Inklings of a Way Forward

My beloved is amazing. It amazes me that she has volunteered to accompany me on my twisting turning waxing waning journey around power, sex, and relationships. "Volunteered" is maybe too strong a word. But she has very good-naturedly, and sometimes enthusiastically agreed to listen, explore, and poke about in something I can't seem to help but be interested in, but which (I think) strikes her as an emotional and intellectual oddity at best and an emotional disfunction at worst.

After an insanely busy hiatus, in which only her sense of self-discipline has kept us on track, suddenly I come up for air and wonder how I want to go forward with this. (I'll ignore for a minute all the ironies of her self-discipline, my relative lack of self-discipline, and our inability to find a way to apply her discipline to me, in either metaphorical or physical form.) For go forward I must. The stream never stops. Sometimes it runs shallow, and sometimes it runs deep, but it always runs.

One of the things that frustrated me the most was that I am unable to consistently come up with service things to do for my beloved. This has led me to question my whole identity as a "service submissive." The idea of coming up with one thing each day to do that would be nice is very appealing, and I seem totally unable to do it.

One thing I realized I can do is to be submissive, rather than ask her to make me submissive. This is the way I lost my right to decide over my own orgasms over the years: I asked all the time and then finally we had the conversations where she agreed to decide. I think this model could apply to other things. The other day, I asked her if I could paint her nails - a service-submission thing that I also enjoy doing. It was very good and put us (me certainly, her I think as well) into a really good headspace.

I could do this with other things. I'm wearing my chastity device for the afternoon because I asked her if she'd hold the key "till I need it back." That doesn't do anything for her, but it does for me. Simiarly, I could/should/would like to ask to do at least one submissive or service thing every day. These are for me, not for my beloved. Her gift to me is accepting them. It's not that she makes me be as i want to be, but that she allows me to be as I am.

Overall, I think taking responsibility for what I want is helpful. It also might make her more comfortable insisting on things when my mood fluctuates because otherwise it's to inconsistent and annoying for her and thus in some sense help me be more consistently who I am, rather thank my relying on her making me be who I an, which is something she can't do anyway since in the end only we know who we really are. Isn't this a big theme in literature, with pygmalian at one end?

Tamara did a re-post and reply to a post she'd read on another blog. It's about acknowledging the reality that in many relationships (including hers with Rene, and the original poster's with her partner), that one partner is much more "in to this" than the other - in their words, that it's in one partner's soul, but not the the soul of the other. That sounds right to me.

To me, it means managing my expectations, and asking for what I want, and helping my beloved explore what things there are in this that may tickle her fancy, more or less.

And always being grateful that I have some with whom I can talk and explore.