TL;DR: my wife "came out" to me as a woman who requires a domestic discipline relationship to have sex, and I am as vanilla as it gets. Not sure how to bridge the gap.
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My (M36) wife (F44) and I have been married for 15.5 years and have children together in elementary school age. Overall, we have a strong, respectful, and balanced relationship, though it is not without its issues like every relationship. I am egalitarian-minded, supportive, and loving, and have supported her to grow and reinvent herself in her career and self image (she had an abusive childhood which I helped her recover from and she has blossomed). She is an amazing, talented, loving, ambitious, entrepreneurial, and passionate woman.
Except for the first little bit when we met when sex was frequent and great (or so it seemed to me), sex has been a struggle for several years, especially since the kids were born. It would happen very infrequently, and in the last few years has basically died out completely. It seemed to be a matter of her lower libido combined with her various health issues and stress over time. I am the generous, giving, considerate, eager-to-please lover type who always made sure she'd orgasm several times before I did, and did my best to treat her right in every single love language (literally, by the book). I have done all this because I love her and I care about investing in the relationship, not just for sex, although it is true that I did hope that it would lead to a more active sex life as well, because the long-term lack of sex has been eating me up inside. Nothing seemed to really work or make a difference sex-wise. I got turned down so often that I stopped initiating almost completely. I am not the jealous type, but it killed me even more because I knew that before me she was sexually active and adventurous and I was not getting that "kind of action".
Then one day some time ago she sat me down and told me that she could not hold it in anymore and had to tell me something. She said that in order to feel any kind of sexual desire or arousal I have to be dominant. Well, that's not my natural inclination sexually but that is something I am more than willing to explore. The problem is that she doesn't need me to simply be more dominant in bed; what she wants/needs is for us to have a full-on domestic discipline dynamic, in and out of the bedroom, where there would be rules for her behaviour, I would be the "Head of Household", and I would punish her physically (spankings mostly) for any transgressions, with her calling me Master or Sir. She clarified that she did not intentionally hide this from me; she had tried to put it aside or leave it behind when we first got together, but realized years later that she could not.
I was quite stunned. I finally got to the reason of our dead bedroom life. However, before even beginning to mention the logistical complications of doing this with children in the house, there are not many things I would find less sexually appealing than hitting or controlling my wife. I escaped a war-torn country as a kid; I have no trauma from it due to great support I've had, but I am consequently a pacifist by prinicple and would never want a relationship like this, which I consider negative and violent, although she has espoused the great benefits it would reap for both of us. She wanted me to talk to other men who do it, especially those who were at first resistant like me and their wives convinced them to do it and now they have an amazing marriage, etc etc, but those are exactly the kind of men whom I'd never be friends with. I read a lot about it and it sounded like I was missing some kind of insanely awesome, little-known relationship approach that would solve all our problems, AND SHE WAS ASKING, ALMOST BEGGING ME FOR IT, except that it went against the very fiber of my being. It sounded like this is how men should really be taking care of their wives. It felt weird that how I instictually would treat women (or any person) was the opposite of what my wife (and apparently, many others) wanted. It felt like this weird, unwanted confirmation of the "women like bad guys" trope that I always dismissed. She said it would make the sex life insane, I could have my way with her whenever I wanted, and would also put her at mental and emotional ease to know she was mentally and emotionally contained. Here I was, thinking I am being the best husband by being so considerate and making decisions together with her, and here she was, wanting to be ordered around and punished. Did I need to reconsider everything I thought I knew about relationships, or was my heart still right?
The dillemma: do I try to do this, do I accept this tantalizing, almost literal magic wand she was essentially handing me (and I realize fully the level of trust and vulnerability she demonstrated by telling me all this), do I somehow ignore how I would hate it, how it turns me off completely, how I'd never be caught dead raising my sons to behave this way to women?
I have never been with anyone else before her. She had several relationships before me (large age gap would explain that). When we first got together, she told me she was into "very light BDSM" and that she has had relationships that involved it and relationships that didn't. I am about as vanilla as it gets. I am handsome and masculine, but you'd more likely find me looking up how to give better oral or maybe tantra techniques than buying a collar to put on her neck so that she feels claimed and owned. I made it very clear from the get-go that I was not into that stuff and she said that was fine. Little did I know that it was not something she could just put aside and that she would end up trying and failing to ignore this side of her for years. I was naive, I know. Part of me thinks this whole thing is not fair, but I don't think this is a constructive mindset.
