Contract Negotiation Time - End of Discipline Desires

This is being posted on both my blogs.  I am ending my Discipline Desires blog.  It was set up when we thought that we might have a DD aspect to our relationship, but I think I can clearly say that is not going to happen.  Maintaining two blogs has actually been both fun and easy for me, but it is taking way too much of my time from other activities, so this one will be dormant for now.  (It will stay up, and I reserve the right to change my mind at some future point.)

I am moving Follow Friday over to Submissive Wife because, well, I like Follow Friday and so does H.  :)

Hi there!  This is just a quick note to summarize the thoughts from my conversations with H and the excellent discussion on Saturday's post - Everything is (Not) Rosy.  Additionally, Kitty at Sweet Surrender asked me a question about the contract we have, and I assume if one person is wondering, more people are wondering:

When you say you have a contract, what do you mean? A literal, signed contract?

H and I have a literal signed contract, ominously titled, "Contract of Consensual Ownership".  Over the last two months, I have shared several provisions in it on my Submissive Wife blog, where you can hit Contract in the word cloud.

I see a lot of people in various relationship dynamics have literal signed contracts and I think that it is important when you have been together for a long time to have a real starting place when embarking on a new adventure.  And also an ending place in case it doesn't work out for one reason or the other.  Our original term is just under three months from January 25 to April 15.

There is nothing of a financial or domestic nature in our particular contract.  It is actually quite good (for our relationship) and H put it together with what I can only imagine was months of research.  The exit plan is as follows:

11.0.0 Termination/Renewal of Contract

Renewal
On the above named date this contract will be reviewed, renegotiated and rewritten to include all addendums.  After the signing of the new contract, this contract and all addendums for said contract will be destroyed.

Termination
This contract may be terminated at any time by the Master, but never by Slave except during renewal of said contract or in the event of breach of said contract.

Upon termination, all actions between Master and Slave will be forgiven by both parties and they shall return to their previous relationship without blame or disappointment.

We have just under three weeks left and I think I can honestly say that both H and I want to renew.  But, this is my only chance for negotiation under the terms - as you see, I signed away those rights.  (Without too much thought, because H has always been very considerate of me and I had no reason to think that he would be otherwise in this case.)

Here is where we are at so far:

H does not want to punish me and, I don't think I have made this clear previously, I don't really want to be punished.  So, we agree on that.

I do want less control and possibly more pain in our sexual interactions.  We are working on this.

Maintenance is really important to us, but only as a calendar tool for making sure we are connecting very regularly and for advancing the pain interaction goal.

Other than that, the real issue is how submission takes place and whether or not it is enforced.  I have started to think of submission in one of two ways:

Sexual Submission - Rules of attire; service rules; safe words; others, etc. and
Soft Submission - Non-sexual submitting - letting H be the leader, domestic type items, things that could be summarized under the idea of "making a quiet home for us", etc.

For the most part, I think that punishment would fall under soft submission and I know that we don't have much about that in the current contract.  So as long as H doesn't have a rule related to behavior that is domestic, financial, parenting or what not, we don't really have a problem there.

The sexual submission area has one rule that I can not follow and that causes us the most trouble.  I am just going to throw it out there:



She looks as uncomfortable as I often feel when following this rule

Slave shall never in public or private close nor cross her legs in Master's presence, unless specific permission to do so is granted.  Slaves legs shall be spread so that no part of the legs touch each other but may be commanded to increase or decrease this as desired by Master.

I like the thought behind this rule - that H can access me whenever he wishes.  But, he never really has and it is not actually practical around the house in day to day life.

I break it often without noticing and then when I do notice, I notice that H doesn't notice.  This is really where the whole punishment thing breaks down.  It is a good rule, but completely impossible to enforce, so it must be changed.

Other than that, I would formalize maintenance or some type of scheduled interaction (that is practical) and there is one other provision that I think has conflicting direction, but I think we can more than continue into Phase 2 of this contract.  I am sure H will have much more input, and I look forward to it, because so far, he has been pretty amazing through all of this!

