0205 Female Led Relationships: How to Communicate About FLR, Kink & Power Exchange

On this one I break down how to communicate about FLR, kink, power exchange, and sexual dynamics in a way that builds connection instead of fear, pressure, or misunderstanding. Whether you’re curious about FLR, chastity, BDSM, or simply want to have healthier conversations with your partner, this episode is your starting point.

I talk about how to bring up difficult topics, why listening matters more than convincing, how body language and timing affect communication, and why taking sex out of the conversation at first can actually strengthen intimacy. I also explain how skills learned in the kink and FLR communities — consent, boundaries, negotiation, and emotional awareness — apply directly to everyday life, parenting, work, and family relationships.

This episode isn’t about sex acts. It’s about connection, consent, respect, and emotional safety — and why communication is the foundation of every healthy relationship.

Topics Covered

• How to communicate about FLR and kink with your partner
• Talking about power exchange without pressure or fear
• Why listening is more important than speaking
• Active listening, body language, and emotional awareness
• Taking sex out of the conversation to build trust
• Why consent and boundaries strengthen relationships
• How FLR communication skills apply to real life
• Breaking generational shame around sex and intimacy
• Why kink is not abuse — and what consent actually means
• How relationships evolve over time through honest communication

Key Takeaway

Healthy Female-Led Relationships — and healthy marriages in general — are built on communication, consent, patience, and trust, not sex acts, labels, or performance.

Subscribe to Krystine’s FLR Podcast for real-life conversations about Female-Led Relationships, communication, consent, and emotional connection — beyond fantasy and judgment.

