what happens and how do i fix it

I turn into a completely different person when he is gone

This isn't new - not his travelling - and not the way i react.

This has been his job since before we started dating - it has always been our reality.

He is never gone all that long.  It is is job, not golf trips with buddies.  He is wonderfully engaged and with us when he is home.  He works very hard to minimize the impact.

And i have always - not fallen apart, not at all - but i am a very different person once he leaves.  Probably I need to be different on some level, single and single parent is different than together and co-parent.

Slipping in and out of in-charge vs. not - that transition has to happen every day, often multiple times as i go from home to work to interacting with the kids to interacting with him - i manage it with varying degrees of success and grace (or not).

This is not that - i think, maybe.

I watched myself yesterday.  He left, all was fine, sweet, nice.  He called when he landed and i heard a different person talk to him on the phone: short, terse, not nice and not engaged.  I saw it and couldn't stop myself.

When he is away - i manage the house and the kids, no problem.  But i don't manage myself.  I stay up too late, eat poorly, skip exercise, blow off work that i ought to do......

I become a person i don't especially like - and i am a million miles away from being His.

I don't know what happens.  And i don't know how to fix it.

can't have it all

I get wistful sometimes - or dreamy or desirous or sometimes something less attractive.

 "I wish...."  Or maybe "Wouldn't it be nice if...", or "I wonder why we don't....."

I go along for days doing all the things i need to do.  The D/s is there - sometimes more overtly, a hand placed possessively, a service performed, a whisper in my ear.  Sometimes the only hint is when i finger my collar and recognize the reality way in the back of my mind, then move right back into all the other things i need to do, interactions i take part in, places my mental energy is required.

Sometimes I do think about the what if's.  And sometimes i even wish.  But i'm grown up enough to know you can't have it all:

If the opportunities for play were more frequent and predictable and private, if it weren't so long between times that i feel like it's starting all over again, if i didn't get nervous because i think i might have forgotten how, if my tolerance and ability to follow him didn't get so rusty - think of the fun we could have, think of how far we could explore, think of how much he could let himself go.  But there is something to that pit of nervousness, to looking to him as both tormentor and as security and comfort, to not being jaded, and to it being an exercise in trust and connection each time rather than a game of endurance.

If i had no responsibilities outside of him, if there weren't my work, the kids, our families, community, friends, organizations, and a full life to be engaged in, i could stay focused on him, i could do everything for him, no push and pull, no external upset, i could wait home, naked, with dinner and the newspaper ready, i would be sweet, unperturbed, unruffled, undistracted.  I bet he would like that.  But we both know that what i would actually be is a bored, unfulfilled, crawling-out-of-my-skin, bitch.  For both of us, our family, our connections and engagement with life are essential to who we are.  That other vision, as idyllic as it sounds, is hollow and empty.

If he were very strict, kept me on a short leash, lots of constant control, many rules and rituals, lots of consequences, inspections, spot checks, formality,  etc - which sometimes sounds so good, so structured and dominant, and - well -  hot, really hot.   Wouldn't that be lovely.  But if that were our reality,  i would miss the laughter, the wit, the passion, the melting into each other, the comfort and support of each other, the joy, the pure "us" of it.

tumblers and toys

At the risk of veering too far from my recent deep, angsty, not-even-especially-useful navel gazing....

What gets to me is words, stories, scenes set in writing.  I thought that sending my husband examples of these - what excites, stirs, ignites me - would be a good way to communicate with him -and also would save me from saying any of it out loud to his face.  Didn't work that way though.  Too many words for him.

Pictures can capture my attention, but not nearly in the same way or to the same degree as writings.  Not enough words for my taste.  

Eventually though i started sending him links to tumblers.  And boy - did that work for him.  I guess he's just more visually oriented :)  

He takes what i send - and goes off on his own with it.  I imagine he does some exploring and linking and looking around from there. We don't discuss.  But it's a start of a way for me to communicate to him what impacts my psyche in all of this.

It's subtle, and indirect - i suppose it would be far simpler for us to sit and examine pictures together, discuss them, parse it all out together....  But - well - part of the truth is that would be very difficult for me to do - to talk about - to admit to his face.  But also - I do- but i really, really don't want to influence, or even know, what he chooses to do or which directions he chooses to go.  

So it works - kind of - but it's a risky thing for me too- if i send him to a particular tumbler that has things i find intriguing on a particular day, i'm sure he notes what those are.  He probably even reads my message that says, "i like this or that, but some of the other things on here i find unappealing or frightening or perhaps even horrific."  But there's the very real risk that those unappealing, frightening things are the ones that will catch his eye.

So - it's imprecise, and carries some risk for me.  But I know my feelings and i know that having him do to me only things i've asked for would just not work - my head would go to bad places instead of good ones.  And yea - the edge of fear of the unknown is kinda hot too.  

And like any good husband - he plays up that edge to his advantage.  Last week a box came which i was to keep away from the kids - but not to open myself either. 

This week he pulled out and put into use one of the new toys - and that went way, way in my favor.  We (I say we - really - all the toys are his, none are mine)... We didn't have a decent vibrator.  Now we do (he does).  Yea for me!

He also showed me the other toy, the one he's going to let me ponder and stew about for awhile.  "Frightening" did catch his eye.  That one is all for him.   But sadly i'm the one who'll be hooked.

completely useless bit of overthinking

A whole stream of thoughts occurred to me this morning.

We stayed in bed this morning til after 8 - that just never, ever happens.  This stream of thoughts occurred to me when my husband told me i needed to learn "not to fight it."  I told him i don't feel like i'm fighting - but he's got a definite idea of what is me fighting it and what is me finally capitulating.

