Stormy Weather

It amazes me how fragile this entire edifice of female-led relationship can be in my mind. Not that I stop thinking about it or stop wanting it, but that I become unable to pursue it.

My strategy right now, as I outlined previously, is just to submit to my wife's judgement - as many posters more eloquent than I have pointed out - not because she's smarter or because my judgement is inherently flawed (both debatable points), but because it just works better.

And when I manage it, it works well. But it is hard. A couple of little successes last night - I wanted to update this blog, but she suggested "You could work on the home-office orders." And so off I went - about a 1 1/2 hour event that I'm afraid to say I didn't do with particularly good grace, at least at the beginning. But in the end the submission was it's own reward and the work got done.

Our son suggested that we watch a TV show we have on DVD, and since she was doing that, I did too - though only for a while. Faced with the choice of playing the instrument I've just taken up (and play rather poorly, but enjoy quite a bit) or watching a TV show I've already seen, that wasn't a hard choice. But going in to watch TV was a nice moment - I decided to have a fudgecicle and got one for myself. When I saw her on the couch, I immediately offered it to her. She accepted and I got another one from the fridge for me - and then one for our son. Awkward moment when it wasn't clear if there were two more or only one in the freezer. Selfless as she is, she said to him "I'll eat half mine and give the rest to you." He demurred but it was a non-issue since there were more in the freezer.

So why "Stormy Weather"? Because each time I got near her, it felt like two positively charged magnetic poles approaching one another. There was this "space" the I couldn't get in to near her. Partly I'll guess this was my own perception, but I'll guess that it was partly based in reality too. It's the thing that drives me the craziest.

In a comment on one of the blogs I read (shoot - I'll find the link later) a caring dominant wife pointed out that she had realized that the easiest way to punish her errant husband was to send him away - to another room, to the other side of the room, from her bed. That being so devoted to her, the separation was the simplest and most painful form of punishment.

Amen to that! So this sense of distance, this sense of not being able to get close to her drives me crazy. It makes me think that perhaps this is all a fool's errand, that there is now way in heck that this is ever going to be more than my fantasy.

But for now, I'll keep faith with myself, and with the confidence that if I really to defer to her and don't expect any change in what she does, that eventually I'll have the courage to ask for what I want, and she'll have the example to see that it's not about "leather and lace" (two things she hates) but it is about creating an emotionally satisfying relationship for both of us.

On another note, "Rich" posted an introduction on the very fine Venus On Top discussion list which has generated a lot of comment. His story and mine are so similar that I must comment, but I want to give it the time it deserves to do so. That's what I was starting to do last night when the home office work came up. I will comment, but it may take a while to find the time.