Caught in the Courtship Loop, Part Two

Part One of this posting ends with a question: Is the ultimate happy-ever-after marriage an endless replay of courtship? An endless blissful loop, in other words, a la Groundhog Day?

That’s certainly the answer implied in the final chapter of my book, “Happy-Ever-Aftering Takes Work”: “Fumika Misato seems quite confident about the prospects for happy-ever-aftering. She tells wives: ‘This is a marriage in which your husband courts you till death does you part.’”

But that can’t be right—an endless loop, or freeze frame. Things don’t remain status quo for that long. They change, evolve, devolve, whatever. Here, just for the heck of it, are a few metaphysical quotes to that effect:

“Everything flows and nothing remains the same.”– Heraclitus

“Nothing can develop by staying one one level…Nothing in the world stays in the same place, or remains what it was; everything moves, everything is going somewhere, is changing, and inevitably either develops or weakens.”–G. I. Gurdjieff

“You define a thing by the direction it is going.”–James Paige

The real answer is that I don’t know the answer—what the ultimate condition of a courtship marriage is or can be. But my inclination is that happy-every-aftering is not an endless ground hog day of courtship, even though those elements are perpetuated. My sense is that the courtship marriage too, like any other relationship, needs to grow and deepen, or it will decline.

So, if it is to grow, in what way? I have written that passion need not ebb. And I believe it. But if you measure passion by testosterone levels, then I grant you that ebbing is pretty inevitable, given the sales trendlines for Viagra and Cialis et al (with similar products more quietly marketed for women).

“We used to do it all night, and now it takes us all night to do it,” goes the old joke, and it’s true enough. But…. There is a silver lining to this graying of passion. As Elise Sutton writes: “As a man ages, his sex drive diminishes as he loses testosterone. But as his physical sex drive may diminish, his mental desire for sex does not… You can now gain mental, emotional, social and spiritual fulfillment via serving a woman. That may mean doing chores for her, obeying her authority, pampering her and also sexually serving her.”

Wife worship, in other words, is not dependent on testosterone levels. Even with a diminished sexual drive, a romantically inflamed imagination, according to Ms. Sutton , can keep a man “devoted and committed to the woman in his life.” “And that,” she adds, “empowers the woman.”


So, in a wife worship marriage, an aging husband can feel as giddy and adoring as a honeymooner, even if the manifestations of that desire are less obvious.

Now I am old enough to have experienced this alternation of passion, so I can tell you that Elise Sutton is right. And I’m not alone in my testimony:

“After all these years of worshipping my wife,” a husband confides in a wife-led marriage forum, “she has gradually been elevated to almost Goddess status in my eyes. I find that our sexuality is more on a mental sphere than a physical one and I worship her in spirit and in the flesh.”

On a more mundane level, there is also a feeling of being “comfortable.” My love for my wife, as in any happy and long-enduring marriage, tends to become an ever-present thing. And yet, it does seem to progress. I experience a slow, incremental drawing-closer to her, a devotional pull that reminds me of the “tractor beam” that pulled Luke Skywalker and his Millenium Falcon friends inexorably toward the Death Star. Except, of course, you must picture, in place of that dark nexus of evil, a radiant and glorious and good She-goddess, into whose intoxicating orbit you are being drawn.

It’s like penetrative sex, don’t you know? She is the divine ovum, and you are the frenetic, lost spermatozoon, desperately seeking… well, let’s call it amalgamation. Sex as daily metaphor, with you becoming more and more a part of your wife, living within her orbit and aura.

As this intimacy grows and abides into later life, of course, a wife worship marriage is going to be preoccupied with the practicalities of any aging couple--launching the kids, financing college, securing retirement, paying off the mortgage, arranging adequate health care, staying well an, busy, etc. But even these exigencies can be tinted with an enduring honeymoon glow.

Caught in the Courtship Loop, Part One

The animating idea of my book, Worshippping Your Wife, is that the magic of first love does not have to wear off. And, darn it, if it does, it can be recaptured and perpetuated. Yea, verily, a husband and wife can reinfect one another with honeymoon fever even unto the happy-ever-aftering of storybooks and Harlequin romances, until death do them part.

