Some context about the preceeding two posts, and a step forward

The astute reader will notice that the preceding two posts are separated by about two weeks. 

As my beloved so trenchantly noted, our life had devolved into the thoroughly mundane due to a number of external stresses.  My post was supposed to be the first step in examining that and seeing if there was a basis for renewing our special relationship, or if this was going to be my "problem" and fantasy life for the foreseeable future.  Clearly an unsuccessful step, partly because I did not write from an awareness of how serious the situation was.

During a long car ride on an otherwise very stressful night, we started talking about this, and she read my post.  The reaction is there for you to see.

We talked a lot more on that night, and in the end I wrote (in the form of an email) much more of what I should have written in the first place.

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A second try at where my head's at:

Ok, I'm trying to remember what it was I was supposed to write...

1. About why I suddenly stopped doing what we were doing
2. About the differences between submission and service 
3. Ideas about where to go from here

I've put off writing this long enough / haven't felt like there was time to write it because there was always something more important, that I've blown it up in to a big thing.  I think I was also afraid of getting it "wrong" and getting a big reaction. 

Why I suddenly stopped doing what we were doing....

Beyond all the busyness and lack of brain-share, I was very unclear as to what you cared how much about the following

• My only having permitted orgasms - I knew you cared a lot about that because you'd said so.  So that was never an issue.
• Making coffee - I know you appreciate that a lot.  I felt really bad about not making you coffee when you left on business at 5AM.
• Personal service - shaving your legs and doing your toe-nails.  Sometimes that was a time thing, sometimes that was a "laziness" thing, and sometimes it's just not something that I'm naturally "in-to."  That made it easy in my mind for me to slack on those.
• Kissing your feet when I arrive home - I wasn't sure whether that was a "me" thing that you agreed to, or if it meant anything to you.  In our subsequent conversation, it clearly does mean something to you, but I didn't know that at the time.
• Opening doors - I really felt that that was a "me" thing that that I'd just do it to make myself feel better and that you didn't care about it.  So I felt free to quit.
• What specific things have I forgotten?

We talked about how, in the bigger sense of things, we fell out of communicating.  I think we need to create a space to do that.  At some point we remarked on the fact that if you're doing a "normal" set of social roles, there's lots of support in the environment for that and lots of expectations, etc.  Whereas if we're doing what we're doing, we have to make it up as we go along.  That's harder and requires more communication.  I think after having had a good but difficult conversation in the car, we need to be careful not to do that again.

About the different components of this in me:

• Sexually submissive - my whole life and always.
• Submissive in daily life - not so much.  Somewhat, because it leads to sexual submission.  Somewhat, as an exercise because it affirms this "different" relationship that I want to have.  But also something I could be better at if that's what we wanted (which sometimes I do, and which other times I do as an affirmation of the relationship, and which sometimes I'm not sure I do.)
• Service-oriented - sometimes.  Like submissiveness in daily life, only more so.  There are times when I really like it.  There are times when I really want to rub your feet because its a way of communicating to you.  There are times when I love shaving your legs or doing your toe-nails, and times when I am not so much in to that. 
• Sensation-play - Always, I think.  It's like sex, only with my whole body....
• Fetish stuff - shiny clothes, boots, etc - the Magpie effect.  Always.

Here's one possible take-away from this whole episode: I am eager for you to set the terms of the relationship, if not unilaterally, then at least for you to propose what you want it to look like, as you said to me, based on what you've come to enjoy or appreciate.  You said that my coming and going around parts of this made you feel like a fool.  In a similar (but different) vein, my doing all these things that I didn't think you cared about made me sometimes feel foolish, and I'm still getting over the feeling that you'd prefer it if I just didn't do them.  I get, from what you said, that this is not so.  But I'm working on internalizing it.

I had suggested at one point that part of the issue with kissing your feet when I arrive home (which I REALLY LIKE as an indication that, regardless of what else is happening, our relationship is different), was that I wasn't sure if it meant anything to you and I was unsure when it was appropriate and when it wasn't.  My suggestion around this was to get whipped severely enough that I really wouldn't want to go there again, and would, in any way possible strive to kiss your feet so as not to be subject to that.  I don't think I necessarily worded this quite right, but I want to just get this out.
That could go for shaving your legs or painting your toenails.  I dunno, just a (scary) thought.  [This came out of a long discussion of punishment vs "funishment" that wasn't very conclusive.  The idea here was to do straight pain - not fetishized - to change behavior - to make me err on the side of kissing your feet when I arrive home.  It remains an area that we're exploring.]

It's hard to express how much I appreciate the entire concept of the collar and you're taking the initiative on that.  It really does help me understand that this is something that you want and are willing to take ownership of (pun intended).

I love you a lot and I really appreciate your exploring this with me.  I'm very very lucky.  You're very very terrific.

The Man Is Clueless

Jamie's beloved here. The last seven months have been insane as we moved his parents into an assisted living apartment near us. It's left us with no time for ourselves or for each other. As a result, Jamie basically bailed out of our arrangement, except for making me coffee and leaving me in control of his orgasms. All other service and attention ceased. It was totally understandable, but here's my problem: he never informed me that he needed to take a break, never asked me how I felt about it, and never apologized. When I tried to start a conversation or request that he write about the collapse of his commitment, I got nothing.

