My client David is a submissive cross-dresser who’s desperate to find a girlfriend.
A 28-year-old virgin, he tells me, adorably, that he’s started going to the gym in the hope he’ll live long enough to find the woman for him.
Not any woman will do, however. He must have a dominant one, as he’s after a female led relationship (FLR).
FLRs come in varying shades, but all involve the woman taking the reins in the overall dynamic and decision making of the relationship. David’s dream woman would take total control in every aspect of their life together, while he merely follows her rules and direction and drifts through life on a cloud of sub space.
It sounds ghastly to me – for both parties – but I’m hardly any kind of guru on bliss. Whatever gets you through the night.
I imagine the worst part of wanting such a specific relationship is the unimaginable horror of screening out women who don’t understand it. Dating is vile enough without having to work in questions about lifestyle kink choices among the initial dinner dates and small talk.
Happily, there now exists a dating app called Chyrpe which asks those questions for you. So I went to meet its CEO, Christopher Holzhauser, to ask how on earth that would work.
He tells me that that the idea was imagined during his university days, when one drunken evening a male friend spoke of being submissive and his struggle to find women who found that alluring. Conversely, a dominant female countered his tales with talk of being objectified for her own sexual preferences.
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What they needed, they both realised, was an app that asked the awkward questions for you. Do you seek something long-term, short-term, virtual or just the odd evening of playtime? Are you curious, a switch, submissive, dominant? (I’ve never been on a dating app – I’m always married – but I guess these questions don’t usually feature.)
So, Chris created the app, and two years on it has more than a million downloads. Its users are a lively, global congregation of kinksters, romantics, and the kink-curious.
‘We wanted it to be a broad community,’ he explains to me. ‘You don’t have to fit a label. You just have to be respectful.’
Intrigued, I made David turn guinea pig and download it. He told me it was quite like Hinge, with around eight free swipes per day, and that there seemed to be plenty of local women on the app too.
Although he could tell when someone had ‘liked’ his profile, he couldn’t see who without paying. So, quickly, David coughed up and started up conversations with two different women, the dirty dog.
On Chyrpe, users are encouraged to describe their specific preferences, limits, and curiosities. David put his as ‘curious/switch’, to dip his toes into the dating pool.
After all, there’s a world of difference between a service sub who wants to do your ironing, and a heavy player who wants his penis nailed to a breadboard. Both may fall under ‘submissive’, but they definitely won’t please all dominant women.
The app’s moderation is startlingly strict. Out of over a million users, only two have been banned for unpleasantness.
‘We verify every profile biometrically,’ Chris explains. The high bar, he says, deters trolls, scammers and time-wasters: ‘If you’re not serious about kink, you’re not going to go through facial verification. Safety is vital for all our users, of course, but safe means different things to different people – for some, it means can I go on a date with this person without fearing for my life; for others, will I be outed to my boss or family.’
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His clients are definitely serious. Half of all users are women, a statistic unheard of in the world of alternative dating platforms, where male users usually outnumber women three to one.
‘Men are louder,’ Chris says, ‘but women are exploring quietly.’
The app’s philosophy seems to balance the libertine and the pragmatic: everything that’s legal is allowed, even controversial kinks like ABDLs (that’s “Adult Baby/Diaper Lovers”) and sissification. These topics, he adds, spark debate—some argue sissies mock femininity, others call that prudish nonsense. Either way, Chyrpe lets consenting adults chirp their truth.
The results, apparently, are romantic. When users close their accounts, half say it’s because they’ve found someone. Adorable. Kink, it turns out, is not incompatible with monogamy or mushiness.
David, meanwhile, is still chatting to one of the women he’s discovered, and trying to find courage to suggest a first meeting.
It’s the closest he’s ever got to an actual girlfriend. Hearing his tales, it strikes me that this app is as much about honesty than kink.
Strip away the feathers and labels, and you’re left with the same fragile human hope: to be seen, understood and wanted, exactly as you are.
For all the talk of dominance and submission, that’s the real power exchange.
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