Me

Could I be clearer in the way I express myself? Is there something about the way I express myself open to interpretation? I don't have a flowery or poetic way of writing sentences, so I just don't understand how I could be misunderstood. 

Here's the deal:

- I am a one-man woman. I have always been so. My lifelong fantasy which I wished to make my reality was to be loved by ONE man and for me to love him.

- I am not into and wish for myself NO swingers parties, NO group sex with men or women. 

- By this definition, I am NOT a SLAVE. If an Owner asked me to do these things, I would try, but it would be so against the natural order of my brain and soul that I think I would ultimately be forced to leave the union.

- I am a conventional, old-fashioned sort of gal. I just want MY man all to myself. I want to be in a D/s dynamic with him. I want to know to the core of my being, regularly, minute by minute, that I am HIS and he is MINE.

- I am happy to work hard. Hard work never bothered me, and I actually like it because I just like getting stuff done, transforming spaces, making the world a little bit better in all sorts of ways.

- But, I need play time; time to see the world; enough financial security for both of us to feel free. I am happy to work hard to achieve this; happy to play my part.

I have held down my deep and profound dismay of suggestions that I would find myself at a swingers party with my owner holding my leash whilst I licked some unknown man's anus. No judgment here; each to his own, and that includes me. That's not me.

Tell me, if you have read a smidgeon of my words here, does that sound like me?

I thought not.

Love

 This will be short. I don't mention it here too much or in my life generally, with the children or extended family or friends. I guess we are both being stoic, he and I.

However, I am the spouse of a man who has been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and for some reason today I want to say that, to myself.

I want to acknowledge that I may lose, earlier than we ever anticipated, my husband whom I married 43 years ago.

One's brain does everything to save the Self pain and my brain is no different. I can assure myself my husband will beat the odds and be totally healed. It actually is possible.

The facts are thus: I would be devastated to lose him. I have loved him, and he has loved me for nearly 50 years.

I have the rather unenviable ability to imagine the future, of walking into our holiday home, a place he loves, when he is gone, and that moment fills me with intense sadness. 

It makes me realize how very much I love him.

A note to self: to cherish each day.

Containment

 Please do forgive me if you are tired of hearing about Om. He is just so impressive and it's not just me. I send my husband episodes of his podcast that stand out to me, and he agrees, he has an important message to offer.

So, Om, as you might have already read here, speaks a lot about containment. He was asked in interview what that word means to him. I can't remember all his words, but the gist of the thing is that men and women have certain expectations of each other that is the same no matter in which era we live. Women want to be able to be supported by a man; to have a man settle them. It's up to the man, Om says, for his women to be contained by his masculine energy.

I would like to offer an example from my little orbit. My third child is quiet most of the time, until he decides to talk, in which case he has a lot to offer on a particular subject. Girls have been an important component in his life but it's this recent one, the one to whom he is engaged that has made for a very happy relationship.

He hasn't changed all that much over time, but the other girls were definitely codependent on him. He was, and this is his mother talking, far too good to them. The one before this one was a nice girl but she didn't have respect for him. His grandmother acutely observed the situation and assessed that "she has to go". Their whining and demands definitely got him down, and without space for himself, he took to becoming quite animated and excruciatingly frustrated. Her OCD was a factor here. I gently encouraged him of the view that he didn't owe her anything. He had to think of his own happiness.

This led to S, a charming, respectful and tender girl. At first, she seemed to have no issues, totally put together, until she started to reveal some of her childhood upbringing when it became clear that the anxiety we were seeing now that we had got to know her and love her was coming from those difficult situations.

This is where the containment comes in. She is a worrier. The boss at work is totally into himself. What if they can't find a house? What about her brother? She shares these worries with my son, and he has a way of containing the worry. 'Don't worry about the boss. When you are ready, there are plenty of jobs.' 'We will sort out your brother's situation together.' Or, he'll just be silly and make her giggle. He brings light to her dark and she greatly appreciates being offered the range of possibilities.

Sometimes, I have gone to my husband looking for containment, but he, being a bigger worrier than me, hasn't been able to contain me with his masculine energy. I think he is learning through these podcasts how important this skill is. I remember distinctly certain times when he was able to contain me; reassure me, and this means the world to me. 

This occurred quite recently when he assured me that the financial situation could be sorted; that we would work on it together. There's room to grow in the sensory realm. Words are good, strong hugs are equally important.

I'm not suggesting this is always easy for a man who may desire to dissolve into being contained by their woman. It's what their mothers did for them and no doubt it felt good. A woman is capable of this, for a time, of course. No-one is at their best all of their time.

As Om says, there is a place for that, but pretty much forget eros at those times.

