Hello, friends. Dominantly-inclined male, here.

This is a tough tale for me to recount and it's not without some embarrassment and shame, but it's time I told my story.

Without going into too many details, five or six years ago my wife and I began a D/s dynamic. It immediately felt right to me on so many levels- it was something neither of us had done before so it was ours, it was a way to cut through the chatter and distractions of normal life to get to something vital and immediate, and she got to feel my attention and care while following her instincts to serve me without being shamed by modern morays. Our D/s quickly became sacred space to me and when I finally collared her it felt as important and meaningful as when I put her wedding ring on her finger years before.

And then along came polyamory.

We met another couple who wanted to get involved with us and who were interested in our dynamic. After some discussion about prioritizing our own dynamic, my wife took the other husband as her second Dom, and I took the other wife as my second sub. Feeling secure in my dynamic with my wife, I didn't see how my position as her true, primary, "real" Dominant could ever be rivaled, but pride comes before the fall.

Over the next year, I grew increasingly aware of little resentments from my wife, impatience, and flashes of contempt for me. That space I used to consider sacred became awkward and forced, and for the first time in our relationship I would catch her lying to me. Assuming the problem was me, I started stepping up my Dominance and trying new things, but the more I tried the more she pulled back. My efforts to understand her concerns and desires were met with a wall that precluded the trust or intimacy necessary for a thriving relationship, to say nothing of a D/s dynamic.

Excruciatingly slowly, I pieced together the truth- later confirmed by my wife- that in every meaningful way I had been replaced as her Dom. In every way important to a man I had been supplanted by her paramour- she fantasized about him, she masturbated for him, she obeyed him, and trusted him, and thrived under his guidance. She placed her heart completely in his care, a fact obvious to mine when I saw them together, but assured by everyone else involved that I was just imagining things.

She begrudgingly agreed to end their D/s when I asked her to, but they continued to maintain it in secret. Proof of that, and of all my fears, came in the form of a message to him mis-foreworded to me. Bringing this to her attention I requested the end to their relationship, as we'd agreed we would if the marriage were in trouble. Weeks later, she conceded.

Her heart was broken. When one dabbles with polyamory, finding a love rivaling your primary partner is a real risk, but I just couldn't suffer the indignity of feeling so completely replaced, and our relationship absolutely could not tolerate the lies. A year later we're healing and she's recommitted herself to me in all ways... All ways but one: She says she can never be my submissive again.

It's easy for me to believe. She doesn't want to compare me to him and to find my Dominance wanting. And for my part, I don't know how I could offer her my Dominance again while in the shadow of her memory of the man I heard her call the "Perfect Dom." I would always be second guessing myself- poison to a Dominant.

I love my wife and the children we're raising together. I'm therefore committed to my marriage, but something big is missing in my life. I miss D/s. I miss being that man. I miss being trusted enough to be given responsibility and the authority to guide and to respond. I miss the warmth of my submissive melting into me at my feet. I miss receiving service that I have to be certain I'm worthy of, and I miss the special clarity that only the duty to love and protect a submissive can provide. I'm trying to find new ways to see and to love my wife, but I'm constantly running up against the boundaries I've had to establish around anything that feels like D/s or power exchange. I've had to curtail my drives and my instincts. It's felt very limiting to squeeze back into narrower marital rules, but this is what I've got to work with.

I don't know what the future holds, but as I will never practice polyamory again, I have to believe neither I will ever practice D/s, and that feels like a tremendous loss.

I haven't told my story to anyone before and it feels good simply to let it out, so take it as you will. If you have any thoughts or have had a similar experience I would be very interested in hearing about it.

Thank you for listening.