We've moved along

We've moved along in more ways than one.  We picked up with our new journey at http://BothSidesOfTheSlash.WordPress.com .  Jamie came back here for a look around to see how the old haunt looked, and lo and behold, it's still here.  We certainly did end at a bad moment, though.

Perhaps at some point we'll write the connective tissue as to how we got from there (not a good place) to here (which is feeling pretty good right now).  Getting kicked around by life a little, and a fortuitous meeting with a somewhat younger friend both helped a lot.

Come join us.

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.

Yesterday we changed the rules

We discussed the reasons for changing them at some length, but suffice it to say that what we had had atrophied to the point where my beloved was unsure of what to do when my behavior floated from the norms we had set. To take a specific example, I was rubbing her legs and feet, and when I was done, I stopped. I had said that I would never stop until she told me it was okay, but this came at the end of a long period of not doing anything service oriented and I lacked the discipline to relax on to it and be who and what she had the right to expect me to be. Since so little had been going on, she was surprised and unsure what to expect/demand.

As to why so little had been going on, external circumstances notwithstanding (and I should read the history to find out if those have been a factor in our pauses in the past), I almost titled this post "Not thinking about sex is better than thinking about no sex." This seems to be my reaction to longer term denial, whether it's in the context of enforced chastity or crazy circumstances. Either way, it decreases my ability to stay focused on my beloved, and things spiral down hill from there.

As a simple corrective to that, I'm now required to stimulate myself as close to orgasm as possible once a day, and, out loud, thank my beloved for controlling my orgasms, then thank her in person or by text.

There are lot of other aspects to our new arrangement, perhaps too many to be put in to place all at once. But it boils down to one transaction: I will do all of these things, some to help keep me in the right head space and some because they serve my beloved.  All I ask in return is something fairly difficult from her, which I think she's agreed to try: She will care about these things as much as she can.

3/27/12 7:33PM

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.

A Blog Back From The Dead?

Is this blog returning from the dead? I don't know.

Why has it been so long since I've posted? Because I've got two intense community commitments, intense job commitments, and it feels in some ways like our FLR has been hanging on by a thread.

The bigger question for me is, "What are we doing here." I've made several attempts at distinguishing between a service-oriented relationship, a submissive relationship, and sexual "bottom" relationship, none successful. Yet I have to try again, because on this short trip with one of our children, it's much of what I've been thinking about - yet another way that sexual being that isn't in tune with the rest of my life is intensely distracting, to my detriment.

Some of this is sexual frustration. It's been - I've lost count - three and a half weeks, maybe? No touching by me, a little by my beloved, but certainly no orgasm. One of my favorite parts of the blog was always the time-since counter. I remember early in the summer when we first had sex and I didn't update the counter. From there on, it seemed impossible to catch up. In once sense, it's been nice to get unhooked from the calendar. I've feared that my beloved was keeping track; for a while it seemed like she'd decided that every two weeks or so was "right." Once, I asked, because I felt that being frustrated was distracting me from the rest of my life. She didn't immediately accommodate me, for which I am grateful. I'd hate to feel like I could just ask and that would be that. I think I need to be able to ask, but I'm not even sure of that any more.

Now my orgasm happens when it pleases her, and that makes me very happy. Most of the time, orgasms are much much more intense that way. Sometimes they come and go so quickly that I hardly notice them. I feel physically satisfied, but the "frustrated" mind-set doesn't really change.

One experiment that is a little on-going in our relationship is the arrive of a CB-6000s. This has been a long-time fantasy of mine, and at some point I mentioned it to my beloved. I was among the early people to order a CB-2000 long ago. (I conclude this because our order was delayed because they were just moving from "hand crafted" to "manufactured.") My anatomy is best described as "high and tight," and the CB-2000 was not effective at all. The idea is that the testicles are "trapped" between two acrylic rings - hence the generic name for these devices: "Trapped ball devices." A very small number of trials indicated what with my anatomy, it was more like "crushed ball..." It's been languishing in a drawer for 8 years.

The "CB" folks have been busy and gone through several models, and there are others testing out related designs, including the "Bird Cage," a flexible silicone version of the same thing. The discussion board at ChastityForums.com is very metal-centric (there are trapped ball devices from Mature Metals), but are willing to condescend to plastic to the extent the CB-6000 and CB-6000s can be useful to figure out your sizing for the "real" devices. The silicone devices they dismiss out of hand. Although my beloved preferred the silicone as a concept and a look, ever the pragmatists, we decided to try the CB-6000s.

