My task

Where to begin? Last night started out bad, got worse, then ended on a hopeful note.

It was my Belle Fille’s last night at home before she left for her week overseas. We made dinner together. It was fun hanging out in the kitchen, drinking wine, enjoying each other’s company. I was buoyantly optimistic that we’d have a good night in bed and was building up the courage to suggest a few new twists to our repertoire. Just after we finished eating and the kids had scattered to consume their preferred media in the far corners of the house, we were alone. We were sitting close. I put my arm over her and kissed her neck. She put her hand in my lap and sneaked her fingers through the opening in my pajama bottoms. Then, through a series of events too obscure to detail here, we found ourselves reminded of my past infidelity.

The thing is, after you cheat on your wife and burn through all the psychic energy of traveling through the pain and healing and therapy, etc., the detritus of your stupid decision always remains scattered about just under the turf of everyday life. Sometimes, through no fault of anyone, you stumble upon it. It can be no big deal and you laugh it off together. Or, it can be like stepping in a pile of emotional dog shit. Other times, like an emotional land mine. Last night was somewhere between dog shit and land mine.

Belle wasn’t angry at me all over again or anything. No, it was more like the scab had been ripped off and the nasty feelings came oozing back out again. At one point, she was in the bathroom crying. I went through the typical range of “god, I’m such an asshole” to “god, not this again” feelings. Once the kids were down for the count, we went to bed and talked it over. She doesn’t like how it feels to come across like a basket case whenever this subject rears it’s shaggy head. I don’t like seeing her continue to suffer for my stupidity. In any event, we talked it though. Again. And not for the last time.

We were through it, though I knew everything was still too raw to expect any sex. I was disappointed, but only in myself since it was all the result of my actions. However, we were in a happy talky place and I thought I’d take the opportunity to go over some of the things I was hoping to spring on her before the night went all to hell. As I began, she cut me off, albiet nicely, and said she wasn’t feeling up to anything sexual that night.

As I retell that moment, it sounds very innocent. However, I reacted negatively. As I said, I already knew there wasn’t going to be any sex. That was perfectly obvious. She was simply confirming that, but I expect due to the all the emotions of the previous few hours, I took it as some kind of passive-aggressive rejection of the topic. And, through her rejection of the topic, she rejected me. Of course, I was overreacting. I know that now. But at the moment, it suddenly surfaced a tangle of conflicting emotions all bubbling under my skin.

First and foremost, I felt like a freak. All the sexual urges and kinks I have left me feeling exposed, insecure, and overly complicated. I apologized to her for being so weird and complex. If only I could go back to being “normal”, everything would be better. She challenged me on that and asked what normal was. I don’t know, but it’s not me, I answered. I told her I felt she wasn’t really into the role I asked her to assume. She was doing only the basic, cursory things I asked of her and wasn’t trying to grow into her dominant role and truly make it her own. Yes, she was controlling my orgasms, but that was about it. There wasn’t much in her actions that demonstrated she was very interested going very far beyond that. All the books I had purchased had basically sat unread by her. I apologized for asking too much of her, for putting her in this active, difficult position that obviously did not come naturally to her. For not the first time, I suggested that maybe we were heading down the wrong path and it was all my fault for putting us on it.

Now, I know there are many blogs on the web that could have produced the preceeding paragraph. There are gaggles of submissive men out there who came to realize what they wanted from their partners only after years of marriage. I know, I’m just another in a long line of whiny malesubs. I also know I was being totally unfair and excessively self-pitying. She has tried. But I’m feeling as though we’re moving too slowly and that her heart’s really not in it.

One of my biggest issues is how hard it is to actually tell her what I want her to do. I want to be submissive to her. I want to serve her, sexually. I want her to find my boundaries – the edges of where I’m comfortable – and ask me to go farther. And then I want to go farther, for her. I know where some of those boundaries are, but I feel that to simply tell her would be to rob them of their magic (which is also pretty fucked up, I know). I want her to discover them herself through practice. Besides, several of them are somewhat embarrassing to me. That’s why they’re on the edge. Yes, I understand that I’m basically asking her to read my mind and, yes, I get how that’s unfair. But she’s not really trying. And instead of being mad or frustrated at her, it all comes out as my insecurity and inferiority. It’s all my fault for being a freak.

She said a lot of things last night trying to bring me off the ledge. She says she doesn’t think I’m a freak and that she wants to do what it takes to make me happy, but I’m still feeling freakish. In order to help her help me, she’s left me with a simple task to perform while she’s gone. I am to detail here, on my blog, all the things I want. Not in broad, general terms (“I want you to dominate me”) but in actionable, specific terms (“I want you to spank my ass with the wooden hairbrush”). Over the course of the next week, that will be the theme here. It will be difficult for me since, even though only two of you know who I really am, I will be putting out there for all to read the dark corners of my sexual wishlist that have only been glimpsed or hinted at before.

We’ll see how it goes.