Ceremony

I went to a grove on Saturday to see if I could learn some more about the energy work that I do. After seeing how it worked with Devin, I really wanted to explore it further. After affirmation from the frog, I knew that I had plenty of power, now all I needed was more control. I really enjoy the idea of being able to bring it into my intimate life as opposed to doing much of anything else with it, at least for right now.

There was an entire ceremony that was going to take place and I was aware of it, but I don’t think I could have really prepared myself for what I eventually saw. There were two classes that took place prior to that: spiritual healing and altars. The spiritual healing was done with a bunch of tumbled stones which I’d had an interest in years ago. Since then, I haven’t really needed the stones to do what I wanted to do, but they’re still fun and pretty to look at and I like the texture. I can appreciate that they have their own energy and that I can channel my energy through them as well, use them to focus better. In my case, with Devin, if I focused any harder on him, he may never wake up again. I was okay with this class and really wanted to learn more, see if I could do the same things without the stones, with just my hands or just my energy.

The next class was informative and I went through a period of time where I thought I wanted or needed an altar in order to do the work that I wanted to do. I’d always wanted a second bedroom just so I could put my things in there, have an altar, have a place to go and just meditate. Eventually I realized I don’t need an altar. I don’t need ‘things’. Everything that I want to talk to, need to do, have to focus on is inside of me. So the idea of an altar or a shrine just kind of turned me off.

On the other hand, I just went to someone’s house and I saw that they had one of each. He told me that it was his way of trying to get in touch with his ancestors. It did look cool and I could see that he was using it to help him focus and I can’t really hold that against him. I have still pretty much decided that I don’t need it though.

Finally, the ceremony began. Everyone got in a circle. They gave thanks to the elements. They spoke to three goddesses and thanked them for everything they do for them. They took cakes and wine, which is pretty much like communion. Everything is very scripted. Everything is full of intent. Everything was very peaceful. I could see why they did it, but it didn’t work for me. Additionally, I don’t believe in separate gods and goddesses so that just left a foul taste in my mouth.

After the ceremony I didn’t participate in, I was asked what I thought of it. I told my friend that I didn’t mind it, that it wasn’t terrible or anything, but I didn’t feel comfortable doing it and cited, pretty much, the fact that they called out to named goddesses as my reason for abstaining. The High Priest talked to me and told me if I wasn’t comfortable doing that, I didn’t have to. He broke it down and told me that most people cannot fathom an entire Universe, or an entire Source, or an entire God and so they break it down into aspects, or other deities, something that they can easily wrap their minds around. I’m looking at the whole picture while they’re focusing on something more manageable for them and that’s okay.

A few days later, Junk’s mom wanted to talk to her about the experience, because she’d decided early on that it just wasn’t her bag. At first it didn’t seem to matter what she said because I was already decided. She told Junk that for some people, they need the ritual and the ceremony in the beginning, because it’s easier for them. It makes it easier to believe. It makes it easier to focus the belief. Makes it easier to break things down. Some people might get to a point where they can open up thought to everything and some people won’t. To me, I was well beyond a place of thought that these people were at and so her comments just breezed right though, with me agreeing to them.

Then today I was thinking about something different when those ideas popped into my head and they fit again. I was thinking about my choice of lifestyle. Primarily, I was thinking about a M/s relationship versus what I consider to be a D/s relationship. I was thinking about ritual and protocol. I was thinking about how there are some people who absolutely need that ritual and that protocol. Things have to be done a certain way. Certain things must be done in public, in private. I started wondering if it was because they couldn’t envision the entire path of M/s. Maybe it was their way of staying focused. I realized that when I started down this path, I did the same thing. There was kneeling and scripted replies and answers that had to be said a certain way. There were rules and rituals and protocols and I kinked hard on all of that.

Then I was talking to Devin today and I was thinking about how most of that seems so unnecessary to me now. He could kneel before me or not. It wouldn’t matter to me like it used to. If he did, I would think it was hot, but it wouldn’t be necessary. He could reply to me in a scripted way or not, it didn’t matter. In fact, I came to find that often times it inhibited him from telling me what he was really thinking or feeling and so I liked it less and less. For a while, I struggled with the idea that I was letting go of the lifestyle, that I didn’t need it any longer. If I didn’t need it, where was I headed? So much of my sexuality had been ingrained in it.

