I recognize that

I have kids, and I spend time with kids of all ages in all sorts of contexts, so I recognized it right away. It was quite obvious; it was boundary testing, limit pushing, feeling out the response, probing with "what if I just..." Except this was me doing it..... That part was new.

It's not that this is new because I'm inherently a line-toer, or straight-and-narrow keeper; it's just that it's been since I was a kid that I've had boundarys to test. I know that's a bit of an oversimplification - I am of course subject to tax law, and traffic regulations, and all the niceties that grease the wheels of polite society, all those sorts of boundarys that I may or may not choose to respect. But specific, how I should act, what is expected of ME, in my home, with my husband - that's new! And I've not completely decided how I feel about this.

I did find it very interesting that my immediate response was the obvious one. I forged ahead to see what would happen. I could see what I was doing, but didn't stop myself. In one case, I was not at all ready to let go of my pissiness. In the other case I was goofing around and I was just plain having too much fun being annoying.

Of course any relationship, and in partiular a marriage, has boundarys, the unwritten rules that both parties (usually) adhere to, from the vows to the habits worked out over the years that have become expectations. My being angry, upset, even distraught, and consequently very rude, but refusing to talk about why has been a problem for a long time, and it's one of the places we've decided to make changes. I say we, but I mean that my husband decided and I agreed that it wasn't a fair or at all useful way for me to act. I of course have known that all along, but it is so much easier to ignore horrible things than to try to talk about them, and it is always easier to avoid confrontation than to face it. Right? In this case, it's not an issue of having a rote list of "may say this and may not say this...." The point is that I need to be responsible and accountable for what I do and say (as does my husband, different story though). This time he kept asking until I could force myself to tell him what was wrong. Previously he would have quit trying and I would have seethed, and there would have been no resolution and lots of bad feelings.

This all does sound more like marriage retreat than kink. In my case, letting him tell me where I need to change is a monumental shift that I know would not have happened without my having come to terms with submitting in other areas. As I was resisting, I knew that eventually I would need to tell him and I also knew that he expected me to do just that. In a strange way, that made all the difference.

As far as the goofing around, I'm not sure about that. I was being silly, and annoying, and physically pestering him, and I think I really wanted him to physically stop me instead of asking me to. Of course I chose to do this at a time when the kids were too nearby for him to truely do something about it - so I just don't know.