I lifted this hopeful concept, with (I hope) appropriate acknowledgment, from the website of Fumika Misato (Real Women Don’t Do Housework), but abundant articulations of this idea can be found on FLR websites, repeated in testimonials posted online in newsgroups, bulletin boards (and in emails to me) by worshipful husbands their worshipped wives.

Perpetual Courtship, I call it in the book. Think of “Ground Hog Day” meets “50 First Dates.” The husband wakes up each morning with an overwhelming urge (and need) to resume his hormone-fueled courtship of his wife, to win her all over again, as if for the first time.

I prescribe various kinds of courtship behaviors ardent hubbie can keep practicing, in an endless romantic loop.

But, you may ask, can’t this get a little déjà-vuish? Yes, it can. And, speaking guy-wise, it is especially hard to wake up après sex and launch into a full-court, courtship press. “You mean, we gotta win her all over again?” the hormones are apt to complain. “We’re not exactly in the mood right now.”

This is why Lady Misato counsels wives to master the art of keeping their husbands sexually “on edge”:

“As a general rule,” she writes, “you will elicit the best behavior from your husband if you keep him on the edge between frustration and satisfaction… A husband who is sexually satisfied will have no energy to attend to your needs.”

The same prescription is given by Emily and Ken Addison of the Around Her Finger website, books and CDs. “My husband is the perfect man until after he has an orgasm,” a woman writes to Emily, “then he rolls over like the ape that he was before we discovered your site. Is this normal?”

Keep him on edge, Emily replies. “It is no great secret that after sex men become very sleepy and disinterested in affection and communication… [but] I promise that any man that is denied an orgasm will have no desire whatsoever to get quickly off to sleep after being intimate with his wife… He will dote on his wife, playing with her hair, rubbing her back, and kissing her neck and shoulders. He will behave as if he is just getting to know her. It will be as if the old flames have been rekindled.”


It’s the “uncertainty principle” at work, according to one one Internet couples counselor calling herself “Dr. Ann” (quoted in chapter 4 of my book, “A Playful Step Beyond”): “When my female clients add the uncertainty principle of arousal and denial to their marriage, a woman can bring her husband back to the days when they were first dating.”

“Forcing a buildup of semen in men should be the goal of all females,” another controlling wife says simply. “Your man's behavior toward you will change dramatically for the better as his semen levels increase. You should always deny your man an orgasm prior to events that might require his maximum male energy and aggressiveness.” This, by the way, is pretty much the standard advice boxers are given by their trainers on the runup to a big fight. To help enforce it, fighters often are sent to hideaway training camps, far from feminine temptation.

But does perpetual courtship require perpetual denial? The answer, thank God, is no, and I have it on the authority of those two leading lights of the Loving Female Authority movement, Fumika Misato and Elise Sutton.


Let's start with Misato: “You absolutely do not want to frustrate your husband for too long. If your husband becomes overly frustrated, he will be tempted to seek relief outside the marriage. On the other hand, you do not want to overly satisfy him either. A husband who is sexually satisfied will have no energy to attend to your needs. Finding the right balance of sexual desire is tricky.”

Which, not surprisingly, is exactly, chapter and verse, the advice from Elise Sutton: “You have to find the balance that works for your relationship. You have discovered that your husband is balanced when you give him an orgasm every two to three weeks. That is great. With my husband, once a month works. Why don’t I deny him longer? Because through experimentation I have discovered that it becomes counterproductive to go longer than that. Some women allow their man an orgasm once a week. Some women can deny their husbands for months at a time... It all boils down to what works with your man.”

The process works, even when the husband knows he is being manipulated: “My lovely wife has it pretty well figured out that much more than a week begins to be counterproductive,” a happy husband writes. “She also understands that, as Lady Misato advises, she must continually keep me ‘on the edge.’”

Some guys, as Elise Sutton indicated, are made to endure longer periods of enforced abstinence: “I have been denied an orgasm for four weeks and It has caused me to be in touch and in sync with her moods, wants, and demands. So far, I regularly do the dishes, the laundry, get the kids ready and out to school, and basically all of the kitchen chores. She doesn't have to hound me to do any of it.”

