Waiting Is the Hardest Part

This is the hardest part. I’m on a two day trip, in fact on my way home on the train. We’ve talked (well, mostly IM’ed and traded document revisions and e-mails) about what an arrangement might look like. So even our mundane interactions are colored, in my view, with the impendingness of the thing. As a result, I’m happier and more relaxed and engaged. But we haven’t done anything different. So from my beloved’s point of view, things are great – no uncomfortable changes on her part, happier Jamie.On my part, I’m dying to start doing something different. But I don’t want to press her; I want this to be her initiative, since it seems that she’s willing to take it. But darn the waiting is hard. On the one hand, I’ve waited 40 years, what’s another day or week or month. On the other hand, just from our conversations, I feel like I’ve tasted what it might be like to do what we can do. Or maybe I’ve just fantsized about it. Either way, the waiting is hard.And I wonder if the waiting is part of the surrender. It certainly ups the ante for my beloved. Or maybe it doesn’t. One the one hand, I will surrender and trust that in the not-indefinite future, my beloved will accept my need for her control and my submission and my service, in whatever combination those things please her or she’s willing to do for me, will happen. Kind of like chastity play in a sense. On the other hand, if nothing ever happens – we start the arrangement but it’s no different from what we do now – we still get to talk every week or whenever our checkins are, and I can tell her how crazy I am. Assuming I can make it that long.By which I talk myself into just chilling out and surrendering, but it’s not easy. Perhaps by the end of the evening my beloved and I will have talked and things will be different. Though I took a look at her draft notes on our arrangement, and I fear not so much. I’ll post those eventually (if she approves). On the other other hand, before we start the arrangement, I’m free to ask for what I want, so I guess the lesson is that that’s what I ought to do.

What we talked about last night

My beloved described it as a two level discussion – the meta discussion about what the parameters were around our arrangement, and possible aspects of the arrangement itself.

She read the entire blog, which is a little scary to me since I really don’t remember what I wrote back in the early days. But I think she got that it is a snapshot of where I am at any given moment. It’s also wierd writing about her in the third person given that she’s participating in the blog now.

One of my fantasies was for her to approve these blog posts. Her concern is that this might mean that I was no longer comfortable writing everything in the blog. I don’t think that’s a problem, given that the whole purpose of the thing is for there to be full communication between us.

In the event, she’s agreed to do so, not for the reasons that have been floated in some other blogs, as to keep the content appropriate (though I guess she could do that if it’s what she wanted). But more to ensure that she knows everything that’s on my mind. So this is the first post that she’s read and approved.

We didn’t decide anything last night on the “possible aspects of the arrangement”, but threw out a lot of ideas. One thing she was adamant about was “no blogging at work.” To the extent that I’ve done this (and I have), it was stupid, and she’s right to insist that I not do so. Not, I guess that it matters – if she says so, that’s how it goes.

She talked about how she chooses to view this – as a game, as a deal, or as an arrangement. Which just goes to show how words are loaded. She reminded me that a long time ago when she referred to this as a game, I blogged about how upset I got about that. I don’t remember it, but will look for it in the blog. Her point is that people take games seriously, and I agreed – thinking of Sarah at MaleChastityBlog.com. Sarah’s take on this is that it’s a game she plays with her husband, but none the less serious for that. I think we agreed that this confusion over words was behind us. Because what’s most important to me is that she take this seriously – that it not be “she’s humoring me” or “look at the silly thing” we’re doing (which is the conntation I think I gave to “game” before.)

On the other hand, part of the reason we communicated so poorly about this in the past was my perception that she really didn’t want to think about this. So to the extent that we could put an arrangement in place, like kneeling before bed, if it wasn’t working for me, I didn’t feel like it was a good idea to bring up my reservations because I was afraid she’s say, “Oh, fine. We agreed to do this thing and now you’re trying to micro-manage it. Remember, I’m not the one who wants to be doing this.” She agreed that this had been true back in the early early days (would you believe almost 20 years ago) that we were doing this, but that was a long time ago.

Regarding the seriousness of the thing, she compared it to the arrangement we have with orgasm control and the gold chain she gave me a long time ago. As long as I’m wearing it, I need to ask her for permission for an orgasm. This is inconvenient for me, since life and family commitments often interfere with just being able to go up to her and say “Could you take this thing off so I can toss one off?” So, often, I’m wanting relief but unable to get it. Which is just the kind of control I crave.

We talked about extending this kind of control to other areas, without getting in to any specifics. I did share my fantasy about “high protocol days” or times; times when I’d have a set of rules that are too strict to be followed realistically over the long term, but that would work for an hour, or a day, or maybe even a weekend.

I also shared how totally hot Kathy‘s arrangement with her husband is, in which she snaps her fingers and he has to kowtow until she releases him. What that says is, “regardless of what else we’re doing or how mundane life is at the moment, you’re always under my control”. And that’s the reenforcement that I crave most. And it doesn’t have to be something as submissive as kowtowing. I joked that it could be “touch your finger to your nose until I tell you to stop.” The point is the control, not the activity. She was concerned to figure out three classes of these: ones that we could do when we’re alone (easiest), ones that we could do when we’re around family and friends (with obvious needs for subtlty), and ones she could IM or text me anywhere. I hadn’t thought about the latter two, and was thrilled that her thoughts went that way.