But then I heard those words in my head again and I thought ‘That’s it’. I needed all of that in the beginning to feel dominant. I needed it to see my relationships and how they worked and how everything fit together. I don’t need those things any longer. I know I’m Dominant. I don’t need anyone else to see it or to understand it. I don’t even have to define it to other people and I’ve found a lot of the time it’s not even definable by me. It just is. There is a power exchange in most of my relationships. It just happens. Sometimes I accelerate it. Sometimes I direct it. Sometimes I just let it unfold naturally. I don’t worry about it though. I don’t need a public display of it. It is what it is. I don’t need ceremonies or rituals or a way to focus it anymore because it is so much a part of me, a natural part of me.

 

Shoes

Currently I am in a period of consideration with junk. Across Fetlife there are posts about how being ‘under consideration’ is just a way of holding a sub to you while the Dom doesn’t have to make any kind of commitment. I detest the idea of this though I can see where it probably came about. I am certain there are many out there who have told many subs they were ‘under consideration’ to take them off the market while they continued to mess around with others, not taking that particular relationship seriously. My own personal reasons for doing this were a bit kinder, in a way. She’s very young, this is one of her first relationships, this is her first exposure to BDSM, and it doesn’t entirely restrict her from playing with or getting to know others — it simply means that I get to know who she is playing with or getting to know and dispense my advice about them before she engages. There are many lovely people in our community who would likely make wonderful play partners for her (especially the more well-known and accomplished riggers) but there are very few who would offer her what she seems to enjoy the most, which is a service-based relationship (that does not simply take advantage of her). On my end, the consideration period works wonderfully because it gives me a period of time in which I can assess my feelings for her, determine what kind of training she would need if I were to offer her a contract, and see how she interacts with the people closest to me in my life. It allows me time to expose her to who I am, the more unconventional sides of me — such as my cross dressing and my flawed gender identity — and the parts of me that are possibly new to her in practice such as my being polyamorous. This is a period of time where we evaluate one another, not just for me to determine if she is a good fit for me.

In the time that we have spent together so far, I already know how I feel about her. I know that we get along well. I know that there seems to be little jealousy when she hears of the others that I know (my cuck, Devin, etc.) and she’s more than willing to engage in activities with me that will help my other relationships move along better (such as participating in a phone call with my cuck so that we might tease him as he was steadily approaching day 50-something of his chastity). Her desire to serve comes before anything else. After having a few idle moments in my home, she started to clean. When she was looking for something she needed to clean with, she re-organized. When we’d go shopping, she had mental notes for what I needed to stock my cupboards with. She learned my routines, the things that needed to be done such as feeding the dog, when and how much, and has taken over those responsibilities whenever she is at my house. When I asked her if she had any fantasies about being passed around and used by multiple people in play or in private she seemed almost horrified by the prospect; when asked if she would like the idea of being lent out so that she could clean a house for a friend of mine, she seemed to perk right up. These are little markers that I like to see in anyone that I want to consider for a slave.

The intimacy would be required as well though. As much as I could have a strictly service-oriented slave and develop that kind of relationship with them, I’m more interested in her as an all around, all purpose kind of girl instead of being strictly service and she seems pleased with this as well. I somehow stumbled upon a delicious combination of service masochist. Not in that I give her gruesome tasks to accomplish (although I believe she did feel that way about changing the tank on the toilet this past week) but that she enjoys service and she is also a masochist. This goes well with my being a Sadist. Her pain tolerance is not as high as I initially thought (sometimes I fall into the trap of thinking masochism means they can take all kinds of abuse and get off on it even if they’ve never done it before!) and so I do actually get to work on that with her, which is magnificent for me. Building something together is what I like best in relationships. The shared path. I finally have someone that I can pinch and poke and scratch and hit instead of only being able to hold hands with in order to show that I care, as the former comes a lot more naturally than the latter.

