First I want to thank all of you who commented on my last LOL post. It means more than I can say that there is anyone still reading after all the time I have spent away from the blog. Thank you all!
I never planned to stay away for any length of time. You know how it goes. First it was summer with all the challenges that brings. Extra kids. Extra eyes and ears means less privacy and a lesser dynamic. Then school started again and we were more active but I feel like I have written the “We are starting again” post more than once and so didn’t feel there was much new to say. It felt like we were doing well, kind of chugging along.
And then it just stopped. Well that’s not exactly right. He just kind of stopped. We were doing submission exercises and he was checking in on me and doing maintenance pretty regularly and then it just stopped.
I was confused and concerned. He had experienced a pretty significant disappointment at work and I know it bothered him and shook his confidence and I now know that was the trigger. I tried to be patient and wait it out but after almost three weeks I couldn’t any longer and confronted him.
All the specifics are not that important but ultimately he said he wanted us to take a break. I was completely devastated. How could he want a break? What did that even look or feel like? You have to go back many, many years to find a point that we were relating well on a vanilla basis. It was spanking and that exchange of power which put us on a path of healing what was broken and I truly didn’t and frankly don’t have a good picture in my head of how we would relate without it.
After three years in this lifestyle I am a firm believer in a leader for the family, someone who has the ultimate power to decide things for the good of the family. But it goes beyond that for me. There are SO many times I consciously ask for his approval or make a decision myself based on what I think he would prefer. I’m not sure he even really appreciates the depths of this from me. But it is conscious for me. If we are not going to live in this dynamic then I think I could get a lot more selfish in my decisions. Does that make sense? If he doesn’t want my focus then I will need a new focus.
I don’t work outside the home. I have been fortunate enough to stay home to raise our children. The youngest goes to college next year and we will be alone together. One of the main reasons I even started this at all was my fear of getting to this point and not having any relationship with him. I can’t live like that. I won’t live like that. I could get a job but really after all this time I’m not sure what that would even be. I like the freedom and have really been looking forward to the time that I can travel with him and spend more time together. If we are not relating then that may need to change. I don’t know.
At about the same time as all this he had some pretty extensive travel planned and so we took some time. Time for each of us to think, really think about what we wanted. Let me tell you I was all over the place. Some days I just wanted to call the whole thing off. Some days I wanted to go full steam ahead. Some days I didn’t really know what I wanted.
A few girlfriends helped me talk through some things and really helped. Ultimately I did what I always do and wrote my thoughts down. What I came up with was this.
I want this and I want this completely. I am tired of going slow. I am tired of having training wheels on. I am tired of waiting and thinking and considering. I want deciding and I want direction and I want control. I want his rules and I want his punishments. The problem is that, even before our break, there was not nearly enough doing and far too much thinking.
When things are going well here we are acting in a dynamic that is very heavy on Dominance and submission. I have for quite some time, told him of my desire for him to be my Dominant. He knows this. He knows that when he provides standards for me to follow, I feel safe. What would appear to those outside this lifestyle as controlling and overbearing, appear to me as love and attention. The problem is that even before all this the doing was not always there
And so I gave him what amounts to an ultimatum. We need to do this or not. He either needs to step up and be the Dominant that I am asking him to be all the time or be man enough to admit that this lifestyle isn’t for him. I’m tired of the wishy washy. That doesn’t mean we would split up or anything but it does mean we would have to find a new way to relate with all that entails.
Toward the end of our time apart I went back to doing the things that he asks me to do that make me feel him and my submissiveness. I made sure that the tasks that are important to him were done and done well so his homecoming was good. He noticed. Even though I was giving him an ultimatum of sorts I did not want our discussion to be confrontational. It was important that we talk about everything in a level headed manner and so providing a calm, organized space was an outward way of doing this for him.
We really didn’t talk a whole lot during those trips, saving up the conversation for when he returned. We talked, he read my journal and we talked. A lot. Happily, even before I said anything to him about how I felt he essentially said the same things to me. I was so relieved. He knows that I want and need a heightened level of attention from him and he intends to do that.
So far so good. After being so far apart for over a month coming back together with one direction felt amazing. So connected.
It really hasn’t been very long so I can’t say for sure that it will work long term but so far so good. I’ll keep you posted.
What I think we both learned in a very concrete way was that we are better together and on the same team. It was really lonely without him. And I know he was lost as well. Maybe it was what we needed. I think he saw how much easier he has things when I am centered on him. I like my focus there and now he appreciates it more than ever.
If it helped us to learn and grow then it will have been worth it. I’ll keep you informed.