Protocol and Chaos and What I am

I had an interesting conversation with my wife yesterday.

I have a long drive home in traffic — upwards of an hour, usually — and so we were just chatting. I had my hands-free in and we were whiling away the hour talking about our respective days, my job hunt up north, her own job hunt, etc. And when we reached the “trivia” section of the conversation, when we’ve talked about all of the important and stuff and the conversation becomes fairly aimless and fun, I asked a question that had just popped into my head:

“Honey, what animal do you think I am?”

And without missing a beat, she said, “A wolf.”

I was shocked. I mean, every guy wants to hear that he’s a wolf or a bear or a shark or whatever, but frankly, given my place on the D/s chain with her, I expected something more friendly and controlled: a dog, a cat, a koala or something. (A koala? Really?) But a wolf?

“Really? A wolf? Why?”

She spoke matter-of-factly. “Because, you’re social, you’re incredibly oriented towards your friends and family, but you’re protective: if anybody ever tries to hurt something you love, you’ll go after them. You take care of the people around you, you’re gentle, but when push comes to shove, you’ll tear somebody’s throat out.. You’re a little wild but domestic for your family.”

And I kind of agree with that. I can see how she got there, knowing myself. And more to the point, I can see a lot of our relationship there.

My wife’s constant refrain is, “I want a man.” She wants someone to make decisions and take care of her and our daughter and to be a source of stability and comfort and safety. She wants someone who will protect her. She does not want a boy — although she’s occasionally happy to call me her boy — and she doesn’t want someone weak. She wants someone strong. And then, she wants to take that strong man and she wants to bring them to heel. To the rest of the world, he’s still a wolf. To the rest of the world, he’s still strong. But she knows he’ll never turn on her, never bite, always obey, always come running.

More importantly, she knows that once she breaks him, he will never allow someone else to break him. Wolves, my wife like to occasionally point out, mate for life.

Related to this: I like reading other blogs, and I was catching up on one I haven’t read in a while but which I love to peruse, Mickimichele’s. And she’s got her Master’s protocol for her on the website, right there, in black and white. And I was thinking, “Why don’t we have a protocol?” Protocols and contracts give the slave an idea of expectations — they let the submissive know, “Here’s what I, the Master/Mistress/Whatever wants from you, the servant.” Dev and Jos have a protocol, too, and Dev has spoken about it.

Protocols and contracts establish the boundaries and obligations of a relationship, even if they’re only one-sided. When my wife and I tried switching places, I realized that with her, I’d need a contract or a protocol — that there’d have to be signals and cues about when she’s supposed to be a slave and obedient. I feel comfortable with those kinds of boundaries — I like being on notice.

We don’t have a protocol or a contract, precisely because she doesn’t want those boundaries or for me to be on notice. There are two reasons for this. One, my wife likes to fly by the seat of her pants. She wants to be free to do whatever she feels like, and she doesn’t want to be caged by ritual and expectations of behavior. Domme activity for her is about not being a slave to anybody’s desires but her own, not being bound by anything but her own whim.

And as for contracts, she knows I spend my day parsing language and that there’s not a M/s contract in the world that I couldn’t make my bitch in five minutes flat. She knows I could lawyer my way out of any clause in a slave contract; so she cuts through the bullshit by simply not having one. Her word is Law, and it is what she says it is. I can’t really argue about her intent, or my expectations, if she’s simply going to hold up her hand and say to me, “My intent is something I know and you don’t, and your expectations don’t matter — only mine do.”

So I don’t know what her expectations are except what I can divine them by her statements and actions, by what she lets me hear and see. She doesn’t let me in. And this idea of wanting a man, wanting a wolf, of me being that man and that wolf — it’s my only insight into what she wants from me. She doesn’t mind breaking me — she doesn’t think less of me after crushing me under her heel. Because it’s her, crushing me. She’s allowed to break her man in two. That’s the zone of safety she creates around our play: I can be human. I can be weak. I can allow myself to break under the switch and use the safeword. That doesn’t compromise her image of me. I’m allowed to suffer under the ordeal she creates for me, because she wants to know she owns me and can crush me.

But now I know that there’s no conflict for her in me being a man outside of the context of our D/s. Now I know that no matter how much I crawl in her presence — outside of it, I’m allowed to be a man. I’m expected to be a man. And I feel very comfortable with that. Happy to know what’s expected of me.