Maybe context would help.

Once he realized i was awake this morning, he pinned my hands above my head with one hand and started exploring with his other one.  Stroking turned into pushing and pinching and then into plunging. Sucking became nibbling became biting - hard.   He takes his time with this - i think he likes it.  He gets me very quickly to a point that I am all response - no conscious thoughts of initiating anything, even if i could.  I move and moan and open myself to him, to what hurts, and to what feels so tantalizing - all swirled together, nothing in my head but listening and wanting.

But there are some sensations that i'm convinced my body can't handle.  Too much stimulation when i'm already so - stimulated - is just too much.  With my head out of the equation, my body can't process it and, I suppose, fights against it.  I think this is what he is talking about.  I have to re-engage some part of my consciousness and force myself to relax, to accept, to feel what is happening.

I suppose this is something that he will keep pushing and i will keep trying to figure out.  My rush of thoughts though, as incoherent as they are, had to do with this who does what during sex.

The "who's in charge" question is not really what i mean.  We fixed that some time ago - and now - well - life is good.

But - i think about submission, especially in the context of serving - and to me that sounds like providing sexual service - i.e., doing things for him and to him that he likes, the way he likes, when he wants... And that feels pretty easy really.  I can do that.

I think about way, way back when i was dating - i was a dork - i didn't date much - but it was a process of back and forth - taking turns between doing and letting the other person do, some mutual combinations of the two.  Well - that was the good parts - there were of course the ones who tried to insist on getting just what they wanted then being done.  The back and forth was a good part of married sex also.  This makes it sound unappealing - that's not what i mean - but it is different.  

There was one person i went out with a few times, until i got very scared - afraid of my reaction to him though, not afraid of him actually.  He did to me.  He made me wait, he made me be still while he explored and touched, he made me experience, he made me feel - so many sensations, and then urges.

And this is what my husband does to me/for me now.

As much as i now love being played with, being used, being made to experience all those sensations, being made unable to respond in kind - this is harder for me than doing would be.  For the worse parts of our married sex life, sex consisted of me doing or not doing.  In my head, at the time, it seemed like i was doing what a wife was supposed to do - giving her husband pleasure.  The idea of letting him take his pleasure was not on my radar, and if it had been, i don't think i could have accomplished it.

My guess is that different people want different things, that what is difficult for some is easy for others, what some find fascinating and pleasurable, others would see as tedious and no fun, what i find as the easy cop out - others probably struggle with, what i work to relax into, others might find as the cop out.  It is interesting that it has meant a complete reversal for both my husband and me - and ironic that in submitting i serve him by letting him pleasure me.

He can - but can I?

He can get me where he wants me.

We've spent the past three years learning that - he to move me around to the way he wants me, and I to cooperate with him when he does.

I'm not sure that's quite enough though.

Cooperating with him is a step, it's something, but it's fairly passive - more work sometimes, but mostly not.

It feels good, I like it, i want his hands on me and his power over me.

But it's destructive to the Us - for me to wander off and wait for him to come get me.

I have to learn to get myself to where he wants me.

either/or's

"Ow. That really hurts."  "But you like pain, right?"   So - either i do or i don't -  except clearly it's not that simple.

"Do you like that girl?"  "Well..."  "Yes or No, which is it?"  No - i don't "like" it - it's not pleasant or enjoyable, it's difficult even;  but i desire it, crave it, need it...

Those sorts of contradictions i seem to be able to hold all at once - and he understand that.  He uses them to goad me and sometimes rattle me, but he knows they aren't either/or - they are, against logic, both.



But other things maybe really are either/or - even though in my head the truth of both sides is clear at the same time.

Either it's about him - or it's about me.
        (But - he wants to take care of me, he is happier if i'm happier, blah, blah, blah)  

Either i want him to be in control  - or i want him to do what i want, when i want.  
        (He needs to know what i want in order to have all the info he needs to be in control, right? 
        And i'm supposed to ask for what i want, right?)

Either i tell him all of what i think or how i feel and then let the rest up to him, or i have an agenda and expectations.  
        (Ya know - this one is just hard - we are so practiced at providing the right information the right
        way to get towards what we want out of an interaction - it is just so damn difficult to disattach
        the expectations)

Hmmm.... in my head those all seemed so complicated, like some riddle with two right but opposite answers.  Written out - they seem, well, not so unclear.

What i ran up against this past week was enormous desire - out of the blue i was overwhelmingly and unreasonably needy. I was constantly aroused - but beyond that i wanted to be used, beaten, degraded, conquered.  It was a desire in my skin and my bones, not just in my head.  I hadn't felt that way in a very long time.  I was obsessed and completely certain that this was a need that, if left unmet, would leave me crashed and burning and unable to function.  In my mind - it was his responsibility - his only possible course of action - to fix me, to meet this need, to beat me and use me and conquer me.

But he didn't.  Partly, circumstances just didn't allow for that, and partly - it just wasn't what he chose to do, at least not how and when i thought he should.  I communicated my feelings, my needs, my desires. Then I hinted and probably whined. I had all this need, and it was being left - unmet, unsatisfied, unresolved - i was being left - needing.  I swirled around in my emotions and panicked that i would be lost in the storm.  But what i couldn't bring myself to do was just come to him with the cane and ask, or present myself to him quietly and openly.

And yet - here i am, functioning, connected, fairly calm, if not a touch chastised and a little bit ashamed.  It's interesting: either he meets my needs, or he doesn't.  Except - i need to accept that he decides, it's not about me, my expectations aren't the important factor.  He does meet my needs, even when it feels for all the world like he isn't.