Transcript

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Coffee is not a good thing to help me focus. It just makes my brain go real fast. This podcast is intended for mature audiences only. If you're not 18 years of age or older, there are thousands of other podcasts you can listen to and you can come back and visit us when you are 18. This podcast is meant solely for entertainment. We are not licensed doctors, lawyers, or therapists. We simply have a fascination with the lifestyle and I'd love to share it with you and get your thoughts and opinions.♪♪ Welcome back. Episode five of season two. I am drinking coffee. This is your fair warning. I've had far too much caffeine for the day, but let's continue intaking the caffeine. Hear it? It's iced coffee. Yummy. This week, we are going to talk about communication, how to communicate, how to talk about issues and feelings in a dynamic, and how to be a good listener. Ooh, maybe I should turn the ring light on just to make it real pretty in here. First, let's address some housekeeping.♪♪ What? So housekeeping. It has been kind of a hectic week. I found out earlier this week that my mom has COVID. And on top of that, multiple of our neighbors have been calling the city on us because we have a 1986 camper in our driveway. And apparently that is fucking frowned upon. You guys can all suck a fat one for all I care. However, it has pushed us into doing things that needed to get done either way. All things that needed to be done, it's just something that we didn't really have time for at that exact moment. Whatever. We also found out that our landlord has not had a valid rental license, I think the whole time we've lived here. So that's interesting. I don't know what that will entail for us. However, we are prepared to live in the camper sooner. If need be, stay tuned for that. If you're interested, if not, you'll probably still hear about it. Sorry, not sorry. I don't know that there's really anything else. Anything else I was gonna talk about so I should have more caffeine. Also on a side note, my mom having COVID, she is actually at my sister's house and contracted it there. So she hasn't been here. We weren't exposed, thankfully, but it's still a little nerve wracking when she doesn't respond to my texts, which she's sick, I get it. I just worry because that's the nature of me. All right, let's dive into communication. So what is the definition of communication? Because you know, my good friend Google has all the answers. The definition, it's starting. The definition of communication, the act of transferring information from one place, person or group to another. Every communication involves at least one sender, a message and a recipient. So, I mean, communication definition, pretty standard. We have talked about in the past how it was brought to my attention that my subbie was interested in this lifestyle. And I have been getting a lot of emails from people who are wondering how to start this conversation with their partner because they're interested in some form of a kink or something, a specific dynamic for their relationship. And this has no ages, no age limit. I mean, I have received emails from people that are in their 60s that are interested in this lifestyle. And I think a lot of that has to do with the programming that, or not programming, because that word makes me sound, I feel like it's a little crazy, but it's an accurate description. But how we grew up. I mean, imagine, okay, so I grew up with a Catholic and a Catholic family, small town, farming community, all of that. Now imagine how like my parents and my grandparents grew up. Like sex is something you couldn't even talk about. So, I mean, at the age of 60, it would be extremely hard to break down that programming or what you had been taught your whole life, or just the different things that are kind of embedded in your brain. So let's talk about some tips for communicating. One, listen, listen, listen. Listening is important. Active listening is important. Open your body language, body language. Open up your body language. Stay engaged and focused on the person speaking. Resist the urge to interrupt. This is a fucking hard one for me. God, when I have something to say, I feel like I have to say it right now because otherwise I'll forget. It's rough, but try real hard. Ask questions, practice empathetic listening. Listen without giving advice and keep your emotions in check. So applying this one tip to speaking to your partner about entering into any type of dynamic, whether it be FLR, whatever, swinging, whatever the case may be. I would suggest you present your case, take the sex out of it, talk about why you want to participate in this dynamic. And I would focus on more of the emotional connection that it's going to bring rather than the physical. And then give your partner time to process and then respond. And while they're responding, don't interrupt. Stay engaged. And also you can try, I think it's all about perspective too. You could try and give it from a different perspective if they have questions or people have things that they've lived their lives that way for so long and then trying to switch to something new is going to take time. So offering a different perspective, again, away from the sexual aspect and more of the emotional connection, how it can strengthen the relationship. All of these things are important to present when speaking to your partner about entering into any type of dynamic. Remember that who you are talking to matters. Body language matters. Facial expressions, body movements, posture, gestures. Eye contact is very important. I also struggle with that one because if somebody is talking to me, I don't always maintain eye contact because I feel like I'm staring a hole through their head. And I don't know. Eye contact is a real struggle for me. Touch, space, voice. You have to know the person you're talking to if they don't like to be touched or have people too close to them. And I mean, with COVID, stay six feet apart. But just know the person that you're talking to. And I mean, obviously if you're talking to your partner, you know if touch calms them or if you should just not fucking touch them while you're having this conversation. But it's important to pay attention, know the person you're speaking to, and do things so that they know you're listening, engaged in the conversation, and genuinely care about what they have to say. This is a good one. And I just got a comment on my YouTube channel from somebody who was saying, and it must've been my earlier episodes of my podcast they were listening to, and made a comment about how it's all advertising and all I do is read articles. And I don't know, but it was so hard to read. It was grammatically fucked and so many things were misspelled. And that part of that is me being a dick. Grammar is important to me. Speaking with correct, I mean, spelling, correct grammar. Now I'm a fucking shitty speller. I rely heavily on spell check, but I'm very aware and conscious of the things that I send out. I try very hard to make sure that everything makes sense and I have done the correct spelling for like to, to, or to, your, or your, et cetera. But this next one for tips for communicating is check your messages before you hit send. Now, autocorrect is a real whore and it has provided some great laughs to me and my subbie, but when we're trying to have an actual texting conversation, autocorrect is a real fucker and it really pisses me off sometimes, but just always double check. Be brief yet specific. I don't know if you necessarily need to be brief when talking about lifestyle things or approaching your partner about your dynamic. I think the more details you give, maybe not, you know your