Can we ever go back?

I have often wondered about this question and certain conversations recently on the chastity forums have got me thinking again. I think for us the answer is no, we could not.

This has been a long slow progression to where we are today. Lots of stops and reversals along the way since I introduced kink to our life. For most of the time I was the dominant one, both day to day and in the bedroom. Once we started switching roles it was still a game. Sandy wasnt sure she enjoyed it much for some years, and didnt think she was comfortable in the dominant role. So it remained a game, she liked aspects of it, tickling and teasing, but mostly it remained something we did now and then for fun.

Three years ago that changed. The reasons I wont go into here, but they were changes in my wife that were not only related to kink but to her whole life. She discovered parts of herself she had not known existed and became pretty quickly comfortable letting herself go. This included in the bedroom, with kink generally, and with her dominance also. She blossomed. With it our marriage also blossomed, and at the same time I made many changes in my interaction with her to support and care for her more. In time this has all got tied up with the d/s life we now lead.

She loves being in control, in and out of the bedroom. Its 24/7 but not in the total power exchange sense. We speak as equals, I will stand up when I feel strongly about things. But what works for her is that she knows that if she gives me that look, if she tells me to go do, I will do it. Quickly. She can stop me in my tracks and redirect me. She can offload her work on to me and while she still occasionally feels bad about it, especially when im tired too, knows that I will do it, because she wants it, because she needs to relax, because I love her and want her to be able to relax the stresses in her mind and offload them, on to me if necessary. These things make her feel loved, supported, and the control aspect makes her feel powerful and completely worshipped. Its fun, loving, caring, exciting and even a bit mean at times. Yes she has a mean streak and loves to let it out, many interactions between us now involve something a bit teasing or mean. A shadow of a kiss that doesnt quite connect leaving me gasping for her, a smack on the arse or a pinch of the nipple, her sliding her clothes from her body seductively at night knowing I am transfixed, and knowing she has denied me orgasm. A tickle before bedtime. These are also constants in our life now.

There is also a great deal of vanilla love, hugs, kisses, from the outside you would not see any of the d/s. But we know the edge that lies beneath it always.

Whats in it for me? Well Im submissive, more so than I used to realise. Its such a sexual thrill seeing the disparity between us, seeing her getting more sex than me, asking, no lets be honest sometimes ordering me to do certain chores while she sits and reads her book. Handing me her empty plate with a haughty air for me to take to the dishwasher (with a touch of a tongue in cheek smile). She is a buzzy woman who finds it hard to relax, i have spent years trying to help her do it. So I get fulfilled knowing this lifestyle has empowered her to relax more often without guilt, and I also benefit later that day from a happier more relaxed partner. I feel like I have looked out for her. Any man with a protective nurtering nature will know how much it means to protect the woman you love from lifes troubles, and I often feel that sense strongly.

And the sex... Its fantastic. She has it turns out a hell of a sadistic streak, and I have a hell of a masochistic one. We click in the bedroom and are always exploring old games, and occasionally new ones. She can be very mean, more so than I would always want, which of course feeds the submissive in me because I am having my limits pushed, and encourages her dominance to grow also, which makes her feel free, but also paradoxically makes her feel loved.

Notice how often I have mentioned love and care. And thats the rub. This lifestyle has brought out a level of love and caring for each other that we never had consistently before. We had flashes of it but we never knew how to sustain it. This way of interacting, these roles we have taken on provide a framework for interaction that encodes within it those things we both value as our own love language. It has also brought a fantastic sex life and an outlet for her dominant nature and my submissive side. Last but not least it has given her, in her own head, permission to break free her inner passion.

In the last three years we have forgotten how to be vanilla. Now and then we have a break for a change, but we dont know what to do. How to interact day to day, how to have sex. Its a lovely change but thats all it is, a break. I never quite shake off being her sub, she never quite shakes off her teasing nature. In bed we have to work hard to stay vanilla as we keep sliding back into our d/s roles. Partly this is habit, but mostly it is that this is now who we are. As Thumper said in his post stacks, this has now become one of the most solid foundations of our marriage.

