Question: When my frum therapist advises me to carry out my fantasies of 
female domination, when my wife's therapist agrees, when our couple 
therapist advises me not to fight against my inclination but to work this 
out with my wife, when the halacha allows it, when my love for my wife thru 
domination has never been so high, what should be the attitude of a frum 
Jew? Is it better to be machmir and try to be like everybody else, or to 
listen to the therapists who know me and my wife? What would Jewish values 
say I should do? Thank you for your answer. 
 
 
 
Answer:  Another questioner might dispute the characterization of these 
aspects of intimate behavior between a consenting husband and wife as 
objectionable.  But another questioner is not struggling with the issues 
that this questioner is.  My answer is intended to be both halakhic and 
therapeutic, and to speak to this questioner directly: 
 
 
 
As the questioner, being an observant Jew, almost certainly knows, the Torah 
commands us to care for our health zealously.  All the medical professionals 
whom he has cited agree that the particular behavior he is resisting would, 
in his case, be supportive of his mental health.  So why is he resisting the 
consensus of their advice? 
 
 
 
The answer is obvious.  The questioner has also absorbed a sense of 
appropriate male and female roles, perhaps from Torah culture, perhaps from 
secular western society; but whatever the source, the questioner feels, 
intuitively, that such behavior would be morally objectionable. 
 
 
 
I write these words, to reassure the questioner that he may follow the 
therapists' advice without guilt.  Let me remind the questioner of what 
Maimonides has written in the Hilkhot De'ot (Laws of Ethical Conduct) 2:1. 
"For those who suffer from bodily ailments, the bitter may seem sweet and 
the sweet may seem bitter."   
 
 
 
While others would disagree, let us stipulate that the questioner's desires 
represent an ailment, or at least a variation of normal that the questioner 
himself regards as an ailment. What his therapists are trying to tell him, translated 
into Torah terms, is that, for him (and with the willing participation 
of his wife), allowing these expressions of intimacy is simply the medicine 
that he requires.  Medicine that is appropriate for a person dealing with a 
condition would be inappropriate for a person not dealing with that 
condition. 
 
 
 
Hence:  As long as the questioner is in his current state of mind, he 
may-and what is more, he ought to-- engage in this form of allowable 
intimacy, of course, with his wife's consent.  If a day should arrive when 
the questioner no longer desires that, it will signal that he has reached a 
different mental state, and at that point, he will naturally want to 
discontinue this behavior. 
 
 
 
One final point:   the questioner does not know what happens in the privacy 
of other people's bedrooms. It goes beyond the evidence to say that, if he 
desists from acting out his intimate style, that he is being "like everybody 
else."  
 
 
 
Let the powerful rhetoric of Moshe Rabbenu be the last word: Ha-nistarot 
lashem elokenu, v'haniglot lanu.  Let the hidden things be dealt with by G-d 
alone; for us and for out children the obligation is to deal only with those 
deeds that are revealed to people. (D'varim 29:28) 
 
 
 
Rabbi Michael Panitz 
 
Masorti/ Conservative 
5 Adar II, 5744/  March 7, 2014