partner, decide what's best. One of these says sometimes it's better to pick up the phone. This maybe isn't a conversation if you're discussing entering into chastity or a female-led relationship. Maybe not a conversation you want to have via text, but I want to say, no, ours happened on the phone. We were talking. Probably not a good text conversation. Think before you speak. This is one I struggle with my 12-year-old on. That kid was born without a filter from his brain to his mouth. The second he thinks it, it comes right out his mouth and he's got ADHD to high hell, but think before you speak. It's an important one. Okay, since my podcast is all about articles and things, I did find an article in Through the Woods Therapy Center, sexual communications, three things everyone can learn from the kink community. I, again, I'm not going to read everything, but the first paragraph struck me. It says, from a very young age, we're told not to talk about sex. We're provided with handy euphemisms for our body parts and informed of all the scary things that can happen if we have sex without protection or with a lot of partners or with the wrong partner. We're taught to define sex in a very heteronormative and limiting way as penis and vagina intercourse and to view anything else as deviant or weird. And that kind of goes back to, you know, talking about like how my grandparents were raised as compared to how my parents were raised as compared to how I was raised. I mean, things are constantly evolving. Now, I was having a meeting with someone and we were talking about all the different labels. I don't know what else to call it, but you know, people being referred to as they, them or instead of he, she, or asking people their pronouns now. I happened to be in a shop in a town just outside of our area. And there was a younger group of employees discussing about an older employee who just couldn't seem to grasp the concept and kept calling this person she, even though their pronouns were they, them. Here's my plea to people, you are right. You have every right to every pronoun you wanna use. That is totally fine. Like, I believe you should have that freedom to identify as what you believe and what makes you feel good as a human being. However, I beg you, or I just plead, have some fucking patience. Like, you can tell if somebody is doing it out of malice and calling you by a dead name or, which I just learned this, a dead name would be, for instance, if there was a female who was Erica and is now Eric and you refer to Eric as Erica, Erica would be her dead name, his dead name. However you, see what I mean? I'm only 42 and I struggle with this. But you can tell if somebody is doing this out of malice, I think that's the right word, I don't know. Or if they're genuinely just doing it because that's how we grew up. There was he's and there was she's. There wasn't they, them, or, you know, I mean, just, and this is all just a rant basically about how things have changed throughout time. Like, I didn't ever grow up with that and my kids are growing up with that now. And their kids are gonna grow up with a whole new set of, you know, names and pronouns and whatever. Just be kind to one another. But now that I'm off my rant, let me take another sip of coffee. One thing that I have done that my parents did not do is I have been very, very open, not so much with my 12 year old yet, but very much open with my daughter. There is no, I've had the discussion with her that, listen, if you wanna sleep with the whole fucking high school because that's what makes you happy, because you enjoy sex, more power to you. But you have to be okay with your decision and you have to not let the hate you're going to get from other people who believe a certain thing. Like you have to be ready to be called a slut and a whore. Now, how you interpret those names is up to you. They don't have to be negative. Why is a slut a negative word? It doesn't have to be a negative word. I think the main reason for me starting my podcast, and I just did an interview last night, which will be next week's episode. I'll talk about that more at the end. My podcast is very different than most of the kinky podcasts out there or any type of lifestyle podcast. My podcast is more about checking in with the emotional side of these dynamics. Like, how are you feeling? How is this affecting you? You know, it's not really about the sex. It's not really about the work that I do through voiceover, erotic voiceover, anything like that. It's more of exploring the emotional side of these dynamics and showing the positivity that exists in these dynamics, the amount of trust and communication that exists in these dynamics. And that it's fucking okay to talk about sex. It's okay if I wanna lead my subbie around by a leash hooked to his cage. Obviously not in front of my children, but if that's what I choose to do, that's okay. It's not affecting you. Obviously, I'm not gonna do it in public. So if I'm doing it in the privacy of my home, no one's being hurt. Why is it a bad thing? And why can't it be discussed openly? Why can't we just agree to disagree on things? Okay, so the next paragraph of this article says, but the problem is when we don't communicate about sex, our needs aren't met. Our sex lives are unsatisfactory. We don't try things that interest us and worse, we do things that make us feel downright uncomfortable. However, the kink community has changed these ideas and created a more sex positive paradigm, which is what I would hope or which is one of my goals for this podcast. I don't want a female led relationship to automatically trigger the emotion of, she abuses her husband or they're fucking weird or who does that? It would just be nice if we could have these discussions and agree to disagree and then move on. Like, why does what I do in the privacy of my home have to affect your day-to-day life? All the questions, all the questions. So this article also goes on to talk about what is the kink community and BDSM, some things that are not BDSM. Jay Wiseman, author of SM 101, is who is talking about this in this article. So it talks about, here are some things that are not BDSM, abuse, physical, sexual or psychological, use of power in a way that parties involved haven't agreed to, anything non-consensual or 50 shades of gray. And then there's an article that talks about that. However, conversely, here are some fairly mainstream things that could be considered light BDSM, a teasing good nature game of kiss me, you can kiss me, actually, no, you can't, consensual hair pulling, spanking, et cetera, role-playing. Okay, these two things are what I was trying to get to, but got a little sidetracked. The things that are most true about BDSM from my perspective are the following. Now, I don't know that this necessarily needs to be constricted to BDSM. I think this kind of applies to most dynamics, maybe not. It's about power, not power taken without consent, but power given willingly by someone who enjoys a lack thereof. And the kink community contains some of the best communicators, some of the most stalwart feminists of all genders. And some of the most consent-driven people I have ever known. So I think this is fascinating because most people think about the lifestyle, swinging or whatever. It just, you know, they get this weird look on their face and it's automatically a bad taste in their mouth. And maybe they had activities prior that left a bad taste in their mouth, who knows? But that's the one thing I wanna promote about these different lifestyles is the communication in a healthy relationship or a healthy dynamic is amazing. I have never communicated better with anyone in my entire life. And not to mention, since being in our female-led