In other words, Everything IS Rosy.  :)

Wow, by "quick note", I guess I meant, strap in for a really long post.  Ha.

Everything is (not) Rosy

Does your capitalized half read your blog?  Mine does and knowing that may have an impact on what I write.

I mean, I try to be honest, but I called a "state of the contract" meeting the other night to discuss some misgivings and miscommunications and just plain missing parts related to this M/s contract that we have signed.  I approached it from the perspective that we have about one month left and it would be nice if some tweaks were made because I didn't feel very inclined to continue once the end date arrived.

To say he was a bit surprised that I had misgivings would be an understatement.  One of his comments, "I read your blog(s) and you seem really happy with how things are going."

Whoa.  Full stop.

First of all, I can't imagine ever truly being unhappy with H.  He is an amazing man who is about the best match I could ever imagine for myself.

Second of all, things would have to be REALLY BAD before I would publicly announce (even in an anonymous blog) that I was unhappy with H.  Especially one he reads.  That would be very bad form.  I like to think that I would talk to him first.

None of that means that I am completely satisfied.

We are stuck at the punishment part of it all.  H does not like to punish me.  We tried it once and he was not happy with my reaction.  And so he doesn't do it.  Apparently, I get one chance to react and if it is not how he expects, well, then that goes into the scrap pile.

Two problems with this - many BDSM practices that I fantasize about leave me a bit uncertain during the actual doing (especially the first time), so my reaction is never what he expects.  And then I never get to do it again.  (Boo, me.)

Second problem - H is a little gun shy on starting something and it makes me a little (a lot!) anxious.  (I am now editorializing H's feelings.)

I know that I should not complain that he is so thoughtful and responsive to me, and I am not, I just wish he was hearing my words on some of this stuff and not my first reaction.  I have NEVER used or even been close to using my safe word or my veto power.  Does that help?

Anyway, back to the punishment.  If H won't punish me, what is the point of having rules?  When I break them and nothing happens, it leaves me feeling like he doesn't care enough to try.  When in reality, he doesn't know what to do with it all.

It is kind of an uncompromising situation that destroys the whole premise of the relationship dynamic.

A dynamic that has added so many good things to our lives and that we both would like to continue to explore.  But we have to move past this punishment part.  Which means no rules.  Which means no contract.  Which means no spanking?  Big Sigh.

So, there you have it.  A less rosy picture of what is going on at Kitty and H's house.

How We Met - Part II

This is in response to a question asked about how H and I met for March Q&A month.  It turns out that it is a long story - you can catch up with Part I here.  I decided to finish, because I have been thinking about it all morning and I have other things to do.  The walk down memory lane continues...

When you are single for a long time, you start to get quite a list going regarding what you want in a mate.  Here was my relatively short list:  single, no kids, no more than ten years older.  That's it.  I broke every rule when it came to H.  I figure that means this relationship is either very very right or very very wrong.

You really can't help who you fall in love with.

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H had made an unusual proposition to me, one with his wife's consent, but one which I could not fathom or stomach.  I was very uncomfortable when I had to be around him and I avoided unnecessary contact.  This went on for a while.  During that time, I turned 28 years old.

My birthday is always a time of reflection and this birthday pretty much sucked.  The boyfriend mentioned previously showed up on that day (awww, he remembered) and we had sex.  I told him that I missed him (I didn't) and that I still loved him (I don't) and begged him to stay (he left).  Nothing like hitting a girl on her down day.

That whole experience carried my normal birthday funk over for a couple of months.  What was I doing with my life?

Well, one day, about two months later, I was in the garage at work getting ready to leave and I saw H blow in on a motorcycle.  He looked so good (yes, motorcycles are sexy) and so alive, and while I had not thought about him at all, that kiss must have been marinating.

