It’s hard to admit…
April 22, 2008 — underthebootI have the chance to get a job I’ve wanted for a long while. My wife wants me to move back North. Our views are in total conflict on this. I really believe that staying here is possibly the best thing, she really believes the North is where our future is at.
We’ve been…debating this. Vigorously. Often. It’s resulted in tears on her part, anger on mine, her hurting me, me hurting her. It’s been, for want of a better word, a fight.
And it’s hard. So hard to fight her. So hard to resist her will. Every time we go back and forth, the cracked part of me that desires her will — needs her will — in order to make me whole again, that part quails at the thought of resisting her desires. I want to obey. I want to submit. I want to surrender. It would be so fucking sweet to stop fighting and resisting and thinking and just slide into that warm, safe place where she makes all the decisions.
It’s times like this where I know in my heart that if our life allowed it, I would happily be a lifestyle submissive. I have it in me to give up completely to her. To surrender, totally. To let her control be total.
I honestly don’t know what to do. The longer I fight her, the stronger the voice in my head gets telling me to give in. I’ve never been in a situation like this before in our relationship since we started BDSM, where she and I are in direct opposition to each other, where one of us has to win and one of us has to lose, where there’s no compromise, and our future is at stake — the direction the next few years will take is up in the air. Because I know we’re two equals fighting, but on another level, she is my Mistress and I am a fucking slave and I know my place.
Is this weird? Do I have bad boundaries? Or is it natural, due to the intimacy of a power exchange in a marriage, in an intense love affair like ours has been for eight months, for there to be bleed-off into our day-time lives? For me to want to submit everywhere, not just in the bedroom?
April 23, 2008 at 9:32 am
Perhaps not quite the same as your relationship, but May and I deal with the various aspects of our relationship as layers that build upon one another: friendship, partners, D/s. (With complexities thrown in, of course.)
Therefore, if we have a problem to deal with that affects us at the layer of our relationship as partners, not only does that affect all the ‘higher layers’ like D/s, but to deal with the problem we have to attack it from the appropriate place, on that layer specifically.
I’m not saying that you can turn your D/s off. We can’t really either. But if you make a decision on the wrong layer, so to speak, you put the entire system in trouble.
May wrote more about this here:
http://maybemaimed.com/2007/09/13/how-not-to-fuck-up-a-ds-relationship/
April 23, 2008 at 2:03 pm
You might try to think how this argument would have gone before your growth into BDSM. After all, you’ve been living apart for some time now-that didn’t happen without some discussion, I bet.
It’s true-if trite- to mention that any long-term commitmnet contains levels of sacrifice. And just recently uu mentioned on your wife’s using a desire to submit as a way to backout of making hard choices. Whi has made those choices in th past? Who has backed down, or suffered in silence?
I would guess that the change in the power dynamic in the bedroom has changed the power dynamic of your whole relationship-and because of your living arrangments you haven’t had the time to see it before.That it sprang up out of a major life-change is even harder.
Reconciling the inner submissive and the person who has to be all front and aggression at work is another stressor. Is this descion being made by the work-Belisarius or the home-Belisarius?
This has to be mved out of a win-lose/zero sum game for your marraige (sp?) to survive. BOTH of you need to feel that the end result is something that you can cope with.
All I can suggest is-keep talking. Assume each other’s position for a conversation. (switching can be fun!) Don’t make ultimatums you aren’t prepared to live with.
Good Luck
April 23, 2008 at 2:04 pm
sorry for the horrible typos.
April 23, 2008 at 2:57 pm
i hope you guys come up with the right solution to this. I’m in a sort of similar situation in that my Dom wants me to move in with him (this is only 200 miles but its to a very remote area and will put me 400 miles away from my family). I will do it but the reason is not because out of submission its because its the decision for *us* that makes the most sense, his job is more secure than mine and it’s a nice place and other factors too. I think if he ‘made’ me move i.e. an ultimatum of ‘you do this or i wont believe in your submission’ then i would end up hating him. Decisions that big need to be mutual i think…or at least to a certain extent…it needs to be whats right for the relationship and for you both as individuals AS WELL.
I guess what i’m saying is it needs to be balanced sometimes, and there are times when sexuality and submission cant be the only driving forces.
I hope it works out!
April 23, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Thank you for all of the comments. (And Becky H, if everything you write is so insightful, I don’t mind a few typoes.)
I’m not willing to back down in this argument with her because I’m the submissive. But I have to admit — as the blog demonstrates — that there’s a part of me that just wants her to take over. Not because it’s afraid of the decision, but because it’s the part that wants to be a full-time submissive. And because I know if my wife moves in with me down here — rather than me moving in up there — it will mean hard work and stress and tough decisions, as well as more alone time for her. I hate the idea of putting her through that.
At the same time, this is the first big decision of our marriage since we’ve embraced BDSM. And it’s the second big decision of our marriage since I embraced a future as a type-A, hungry and aggressive workhorse. And there’s a disconnect between me as decision-maker and driving force, and the part of our life that’s in the bedroom, where I want to be anything but. Because I don’t necessarily want my submission hidden in its own box — the part of me that wants to live a submissive lifestyle wants it to bleed into every part of my life that my wife shares a part in.
Does that make sense? It’s weird for me to work through it all as I type…
–B