It's not clear that this thing is going to work on me. There are five ring sizes, and five post lengths, so that's 25 combinations. We've tried three or four, and either the ring is too small around the base of the balls, or the space is too big, allowing them to slip out. I have one or two ideas of additional combinations to try, but it's quite possible that it will be a fail. I've worn it overnight once, and out-and-about on a number of occasions, but most of the time the result is either too painful to continue or "the boys" slip out, which is painful in its own right. I might think about trying "the birdcage." But I wonder if the results would be different.

Now on to service, submission, and sexual-bottoming.

I don't know if I'm a service submissive. I read Axe talk about being a service submissive. I remember one remark he made about the satisfaction of bringing Sade a cup of tea on a quiet evening. I'm not sure whether or not I share that satisfaction. I think, for me, the satisfaction of doing that comes from the interaction that it implies with my beloved, and I can't figure out what I want that interaction to be: ignoring the service? taking the service for granted? acknowledging the service but at the same time making it clear that I have no choice? Much of that sounds like a lot of work for her.

The service submission things we have figured out need some kind of interaction from her: paying the bills is the biggest one, and I haven't been doing it. At the other extreme, making her coffee in the morning, even if I'm not having coffee, I love too. In the middle, I paint her toenails and shave her legs. I don't suggest these things nearly as often as I should. And when she tells me I need to do them, I do, but not, initially, with as much grace as I should. And I don't know how I'm "supposed to be" while I'm doing it - are we our "partners" selves - as we are partners in life - chatting about stuff? Am I the quite submissive studiously not disturbing the person he's serving? Should I be providing a book or magazine for her to read along with the personal service?

What visions do I have for this? What do I want? I don't know. I think we'd have to try two different extremes: In one, I ask for permission to give her this service, I make sure she is entertained while I do it - book, magazine, radio, movie, something - and I thank her for the privilege of serving. This "brackets" the experience, sets it apart from our "partner" relationship. In the other, we acknowledge that this inequality is part of of the "partner" relationship we have - that she can order me to provide these services for her whenever she wants, that it immediately becomes way more important anything else I might be thinking of doing, but it exists in the context of our whole relationship, so we interact about the rest of life while we're doing this.

Or we do both - bound the event with those rituals AND maintain the connection to the rest of our relationship that goes on at all times. THAT sounds like the most powerful idea to me.

It ties in to what happens when she tells me to rub her feet at night. I appreciate it a lot when she tells me to do this on the evenings when I'm tired and just want to sleep. Surrendering to her in this way is probably the most profound experience I have in this context. She's usually reading or dozing late at night. I rub her feet until she tells me I'm done. When she falls asleep, I feel like I've achieved what I really want, both psychologically and physically. Physically, it's clearly comfortable enough that it feels good. Psychologically, it means she's comfortable enough not to worry about how long I'll be there serving her; I'll be there until she happens to wake up and decide that she wants me to stop. I love that.

The part of service that I don't seem to be good enough at is seeking out things to do for her, and being attentive to her needs when service "play" is not the focus of what we're doing. Does that mean I'm not a service submissive? I think it might mean that.

Submissive. To me, that's letting my beloved take the lead and be "the decider." I'm not sure I want that. I don't know if she does or not. In some ways, I think I'm so desperate to have this dynamic in our relationship, that if she were to say, "When I want your opinion, I'll ask for it," I'd be incredibly turned on. But I'm pretty sure that's not her. We've always functioned as partners.

Sexual bottom? Totally. Sex when she wants it, how she wants it, and involving me in any way she wants to involve me. That ties with service submission in some ways, because sex becomes service to her. My frustration becomes a reminder to me of my service to her and her control over our sex life. And that all is very very satisfying.

That's why "teasing" isn't really teasing - it's a reminder that this is what sex is. And that is very satisfying too.

I thought I'd have more to say about submission, and about sex, but at this moment, I don't. I also thought I'd be writing about objectification, and how that's a bad thing, and how it manifests in a lot of contexts. Also about how wearing the CB-6000s feels - the idea that I would experience discomfort because of our sexual roles, and that I would feel okay about that trade-off, just as women who wear high heels or tight pants make that trade-off. It's not like either of those things aren't uncomfortable. But the discomfort says something about who I am (and, if my conjecture is right, who those women are), and that is a satisfying thing: that I am a sexual being, that my sex has power - in my case, power that my beloved want's to control, in the case of high-heels, power to attract men, but that that attraction will be controlled because of the social mores in our culture. It's why my favorite line in "Miss Congeniality" is when Sandra Bullock's geeky FBI agent has been transformed into a self-possessed, self-confident beauty queen, and she taunts her fellow agent with a little ditty, "You want to hold me, you want to kiss me, you want to [unintelligible - love? fuck? I'm sure that's intentional] me." And she knows he can't and won't because of their professional relationship.

But all that for another day.