I drove over to where he was and quite unexpectedly (at least to me!), invited him to have sex with me.

He said, "Are you serious?"  Yes.

"Okay, lunch on Friday."

Friday rolled around and he followed me down the freeway to my apartment. I arrived first and went inside, shutting the door.  He knocked.  I opened it.  I started to say something and he just attacked me with his lips.  Months of pent up sexual energy came rushing out.  (I am so glad he did not let me speak, because I probably would have ruined it all right there.)

We went to the bedroom and had a funny moment when we realized no one had a condom.  Apparently, neither of us do this much anymore.  Since I was not on the pill and there was no condom, I ended up giving him a blow job (and apparently sealing my fate to that particular activity).  It was fantastic.

I normally don't tell people this, but I also don't normally tell people that I like to be spanked and desire to suck on H, so I am telling you.  For the next three months, we had a sexual relationship.  Yes, an affair.  Every possible chance we could get - in cars, in stairways, in elevators, in my apartment, and yes, even at their house.

Because there was no chance of a relationship, I constructed a Chinese Firewall, if you will, against any chance of feelings for H.  This is probably the only time I have ever been successful at this.  His wife still seemed to be out of town a lot and there seemed to be a lot of fights, but I did not encourage any stories and he is not one to over share.

About 2 and 1/2 months in, H asked, "What if I wasn't married anymore?"  I thought, yeah, that's how this works - you sleep with a married man and they leave their wife and you live happily ever after.  Not. "Well, you are, so..."

Christmas rolled around and H called and said, "I am coming to see you."

"No."  I said.  "You are not.  It is Christmas and Christmas is for family.  You are not family."  I was alone that day.

"I am coming over."

"No."  And I ended the conversation.  He respected my wishes and he did not come.  Which was good.

January came and I found out that he was alone and I had a couple of days off work, so I said, let's get out of here... and we took off to a bed and breakfast for two nights.

While we were there, H asked me if I thought that I could ever have feelings for him.  I said, "I have no idea.  I am not even contemplating that."

He told me that he and his wife had finished before Christmas and he wondered if I could care for him.  I literally lay with my back to him, his arm around me and pictured a real wall disintegrating into ashes and felt an overwhelming rush of love for this man that I had known for two years and through so much.

Two days later, I told him I loved him.  Three months later, he asked me to marry him.  And lest you think we rushed into anything, 18 months after that, we got married.  That was eight years ago.

I wish I could say it was all great, but the first six months were hard.  He was still in divorce proceedings, which everyone knows is a bundle of fun.

Also, we fought a lot - me because of guilt over how we started and him, I think, because he wanted to get married for the last time and needed to let me know for sure who he was and what he needed.  Since then, though, it has pretty much been all great.  I can't imagine any other man fitting with me so perfectly.

THE END

PS - On the very same day my wall broke away, probably around the same time, the wife cleaned out the bank accounts.  I always found the timing interesting - the universe telling you when something is really done.  I also think it was fitting - H and I are so very right for each other; but people were hurt on the way to us getting there.  I never forgot that.

Because I am a Witch

I once saw a thing that said, tone over the Internet is hard to decipher, so when in doubt, just assume I am a bitch.

There is a vulnerability in D/d, I have seen many posts on it and I have felt it myself.  Maybe it is because we are trying something so different than many of us thought of when we were young.  Or maybe it is because, for the first time for many of us, we are being honest, even if we are being anonymous.

Anyway:  vulnerability + blog town = some miscommunication.

Add in the fact that I am naturally sarcastic and I find myself treading in comments really carefully and even pre-emptively apologizing.  I have hurt people without intention in face to face conversations, so I am sure that possibility exists here x10.

I joke when I say assume I am a bitch, when in reality, I am exactly the opposite, concerned almost too much about what others think.

Which puts me in mind of a bumper sticker I saw - Don't worry about what other people think, they don't do it that often.

Just something I was thinking about as I was lurking through blog town tonight.