The most important skill for anyone that actually wants to be mine though is the pursuit of knowledge. To find things that interest them and to pursue them and to share them with me is a necessity, but beyond that, to want to learn about me, to learn how to serve me, to learn to do things my way. Without me telling her any of the past rituals that I’ve had, or even the past protocols that I had had in place for jhusdhui, I found her kneeling before me removing my boots one day. Another, she knelt before me to put my boots back on. At first I simply enjoyed that she had come up with this on her own and so allowed her to do things her way. Each subsequent time though, I provided more instruction. Such as ensuring that the leg of my pants was fully adjusted over the top of my boot before moving on to the next one. It bothers me for them to be left until the end and sorted then — or not sorted at all as she would think of something else we were supposed to bring with us and would scamper off to fetch that. To double knot my laces, lest she enjoy retying them every few minutes that we were out. Finally, the way she tied them in general. The way that she makes the knots makes them feel almost upside down from the way that I make them, which takes longer to untie when I’m home without her to do them. I want for the knots to be the same as if I’d tied my shoes myself. In order to do this, she has to mimic the way that I tie them. The first couple of times, she forgot entirely. The next couple of times, she would spin around and straddle my ankle and tie my shoes from ‘my’ angle in order to try to make the knot right. This looks very curious in public, I assure you, as the expression from the board members of TNG were priceless as they bore witness. Finally, last night, as she attempted to spin around to tie my shoes from my angle again, I put a stop to it, told her to return to her kneel, and simply tie them correctly from that position.

Have you ever been told that you tie your shoes wrong?

She did as I instructed but she struggled with it. She held the loop in her left hand, tried to cross it over to her right hand, looked up at me, fussed with it a bit, pulled the laces too tight until they ran through entirely and she had to start it all over again, and over all ended up frustrating herself. As we headed to the car she was quiet and unresponsive. She did still open my door for me and go through all the motions and that was fine. After a few minutes in the car, she confessed that she thought she knew why she’d gotten mad. Not mad, she corrected, but frustrated. She thought she could imagine doing them correctly, but that she would have to do it upside down from what she’d been doing. She was trying to visualize it in her head. This is precisely what made me smile too — that with the easy way being eliminated she actually had to think about why she was doing it. But she had grown frustrated because she was having a hard time grasping how to do it and it was something so simple. Tying shoes! But that she could no longer do it her own way. That she had to do it my way instead. It was then that she looked over at me and almost smiled and said ‘But I suppose that’s what training is all about!’ and seemed okay with it.

These are the moments that I look for, the moments to teach, to train, for the training to be accepted, for the thought that goes into it, for the desire to improve, to succeed, not just because it makes them feel good to do it correctly but because it is learning how to do things the way I want them to be done.

Protocol, Definitions, and Circles

Protocol is a word that’s been going around lately. I’ve used it for years, it was at the Behind Closed Doors conference, and I’ve had two different discussions with two friends about it in two days. Protocol, to me, is something that I have had and feel I do need to have in each of my relationships. Beyond that though, defining it was getting difficult. What is protocol? According to the workshop, it is something that you do to help reinforce the dynamic of the relationship. This is what I think best suits the way that I use the word protocol. For Devin, he defines it as a task that puts your attention on your Top/Domme/Dom/Master/Whatever. For Blake, it was pure fantasy. That or the sorts of protocols that I’ve had in my life were pure fantasy to him. I wasn’t ever entirely clear on that, just that he didn’t much care for them at all.

For some people, protocol really pushes some buttons. They push my buttons a lot. Sergie seems to like them a lot as well; I know this because we talk about the kinds of protocols we both like. Devin mentioned that he didn’t like them. As soon as they become expectations, he doesn’t want to do them anymore — at least, that’s how I took it. It reminds me very much of how I don’t mind doing something for someone but the instant they tell me I have to do something, I adamantly refuse. How I’ve not been fired from my job I’ll never know. People either figure out how to talk to me or the years with me are very rough.

This was the problem that I ran into though: expectations. I wanted to have it defined, but asking for definitions is kind of a grey area for Devin and I right now. We were going through a period of time where we were defining everything and redefining it and everything was a mess. I think it was a matter of trying to figure out where we fit into the life of the other. We were often talking about the same thing, but using different words. Or we were using the same words but they were meaning something different for us. Getting personal definitions wasn’t a problem, it was the way the words were being used and the context in which the knowledge was being applied that likely left a bad taste in our mouths. I’m reminded of a scene from WALL-E where the Captain is sitting in front of the computer, learning about what Earth had been like, and he just keeps saying “Define ____”. That was us. That is still us to a certain degree. So today, when I got stuck on ‘expectations’, I didn’t bother to have it defined. I decided it was better to just think on it and let the thoughts come rolling out.