It took a long time to get here, but I firmly believe that to go back now would be almost impossible and furthermore would risk the very marriage itself. As Sandy herself says (and it warms me to hear it), she doesnt see herself as sometimes wife or sometimes mistress, there is no longer a distinction, she is both. And same on my side for me. Its beautiful.

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One little side note. I revealed our lifestyle to a very close vanilla friend of mine recently. He was curious as to why we were so much happier these days, and I know him so well that if I cant tell him it would feel like a lie between us. I trust him. So I told him the whole story (without the gory details!!!).

Surprisingly he almost completely understood. He did wonder how being told to do stuff regularly didnt make me get rebellious, but kind of understood that it met my need to care for my wife. I asked him if he had noticed anything between Sandy and I earlier in the evening (she had left by this time) and he said no. All he had seen was a couple in love who interact lovingly and touch each other a lot in passing. He had not noticed, even once I pointed it out, the occasional look she had used on me, the teasing one, or the do this now or else one. Open air dominance and submission yet even a close friend had no inkling anything was going on. Sandy and I find that very entertaining.

Sex amongst equals

Sandy likes to highlight the difference. With her lover she has sex as an equal. She lets him fuck her and encourages him to be rough with her. I am her sub and sex between us is almost entirely a d/s dynamic. With me she is in charge in bed, even when temporarily she gives away a little power. She has admitted that she spent a long time teaching me to be gentle, and now with him remembers the pleasure of someone being rough with her. She says it almost to tease me because she doesn't want me to change, she gets submissive kinky sex at home with me, and now and then gets sex with an equal, fucking, and not being dominant with her lover. The best of both worlds. What is more she enjoys the disparity, her husband is sexually her sub, her lover is her equal. These are her words.

She has also admitted that its reminded her why we are kinky. Once a week or so of vanilla fucking is fun especially with someone new, but she has said she needs much more than that. Her lover is not especially kinky and she told me would get bored if that is all she had. Again this works for her, she gets both vanilla from him and kink and d/s from me.

Mind you her lover has noticed that she is quite a dominant woman and it appears that he might have a bit of a submissive streak himself. He has asked her a couple of times to dominate him and she has declined. She says it is partly because she doesn't know him well enough to do it well, but mainly because she has that with me and prefers her lover to be equal or even a touch dominant with her. Poor bloke. If he really does have a submissive streak it must be hard to be so close to having your fix but not getting it. I suggested to her that she should tell him about our dynamic otherwise he doesn't understand part of what makes her tick.

For myself I kind of like it that my submission to her is valuable precisely because it's coming from the man she loves, and I like to think she doesn't want that with anyone else. She says don't kid myself:) she values it from me but doesn't want it with him mainly because she wants a change.

She does not think that having a lover is a lifestyle for her. She thinks that after this it may not happen again. I find that amusing, she had thoughts like that about so many things in the past. She does not always realise how much these things grow to be part of her. She gets dominance at home but vanilla sex with an equal away. She has all the fun of a new relationship and the excitement of the taboo, while having a loving husband and safe home life. She enjoys the fantasy. Most of all she has broken that taboo once and knows that it has not harmed us, quite the opposite. Once you've done it once the second time is much easier. So I doubt this is the only time, because one day whether a year of 5 from now when a cute guy she likes shows an interest in her and she knows her husband wont mind and her relationship will only benefit, whats the chance of her saying no?

M

Short update

Well its been a while since I have been on, to be honest I havent been in the mood to write or do very much of anything else...

Up to early october things were ok. In fact the week before my birthday we had a very fun week. I was locked up for about 5 days straight in my neosteel (a first for that length of time). Sandy had a lot of fun at my expense, and even on my birthday I wasnt unlocked. My birthday present was to pleasure her. I might write more about that sometime.