I mentioned my long-term fantasy about “need a cookie” – that there are times when I need an affirmation of this relationship. I’ve always thought of those as “I need a cookie,” and my thought was that she’d have a “cookie jar” of things she could tell me to do. I think the most important part of that to me is to know that she’s not laughing at me for needed that. I was pretty well reassured on that point.

We didn’t talk about consequences, though we skirted around them a little. I mentioned that writing lines seems to have gotten popular in this part of the blogosphere recently. That got us in to a discusson about how this kind of relationship skirts parent/child issues, a place we totally don’t want to go. But my beloved pointed out that this could be equally well framed as supervisor/worker issues. I did mention the “pressing a penny to the wall with your nose” meme, which has no erotic value for me, but that’s the point.

We talked about who we might become if we were to do this. She is (rightfully) concerned that we’ll become my parents – a very controlling and bitchy mother and a very sweet but down-trodden father. I suggested we go more for the model of her mother, who in the final days of her terminal illness was joyously imperious, and who we all thought was having a brief taste fo the imperious old woman she never got to be. And while my beloved pointed out that it got a little tedious after a while, I pointed out that the advantages of doing the relationship consciously as we are is that it won’t get tedious – it’s what I signed up for.

I also pointed out that I think she and Thumper‘s Belle are not dissimilar in many ways. When he talks about Belle’s concern that the people around her be happy (though I can’t find the link right now), that very much strikes a chord in how my beloved relates to those around her.

Just in terms of communicating, I said that the two nicest words she could say to me are “I want.” (Thinking about it this morning, I realized “you will” or “you are going to” work equally well) because then I get to do things for her. This got us in to the difference between doing things because we love each other, and doing things because we’re in this peculiar relationship. I wan’t totally able to decode that difference, but to date, when she asks me to paint her toenails (to take one example), I do because it’s something I can do for her that she doesn’t enjoy doing. But in the context of the relationship, if she says, “I want you to paint my toenails” it means something very different: we’re doing this peculiar thing, and you’re doing this for me. As I said above, it’s all about the acknowledgement of the relationship, more than the actual activities themselves. I’m sure there’s mroe exploration to be done around that, but it seems like a good place to start.

Then she told me she wanted me to kiss every inch of her body, and one thing led to another….

So we didn’t actually resolve anything, except that we’re going to do “this”, whatever “this” turns out to be. And I was incredibly appreciative that she read the blog in and saw it as a constructive thing. And she was very gracious about appreciating image of her that I painted in the blog.

Sharing This Blog with My Beloved

Last Saturday night, I found that I had so much on my mind relating to this blog, and whatever the intersection is among wife-led-marriage, female-led-relationships, dominance and submission, discipline, and whatever other labels one might care to attach, that I had to share the existance of this blog with my beloved.

We had, as I recall, a good, if brief, conversation about it, after which she asked me to remind her of the url a couple of times. She read it during her business trip earlier this week.

It feels great to have shared this. There’s so much, from the profound to the trivial that I think about relating to either the blog or the things I read in other blogs linked from here, that it felt very isolating not to be able to share that.

After she got home, we talked about it. That conversation is the subject of the next post.

Getting to “The Conversation”

I mentioned this blog to my beloved for the third time recently; the first time was a couple of years ago when I wanted to share it with another member of our extended family. There was no way I was going to do that without first telling her about it, but it turned out to be in the middle of a much larger conversation about our relative and about kink and fantasy in general. I reminisced about the “Man From Uncle” episode that got me started and she described a “Star Trek” episode that was very revealing about her character. Nice to know there’s still stuff to discover after 25 plus years married!

But all that stuff swamped the discussion about the blog and, as it tuned out, she forgot the url and never asked about it. I was a little disappointed but didn’t want to nag about it so end of conversation.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned it again – I don’t remember if it was on our vacation (when we had another conversation that I’ll try to remember to blog about) or later. But as subsequently came out in conversation, she forgot the url again. Finally last Saturday I mentioned it a third time (which was when all the revelations about the previous mentions came out) and she agreed that the fact that she couldn’t remember the url probably meant something and we left it at that. Finally, on her way out of town she texted that she was looking for the blog but couldn’t remember the address. (Guess it really isn’t that memorable!) I texted it to her and later she remarked on the fact that there was a lot to catch up on there.

I’m so glad the blog is out in the open between us. As “she” put it on http://forever-hers2010.blogspot.com/ secrets are really really bad things to keep in a relationship and this one, though well within the bounds of what we had negotiated, was still corrosive, mainly because I’d read about stuff and be contemplating it and be unable to mention it. That’s over now at least as far as I can tell, or at least I certainly want it to be. Some of it was trivial stuff like finding an ad for a campsite we go to beside someone’s blog post and some of it was more profound, like the effects listening to Masocast has had on me.

My beloved sent me an email saying she’d read the whole blog (wow, she reads fast, but I knew that) and wondered if email might be a good way to discuss this stuff. She said some other stuff that was very very sweet and understanding as well.

So now my thought is whether this blog might be a good way of discussing this. The Forever Hers blog is such a frank and helpful discussion between a husband and wife that I might hope we could do the same and be a resource for others as well.

At least for starters I think I’d like my beloved to approve all the posts to this blog. That way she’d know there’s nothing on my mind she doesn’t know about and of course it’s a delicious control thing for me.

I guess I’ll ask her.