This husband exhibits other classic symptoms of the courting male: “I find myself going nuts to attract her attention. Over the summer I lost a lot of weight and am about 14 lb. short of my ideal. I almost look as fit as when we met.”

“I feel more focused, alive, vital, and sexual when I am denied regular orgasms by my wonderful wife. When I come too oftgen, I become torpid, disaffected, and disinterested in her. Far better to be kept tantalizingly on edge.”

Another teased-and-denied husband echoes this: “I do not perform for my wife as well when I come to often. I have been living this lifestyle long enough to know that denial by our dominant wives for us is one of the most effective things.”

“My wife has been keeping me on edge constantly, and although I never would have predicted it, I love it. She has me waiting on her hand and foot, doting on her constantly, and sexually it has become all about her, as it should be.”

So, is the ultimate happy-ever-after marriage an endless replay of courtship? Perhaps surprisingly, my answer is no. But I’ll save the explanation for the next post.

In Her World

“[My wife] has arrived home and my heart is fluttering with excitement! I hurry to do her bidding. I do not feel complete until she is home. I'm near the center of the feminine mystery, an intimate part of the life of a beautiful woman. So close to her, caring only for her comfort and happiness.” (“Near the Center of the Feminine Mystery”)

“Harry was transferred to the feminine department, where his life was little short of heavenly… He took a pride in servility to a beautiful woman; received Lady Vandeleur's commands as so many marks of favour… to pass one's days with a delicate woman, and principally occupied about trimmings, was to inhabit an enchanted isle among the storms of life.” (From "Story of the Bandbox" by Robert Louis Stevenson, posted here back on January 5, 2007 under “RLS and the Enchanted Isle”.

Not very macho, the giddy husband with his heart a-flutter on his wife’ s return home, or Harry, currying the favor of beautiful Lady Vandeleur.

Now here’s a macho husband. He comes back from a long sales trip to find his wife has redecorated their all-American bedroom in a Continental style, inspired by interior design magazines. He throws a fit, demands she remove every last ruffle and pastel what-have-you and put everything back the way it was. He’s not going to sleep in some "goddamned Parisian bordello."

Does that sounds like a sitcom episode of, say, "Married With Children"? Waiting for the chauvinist jerk to get his comeuppance? But sixty years or so ago, when this story reportedly took place, autocratic husbands could get away with stuff like that. These days, the guy could call himself lucky if his wife set aside one room as “an estrogen-free zone”—the den, say, complete with Laz-E-Boy.

While the rest of the house is the Lair of the She-Creature. Which is just fine with wife-worshipping husbands. We enjoy inhabiting “Lady Vandeleur’s enchanted island.”

Maybe we’re secure enough in our masculinity that we don’t need to have it constantly reinforced and reflected back at us. We’re not threatened by chintz and organza, bedskirts and dust ruffles. These are clues that we are drawing “near the center of the feminine mystery, an intimate part of the life of a beautiful woman.”


Now some quotes, staring with this one from Chapter 5 of my book, “Pampering and Pitching In”:

“Men are fascinated with a woman's body. They want to be a part of it and to understand it. Often sex is a type of adoration and respect for woman… He longs for her to teach him about the great mystery of woman.”

“She wrapped Her Arm around me and put my head on Her Chest. i was feeling much better now. In the silence, i could sense the relaxation spreading through my body. my life was once again back in Her capable Hands! A heavy burden had been lifted from my shoulders and i was secure in the knowledge that i was once again back in my true place in Her World.”

“Through pampering my wife I am brought close to the center of the feminine mystery, intoxicated by it, overwhelmed by her.”

“A wave of profound happiness rises in me when I worship my Goddess wife. It is heaven for me.”

“I love to wash my wife's hair and scrub her in the shower, then dry her. Mostly because she loves it. If someone says it isn't important, I do not care. I know giving and loving are important to me.”