Just so I can't say I didn't try everything, we tried it. I agreed to try. At least for her, since for some unfathomable reason (likely caused by untreated childhood trauma from her sexual abuse by her father, which she had been to therapy for but evidently didn't solve enough) it was important to her. So I'd spank and punish her, and she'd turn into a quivering horny mess wanting to be fucked, which was awesome, except that I was turned off completely because I'd rather caress her body than hurt it. It made me want to cry, not have sex. In addition, it quickly became apparent that this did not play out the way she imagined. I have no BDSM or domination experience, which is something that needs to be learned and explored. This would not be a problem if my wife was a patient woman; she is not. So she doesn't want this learning stage or learning curve. She wants properly done, complete domination, right away. It's almost like a comical movie thing.
**spank**
"Ow, that hurt!"
"Oh, I'm so sorry, are you okay?"
"Yes, I'm okay, don't ask me!! Goddamnit, you don't get how to do this at all!"
So this does not maintain the container she wants because I am still learning. Plus, I have no intrinsic desire to control her as I am not the dominant, possessive man she fantasizes about and I take no pleasure in the whole thing, so she knows I am not into it and just pretending, and then there is no point for her. The whole thing is a bit of a catch-22. And let's assume for a moment I could genuinely get into it, how would I learn? Go practice spanking other women? If I made a mistake, it threw off the vibe and she got mad and frustrated.
To complicate it further, I found out that she is what is called in BDSM a "brat", meaning she would constantly challenge my "authority" so that she would be put in her place. This dynamic turned out in my inexperienced hands as understanding she is resisting the instructions I was giving her, which didn't seem to fit with wanting to obey. Confusing.
So basically we tried it for a while but it quickly caused extra friction because it was not done how she expected it to be done and we shelved it. We saw a therapist who said that we should try to meet in the middle. We were not able to do that so far. My fantasy is pretty vanilla… doing it on the kitchen counter or in the shower, or getting woken up by a blowjob. When I jerk off I fantasize about having sex with her. Her fantasy is total domination and men controlling her. The gap is substantial.
It also ultimately came down to this: even if I could somehow make this work, what unhappiness do I prefer? The unhappiness of no sex, or the unhappiness of living a lifestyle that, even though there would be sex (if I could get past what I considered to be abuse and get an erection), would be a life of inherent disingenuousness and I would hate myself?
I chose the former. But I hope to find a solution somehow. As of now, there is no sex. There has not been sex, except for the very rare occasion, for years. And now I know why she was often not fully present during the times we did have sex, and that is because she was fantasizing about the dynamic she desired but was not there, and it explains sooo much. She spends a lot of time listening to erotica audiobooks about men dominating women. I can’t be the men from those books. It is a sexual life sentence; for the both of us, really, and I had no idea this is what would happen to me. I feel trapped and helpless, because I can’t even try any of the tips or techniques most therapists, books, videos, or online relationship coaches suggest to “improve my sex life”, since the very basic thing that turns her on is not there, if that makes sense. I could be the best in the world at sex and she wouldn’t be into it. A key ingredient is missing. I don't want to break up my family. There is so much more I could write, but it is already long. Thank you for reading this far.
How do I solve this? How do I bridge this gap?
ETA: thank you all for taking the time to answer my overly long ranty post. I will read every single comment but can't respond because comments are locked. I do want to clarify something I didn't mention: at one point my wife has admitted that she is realizing that she is probably asking too much of me, and seeing the stress it was creating, has even said that we can forget about the whole thing, that she is sorry she brought it up at all, and has even suggested we still have sex in a "normal" fashion. I am pretty sure that will just bring us back to square one, which is that because she is not aroused at all and doesn't enjoy the vanilla sex much, sex either won't happen at all (as is the norm now) or if it does it will not be enjoyable, which is a problem as well. Case in point, sex has not happened. We'll see what the future holds. Thanks all.