Sunday, January 17, 2016

Praise

I try to imagine what life would be like for me if my husband were the type of 'Owner' where he wanted complete control of me. In some ways, he has complete control, but in other ways he does not, because he doesn't desire control in those areas.

I think I'm the type of woman that probably would do best if my man did want more control of me. I'm not saying that it would be easy or immediate. I remember myelf as a woman in my twenties - that time when you can probably most mould a person to be what you want them to be, before they develop too many opinions of the world and themselves - having opinions and feeling that I had a right to an equal say.

I learned, particularly through my role at work as a Personal Assistant to a Managing Director, that there was a dynamic at hand and that I was the one to defer. The deferment didn't necessarily come entirely easily or even naturally. For example, at that time my intellect was shooting higher. Quite honestly, I was capable of doing more than I was doing and on a few occasions I requested transferal to a different job. On one occasion I suggested being transferred to the Training Division. I did, after all, have a qualification in teaching high school, so why not put that knowledge and skill into effect?

My boss simply couldn't understand my thinking. Why would I want to limit myself in this way when I could be a part of every last strategic decision made by the organisation? Naturally enough, I reminded him that I didn't make those decisions and had no effect on those decisions in any way. To the contrary, he insisted, he may not have acknowledged too many of my suggestions, but he had in fact listened and a number of those decisions had been taken up.

One day, when he was safely ensconced on an overseas holiday, Dan the advertising man came to me and asked if I would be in an advertising campaign. It sounded like fun and off we went to shoot the photographs. (I didn't advise the boss of this because I had a feeling he'd put the kabosh on the idea.) I was quite pumped about it until he arrived home and berated Dan about taking me out of his office. I took it very personally, though I never let on, and felt that he felt that I wasn't good enough. I came to realize over time that I wasn't going anywhere in that organization. He had the Personal Assistant he wanted; had trained her to suit his purposes and disposition, and he wasn't losing her to some training division or advertising studio.

If you've been reading for years, God help you, you'd know that he wanted control over me and that included my style of clothing, whether I bought something new or not (he wasn't into excess and if he caught me in stores around town at lunchtime when he was returning from a luncheon, he'd let me know about it), and my weight. When I joined his employ I was straight out of two years in the USA and I'd put on a little weight eating one or two too many hamburgers and fries, I suspect. He wasn't (completely) rude about it but he made it clear that the 10 pounds had to go, and they did. It wasn't so much a huge change in diet that did the trick. I was simply using up a lot of energy making sure he was satisfied and that I wasn't going to get another 'rounds of the kitchen'.

He also made it clear that I needed to eat more vegetables and to be sure that I did he'd often drop a box of vegetables from his garden in the country on my front door on a Sunday evening. He thought it senseless that women eat their way into a middle age spread and he loathed women eating in public on the streets. I can still feel the guilt in my throat when he spotted me one day in the street returning to the office at the end of the lunch hour eating an apple. 'But it was just an apple,' I argued. He was unconvinced.

I remember one day expressing my discontent about something in a way that wasn't entirely diplomatic. 'Don't you show your temper to me!' he stated. As a woman living through the stirrings of female liberation, he challenged me to the core. But, he did teach me many things: about men who insisted on control; about diplomacy; loyalty. It was the first stirrings and experiences getting to know my nature. If he was happy with my work, or my decision making on his behalf, or taking action to watch his back, he praised me and I cherished that. I bathed in the glow of his pride and perhaps it is this feeling that has stayed with me.

It may be interesting to know that I don't say much, nothing really, when I receive these warm feelings of having 'done good'. You'd have to look to my expression; the mellowness that is probably evident in my eyes that drop down that may suggest that I am a tad embarrassed, and the slight but unmistakable smile that widens my lips. On the page, you will need to trust me that I am most content.

A man who wanted total control of me would indeed need to train and condition me to his ways. It's only late in my life that I have wanted, myself, piercings or to wear latex. That is when I was introduced to those ideas. At first blush, I'd be most reluctant, I'm sure. But, I know in my heart that if he wanted that and made it clear that he wanted that, and it would strengthen the dynamic we shared, I'd follow along. I'm so very much into wanting a tight, strong, intense relationship that his desire for something in particular is all that would be needed. When I feel the energy coming forth, I meet that energy with abundant energy of my own. I respond to the dominance with a very natural and enjoyed submission.

In all the years that we've been together, my husband has very rarely not liked a piece of clothing I have bought, or at least he hasn't expressed that. But, one day he told me that he didn't like a pair of pants I had bought. They were pink vertical stripes. I thought they looked quite all right for weekends but he made it clear he didn't care for them. Out they went without a glace backwards.

I've an electric toothbrush. On occasion I forget to dry the base before I put it back on the base and he simply hates that, as he hates it when I don't dry my back completely, or when I make a big mess in the kitchen rather than clean up as I go. There are no consequences for these things other than 'getting it in the neck' as I like to put it, or in other words, getting told off. Maybe I'm not so much doing things the way he likes them to please him as I am doing it to avoid another telling off, but the point is, I do do it his way. Is that conditioning? Is it a natural drive to please? I wonder, if he praised me for a clean kitchen just before I served dinner once in a while, might that not be the biggest incentive of all to do things his way?

Truthfully, if I had an 'Owner' that wanted my nipples pierced, as an example, of course I'd oblige. The praise that this agreement would engender would be adequate compensation for overcoming my fear. Anyways, we'd be together. He'd lead me there so it wouldn't be that hard at all.

My husband wants, and will want going forward, to live in this big house. So, we live in this big house. We will live in this big house long after all the children have moved out. My husband wants us to do the garden ourselves, even the removal of huge tree trumps and so it is done this way, with me as the second gardener, of course. Just now I asked if I may use the ladder to do an outside task and he said 'no'. There are many tasks I'm not allowed to do because he wants control of them and isn't sure that they'll be done to his specification (which isn't at all true since I am perfectly capable of this task really). Still, I have to live with that.

Sure, I make suggestions and sometimes they are taken up. Often, they are not. We live according to his decisions. If he wanted me to live in latex for hours each week, needless to say, I'd be living in latex for hours every week. Why not, for heavens sake? It's become a dream of mine anyway, so why would I hesitate? If he bought it and demanded it, what a THRILL would that be!

Yes, at times it is hard buckling under to his version of the world, but kinky demands? And, I do mean demands. Insistence. These days? Well, I think that would be about as hard as eating New York baked cheesecake.

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