ALPHA_BY_DAY: DISCOVERING FLR

(Note from Mark Remond: I join a great many of my readers in lamenting the recent departure of Ms. Amanda from these pages and in hoping she will find it possible to return. In the aftermath, I have been scrambling to recruit other guest bloggers, especially women. More on this soon. Meanwhile I am happy to tell you that "Sam" will be posting again shortly, and I am delighted today to announce what I hope will be an ongoing series of guest posts by "alpha_by_day," describing his own lifelong search for a female-led relationship. Those intrigued can find more about his submissive quest on his own blog, My Journey Into FLR.)

Hello. I’m honored to become a guest blogger here. I’m going to be checking in from time to time with updates on my search for a female-led relationship.

In my quest for information about FLRs, I found this blog a few months ago and just love it! I’m really quite excited that Mark is allowing me the opportunity to chronicle my journey.

I guess I should start with a little background…

There have been so many different “me’s” in my life. So

many head-spinning course corrections, so many mistakes and triumphs, so many proverbial skinned knees; and yet through it all, still so much for which to be thankful. If balance can be defined as the average of all movements, if extreme flailing in one direction can be balanced by running as fast and hard as possible in the exact opposite direction, then I’d say I have maintained a balanced life.

But that isn’t really true, is it? Balance isn’t a calculus equation whereby two opposing values cancel each other out, regardless of magnitude. Balance is discipline and focus. It’s equilibrium and atonement within the complex circumstances of our lives. Balance is about subtle shifts, a nudge, a minor adjustment to keep us from tipping over.

For most of my life, I’ve been a workaholic, and that singular focus has served me well. I’m good at what I do, I enjoy my career, and my future seems bright. What I realized a few years ago, however, is that I’ve started to define success differently. While I’ll certainly continue to push for greater achievements professionally, I recognize that I need balance. To put it plainly, I need someone with whom to share that success.

But here I come up against a contradiction of long standing. Professionally, I have always been 100% alpha. I’m a natural leader and very comfortable in that role. Personally, however, I have always—literally always (as I’ll discuss in future posts)—harbored submissive desires toward women, though (until quite recently) I’ve found scant opportunity to act on these desires.

How to reconcile that contradiction? Could I ignore the submissive me and be the  alpha me, all the time?

Well, I tried that. I decided that, despite my submissive

desires, a long-term “D/s” (dominant female/submissive male) relationship wasn’t realistic, and I forced myself to go vanilla “cold turkey” so to speak. It was my hope that, within the framework of a vanilla relationship, I could find sufficient outlets for my submission. And even if I couldn’t, it was more important to me to find a long-term loving relationship than it was to live out my submissive fantasies.

I believe that’s the kind of compromise that many submissive guys are forced to make.

Looking back to that decision, or compromise, I find it ironic to think that I grew up in a female-led household, and yet didn’t recognize the difference between a D/s relationship and loving female authority. Call it naivete, call it Internet-kink-inspired ignorance, but regardless, I didn’t see what was sitting right in front of me. And what’s worse is that I tried to consciously ignore feelings I’ve held inside me for my entire life.  

So off I went on a full-scale assault on vanilla dating.

It was great—heck, I love vanilla. Let’s face it, being single in Southern California is pretty amazing. In one sense, all of the great dinners, great wine and great conversations helped me find some balance in my life and enabled me to break the workaholic streak.

I also learned an important lesson about myself, one that has, again ironically, led me inexorably to this point. I realized that I love being a gentleman. I like to bring flowers and hold open doors, to be well mannered, kind, considerate, honest, punctual, to follow through on commitments, always to put her first and do little things to make her day a little brighter. And that’s when it hit me…

Being a gentleman and being submissive seem to have a lot of parallels.

This revelation fueled my fire even more. Being a gentleman

in a vanilla relationship is a perfect outlet for my submissive desires. I can be my alpha self and still put her first and have the best of both worlds. It was around this time that I stumbled upon the “strong but obedient knight” analogy and immediately tried to incorporate that concept, at least to the extent possible in a vanilla relationship.

And yet, through all of my doting, courtly behavior and thoughtful gestures, I began to realize that it was a façade; and so, after all of these attempts at melding my submissive and alpha selves, I’m back where I started… trying to find the real me.

Someone I have come to regard as perhaps my closest friend on this journey made a great analogy that seems quite apropos. She said that coming out as a submissive man is, in many ways, like coming out as gay in that you feel the same peace inside once you accept yourself. To live authentically is to know yourself, and that enables you to find happiness.

Now a topic I am likely to explore in future posts is this notion of what is a submissive man, because to tell you the truth, I am still wrestling with the "S" word as it applies (or does not) to me.

I guess in the end, a duck doesn’t know he’s a duck, he only knows he floats and flies.

—Alpha_by_day