Months ago we had a discussion on what we each felt ‘romance’ was. To him, romance seems to have to be spontaneous. This led me to think about something that most people consider to be romantic: Anniversaries! People enjoy celebrating anniversaries. (Random fact: jhusdhui and I never had an anniversary.) They know that they’re coming. It happens once a year. Because that happens, does it inherently make anniversaries incapable of being romantic? The point that he was making was that no one should expect anything to happen on an anniversary, I think. At least that’s what I took away from it. Once someone starts expecting things, then it kind of ruins it. I think that you can expect to do something special on an anniversary and not knowing what it’s going to be can still make it romantic.

This is what led me into thinking about expectations. What can someone rightfully expect and not expect? The first thing that sprung to mind here was a devoted couple telling one another that they love each other. So of course, I asked him how often he used to tell his partner in his last relationship that he loved her. I was thinking that he wouldn’t say it very often at all. However, I was completely wrong. Next, I had to know if she told him several times a day as well, and he affirmed that she did. Finally, I asked him if she had missed telling him that she loved him for a day or two, would he have an emotional response to it? He said that he would ask her what was up. To me, that indicated that he expected to hear that she loved him at least once a day. He disagreed. He concluded that he liked hearing it, but he didn’t expect it. If there had been no emotional response to not hearing it, I would agree with him. However, I still stand that it had turned into an expectation of sorts.

Now I thought back to protocol. Protocol in and of itself doesn’t seem to bother him. We had a protocol early on in the relationship where he would text me as soon as he got up every morning (ranging from about 5:30am to 5:36am) greeting me and giving me an update about whatever, either his morning, or how he slept, or the chastity device when he was in it. He tells me that I had suggested he do that and he saw no reason not to and so did. It wasn’t until much later on that I pointed out that it could be viewed as a protocol. Another thing that I’ve pointed out to him is that I prefer to have him on my left and I have seen him make efforts to always be on my left. I don’t expect him to be, but if he’s not, it’s likely one of us will make adjustments so that it will happen. Another discussion we often have is how in the past I’ve made it a protocol that my subs open doors for me and how he’s just always done it naturally. If it was suddenly expected of him, he probably wouldn’t enjoy doing it any longer. So it doesn’t seem to be that protocol is the issue, just the expectation of something happening that kills things for him. After discussing all of these things with him, I thanked him for answering my questions. He asked me if he didn’t usually answer my questions and I told him he did, so much that I had started expecting that every question I asked would be answered. So it was time to step back from that, remind myself he doesn’t have to answer any question I throw at him at all, and that thanks was in order for taking the time and not minding that I ask such personal questions of him.

Finally, I was left to wonder: what is it that we can expect from other people, from relationships? Two relationships ago I would have said a myriad of things that I don’t know are true anymore, or at least in this situation. I would have said that I expect that even if things get tough, we stick them out, work them out reasonably, but to what extent? What if one person feels they have done that and the other is unwilling to compromise? That expectation might not be met on the one side but it certainly was on the other. Is it fair to expect anything of anyone? Is it fair to not expect anything of someone? In our situation, in our particular case, would he feel worse that I expected he would show up anytime we make plans together or that I don’t expect him to ever show up again, to keep from getting my hopes up and getting hurt?

Circles. They’re a good shape, I’ve learned. Everything works in circles. Even my thoughts work in circles. I keep running around the same track. In this case, it’s relationships. I’ve written about what I want and need in relationships. Protocol is always on the list. I think about how I need something that affirms the kind of relationship that I want to have. I think about the kinks I want fulfilled. I think about the intimacy I want to create with someone. But then I start peeling back the layers. I start inspecting the sorts of things I want to do. I start looking at why I want to do them. I start separating. Is it the kink that I need or the person? I have plenty of boys that are willing to follow any command I give them. I have plenty of boys that will let me tear their flesh to ribbons. I have plenty of boys that will kneel and turn their lives over to me. So why not just pick one of them? Why not just take the easy route and take what will make me happy? Because in the end, I don’t think it will make me happy. I need the person. Finding the person that I have any kind of deeper connection with is so hard for me. There are so many different things that have to happen, that have to be present. Chemistry. Attraction. Intelligence. The way they look at life. So many things that are so hard to put into words. I want to feel something when I touch them and I want them to feel it in me as well. And if I don’t have that, nothing else seems to matter.

