FLRINDIA

Around the world

Songs, threads, munches, research and the rest of the female-led world, written up so you can take it in here. Every item has its own page you can pass on.

On Reddit
He rubbed his wife’s sore feet at the airport gate, then wondered if it was too public
Flying home from a holiday, she wanted a foot rub and he gave her one in the lounge chairs. Was that awkward? The replies on r/flrindia were kind and unanimous.
r/flrindia
A film
As you wish: the three words that make The Princess Bride a love story about service
Westley answers every order Buttercup gives him with the same three words, until she understands what he has been saying all along.
NPR
New research
The chore she does in her head: a new study on the mental load
Two new studies of 452 women and 156 couples find women happier in their relationships when their partners carry more of the remembering, planning and reassuring.
PsyPost
In the news
A chastity survey finds it works best when she runs it without being asked
Cat Boulder asked 219 readers about chastity in their relationships. The best results came where she directs it herself, not on his reminders.
Female-Led by Cat Boulder
From history
The groom who gave his power away at the altar, in 1855
Lucy Stone had decided never to marry. Henry Blackwell won her by renouncing, in writing, the authority the law handed every husband.
Library of Congress
A podcast
Leading does not mean deciding everything: an FLR couple on tone, silence and check-ins
On Krystine’s FLR Podcast, Krystine Kellogg and her husband talk honestly about the unglamorous side of a female-led marriage: how they talk when things get tense.
Krystine’s FLR Podcast
A song
Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man, and the difference between pleading and serving
In 1988 Cohen sang a man’s offer to become anything a woman wanted. It is a great love song, and a gentle lesson in what devotion is not.
Pitchfork
On Reddit
A reader works out that what draws him is rest, not sex
Measured and compared since school, he wonders if the pull of a woman in charge is a place where his worth is not on trial.
r/flrindia
On Reddit
Does being led make a man less of a man? A reader says it takes more
On r/flrindia a husband argues that choosing to serve takes trust, honesty and discipline, and the replies agree with him.
r/flrindia
New research
The 81 percent finding: what happens when a husband will not share power
John Gottman’s long study of newlyweds found that the men who accept their wives’ influence have the steadiest marriages.
The Gottman Institute
A song
Wrapped Around Your Finger, and the twist in its last verse
The Police’s 1983 single sounds like surrender. Listen to the end and it is a plan to turn the tables.
The Police on YouTube