey, have you subscribed to the podcast? You're gonna want to so you never miss an episode. Please go to the app where you listen, hit that subscribe button and then you'll always get notifications of new episodes when they drop. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Michelle Lizenberry Christensen and this has been Sex Love Power. I will see you on the next episode and until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.