I know that he’s standing in the doorway, looking around. I know he’s trying to figure out where he’s supposed to go, whether he’s even in the right building. But until you get past the lobby and start walking, you’ll never know if the room behind that last door is what you’ve always been looking for. From the lobby, nothing looks certain. From the lobby, everything can be disorienting. From the lobby, where you came from looks rather safe and comforting and you know how you handled all of that. This was my problem from the very beginning. I may only be projecting. What I’ve learned in my years of confusion, in living my life, and was reinforced through the book I’m currently reading is this: there isn’t just one way to get there. There are millions of different ways to get where you’re going. Some are easier, more efficient than others. Some are messy and have dead ends. The point isn’t how you get there, just that you start going. Where you’re going and where I’m going might not end up being the same place. That’s okay. As long as we’re both moving and not being bogged down by indecisiveness or pure fear, that’s all that matters.

I’d like to think that some day I’ll come back to this and clean up the thoughts, write in what’s happened. I don’t know that I will. It might just be that my mind’s mess needed to be out so I could think about the next important step I’ll be taking. I think I’m okay with that.

Slavery

This was the first full weekend j and I have had together in a while. When my house was first broken into, my husband insisted that I stay at j’s place because it made him feel safer. Additionally it gave me something to do, since at the time I’d lost my computer which was what I spend most of my time on. Eventually I think he got over the paranoia of someone coming while I was home and he himself got a bit lonely, so I was spending more and more time at home, which unfortunately allowed me to drift away from j ever so slightly. Not in intimacy so much, but in protocol.

This weekend we talked a little about that. He’s a very high strung little kitten and he has a tendency to stress about anything. He doesn’t know how to relax so well either, not like he used to be able to. We both admitted that we liked higher protocols and that it helped us both out. With him, it helps him to relax a little and with me, it makes me feel like I’m actually helping him. I do what I can otherwise, but there’s just not a whole lot I can do other than to be there and tell him things will be alright. He says it helps, but I know that honestly it has to come from within.

I don’t think that we’ve quite figured out how to manage the higher protocol throughout the day though. I know what I want to see, and most of it starts with just the way he speaks to me.  I want to see ‘Miss’ in just about every one of his replies. I think it’s an easy way for us to be reminded of the kind of relationship we’re in. We’re not just friends or lovers, but are in fact Mistress and slave and having to write out just that every time he communicates with me will bring it to mind more often. In fact, it might even prompt a better way of speaking between the two of us. I know that when he’s in a very submissive place, I speak a little sterner, a little firmer, and with more authority. I have a tendency to coddle him when he’s feeling down, stemming from insecurities that were brought about the first couple of times I tried to do this sort of relationship (and it didn’t do me any good then either so I don’t know why I keep falling into that trap). Right now, as it is, I feel like anyone that might see our conversations might think we were just friends which is definitely not what I want.

Something else that we talked about was that I don’t feel like I know enough of what’s going on in his life. I know exactly what he’s doing every minute of the day when I’m with him, but other than that I pretty much only know if he’s at home or at work. I don’t know the inbetweens. I don’t know when he’s visiting with friends. He is very good at asking if he can have a friend over on the weekends or if he can go out on the weekends. If we’re both online in the evenings, he always asks if he can go get/eat dinner, if he can step away to use the bathroom, if he can go watch television, or if he can go to bed. But then the weekend will come around and he’ll tell me he went out with a friend or a friend came over and I’d much prefer to know closer to when it’s actually happening than at the end of the week. I’m a very controlling person who’s not getting a whole lot of control.

Additionally I’ve found that I don’t like taking it. I don’t know what kind of stigma I have for laying down very strict rules, except that I’m afraid that they’re too fantasy-based and won’t work out reality. What I should do is be strict and then lessen them if needed, rather than the other way around. Regardless, it’s my feeling that when the slave trusts the Owner, they’ll offer up more and more of their service and of their submission. So for whatever reason, in my head, if he truly trusted me, he’d take that first step towards telling me anytime someone came over, asking if he can go out with friends during the week rather than just on weekends, etc. I guess in a way it feels like he’s not exerting that much effort and I don’t want to, I don’t know, feel rejected? if I demand it and he fails. I don’t want to set him up to fail. I want to see him succeed but I want to see him succeed in so many more things than what we’re doing now.