relationship, my ability to communicate with other people has also improved tenfold. It is so much easier and it depends on the day because sometimes, I don't know, I'm a rollercoaster of emotions. And as I've said before, I'm like the hot mess express, usually the conductor. Communication is the biggest part of any of these dynamics. You have boundaries set. You have safe words. You communicate your wants and your needs. Now imagine if you did that in your everyday life. Imagine if you said, for example, I was just having this discussion with my daughter. She has two friends who both have their mom's credit cards for expenses. And this girl is going to high school trying to make up some credits because she didn't do so good with distance learning. But my daughter is busting her ass to graduate. On top of that, she's working. She's not working as much because she's focusing on school, but then she has these two friends that she is driving all over the place. Nobody's giving her money for gas. Nobody's considering the wear and tear on her vehicle. And we just had this discussion about needing to set boundaries, just like my stepdaughter with her mom. The way that she interacts with her mom, she tends to cater to, I mean, it's fascinating to me because she tends to cater how she acts to how she knows her mom will react. So at 17 years old, she's got this figured out so that she can interact without conflict with her own mom. And it mainly involves work. It's mainly everything that involves me because apparently we're still in middle school and can't fucking manage to move on from the fact that your ex-husband is remarried and I'm not fucking trying to be your kid's mom, but whatever. I fucking totally got off on another topic. Oh, I know what I was talking about. But imagine if you implemented the communication, the boundaries, all the things that you implement into your dynamic. Imagine if you implemented those with people of your everyday life. Imagine if you set boundaries at work and were comfortable enough to communicate your feelings to your boss or coworkers. Like imagine what the world would be like if people could communicate like people in the lifestyle. So he, this Jay who does this article, he's previously written about his perspective on working with relationship minorities, all these things. Let's see. Number one, challenging the normal. A lot of people worry about whether they're sexually normal. Who fucking defines what normal is anyway? They want to know if their desires, thoughts, interests, quality of sex, quantity of sex, problems with sex and everything else they do with sex is on par with what other people do. They also want to know the same thing about their partners. So sex is awkward. And he talks about that awkwardness, self-consciousness, limited communication. Sex happens when both people are tired. One or both people tolerate something they dislike, hoping it will stop soon on its own. So these are also things that you should be able to communicate with your partner about. There are things that I don't like doing and I'm not afraid to tell my subbie, hey, I don't like that. Now on that same note, there's things that if I'm in the right mood, I do enjoy. If I'm not in the right mood, I want no part of it. So being with me is real fun for him. Lucky man. You should be able to communicate with your partner what your likes and dislikes are. And when you're communicating about entering into a dynamic or what you're interested in or whatever, I keep saying this, but I feel like it's so important. Your dynamic is your own. There is no textbook that says, this is how you do this, this, and this. It's entirely your own dynamic. There is no wrong answer if you guys are both consenting. If both parties consent to whatever the dynamic consists of, it's perfect. It's just right. And it will evolve. It will always evolve. So when bringing this up to a partner, if you're bringing it up to your partner and they are completely new to any type of kink, start out so slow, so, so very slow. Communicate until it almost feels like you're beating a topic like a dead horse. Just start out slow. The more you talk about it, the more it provokes thoughts. The more you can kind of change the perspective of how they look at things. I'm a slow learner sometimes. And when I look back to the beginning of our relationship to where I'm at now, it has evolved tremendously, as have I as a person. I'm not the same person I was six or seven years ago. I'm entirely different. The things I like are entirely different. So you kind of have to just take it day by day and make sure you're checking in with each other regularly. Like I always say, sometimes I feel like I repeat myself a lot, but I feel like the more I say these things, the more they sink in because that's kind of how I learn things. It's repetition and you just got to take it one day at a time. Okay, let's see. This is a good, it's a pretty good article if you want to skim it. Oh, this is a funny example though. Negotiation. Imagine you and someone you're dating are trying to decide what restaurant to go to for dinner. Assuming both people's needs and values, needs are valued, your conversation is likely to look something like this. Person A, where do you want to go for dinner? Person B, I'm in the mood for Chinese food tonight. Person A, oh, I'm not really in the mood for Chinese food. How about Italian? Person B, I had Italian for lunch. Mexican? Person A, sure, sounds good. In a non-kink relationship or a normal, ooh, try that again. In a non-kink relationship, a normal, see above, conversation about sex is likely to look something, likely to look like some variation on this. Person A, so do you wanna, you know, Person B, sure, yeah, let's, yeah, I want to. Kind of goes back to my point where just imagine if you could implement your communication tools that you have in your relationship with your partner into real life where if communication just came easily and people were just honest about what they felt like, there's a way to be respectful and say, I'm not interested in that, or I don't wanna do that, and set your boundaries. It also, this article also goes on to talk about consent, checking in, the stoplight system, red light, green light, yellow light. Different people implement this when they are in a play session or something along those lines. You know, red means the whole scene is done. Yellow, just kind of checking in, something needs to be adjusted, something needs to be changed. Green, everything's good to go and everybody has their own variation. I will link this article. There's some good points in there. I will link this article in the show notes. Okay, so just to kind of summarize, communication is important in dynamics and in real life. Make sure that you are paying attention to your partner's body language when you bring this up. Pay attention to the signs they're giving. You know your partner, take it slow, open your body language, make yourself approachable so that they feel comfortable to ask you questions, all the things. I think that about wraps up this week. If anyone has any questions or wants to discuss communication further, you have all of my contact information. Don't hesitate to reach out. I have to give myself a little pat on the back. I have gotten much better about responding to my emails. I'm mildly proud of myself. All right, so next week we have a guest, a new friend I found on Instagram and we will kind of just be talking about her dynamics. So come back and check that out. I hope everyone has a fantastic week. I appreciate you coming along on this crazy ride today with my caffeine-filled mouth. Be good human beings, take care of yourself, be kind and we will chat next week. Love you all.