This made me smile

We are on our way home today and it has been a wonderful trip.  It's a part of our country I've never explored before and I'm so glad to have had the opportunity.  Our last night was in San Francisco and we wandered for hours.  This sculpture hung on the wall of a bar we went into for a drink.  It made me smile.  They must have been on the same kind of vacation as ours.

i wonder what it means

It's been a long week - and yes - it's only Thursday. 

Lots of extra teenagers at my house this past week, and lots of extra work at work. 

But now my teenagers have gone off with the extra ones and we are on our way - on vacation - just my husband and me - a huge treat.

Packing last night, he told me to pick one toy to bring with me.

Hmmmm - i hate packing, i hate trying to decide what i might be in the mood to wear, much less play with, several days from now - besides, it's never my choice anyhow - the toys that is. 

And my brain was tooooo tired to think or imagine or even want.

And as i stared into the box, my eyes just kept coming back to the collar......

he dreams in kink

My husband goes away often - weekly in fact.  I rarely go away - a few times a year.  His being gone is a non-event.  He comes home like anyone coming home from work (which he is) - happy to see us, or tired, or frustrated, or ready to start the weekend, or missing me, or whatever.  When i come home, it is definitely NOT a non-event. 

It seems that when i'm gone - he dreams in kink. 

Most recently, the instructions started even before i was on my way home, "Wear a skirt on the plane.  If you didn't take one with you - buy one." 

And continued at the departure gate, "Take your panties off before you board."

And again as soon as i'd texted that i'd landed, "Take your bra off before you get to arrivals where I'll be waiting." 

I was very happy to be home, happy to see him, and looking forward to whatever he had planned.  I was in that state of being aroused and a bit anxious and expectant, and listening, but still not deep enough to not have the wondering and the questions and an independent dialogue about it all running in my head at the same time.

Walking to the car, he casually asked about my trip, filled me in on what was going on at home, held my hand innocently.... But he had that smile underneath his smile, the one no one else would recognize, but i certainly do.  And i found myself falling further in.

Of course I knew something was up, so the fact that he had parked far, far away from anyone else in the lot was not a surprise.   Playing at anything at all like this in public, such as it was,  is very much not part of what we do.  Half of my brain was happily on it's way to lost in him; the other half was fighting very hard not to blurt out  reasons this was a bad idea and how we should just stop and go home.

Once we were in the car, the pretences stopped and he wanted all of my attention.  I was getting there but still had a voice in my head running a script that was not part of the program. 

The nipple clamps, just strong enough to be tolerable for the 30 min drive home, helped.  But they were at that maddening point that they hurt just enough to make me want them to hurt more, to drive out any other thoughts.  But they weren't there - they were a tease.

I don't know how he knows, or why it has the effect it does - every time - but it does.  He nodded towards the plug and watched me put it in place.  I could barely manage to make my hands work properly, i couldn't look up and i couldn't look at him.  As soon as it sunk home, i was there, I was beyond there.  And i was entirely his. 

sounds about right

I hate, hate, hate D/s to dog training analogies - but this one struck me...

Our dog is in training - he's not bad, but he's fairly big, and fast, and a teenager  (like the other boys around here...), and since he came from a shelter, his history is a bit nebulous.
The trainer explained that he needed two things to be well adjusted and happy and well behaved and all those things we want him to be: control/obedience and  fulfillment. 

The obedience and control make sense and, even though it remains uneasy for me to talk about, the parallels to D/s are clear.

Fulfillment, apparently, is equally important to maintaining balance and well-being.  I'm sure some breeds are fulfilled through their obedience - working breeds, police dogs, guide dogs perhaps.  Ours however is a hound - he lives to track and sniff and hunt.  Every fiber of his being wants to be nose to the gound running through the underbrush, oblivious to anything or anyone else.  The point is that he needs a certain amount of opportunity each day to do exactly what he was literally born to do. 

No - people are not bred to roles the way dogs are.  But i think the point about fulfillment is just as valid.  People, submissive or not, are fulfilled by any number of different things.  The control and obedience are not the whole picture.  I know - and more importantly, my husband knows that finding and being engaged in the things that fulfill me are essential to my balance and well-being.

i don't feel well

I think very well, but i don't feel well at all. 

Physical sensations i perceive just fine too.  It's not that kind of feeling i don't do well. 

And i have emotions, or rather, maybe, i have moods. 