Unfortunately within a few days of that things went pretty sour between us. So much so that I am no longer subbing to her. We have taken a step back from kink for a while. Its a bit of a relapse of our old problems.

Sandy naturally does not show her emotions, is not very demonstrative with her love. Thats not to say she doesnt love me, but her language of showing it isnt at all like mine. She also has a habit of becoming very insular, in her own world. At times like that I feel like I am just a breadwinner and aide round the house. If she is busy, stressed or ill, almost any stress in fact makes her react that way. Since about July one thing or another has led to her progressively withdrawing from the relationship. By the time of our week holiday (which I wrote about a while ago) she effectively spent pretty much the entire holiday in her own world, from which I was excluded. We probably had only a handful of quality exchanges during the entire week. she read, slept, ate, but wasnt 'present'. Since then it continued to get worse.

A couple of years back when we were at out lowest and close to divorce we both realised that the only way to recover was for each of us to take the others needs and prioritise them over our own. Only if we both did that would we both feel loved and looked after. It worked extremely well, until now. As she progressively gave less and less I continued to be supportive, probably even more so. We did talk about the change in her a few times, she agreed it was a problem and needed to turn it around. Problem is she didnt, she kept putting it off, saying she was trying but not actually changing anything. I got the distinct impression that she was waiting for a reduction in stress to hand it to her on a plate. But life's little stresses dont always go away when you need them to. Eventually, very soon after my birthday I cracked. We had a couple of very horrible weeks of arguments.

In short I dont feel good about being her sub anymore. I feel distant and unappreciated, and lacking in trust that she will care for me as much as I care for her.

We have gone beyond that point now, are starting to rebuild the love and trust for each other. Its difficult in a way, knowing she can do it now makes me wonder why she couldnt do it before it hurt me so badly. But it is changing. She is much more present and caring, and I am starting to want to care for her again. Its a hiccup, I am sure it will pass. But it is a nasty reminder of how bad things were between us a few years back. It is also showing that our relationship is more fragile than I thought it was. I hope we learn from this a little in order to make it less fragile.

She has made it clear that she would like me to be her sub again, that she liked it. I also feel like there is something missing, I liked putting her first. I am sure we will go back to those roles, but first we need to reconnect a bit more. We both feel it is a little too soon, but hope that it wont be too much longer. In the meantime we are making love a bit more, good old fashioned vanilla love. It is helping rebuild our closeness.

Anyway you havent heard the last from us.

Hope you are all well.

M

What is vanilla?

When my wife and I were first together we almost always had vanilla sex. As I started to introduce kink we talked about it and she said that once or at most twice a month was as much kink as shed want. Now its unusual if we have vanilla sex once or twice a month.

But then for us masturbation and vaginal intercourse are vanilla. Anal is not and neither is bondage, teasing etc. Critically fantasising we count as kink, since we fantasise out loud and share the story as we go along. Like two writers working together. And our fantasies are always naughty. Bondage, public exhibitionism, cuckolding, lesbianism, and being used by groups of people are very
common themes. So vanilla sex while verbalising such fantasies is much of what we do, makes for great sex, and is not vanilla :)

What classes as sex?

My wife has by her own count had 14 lovers, where I am the 14th. By this she means that she has fucked 14 guys. Actually there has been a 15th since, during a threesome, but I digress.

When she first told me that figure I assumed she meant that she had had sex with 14 men, but no, that's only the guys she has fucked. She has as she puts it 'squirmed' with a number more. This includes oral, fondling and cumming apparently. In my book that counts as sex no? I always put it down to her being weird but after polling a few female friends I discovered that more than half agree that its only sex if there is penetration! Huh :)

So from now on if I fool around with another woman but don't fuck her its ok cos its not sex, hahah. Somehow when i said that my wife didn't agree:)

Childhood incidents

I recently realised how much power a certain incident has held over me. As with so many others it began as a childhood taunt, meaningless and silly. Caught me unawares and left me wounded. I have been working to exorcise the incident and remove its impact on me.. writing it here is partly to help others who may have felt the same kind of shame, and show what can be done about it.

