Training

 There's an opportunity my husband and I have currently to reinvigorate our marriage via the introduction of a third party, for a time. It wouldn't be anything permanent at all; just some 'training' for want of a better word, on both sides of the equation.

Individually, we have both been quite open and optimistic about this idea, but as the time draws nearer to commit, we are discussing it in all its complexity. I think this is a normal and healthy thing to do, if for no other reason than it could easily go horribly wrong.

At the end of the day, we are both reasonably conservative people. We have not had the experience of multiple play partners, of play parties, scene events, or even munches. The desire for any of that has not been there, so there's a little apprehension in partnering with someone with differing experiences and views. On the other hand, what conservative person would you ever expect to find who could partner you in such an endeavor?

My husband has brought up the fact that there's a real possibility that a girl trained by a third party could 'fall' for that person and think about that person long after the training is complete. I agree. I suspect many girls have found a training experience profound enough to have feelings for the trainer. 

I was initially concerned about this as well, but I am now confident that this would not happen. I can't go into why I think this in this journal (which can be read by anyone. Oh, hello!), but let's just leave it at the understanding within myself that I've developed enough strength of character to not allow that. I see the motivations and intentions clearly, the professional approach adopted many times over, and this 'professionalism' keeps emotions clean and tight.

I would suggest that for some couples, they need to really consider it as a possibility, however. The question has to be asked, why aren't you training the girl yourself? Deity thought the idea unnecessary for his girl, but in his union, he was far more attuned to what he wanted to achieve; had thought about it and made it a study. 

We have asked ourselves this question and came to the conclusion that first time round, we sort of made it up as we went. We didn't really know what we were doing in any sort of detailed approach. We're looking for something sustainable, something that uplifts us both and provides a lot of joy, and this arrangement seems like a way to get the thing up and running with a sort of neutral third party who can professionally set the thing up for success. So far, so good.

Let me preempt the next comments by saying that I've grown a lot as a person in the last several years. The events of our lives demanded that, but so too did I seek out paths for growth. 

I am a kinesthetic meditator and perhaps a kinesthetic learner. I hate reading instructions and would rather just be shown how to do something, so that explains my choice of interests and study, at least partially. I have been aware of that for a long time.  In my meditative state and in my imagination or in a trance, I now know, I am living the experience. I am not watching myself. I am part of the experience. 

I have often wondered why I get such strong messages from my body and maybe that explains it. I have done hundreds of hours of formal dance training and I have always been someone who has gone to movement classes - step classes, or aerobic training or weight bearing classes, Pilates and Yoga. Maybe it's all this, combined with meditation, I don't really know, but I get very strong bodily responses.

I am aware of a trigger point still sitting in my body; a land mine that sit there that can go off when triggered. I am excruciatingly aware of it, because when it is triggered, the experience disrupts both my body and my state of mind. I get angry first, a gut reaction that wells up from the pit of my stomach and wants to verbally 'vomit' all over the person who has incited the trigger.

I think the landmine is about justice, I didn't bloody do anything to incite the trigger words and I'm not going to lie down and take it. Except, I do. Once the anger has subsided a bit, I get incredibly sad, and that sadness takes me to the floor. But you can't keep me down on the floor for long because I need to move, and so I revert to anger because anger has some fluidity about it. Anger gets you up and going.

It's this landmine that sits in my body that makes me especially wary of any sort of 'training' process. I strongly suspect that if I felt a sense of injustice or disrespect (and that's likely to happen in a training process, right?) I strongly doubt I could resist telling the offending party to get f**ked and to hit the road.

So, I did some reading about training a submissive this morning - the conditioning, the positive and negative reinforcement, the operant conditioning, the intermittent reinforcement. Nothing caused me more distress in the past than intermittent reinforcement, which I think is a form of evil. Yet, this is all part and parcel of the training process, so it seems. Do I want that? Is that all necessary to get to the highs of wonderful intimacy and pleasure?? I'm no expert but it sounds so manipulative and not always in a good way.

My husband reminds me that I loved letting go into a submissive sexual mindset. Maybe it's worth it to experience some discomfort around these issues to get to where I want to go. Maybe.

We are both very comfortable with soft strategies. No problem there. I like the idea of an ankle bracelet, for example, that I wear when I want sexual attention. It's a sweet strategy to avoid miscues.

There's already been a lot of attention given to my independence. It's a bit galling, honestly, since I have become more and more independent of my husband all the time. Since he remains a workaholic, I had no choice but to be independent in various ways and that's bedded down. I really hope we're done with that subject material. Any more independent and I may as well call myself a single girl.

In this particular case, hypnosis is bound to be part and parcel of this process. Whatever I say or write now is likely to be overridden by the wonders of hypnosis used for sexual persuasion. It's not a fair playing field. Is that a good or bad thing? I am not completely sure, and I am smiling as I write this.

Here's the thing. We don't fit the usual model. We're mature adults. We're devoted to one another. We don't easily agree to the entry of a third party and we're probably relatively non-compliant. If we don't agree or like something, we aren't afraid to say so. For me, it has to feel right. I will mull anything and give it it's fair consideration, but if my body screams out to me 'this isn't right', I can't ignore those signals.

So, we're not easy, we get that. Perhaps, at some stage, I can review these thoughts and report that my concerns were ill founded, or that I don't even remember these objections. (Did I write that?) I hope so.

Gently, gently.

 There's something about the one-year anniversary of an event that stirs the emotions. There is a real temptation to relive the event, and if it was sad, to be sad all over again.

I lost a very special friend in Deity. He was the place I went to for comfort and support. Whilst I felt, and rightly so, that it would not be good policy to share some of my inner thoughts with people in my life on the ground, he would listen to me say anything. 