In fact i can be easily overwhelmed by emotions or moods - i cry at sappy commercials, at news of crisis half a world away, at very happy things also.  On the other hand, I get irritated and angry easily: noise, kids bickering, the talking heads on TV ranting, people in real life behaving poorly, all can set me on edge and rile me up. 

These are the kinds of emotions we have to learn to control or hide growing up, and as adults.  Maybe even moreso now.  It bothers him when i cry, especially if there doesn't seem to him to be a reason for it.  And he has especially wanted me to learn to get away from the irritation and anger.  It makes me snippy and unpleasant to be around and - well - angry. 

So I have gotten better at letting things roll off, at tuning out the irritants, at not tearing up, at closing off the emotions. In some ways this is good - my mood swings are not conducive to a peaceful, pleasant family life.  And it is not useful to let myself be battered around by things that are not directly related or really important to me.  Especially since my mood ends up impacting everyone else around me.

I wonder about the being honest part of all this though.  I do think I hide emotions more now than before.  I don't know where the balance point is; i wonder how much i'm supressing feelings vs. really being better at just not being moody.  Am i tuning out important, relevant things also?

I am not what you would call, "in touch with my feelings."  I live in my head, not my heart.  Situations and events that are close and important to me - I respond to logically and analytically, not through feelings.

I have a friend who, every once in awhile, will ask me how i feel about things, not just what i think about them.  And often i just don't know.  Or it becomes immediately clear that i have a much better idea of what i think about something than how i feel about it. 

And i think, or - I have a feeling - that a there are parts of our dynamic that need to be more about feelings than thinking. 

Thinking leads to questions.  I wonder why he did that?  I wonder what his goal was with that?  What should i read into this?  How does he want me to respond?

How does he want me to respond?  Maybe that's the issue.  Instead of just responding, i first try to figure out how i ought to respond. Or the response that tries to come to the front gets all tangled up in the logical brain before it has a chance to just happen. Feelings just are, they are an honest reaction to things, they are not subject to 'could' or 'should' or 'ought to.'


So i think, or - I have a feeling - that a there needs to be a lot more about feeling than thinking going on.

And i want to be able to feel more of it all.  A lot of it doesn't make sense logically, so the experience must be in the feelings. 

being broken

The actual title of the blog post i ran across is, :"why being broken in a pile on your bedroom floor is a good idea."  I thought that might be terribly misleading incorporated into the title of a post on my blog, since it really has nothing to do with anything BDSM or even bedroomish. 

The post, which you can link over to a few times for free and after that you are asked to pay to become a member, talks about change, big change that shakes us up, breaks us apart, reduces us to a pile on our bedroom floor.  The post is long and has a lot of words, but is really worth the time; the words are put together nicely and the ideas are, for me at least, a good challenge to my thinking.

Everyone says they hate change.  Changes, big and small, good and bad, are the items always listed on those stress inventories.  People rarely complain about being stressed out by predictability, even keeledness or stability.  Certainly the males i am most closely related to and surrounded by in my life make a big big stink about change.  Times of transition around our house are palpably tenser and the boys just plain get weird.

I have a personal theory that women in general are more open to change, maybe because we adapt to more cycles in our physiology than men do; unpredictability is more inherent in our beings.  But there are types and magnitues of change that level us.  There are changes that bring loss, uncertainty, fear, terror, and even psychic paralysis.  Many women i think can relate to the image of lying broken on the floor under the crush of that kind of change.  Perhaps men can as well, although the men i know well react very differently, outwardly in any case. 

The post i refer to above talks about the power that is found in that state of brokeness.  It refers to a Hindu goddess whose name translates as "never not broken" or "always broken goddess."    This goddess derives her power from change - from the implications of change - from not being stuck in one path, one routine, one way.  Those same stress inventories that emphasize the toll of life changes should probably address the stress of being stuck, of feeling helpless, of loss of control or hope.  The whole point is that, when we are stuck in a job or relationship or situation that is bad for us, toxic, or dangerous, our power lies in breaking out of that - even if that requires being broken, which often it does.  

This goddess is always depicted riding a crocodile - the significance being that crocs live in a river which is always flowing, always changing.  Also they grab and pull their prey into the river - then spin and spin until it is disoriented and drowns.  The goddess uses this flowing and spinning to her use and her advantage.  Read the post - she explains so much better than i can.  It is so easy to see as true from the outside or in hindsight, but so very hard to see the use in spinning or the power and the potential in being broken from within the moment. 