I will write this in a way that shows the effect it NO LONGER HAS over me. I will not relive it in a way as to strengthen its effect, but to negate its impact and leave it as a healthy distant memory.

I was 9. Already very much a sexual being with little knowledge but an interest. I had recently been told how babies were made by another kid, slightly inaccurately. Apparently a man sticks his willy in a womans bits and pees... Heheh, not exactly correct but hey i was 9. So one day i passed this information on to a friend, not a good friend but a friend. This is important, until i thought hard and relived the incident recently i hadnt remembered that he was someone i got on with. I told him, he looked unsure of what i said, perhaps uncomfortable. Then he laughed and said 'dirty simon'. I remembered this as a taunt, but i am not sure if it was said more than once or twice. It didnt catch on, i certainly wasnt called that for long.

Only i felt dirty ever since, at least the sexual part of me. Not a good way to begin your life especially when it turns out you are kinky. I believed it deep down, so if i ever opened up to anyone about my sexuality and got a similar reaction it just relived the feeling and strengthened the belief. Believe me it happened a lot since i was both so sexual and so sensitive about it.
I have fought it conciously for years with some success but not enough. It has even impacted my relationship. If i asked for something different and got refused, or she laughed, got uncomfortable or even said yes half heartedly, i felt uncomfartable and dirty. You can imagine that i was not then in the best state to convince her to meet my need, or show her it could be FUN. Was never lucky enough to have met as a partner a girl kinky enough to have helped me feel less alone.

So what happened? Well i have learnt a few techniques to soften the memory and accept the emotions that accompanied it. The memory is in black and white now, seen as if on a screen rather than being relived. The little boy who was me has the love and acceptance from me now, the love that he didnt have then. The boy who said something so small, in such passing, well he hasnt even been forgiven as there was nothing to forgive. He also has my love and always will.
And if ever i feel dirty again i will replay that memory and see it happen at a distance, in grainy black and white. It will happen to a little boy who now has my love and support and sits at a campfire with me watching it from a distance. The other boy also sits with us, also just a boy and i wrap him in my love too. My arm is around the younger me and he is ok, he is loved, and so am i.

I am ME, i am ok.

The importance of communication

Roll on telepathy, thats what I say. We humans are so bad at communicating its a wonder we get anything done at all... My wife and I in arguments can be trying our hardest to speak clearly and get our point across, and when we think we are at our most clear, ... still the other person takes precisely the wrong meaning.

So what hope the long distance or virtual relationship?

My Domme and I had a bit of scare today. I did something to disappoint her. She responded with a 'headgame' that was (with hindsight) intended to be perceived as a punishment. When viewed from my end it didnt come across as a punishment, the words screamed 'its over, permanently, you failed me'. So I reacted with sadness and some anger... you can see where it might have ended up. Luckily it didnt and a short but intense bit of time on IM sorted it out. Still you have to wonder, when its so hard to communicate in person how hard is this?!!

She suggested that I should trust her more, that I know she loves me and would not hurt me. She is right of course and to a surprisingly (for me) deep level I do. I guess the measure of trust is how far you will go before you feel you are falling. Today showed me that while I trust her a lot its not enough that my more powerful emotional triggers can be played with. Not yet anyway. I think we need to know each other better, and perhaps more importantly know that the other person knows and understand us. Then I at least will feel completely in safe hands.

A friend of mine recently suggested that NVC (non-violent communication) of which he is a practitioner should be taught at schools. Not just for interpersonal reasons but to raise humanity up a level socially. Imagine if everyone from schoolkids chatting, right up to the politicians they may one day become, had measurably better empathic and communication skills. After a generation a significant improvement could be made in peoples lives on the macro and micro scale. I have to say from what I have seen of it, I think he is right. An hour a week could be invaluable!

nb. The violent does not refer to physical violence but emotional, as in charged words and unclear or unempathic communication that results in angry feelings on both sides.

MyKey