“i am where i am supposed to be. i am a lucky man, and i live in the world my Mistress wants, to which She brought me. i am grateful to Her, and i tell Her so; i do my best to love, honor, and obey Her, to be as graceful as i am able in Her world.”

“i prefer being immersed in my Wife's life and serving Her more than outside work and long to be the barefoot househubby.”

And I’ll end with this loving tribute posted by a most worshipful husband:

“Last night my wife fell asleep on the couch. We'd had a busy Mother's Day, which included going to a baseball game and having Chinese for dinner. I was still up… and I went over to wake her up for bed. She was asleep in a sitting position, and I knelt before her (which I often do), and wrapped my arms around her. And before I tried to wake her up, I just looked at her.

“I looked at this wonderful woman—and I thought about just how lucky I am. And I could feel the love I have for her welling up inside me as I gazed at her face. And the longer I was like this, the more entranced I felt. She was so beautiful... and I was so fortunate.”

Her Wish Is My Command

All teaching, I once read, can be divided into three forms:
1. Example
2. Hint
3. Impetus

The point I recall being made is that “Example” is most effective, “Impetus” least, with “Hint” somewhere in the middle. Teaching by example is pretty obvious; “impetus” equates to direct commands; while “hint” covers just about everything else, from harangues to hypnotic suggestion, lectures, textbooks, maybe even the unimaginable whole of Wikipedia.

All three styles are employed by good classroom teachers, of course; or maybe, in higher educational jargon, they’re called “pedagogical modalities.”

Of course, all three forms are equally in play in Wife-Led Marriages or Female-Led Relationships. Let’s start with “impetus.”

Prurient literature of the female supremacist genre used to favor the autocratic Victorian schoolmistress issuing directives, punctuated with well-aimed slaps from a ruler. We’re definitely talking impetus here.

Judging from the WLM and FLR forums and message boards I’ve frequented over the years, real matriarchal martinets do exist, but are more likely to be creatures of male fantasy than flesh and blood.

The extreme autocratic wife issuing arbitrary “Now Hear This!” commands is probably role-playing by mutual consent, with both parties reveling in the delicious topsy-turviness of it all. Full-time, non-stop role reversal tends to be derailed by the little distractions life throws our way, like holding a job and raising kids.

Far more common, and more powerful, I think, are wife-worship or wife-led marriages where the woman leads by “example” and “hint.”

How by “example”? Perhaps just by being herself. My wife doesn’t have to put on queenly airs to be a queen, in my view. She just IS one. In fact, she plays her regality down (in terms of the Power Distance Index, as described by Malcolm Gladwell in his best-selling Outliers.)

In general, wives are far more likely to employ hints than ultimatums, subtle cues than imperious gestures. The difference in Wife Led Marriages is that husbands learn to pay attention to these cues, to interpret these hints, and eventually to treat them as directives.

“Your wish,” the courtier-husband says to his queen-wife, “is my command!” Or perhaps: “Your hint is my impetus!”

A textbook example was supplied in the (now inactive) blog of fdhousehusband:

“In the early days, my Wife would say something like, ‘My carpooler went home early so I'll be taking the bus home today.’ i just accepted that like She was giving me a bit of information. What She really was saying was ‘I need you to pick me up from work.’ Once i understood the Female language, i learned to respond by saying things like ‘May i pick You up from work today?’ i found that She really responded to these ‘offers’ to do things for Her which She in fact had prompted with subtle ‘requests.’ i also think that it showed Her that i was really listening to everything She was saying.”

According to Fd, he actually taught himself how to decode “female language” by studying books by sociologist Deborah Tannen, especially You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation.

Fd provides another example (using ultra-feminist spelling and capitalization): “Even with my Wife, i've had to read between the lines. Today, She called me at work to tell me that one of our daughters was at a friend's house and that it was getting late. If a Womyn gives you a piece of irrelevant information, look at it carefully and try to figure out why she would be telling you that. i immediately read it as ‘I need you to go pick her up.’ So i said to Her, ‘i'll leave now and pick Her up on the way home.’ She said, ‘That would be great Sweetie.’ Womyn speak in a different language and that is why such gender language books are so valuable.”

