Third Time's a Charm?

Well, here we are again. I say this because this isn't the first time we've tried a Wife-led-marriage (WLM), or Dominance & submission (D/s), or whatever label you'd like to put on our past efforts.

I've been married to my Dear Husband for eight years now. Our marriage has just about always been naturally a WLM, without the label. If you were to ask either of us, or any of our family & friends, "who wears the pants in this marriage"... well... DUH. :)

So, the first time we dabbled in this area, it was mostly just fantasy & role playing. We bought some restraints, a paddle, etc. We had a good time, but I didn't seem to get much out of it. I'm not into pain myself, and I understand that he is, but it just seemed like an awful lot of work for me to do, and often times my "reward" was him cumming in about 2 seconds after we played a lot. So - that kind of fizzled out for me.

Later, we tried a D/s relationship sort of thing. Well, I'm not too sure how hard we "tried". Again - I did a lot of the work. He said, "I want to service you" and I said, "well, hell, OK!!" and then I did a TON of work... I researched a LOT, learned about rules, protocols, ways to be a Dom, what to expect from a sub, on and on... I spent countless hours developing protocols, expectations, reward & punishment systems, I documented it all, made him a binder, and even developed a situation where we could role play like he was in school, being trained on what his Mistress expected. Then, we had a death in the family, and we went on a trip to attend a funeral. We agreed that all that was "on hold" while we dealt with "real life", but when we got back, he'd decided he didn't want to do it. He was concerned that I wouldn't respect him later.

Now, our marriage has NEVER been conventional, not really. We are both freaks by nature, and as such, we've both had lots of relationship problems - both in past relationships, and in OUR relationship. It's taken 10 years for us to figure each other out, figure ourselves out, and learn to trust each other, and our relationship.

We've tried diving in to other "non-conventional" marriage arrangements as well. An open marriage, a poly-theme, before we just decided to stop trying to make things exciting, and just "be" for a while. That was probably about a year ago.

Since then, our lives have been "happy enough." We are very much in love, of that there is no doubt. We both know that, even after all this time, we still want to grow old together. But - one of our old problems came back - nearly NO sex drive. It's not that we're not interested in sex - we're both pretty... um... sexually-oriented I guess is a good way of putting it. We're both always thinking about sex - but sex with each other... well, maybe if there's time and I'm not too tired and he's feeling in the mood and if there's nothing good on TV and no kids in the house and we don't have to get up early in the morning, yada yada yada. Almost like it's a chore for us both.

Meanwhile, we're both sporting secrets. Not cheating, but him secretly looking at porn, while telling me he just "has no drive", and me constantly fantasizing about sex, and masturbating week after week instead of coming to him for release.

Now, our lives are about to change. We are about to become empty nesters, and the one thing that keeps popping into both our minds is, "Now there's nothing stopping us" and we've started to become more sexually active.

The other day, I said something to him, that I think changed everything. He doesn't think it triggered our 3rd attempt - but I think he's wrong. I said to him, while we were (finally) fooling around, "I'll tell you what. I'm giving myself over to you sexually. Don't feel like you have to ask, please. Not anymore. We should be past that. If you are interested, don't even ask, just start. I won't turn you down. I miss making love to you, and I don't want you to feel like you have to wait for me. Just touch me. Whenever you want." (or something like that). The sex was great that night. And the next day, he tried it out, and guess what? Wow we had sex 2 days in a row. WTF??? LOL I started thinking "wouldn't it be fun to get back into the D/s stuff?" Things were SO charged up when we were doing that - we both felt very alive & aware back then. I think I might have mentioned it to him - yes, I think I said something about how I'd like to be tied up and teased all day long.

Then he took me by surprise, and said to me the other day, "I have been doing a lot of thinking, and researching, and I really would like for us to enter into a Wife-Led-Marriage. I want to serve you, to worship you, and treat you like the Goddess you are."

Well, How Do You Do.

Okay, so here we are. There were a few things I didn't like the last time around, like all the work that was involved. So I'm not going to do all that work. I have enough shit to take care of, why should I have to write it all out, and organize it all! Yes, if we really do this, I have a responsibility to be consistent, to keep it interesting, to be a good Leader, but I don't want it to be a chore. I also don't want him to feel mistreated, undervalued, unrespected, taken for granted, or any of that, either.

So - I refuse to just jump in blind like I feel we did before, and this time, I think we need to ease in a bit. One thing we discussed is that I need to be able to give up control from time to time. We agreed that perhaps me "requiring" him to dominate me for short periods of time here and there is the way to go. That sounds right to me. I also want to ease in with the "protocols". I think we both need clear-cut "rules" to understand what's expected of each of us, but honestly - it's a lot of work. So I want to go in slowly.

I'm starting this blog to help me keep my thoughts sorted out, and to get input from others. I want to be a loving Wife, not a dictator. I understand that what I want goes, and that I have decision making power, and I make the rules, but I don't want to change the fact that I'm married to my best friend who I love and adore very very much. His ex-wife is a real bitch. She's always belitting him, pointing out his faults, teasing him about what a loser she sees him as, etc. I can see why they got married, with his naturally submissive nature and her overbearing nature, but he grew to hate her and resent her - I fear that happening to us... I can't let that happen to us.

He is my everything.

Today he started out with our old stuff, calling me "Ma'am" when I told him I wanted to do something. "Yes, Ma'am" he'd say. I told him to stop. I don't want to be seen as an authority figure like that - I don't want our life together to be Role Play. I want him to feel loved and cherished, as well as Me. So I asked him to find another "pet name" to call me, one that can be used in public, or in private, that communicates to ME his submission, but shows Love to anybody on the outside looking in.

I'm looking forward to getting started with the Orgasm denial. Of all the things we did in the past, that was the funnest. To tease him until he was squirming with anticipation and desire, and then to leave him hanging, "Not now, my dear" - I LOVE THAT.

I told him today that I'm considering a 90-day denial, to give us a "trial period" to get used to the new way of things. Give him a chance to get a feel for sure, if he can actually do this without resentment, and give me a chance to get into the habit of not feeling guilty when he does things for me, or when the sexual focus is totally on me, etc.

So... here we go. :)