Turning Point – Part 1

This lifestyle is full of expectations.

He expects me to follow our rules. I expect him to notice and act on what he sees, good or bad.

He expects my submission and I expect his dominance and leadership.

We both expect a high level of communication.

The problem comes when our expectations are not met. That is exactly what happened to us on Friday.

Before Alex even got home last week we were both stressed. He had spent Thursday out of town in several high level and potentially high stakes meetings. Several things have not gone as we would like at work lately and the stress of those meetings was intense.

He is pretty much always the smartest guy in the room and knows his segment of his market as well as anyone in the country. He never ceases to amaze me how he can talk to someone and spout incredibly technical details as if he were reading from a screen but he is doing it from memory. He knows his job inside and out and does it very well. I am very proud of him.

Something I don’t think he fully realizes is how strongly I feel the frustrations he feels at work as well. His success is my success. If he is slighted I feel that too. And if the meetings he had were not satisfactory we could be looking at any manner of changes moving forward.

Every time he talked to me on Thursday I got off the phone and cried. I listened to music and cried. Pretty much anything could set me off. I was kind of an emotional basket case.

The gist of the meetings Thursday was that he felt much better at the end than the beginning; not fully happy with how things have played out but better.

Anyway the reason I am telling you all this is by Friday when he came home I really needed him. Of course I hadn’t actually told him any of this. The crying was after our calls. That is the first part.

The second part is that our daughter was gone on an overnight trip with school Friday and Friday night so we were completely alone for many hours. This was significant for many reasons not the least being that I went to pick up the first of our two college kids for the summer yesterday and the other will be home next week. We will suddenly have a house full of young adults who come and go and fall asleep at all hours of the day and night. This was our last really good night of extended alone time for quite awhile and I didn’t want to waste it. My expectations were high.

Let’s just say that the evening didn’t go as I had hoped at all. We had a nice connection when he first got home but then he had some calls to make and I did some outdoor work.

I made his favorite sandwich for dinner and took special care to make the meal visually appealing as well as delicious. I was in full service mode and feeling pretty happy.

The problems started after dinner when he moved over to one of the chairs and picked up his work computer and started doing work. He stayed that way for quite awhile and I eventually asked him if he had a plan for the night and he just looked at me real noncommittally and said not really.

Long story short I melted down about everything. Him doing work. Him wasting the evening. How stressed I was and had been the day before. But mostly about how I felt like I was sending submission his way and not getting his leadership in return. Many doubts and concerns came tumbling out some I’m not even sure I realized were there and so close to the surface.

He did try spanking a little but honestly at that point it felt like he was humoring me more than asserting his leadership and it wasn’t working. Then our daughter called in the middle to say goodnight and that was pretty much the end of it.

We watched some TV and then just rolled over to try to sleep. That was pretty much impossible for me. I was too upset.

I was really devastated and it was bigger than a lost evening. I realized that it all felt way too one sided for me. I felt too much like I was sending all this energy to him but that energy wasn’t being returned.

At his core he is a nice guy and a really good person. That is why I love him but as a nice guy he has and still does struggle with dominance and that part of this lifestyle that sometimes requires him to call me out and assert himself. Pretty much all the punishments we have done are because I self reported on breaking a rule. He is still not good at or comfortable with pointing out things himself and then acting on them. And I suddenly realized that I was terrified that wasn’t going to change and we couldn’t keep doing this as we were.

At 4 AM I got up and wrote him a letter about us, my submission and his dominance and Dd. I couldn’t sleep until I got what I was feeling written down. I essentially withdrew consent until he could do some real soul searching and assure me that Dd and all that means was something he could truly commit to.

I’ve never done a 2-part post but it was that kind of weekend I guess. If I kept on here this post would get really long. Tomorrow I will post a portion of the letter I wrote and fill you in on how this all turned out.