My marriage - our marriage - wasn't broken.  But something compelled us to change anyhow.   Those changes did involve breaking apart, breaking down, and re-building.  I hope that we can keep ahold of that power, and not be afraid of change. 

not wondering so much

Maybe it's summer approaching....

Maybe i just needed a rest and a change of mental scenery so my mind obliged without informing me....

Maybe after two years i've reached a point of being able to coast and run on auto pilot for a bit.  Just do the stuff i've been working to figure out....

Maybe this is what it's supposed to be like - just living it, not working so hard at it, not dissecting every nuance, not second guessing...

Maybe we're building up steam for something new...

Whatever the reason or the meaning, things are just plain nice right now: not deep, not full of angst, not thrilling or over the top.  Just quiet and easy and right.

Life won't stay quiet and peaceful - it's life. 

But i have a feeling ttwd will remain.  I assume it will evolve.  I guess it may take some leaps.  I think, I hope it will deepen. 

For now though, it just is.

I/we/he

I've been trying to write several posts over the past two weeks. I have three very separate trains of thought going on lately, which I'm sure are related, but the whole picture just hasn't come clear yet. I realized halfway through re-reading one post that i was switching all over in person and number, from I, to we, to he, even to passive voice to avoid the pronouns altogether.  At first that just seemed sloppy, then i realized why i was doing it.

I don't have a clear idea in my head of what comes from whom, i don't know what role each of us is playing, or should be playing, at a deeper level, in our dynamic. 

The concrete stuff is easy.  If he wants something, or requests something, has decided something, actions or dress or speech or whatever - that's clear, it's easy to see the source.  Even smaller, more abstract or subtle things are easy to see or feel - waiting, being patient with certain things, my tone - especially if they are difficult or require effort for me to do, i know i do because that is what he wants. 

But talking about the state of our relationship now, talking about where our dynamic is going, where it might end up, why it is what it is...[Notice the complete lack of personal pronouns?]   This i am not so deeply sure of.  And i know i not only am not sure of what each of us is in fact contributing, but somewhere in there, the thought process becomes muddled by what i think it ought to be.

Part of the issue is how it all started for us.  I brought the ideas to him, i asked if he were willing, i continued to bring him ideas and "research".  I imagine many people would see that as negating the whole dynamic; in fact, it took me a long time to see that it didn't.  Somewhere along the way, it flipped.  I may give feedback about how things effect me or share my fantasies with him, but I am not telling him what i want him to do or how i want things to be.  He sqashes that very quickly when it slips out. 

Part of my lack of clarity is that it isn't black and white.  He has told me (i'm not making assumptions or putting words in his mouth here) that he does not want me to have no voice.  In our marriage, our family, our lives, he wants me to contribute, not to sit back and wait.  Just as daily tasks and schedules can me micro-managed vs. set through broader expectations, so can relationships.  He could tell me exactly how we will be, leave no room for me to impact the shape or direction of our interactions.  But he doesn't want that -  he has shown me how he wants our lives, our family, or relationship to look and feel, and he expects me to contribute to that with my full effort, including my ideas and thoughts and initiative.

But am i considering him the way i should?  Or more to the point, do i consider him the way he wants me to?  Did "I" think this thing, or decide it, or determine it's shape, or did "he" or did "we"? Clearly "we" are going this direction or that, we are both in this dynamic and neither of us goes alone. But i catch myself thinking that "I" see things as one way or another, or stating that "we" are or are not one way or another, and i don't know really what he thinks. I make assumptions about what we are and what we will be, and sometimes I'm wrong. And really, i shouldn't be making assumptions at all.

But should i defer to him in each and every thought? That might be the party line - but i don't think it's his wish.  I have given up guessing where things will go from here, what he has planned.  I've been surprised and proven wrong too many times.  In my mind, i do try to suppose what he is or isn't thinking.  I'm not sure it's possible to stop that.  I try to limit myself to wondering rather than assuming though. 

But when i write about our relationship, it is clear by my lack of clarity that there is a depth in my mind at which i have not submitted to him, or, said differently, at which i retain my own ideas and thoughts and mental processses.  I think maybe they are not the same really.  In order to submit to him in my actions and in my heart, i have to retain my ability to reason and think and choose for myself.  To submit more deeply, that freedom of thought and choice has to be deeper as well, not less so.