Pitfalls and Progress in Switching

So the last few days have been a bit difficult. I’ve lamented about the lack of time and the odd disjointedness of my wife and I experimenting with switching. But there have been some added wrinkles, the last few times we’ve played:

1) My wife does not give off the vibes that she wants to submit at all. Oh, when we’re in the car or chatting about it, it’s her big dream. But my attempts at suggesting dirty things tend to result in gentle snark rather than swoons. When I try to start a scene, the timing’s wrong or she’s tired, and I get a boatload of attitude that kills the mood. Outside of our first scene together, the switch has been a big letdown.

She has even described herself as “insolent,” and “the worst submissive ever.” But at the same time, she insists this is what she wants.

2) The last three times we played, she couldn’t orgasm. And believe me, we were both trying. The end result of this is that she’s gotten more frustrated and harder to bring to orgasm, the stress has piled up, and she’s gotten even more frustrated in a cascading reaction that has made her even more sullen when we try to play.

So, not such a good beginning to my new life as a dominant. Until last night…

The thing is, my wife has said a couple of times in passing that she’d like to be broken. Once, I talked about a scene I’d like to do, and she said, “You’ll break me yet, baby.” And then she said explicitly, “I fantasize about being mastered. Being this wild horse and then just getting saddled by my owner. Broken down.”

And it made me think last night as I waited in bed that the nature of our submissive instincts are very different. And the advice that everybody gave me in my last blog post was dead-on, but in particular, I thought back to what Eileen said:

But, “do to her what I want done to me” doesn’t work, because she’s not you. As you already discovered, she has different wants and different limits than you.

My submissiveness is automatic. My wife started dominating me and, boom, right out of the boat, I hung my head and licked her feet and was basically the perfect slave. “Want me to lick your ass, Mistress? No problem. You want to peg me? Okay, want to hit it doggie-style or have me on my back?” I don’t want to fight. I want to obey. The language I use to describe my submission is of the utter annihilation of my will and of total submission. My submissive vocabulary is all about obedience.

My wife…she wants to fight. She wants to be insolent. Thinking back to the way she’s been talking about it, she wants to be broken. Her insolence, her dismissiveness of my power, that’s all — I don’t want to say a “test” — but it’s a hurdle that I have to leap if I’m going to be the master here. Her vocabulary is all about mastery and conflict and eventually being broken and reshaped.

And so last night, we stayed up extra late to watch a DVD I got for Christmas, and we chatted in bed before falling asleep, and as we did, I got the urge to fool around. Like the last few times, she resisted, but I ignored the rejection and told her straight out: “Go get your collar and the ball-gag and the little schoolgirl outfit I like.”

And I expected her to say “no.” And I don’t know what I would have done if she did. But instead of saying, “No! I want to sleep!,” she sullenly got up, brought me the collar and the gag, put on her outfit, and obediently stood in the center of the room.

I collared her and took photos. Then I put the ballgag on her and took more photos. I posed her. Told her how to stand. How to look. It was perfect, because the act of telling her how to stand and pose, and smile, or hang her head, or cross her arms, was a very simple yet effective way of having her get used to obeying me.

Then we had sex, and I topped the hell out of her. And while her attitude was sullen and angry, she was sopping wet. And as we had sex, I kept the ballgag on her, and she could only communicate with nods and shakes. I talked dirty to her. I tortured her tits, bit her neck and ears, and she got wetter. Then, I took off the ballgag, took some time to focus on her, and the orgasm she hadn’t had for several days hit her and she came, shaking, underneath me.

Afterwards, she cuddled up against me, and I asked, “Did you enjoy our little scene?” And she nodded. And I guided her hand and said, “I haven’t come yet.” And she gave me an insolent look and said, “I guess our ‘little scene’ isn’t over yet.”

“Are you still wearing your collar? Because if the collar’s on, you’re still in my scene.”

And when we were done, I came as hard as I ever did when I was subbing out to her.

* * *

Afterwards, she told me, “I was so pissed off at you, but you just took control and kept on going. Thank you.” And as we lay there, I laid down (what I was hoping was) the law:

1) If she ever decides she wants to go back to being the domme, we have to talk about it. As we get our feet wet — as I get used to being dominant — I don’t want her own dominance held against me, her own power interfering. If we decide to switch back, I want a clear transition after communication. I just don’t think we’re ready to hop from one pond to another every other night. One day, hopefully, we’ll be able to do it, but right now I want bright lines. She agrees wholeheartedly.

2) We need a protocol, like the one I’d read about between Dev and her boy at her blog. When my wife was domming me, we didn’t need a protocol, and I honestly thought they were overly formalistic. But my wife and I clearly need one when I’m dominating her. So the rule is, when her collar is on, we’re in a scene, and only I get to take the collar off or put it on. When we’re alone, in private, I’m dominant, but there’s no special protocol — it just means that when we get indecisive or a decision needs to be made, I’m the one who makes the call. I lead, in private. (We’re rarely ever alone, so it’s not as 24/7 as it sounds.) Everywhere else, it’s us, business as usual.

3) She’s very nervous about pain play, but I want to try it, and she trusts me enough to let me. So we added more detail to our safeword system. The safeword is still there, an absolute barrier to us moving forward. When the safeword gets called, the scene stops and the dominant has to make sure the submissive is okay. But we added a “yellow light” safeword, so as we play, if she wants to get used to something, she calls out the “yellow light” safeword and I keep from moving on until she says she’s okay with more intensity.

4) Absolutely, positively, no hitting in the face. I can pull on her hair, but blows to the head are off limits. When we play and I’m the sub, blows to the face were an essential part of the menu — she usually hit me right when I was about to come and it left me reeling and dizzy and incredibly hot. But she’s very, very uncomfortable with it, and while she’ll let me play with clamps and the belt on her ass and hair-pulling, she’s just flat-out said “No” to face-hitting.

Which is okay. I can work with that.

So…that’s progress, right?