I have been a reluctant domme but have grown to be content with this arrangement with my sweetie, and enjoyed the attention and the sex. When it ended abruptly, I was disappointed, angry, and felt foolish to have consented in the first place.

Two months later, Jamie still hasn't said anything, despite a couple of attempts on my part to start a conversation. I just read a draft blog post he wrote and it's about new kinds of play that he might like. Fuck that! He needs to beg me to take him back into any kind of arrangement at all, and it's going to be (at least at first) entirely limited to what I feel like.

Am I off- base?

An unsuccessful attempt to describe where my head's at

I was listening to Axe's interview with SubmissAnne(?) And she was talking about pony play, which I've been fascinated with looking at but n never thought about doing.the depersonalization aspect really appeals to me.  She talked about the relationship between the driver/trainer and the pony, particularly wrt dressage, and it sturck a chord. The idea of being trained so that - in her words - your muscle memory responds to the commands of the trainer gets you to a totally submissive nonverbal place. I would love that. She also talked about dressage, which I've seen horses do and never gotten. But when she describes it as "obey, command, obey, command, obey, command" I go all melty inside

Later she talked about blinded obstacle courses for the ponies guided by the trainers. Absolutely intoxicating.  The whole dynamic between the trainer and the point she made sound very intimate. I want to take one or both of the clips where she talks about that and save them.

In a previous interview Axe talked to a mistress who had something of a sub specialty in working with couples, so long as the woman on the couple was the one who made the contact. ( http://www.mistressmorgana.com/couples/ and http://www.mistressmorgana.com/faq/ ) I know that his partner Sade also does couples work.

THIS IS VERY ATTRACTIVE

I feel, with minimal data to substantiate this, that my beloved is warming slightly to the idea of being dominant but that it's still really important that no one else know ... except that she's determined that she has a co worker at her fairly small non profit who is on fet life, and she seems intrigued by that fact.

Which, I hope, opens the door to working with someone around this.  We've determined that I have an ambiguous attitude towards being a service sub - it's not exactly second nature, especially when the going gets rough, but it has its attraction. I think I could be trained In to it and she could learn how to help keep me on that space - that assuming she wants to.  But clearly the current "whip saw" nature of the arrangement where I'm in to it very much sometimes and less other times is very unsatisfactory to her.

Right now the arrangement's down to making her coffee on the mornings and totally no sex for me without permission (simulation or orgasm).  I'm waiting for her to decide that it's time for something more. There are two factors promoting that "waiting": there were a number of things that I was doing that I felt were more for me - or motivatted by me - than by/for her. Two I can think of were opening the car spot for her and kissing her feet once a day.

To go in to more detail: opening the car door (or doors in general) is an old time chivalry thing.  When I felt she didn't care about it, I did it as a barometer of how submissive I was "feeling.  It turns out that she noticed! Specifically, she felt jerked around when this behavior came and went. Where as I was thinking "I don't want to impose this expectation on her and I'll do it if it allows me to feel submissive and this won't be too oppressive to her."

Kissing her feet to me was different: telling her that I wanted to be required to do this every day was my way of saying "whether I'm 'in to this' or not on a given day, at this minimal level, it is real and I need to do this."  After one day where there was no obvious moment to do this, we talked and clearly she had the expectation that I would go out of my way to do this and I had the expectation that I didn't want to impose this on her.

The end of this discussion was that I suggested/asked that she whip me sufficiently with the crop that their should be no doubt in my mind that of there were any possibility of my kissing her feet during the day, that I should leap at the opportunity rather than doubt.  This involved moving whipping from "funishment" to punishment, which can be a hard line for her to perceive (not surprisingly - absent a lot of feedback, how would you know?).  In the event, we never got to test that out due to the press of family commitments and travel.

And shaving her legs? And painting her toenails? And rubbing her feet?  Where did these all go? I know she's peeved about the shaving her legs going away.

Finally, I want to highlight a comment made recently on Krista Tippett's "on being."  She interviewed Joy Ladin, a m-to-f t transsexual professor of poetry who transitioned in her mid-40's.    She said that one of the hardest things for her for 40+ years was to"play the role" of "male" 24x7.  I couldn't figure out why that statement resonated so much with me given that I realized long ago that the attraction of being female for me was not as compelling as of it Is for people who in the end identify as transsexual.

I kind of figured out out tonight, as the press of family commitments made this weekend In to less of a refuge than a series of commitments to be completed, that I was feeling disappointed and oppressed by the prospect of having to be "normative." Internally I had looked forward to  having the opportunity to be naked and at her feet for some part of the weekend.  It was that feeling of not having to pretend that I really identified with.

I think that that realization interacts with the desire to seek some outside expertise both for the wisdom they might offer - can we (and I mean WE)  get over the idea that no one has anything to teach us? And for the acknowledgement that this is "real" and in some sense who I am.

Why, in retrospect, is that do satisfying to write? I feel peaceful and calm.  I think the acknowledgement of who I am in all this, means something to me.