Of course, when we endeavor to contain a situation, it doesn't necessarily work out and there are family folklore stories around this. We burst a tire one summer, on the way to the ferry that would take us to Block Island. Those tickets are bought months in advance, so the situation wasn't good. My husband said at one point, 'We aren't going to make it.' The children in the back no doubt were watching their holiday evaporate and I got a tap on the shoulder and a whisper in my ear, 

'Mum, are we going to make it?'

'Sure. We'll make it', I whispered back.

Well, we arrived, they called us onto the ferry, we drove on, they pulled up the barrier and we sailed off. We made it, by about five seconds.

A man (in this scenario, yes, it's a man) can't know what is to come, but most men will do anything and everything to make it right, safe, for their women and children. 

I think this is what a woman wants to tap into, time and time again. In spite of all her talents, ability to look after herself and so on, this is what she craves. I, like Om, tend to think this is hard wired.

Agreement

 The man I listen to from NYC, Om, made the simplest and yet the most important of points in one of his podcasts. If interested, you can find him on 'Om Rupani Podcast' and I listen on Spotify. 

He explained that couples who have been married for a considerable time will come to him because the marriage isn't currently in great shape, and they would like to try relating to one another with polarity; that is recognizing their differences. (D/s)

The problem Om sees often is that they want to try polarity, but they haven't been in agreement with one another for years, and it's the agreement component that first needs to be sorted.

I agree. If there is not agreement on important matters, it's going to be very hard to build a stable and fulfilling polarity (or D/s dynamic) on that weak structure.

In my marriage, disagreement began to surface many years ago. We had been in wonderful agreement about so very much, until differences in our investment style began to bite.

I had been reasonably comfortable with him assuming full responsibility for the finances, although I was always a more conservative investor than him, until the percentages of what was put into high risk made me exceptionally fearful.

I cannot speak for him, but I know my fears did not play into his decision making. He called the shots as he saw them, and I felt that my shared thoughts were being cast aside. I know this because he would say to me that I didn't understand the world of investment, share trading and so on. 

It caused a lot of friction because although money is only a means to an end, as he likes to say, money does dictate choices as well as a sense of safety. It can't save you from lots of things, but without high risk at one's heels, it's far more possible to relax and let go, knowing you don't have to worry about some financial disaster befalling you.

It's my sense of safety that I value. I think I got that from my mother and father who, admittedly, were cash-oriented people, because my brother is like me. We take care of our mother's portfolio and when interest rates went up last year, I suggested we avail ourselves of the new environment and put the cash into terms of deposit. We were both excited to think that whilst we slept, money was being made. It's just our conservative minds. As my brother likes to say he will never be mega rich, but nor will he be a pauper.

So, that's where my husband and I are not in sync. He's far more comfortable with risk.

I read somewhere that there are one or two matters over which most couples will always be in disagreement. I think this is our disagreement, our only disagreement. It's a big one though because when things don't go his way, it can affect us for years, lead to other difficulties; have long lasting repercussions.

Yet, this is the way it is and maybe the way it was always going to be. People who reflect on the state of the world sometimes make the point that from an evolutionary perspective where we are is where we were always going to be, and maybe that's the way it is in my marriage too. It was always going to be thus.

What to do about it? So, over time I created some boundaries. These days, I need to know what I am signing. 

I adjust the story too so that my sense of safety is not so compromised. Sure, the cash isn't there, but the assets are. It's all fine really. If push comes to shove, there's a way to correct the situation. As my risk analysis son says to me, 'You have choices, Mum, most people don't have choices.' Very true. 

So, I retell myself the story, accept what must be done in the short term; have faith; allow my nervous system to settle.

I wouldn't exactly say that I have come to agreement over this matter, but nor am I in disagreement. I am on board, moving as one.

And so, the D/s has a firm foundation on which to rest. Our style and sense of what it means to be financially stable is very different, but it doesn't mean we aren't okay. 

To put it another way, how much pain do you want to feel before you just let it go and relax?

Wants and needs

 I have been listening to a series of podcasts entitled 'Power in Practice'. They are quite old, some dating back to 2008, but they are incredibly good. In some ways, the small group of people who published them were experimental, looking to see how to best run a polyamory family, or multiple dominant households.

From the comments made I think it's fair to say that the dominants of the group tend towards extreme dominance and that the submissives of the group were carefully selected to be willing to accept and be at least relatively comfortable with that sort of extreme dominance.

Flagg made the point that romantic love complicates a D/s structure and I think most people can agree on that point. My husband listened along to some of it and I heard him say, sort of to himself, 'I don't agree with that' or 'I could never do that'. 

The hypnotist who we engaged to assist us in setting up a D/s structure again together with dealing with some trauma we both needed to heal, said to my husband that I was born this way. I was born with a service mentality. I think that's right. To be of use to those I love, and even those I don't love, is a part of my personality. I not only do it willingly, I do it without even thinking about it. I slot into the secondary position like a duck waddling into water.