That's not to say he didn't challenge me on occasion but what I got out of it, on reflection, was someone who offered me unconditional love. I had flaws. He had flaws. But he saw that as all to be expected of a human being. So, he forgave quickly. On my end, I could be upset about a conversation, but conflict wasn't something that he felt stood in the way of a good relationship.

So, disagreeable words were said. That was then. Now let's get on with being good friends. This was his policy. To this end, any disruption in communication was, by and large, simply waited out. He saw women, I think, as sort of flighty and driven by emotions, and it was a process with an end.

The hypnotic sessions my husband has had, shook things up and out. He feels so much lighter, and this has enabled dialogues never before had, now even encouraged. So, this morning I said to him that it was about the time when Deity died last year, and it has brought up a lot of emotions. 

Since I have never been able to share with him, or anyone, what actually happened I was afforded the opportunity to tell a living soul that while he was holed up in a hotel I would call him, check in as to whether he had eaten; remind him of the number he could call to get some food delivered.

I was talking to him one day when he told me he had fallen in the street and not one person had come to his aid. He checked to see that he had all his teeth. This was the same man who had begun an organisation at the grass roots and turned it into a national organisation; the man who had made dozens of strong friendships but who was now alone and with no access to his own money.

Alcohol, or any other substance taken to excess is so often self-medication for intolerable emotional pain and anxiety, and so it was. It was incredibly personally painful to watch and yet I felt there was no choice. I never have, and I hope I never will, go through such a gut-wrenching personal sorrow to see him drink himself to death. Yet, as he reminded me, this was his decision to make, not mine.

He was a bit of a devil. It's one of the first things I said to him.  He was also a lot like an angel. He had a foot in both camps and let's be honest, I loved that. 

It's these experiences with Deity, along with other knowings that currently make me quite wary of dominant men generally. It wouldn't be wrong to say that I have an antenna out for those that 'play'. I pick things up in conversation and I bristle. Not that I have hardly any conversations with dominant men, but on the odd occasion, for particular reasons.

Is it common, I don't know if it is or not, to refer to a woman, with submissive inclinations, a 'subject'? Deity used to say to me that I put too much stock in words; read too much into them. But, subject? Is that really necessary, and if it is, what does that say about the person using the word? I try not to judge, but seriously?

I have never had a moment's interest in the kink scene. It's not the way I want to express myself. So, there's a lot of material out there that simply isn't relatable to me.

I am starting to wonder if the term 'submissive' actually describes me. From the get-go, I wanted a marriage that remained, however long, a passionate coupling. I wanted to support and be supported. I wanted to create a loving family. I am starting to wonder if the kinkiness is starting to fade, and if mutual happiness and exploration in all sorts of ways, including sex within intimacy, is my aspiration. 

Gently, gently.

Prana

 It is no burden for me to be in silence, as readers of this online journal would already know. To the contrary, it is required, if I am to find my bliss. 

I am fortunate beyond words to have a home close to the ocean to which I can sometimes travel and live in silence for a few days at a time. Yesterday on the highway whilst travelling here I passed a sign that said that the road where I would pass was closed. I rang my husband in the car, and he rang the local store who confirmed there had been an incident three hours earlier. 

Google Maps told me to take a diversion, away from the coastal road and up to the high country, so to speak, along gorgeous countryside and eventually through a forest.

The incident was of course, most unfortunate, but it provided me with the delight of new terrain; beautiful green verdant land and then the wonder of driving through a forest almost alone. I couldn't make out why there were so few cars, but it was almost as if God looked down and said, 'No, no, it's fine, I knew you needed this.'

With maybe half an hour to the house, I saw a glimmer of the ocean, and my heart skipped a beat. I have been travelling to this part of the world all my life and yet it felt for the first time. The ocean was still and the softest blue. 

Once descended, I came to the Great Ocean Road, turned left and was reminded that in this stretch of the Road, it hugged the ocean, the beach, reminding me of stretches of road that led to the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand, where I went for a meditation retreat.

I am not sure if the world had gone quiet with so few people on a weekend out and about, or if it was I who had gone quiet. What I want to convey is that my mind had become 'a beginner's mind' and it was as if I was seeing everything for the first time.

I stopped off at the General Store for a few necessities and then to the house. When I arrive, I can never resist walking first around the garden. I said out loud, 'I love it here so much'.

Last night, I didn't want television. Instead, I went through the many CDs in the house, boxing the vast majority of them to give to charity. As much as I might pine for a John Denver tune every now and then, I can find that on Spotify. So, instead, I turned onto my saved tunes on Spotify and danced and danced.

Although I had bought food, I wasn't in the mood for it and instead drank red wine, some goat cheese on dried rice crackers, and an apple.

Every last thing I did was to savour my soul. It almost wasn't a decision. It was innate; intuitive. 

This morning I unpacked some books I had brought down and discovered I had brought a book about readings for yoga teachers, so I took it to back to bed and read the following:

'What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.' Crowfoot, Northern American.

And this, by Osho, the person by whom I entered the world of meditation and quiet contemplation:

"You can enter yoga, or the path of yoga only when you are totally frustrated with your own mind as it is. If you are still hoping that you can gain something through your mind, yoga isn't for you."

And how about this by Deepak Chopra:

In this short life, 'we have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment, but it is transient. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. If we share with caring lightheartedness, and love, we will create abundance and joy for each other and then this moment will have been worthwhile.'

Later today, my husband will undergo hypnosis and I have confidence that he will eventually be unburdened from a worried mind. He takes his responsibilities seriously, and of course as adults we must take our responsibilities seriously, but there must also be regular time for the unburdening of the mind. 

He's a good and kind man at the core. You can put down your burdens in nature, and he can put down his burdens in nature, but it's exciting to think that he could, quite simply, put down his burdened mind and rest more completely in wonder and a state of peace. This is how you heal.