I’ve had an opportunity, recently, to talk to a couple that is now married and is trying out the Master/slave lifestyle. The slave is involved with The Submissive Wife.

At first, my gut instinct told me that this really can’t be a good idea. What I’ve heard (specifically about the Master or Dominant not being allowed involvement) made me immediately cringe and label this group as “bad”.

However, it’s always ignorant to judge something without researching it, and that’s what I’ve begun to do.

Let me say this, first… For those of you that are married and just starting to explore being Master and slave, the worst possible thing you can do is allow someone else (individual or group) to train your wife, especially if your involvement is prohibited. I don’t care about their alleged posts from slaves that state that the instruction through the site saved their marriages, and am willing to bet there’s more to that story than what’s posted there.

Let’s face facts… for a married couple to enter into this type of arrangement, it is ultimately to make them both happy. It is the Masters (and husbands) wishes that need to be attended to. Any training that *excludes* the Master (and husband) *cannot* ultimately train the slave to be what her owner desires, at least in the beginning of the relationship. There’s some argument for sending a slave, eventually, to another who is more experienced for refinement, but the initial training should always be by the owner of the slave, no exception. (This does not have any bearing, of course, on training the slave received before being with her current owner).

This type of approach is poison and the statistically you have a better chance of failure.

I’m not going to go into a long post about what specifically annoys me, but lets just take a look at the FAQ:

The first FAQ question has to do with what “instruction” means. There’s a link to a broader definition. On that linked page they mention that focus is put on sexual submission, surrendering in bed, etc, and that this part is generally pleasurable. Maybe I’m reading the site a little too blatantly, but I’m not sure how this works without involvement of the Owner (in this case, husband).

It also mentions that obedience and embracing guidance in a monitored and mentored process is the most important aspect for those involved. Obedience to a mentor is not going to help the girl suddenly transfer those feelings to her husband. This is the absolute wrong foundation, especially if your Master/slave relationship is also your marriage. The basic foundation should beobediance, respect, truthfulness and honesty to your Master and husband. If you need a third party you don’t actually know to ‘teach’ this to you, then I would question the Masters wisdom in collaring and marrying you.

The second FAQ question deals with how this will affect the girls marriage. I will skip over the obvious suggestion that having some unknown third party train a wife will make the marriage happier. Indeed, this may happen in some cases (statistically it will happen, of course), but I highly doubt it’s the norm. Instead I’ll pick on their aspects of progress.

“Dignity is essential”. I suppose, in and of itself, this is a harmless phrase. However, they go on to say “submission is not subservience”. I’m not entirely sure what it is that they’re trying to express here. The word “subservience” means “Subordinate in capacity or function”. The word “submissive” is defined (by Websters) as “characterized by tendencies to yield to the will or authority of others”. I do not see a huge enough difference here.

The only thing I can guess is that by “subservience” they mean “forced”. Indeed, a submissive or slave should not be “forced”. However, I firmly believe that if a submissive or slave willingly, and totally, gives their rights over to their owner that force, if needed (i.e. PUNISHMENT) is fully within the rights of the owner. To say otherwise would make a mockery of the whole relationship.

It also says dominance isn’t about controlling. This is such a ridiculous statement, that it is almost a waste of time to comment on. The word “controlling” means ” To exercise authoritative or dominating influence over; direct.”. The word “dominance” means “The condition or fact of being dominant.” and to further define “dominant” it means “Exercising the most influence or control.”. (All definitions are American Heritage Dictionary or Websters). This clearly states that to be dominant is to be controlling. Teaching a submissive that dominants aren’t controlling is going to seriously undermine the authority of the owner of the submissive.

It also references that trust and responsibility matter. Of course they do, this is obvious. However, their text really gives a sense of “Husband you better be a good boy!”. This goes both ways and to comment only on the fact that a husband holds great responsibility is, well, irresponsible. The submissive, or slave, is just as capable of breaking trust. If this were a true training course they would concentrate more on reinforcing in the submissive’s mind the need for THEM to always be trustworthy and responsible. To have them concentrate on their husbands trustworthiness is seriously misguided. Most psychologists would say “you cant change how someone ELSE thinks” and this is a clear violation of this.

Enough on this, onto the third FAQ question, which deals with why the husband cant be involved. I think they’re FAQ question is really asking “Why isn’t my husband dominanting me already?” and is somewhat misworded. This section has tidbits such as “Men invariably respond to the expectations of the women in their lives especially when those expectations are well understood and expressed behaviorally and subtly and not as a manipulative gesture.”. It goes on to say that you can’t nag a man to be dominant.

However, what they’re suggesting, albeit more subtly, is just that. It’s still manipulation, regardless of how you view it. The single best thing to do if you want your marriage to be a D/s relationship is sit down and talk about it. Doing it this was is *not* the correct way.

Anyways, I wont bore anything by going through all 20 FAQ questions. They are much like the above.

It’s interesting that in various place they stress that they arent specifically religious, yet the first few things on their text resources page are about religion., of course denoted by an asterisk (meaning essential texts). I suppose if your a Christian and also want to be submissive this may make sense, but in reality you will (whether you choose to accept it or not) eventually violate the doctrine you claim to follow.

There’s a link to a sample slave contract under the “Misc. and Dubious” category with the text “Role-playing for lawyers? Just say no”. The link is to sexuality.org and for some people slave contracts help to (in a concrete manner) outline just what is expect of each party. Is it legal? No. Noone’s suggesting that it is. However, how many times (in any part of your life) have you done something and made your partner angry (or hurt them) only to find out that it was miscommunication? Slave contracts can help here. For some slaves, that extra (and granted, essentially meaningless) piece of paper adds to the realism and immersion of what they’re doing. It’s not dubious (although not for everyone, of course), and pretty much proves the ignorance of those involved in the web site.

I could go on and on… The site specifically states that it’s teachings are about submission, not BDSM. However, the site (as mentioned above) mentions specifically that it concentrates on sexual submission (tho, I’m not sure who is involved sexually, as this is unclear throughout the public site). The site references discipline. BDSM stands for (well, depending on who you ask): Bondage-Discipline-Sadism-Masochism (there’s other “flavors” which include “Dominance-Submission”, etc). It seems pretty clear that their training, to some extent, does involve BDSM, so I wonder at why they would make it a point to state otherwise.

This is my rant. Feel free to leave comments if you agree or disagree.

My personal belief is that a group like this has more chance of destroying a marriage than it does with helping it and that if a submissive wife really wants to know how to please her husband, she should sit down and talk with him and then follow his direction.