So, what I want is to be myself, to be the s of the D/s situation, not just to serve for serving sake, but to be comfortable in my skin, at one, in harmony. I need harmony, unobtainable to me outside of a D/s structure. 

So what I want and need is for my husband to fulfill his obligations as the D of the D/s arrangement.

Early in December, we were driving along the freeway when my husband said to me, 'Do you commit to stay married to me forever?'. 'Yes. Yes, I do', I said. 'And, do you commit to our dynamic being D/s forever?' 'Yes, Yes, I do.'  'I commit to that too,' he said. And, like that, the deal was sealed, never to be broken.

I can't say exactly how the hypnotist did his work. We would have started with my husband's therapy, but he wasn't ready, so we started with mine.

First, we dealt with some trauma I held, trauma that played out in the writings here, some confusion about my sexuality. Since I had been having masochistic fantasies from the earliest age, in some ways due to the neglect in my early life, I needed to go to that place and satisfy myself that it was I an adult, that wanted these things. It was I that wanted these things and that was okay.

D asked me towards the end of the first session what had changed and at first, I only noted little things; the little desk had been moved; the curtains had been opened. But then I saw me, not a little girl anymore, a fully-fledged woman.

"Oh my God, Oh my God, she's all grown up. She's all grown up."

Then, we dealt with the neglect, the inability to express myself emotionally as a child. We did forgiveness exercises, and most importantly, in my opinion, I had the experience of seeing myself as a young woman, around 30, blissfully happy in a relationship that was led by a man I loved. I was sitting at his feet, and we were happy and at peace.

This was what I wanted.

Immediately after the session I was sad, sometimes angry. I had felt what I wanted, maybe for a full minute, and I desperately wanted it back.

I wanted my husband to be engaged with me in a D/s relationship that was 24/7. I wanted to be responsible for being the best submissive I could be and I wanted him to be the best dominant that he could be.

D worked away at that. I don't know exactly how, but I do know that he feels that I need the structure that enables me to succeed at the submission.

We haven't formulated a contract as yet, but we see it as being one where we outline our responsibilities.

He is responsible for the relationship; to lead it and oversee it. I am responsible for being obedient and available; enticing and companionable.

We do little things right now. He puts a blindfold on me right before sleep. I have been sleeping very well and my husband noted that I seem very relaxed. 

I call him 'Sir' or 'Owner' but mostly Sir, unless other people can hear.

He initiates play. He shaves my pussy and that leads to play, but it can happen at any time. Orgasm on demand is expected. Until recently I didn't know that I could orgasm on demand. I didn't know that there were 12 different types of orgasm. 

Maybe most significant of all is that we are able to engage in conversation without fear of eruptions. We were both prone to be angered by each other and the therapy sorted that, maybe in equal parts with the new/renewed dynamic. I think he's far more reasonable now; far more willing to see his role in all this; that in spite of not being especially well, we have a life to live. This component had been missing for a long time and I found it soul crushing.

Back to the needs...I believe as a submissive that my whole body is his to play with and enjoy. I was trained this way and I think this way. I have experienced the benefits of thinking this way. I am aware that anal training isn't that difficult and on our 'to purchase' list is an inflatable dildo. We will write into the contract that I train with this at least twice a week, so that all three holes are available.

We will purchase a leather collar that he will place around my neck just before I go to sleep.

He wants more touch and I currently wash his back in the shower. I bring close to the shower our towels.

I think he listens to me more. He is no less opinionated, but I think he is more caring in that he is less self-involved. He still tends to what he must tend to but I suppose I would say that he is more relaxed too.

He corrects. Most particularly he reminds me of the Honorifics, cementing that down. He spanks, not soundly. I am not crying when he does it, but I get the point. I don't want and nor do I choose to be in trouble.

With him I don't have to worry about being asked to do something well outside of commonsense. He's not going to ask me to stand naked in the traffic. He's never going to put me at risk, and I would never want that sort of play anyway. He said to me some hours ago that he could never imagine loaning me out as some dominants apparently do because his sense of responsibility for me would never allow me to potentially be put in harm's way. He simply does not have and nor does he need to have, a desire to push the bounds out to feel a certain way.

Om, a man from NYC I listen to talks a lot about containment, and interestingly I wrote a lot about containment in earlier years. Blindfolds, rope, silence, placed on a chair, whole body massage, feeling held down emotionally...I revel in all of this.

There's not the slightest resistance to thinking of myself as a submissive, or a Slave, or the one on the bottom; whatever you like to say. It is denial of my needs for that positioning that caused me so much distress, not at all the other way around.