Another husband quick-on-the-uptake when it comes to wifely hints was the oft-quoted (by me) Au876. “I seldom if ever ask her what she wants me to do next. I know what she expects and I do it without asking. She often drops gentle hints which I respond to as though they were absolute commands. Our relationship is such that I consider any hint or suggestion by her as a direct order. She may is just as likely to say ‘Would you like to vacuum the den?’ as ‘Go vacuum the den.’ Either way I go vacuum the den.”

As such female-led relationships mature, of course, the wife may grow comfortable with a more direct communication style.

A current WLM blog, At All Times offers an example of a wifely progression from indirect to direct:

“Jane’s attitude is changing towards what and how she expresses herself towards me… we had been shopping together, and had forgotten several things. Jane called out to me, ‘We have forgotten this and that, do you want to go back to the shop?’ When I replied, ‘Not really’ in a less than enthusiastic voice , Jane was quick to add, ‘But you’re going, aren’t you?’ Realising my mistake, I said, ‘Yes, of course,’ and so it was that I had to go back, because Jane had insisted.”

Jane’s husband clearly could improve his female literacy skills, so that those “But you’re going, aren’t you?” reminders could become less frequent and things could go as smoothly as for this wife-led couple:

“We believe that she can be totally and really in charge without raising her voice at me (except when I really deserve it) and with her showing as much respect and affection for me as I for her.”

Pointed reminders, even schoolmarmish lectures, however, may be required on occasion, in the wife-led home as in the classroom, as this husband learned:

“The most satisfying and exciting part of my marriage is doing what my wife wants. I would not have been able to do that if she had not been willing to assert her wants and to coach me on how to best fulfill them. Men are dense. If my wife's ‘asserting’ and ‘coaching’ had come in subtle signals rather than explicit requests, I wouldn't know half as much about her today. We agreed that she did not need to pull her punches to spare my feelings.”

If you’re husband continues to tune you out, this matriarchal Ms. suggests, get in his face: “Sit him down, shut off the TV, get his undivided attention and talk to him until he is dismissed. While you are talking to him, remember that women and men think differently and it is your responsibility to be heard—to teach your [husband] how to hear you. Women like to give subtle hints while men need a flare gun shot at their heads to get the point.”

"Flare gun" may be a bit strong. A rolling pin is more traditional--right, Enoch?

HOH & WLM

The Sacramento Bee recently ran an opinion piece by a part-time documentary filmmaker, William Preston Robertson,* titled “Head of Household? Let’s Talk to my Wife”.

The crux of the piece:

“I'm proud of my wife. She is the breadwinner in the family. She's a brilliant, dynamic, powerful woman. She works incredibly long hours and is compensated for that in a way that your average ukulele documentarian could never hope to be.

“But when my wife and I file our taxes or apply for loans, the computers, by default, make me the head of the household and my wife the ‘spouse.’ And they do this despite all of the usable data being located in her section of the form and all of the goose eggs being located in mine.

“I find this annoying… because it bestows upon me an unearned status and it robs my wife of a status she has not only earned, but worked hard to attain. And as I've previously mentioned, bizarre as it may be, I'm proud of my wife.

“We live in a society that presumes in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that men are and should be the breadwinners in a household and that any other arrangement is wrong and shameful.”

I had the same feeling of annoyance, plus awkwardness and inauthenticity, when my wife and I went to our tax guy last month and I was given a tax return to sign as “Taxpayer” while my wife signed as “Spouse.”

This after my wife, the obvious CFO (and CEO) of our family, did all the talking, responded to all the questions, produced all the documents with explanation, from mortgage interest to charitable deductions, conducted a sidebar conversation with the tax guy’s loan expert on doing a refi of our house. I said almost nothing, a couple of jokes, really, and was acknowledged only occasionally out of politeness by our tax guy.

Like the filmmaker, I’m proud of my wife and her leadership. What’s wrong with wives being the head of their household and family? Aren’t they almost always, in fact if not in name? Isn’t it about time that they be allowed to take that pride of place?

Now I’ll climb down from my mini-soapbox (my version of an op-ed) and, as is my wont, let some other loving female authoritarians and happily led husbands do the rest of the talking:

“We both would like to try out the ‘female head of household’ concept,” a Norwegian husband writes to Emily Addison, the better half of the Around Her Finger
team. “Two HOH’s in a home is one too many, and I think my wife is the better manager. Serving her and taking on much more of the domestic chores are only fair, and if I can be wrapped around her finger - that is all the better.”

Sounds pretty mainstream to me. As does this sensible husband: “My wife has been essentially Head of Household since we were married twenty years ago. She was a Navy officer and I an enlisted man, and to say she is smarter than I am is an understatement. Valedictorian of her high school class, and so on. Since the beginning, she has controlled the finances and many more aspects of the marriage. I'm not submissive, in fact by many measures I am a man's man. But I have come to nearly worship my wife.”

“My wife is unquestionably the leader of our marriage,” agrees another wife-worshipper, “but she tries her best to show me how much she appreciates my role as her husband. It's like she controls me without having to be bossy or bitchy, and I know deep in my heart that I would die for her if I had to.” By the way, this guy’s cybernym is “Mr. Jenny.”

Most female-led hubbies don’t object to a bit of bossiness, even a superabundance thereof. On their above-mentioned blog, Emily Addison, speaking for husband Ken, recommends a candidate wife-leader assume a clear authoritarian tone: “We believe that an open and ongoing acknowledgment of the wife’s authority combined with orgasm management are the fundamentals of a successful female-led relationship… You are entitled to consider his requests and then accept or dismiss them as you see fit. You are the head of household, you make the rules, and you set the guidelines… period, end of story.”

Usually it is the husband who proposes the wife be HOH, less often the wife. Even less frequent are those idyllic matches when the marriage role reversal is by mutual consent from the get-go:

One guy, signed “Obedient Husband,” told LFA psychologist Elise Sutton that both he and his bride agreed during their engagement that she should be undisputed head of household and take the lead “sexually, socially, emotionally, and fiscally. I regard her authority completely without question… I have been very happy in our three years together and would not seek to change a thing.”

Another wife informs Ms. Sutton that her husband “recognized from the beginning that both my native intelligence and career ambitions were superior to his own and he willingly conceded to my preeminence as Head of Household. It was thus with relative ease that our marriage soon settled into its essentially Matriarchal pattern that enabled me to launch my own legal career—and also helped establish the First Rule of Our Relationship: We discuss; I decide; he obeys. In cases where my mind is already made up, or I feel strongly about a particular issue, the need for discussion is obviated and [he] is simply informed. This eliminates the need for discussion in about seventy percent of all cases, allows [him] to concentrate on his career and leaves other issues in my far more capable hands.”


The marriage of “Mr. Louise” to “Mrs. Louise,” described on the old Spouseclub message board, epitomizes living this lifestyle to the hilt: “We were fully aware of our roles before we walked down the aisle. I took her name. No, not secretly and not just on paper. We walked into our reception as Ms. and Mr. D. (her name) and I've never looked back. Our union is wife-centered and wife led. She is the authority I recognize and submit to and in turn she loves, cherishes and supports me. Our friends know just what I mean when I jokingly say I am under her skirt and that our marriage is ‘a petticoat government.’ They can see her obvious maternal/matriarchal control over our house and accept us.”


Another female-empowerment psychologist, Paige Harrison, also advocates the matriarchal aspect of the wife-leader: “The Woman as the Matriarch in a love relationship can redefine family and romantic attachments. Many males tell me their strong desire to live with their Wife as the Head of Household and Domestic Disciplinarian. The Mommy-child relationship works especially well If your Wife is an extremely Maternal Woman.”

And this final amen on the subject from an old standby, Au876: “More and more women are becoming the head of their households. I am proud to follow my wife’s lead with my service, my actions and my heart. I may often disagree with her when we reach a fork in the road, but when she makes her decision it becomes mine and I devote myself to making it work.”

* Mr. Robertson is identified below his op-ed as “a writer, filmmaker and well-kept man who lives in Sacramento.”