We talked about stepping things up a little too, when we were discussing protocols. We talked about putting things in place such as not being allowed to talk at all, because he likes it. My problem with that is that I just don’t feel that we’re succeeding enough at the things I’m already trying to enforce. For instance, one of his rules is to shave every other day, and for him to shave his arms every day when he’s in the shower, so that he’s always smooth for me. When he gets stressed out (which is understandably going to happen, especially with these past weeks we’ve had) he puts them aside. I feel as though these rituals that I’ve tried to incorporate into his life ought to make things feel more normal, a way for him to unwind, and instead they’re not being utilized at all, and they leave me feeling as though they’re entirely unimportant to him.

In one of our latest conversations, we discussed him having a check-up, just to make sure everything’s in working order. There are a lot of things that run in his family that he’s susceptible to and if he’s going to end up with them, I’d like to catch them early. If there’s a way to prevent them, I’d like to take steps towards that. I intend to live a very long and fruitful life with this boy of mine and it’s not going to happen if we’re not taking care of ourselves. I mentioned going along with him for it and he told me he’d be more comfortable alone. At that point, I felt shut out. This person that I own lives an entirely separate life from me. To me, everything that is the slave’s is mine as well. So then, any health issue he might have is my concern and my problem too. At the root of it all, I’ve discovered I just don’t trust him to tell me if there’s anything wrong with him, not because he intentionally wants to hide it from me, but because he doesn’t want me to worry.

So with all of these things in front of me, with all of these things that I still have to work us through, I’ve found I don’t even feel comfortable calling him a slave. Whenever I’m speaking to someone else about him, I call him my submissive, or my pet. When I ask him what he identifies himself as, mostly, deep down in his heart, he tells me a slave. I just hope that we can either reconcile our definition of ‘slave’ to appease each of us or that I can guide him to be exactly what I want him to be, which coincidentally is exactly what he wants to be as well.

Focus

I had a lot of time to myself today. There was a lot of waiting around and doing nothing, so inbetween chatting with my pup on AIM via my fantastically awesometastic phone and reading through a bit more of my Gor book, which was supplied to me through j and a friend of his, also read through my phone, I was able to think about a lot of things. I usually am thinking about a lot of things, but today I was finally able to focus on a few different things that I wanted to see in my relationship. It might have had to do with the fact that I was in a very organized, high protocol setting all day long. In fact, that’s probably what inspired this particular vein of thinking. The why’s don’t matter so much though.

For a while I’d been telling j that I wanted there to be more formality, I just didn’t know how I wanted that to come about. Crow and I tossed ideas back and forth, things I’ve done in the past and liked and tried and didn’t like or things that weren’t reasonable or plausible at this stage of our relationship or just due to circumstance (such as not living together). His speech is something that I like to try to keep in check some of the time. The boy can be very snarky at times, and he’s even come across as rude unintentionally. Luckily those things don’t come out often and sounding rude hasn’t happened since the one incident in the car. He’s been very careful about that, I think. Snarky I don’t mind so much, so long as it doesn’t happen all the time. We can all be snarky. I’m more understanding of it when he’s working than anything. But I couldn’t pinpoint what about his speech I wanted altered or why.

Today I decided that I was having problems with the fact that his tone didn’t come across quite like I wanted it to. Some of that stemmed from the fact that I never hear him say ‘Miss’ or type it. Or he does, he does really, but not enough. Not enough to satisfy me. I can distincly remember him addressing me as ‘Miss’ in front of his friends at the holiday party we went to, and I rather liked that! But I want to hear it a whole lot more. So I told him that I wanted more of it. In nearly every sentence. Anywhere that it makes sense without sounding over the top. He’s really good at discerning those kinds of things and so far tonight it’s gone rather well.

Another thing that had been bothering me was the fact that I didn’t know where he was during the day. Because of his job and the hours he works, he can be at home or the office. He can work days or he can work nights. Normally he’s quite good about texting me in the day to keep in touch, but every now and again, because of the strange hours he keeps (because of work) he’ll go home, fall asleep, and I won’t hear from him for hours. This isn’t normally a big deal because I can usually guess what’s happened, but I don’t like having to guess. So I’ve implemented a new rule that states he must let me know whenever he leaves or arrives somewhere, most importantly by vehicle, but also anytime that he’d be out of touch for a few hours (so a meeting, or going to sleep, or anything of that nature). Knowing where he is, checking up on him, is something we both like. So much, in fact, that we were trying to find ways to incorporate GPS tracking into our relationship, somehow. Via phones was our clever idea, but I don’t know that we found any successful way of implementing that.

Finally, his journal seems to have taken a backseat to life. Which is typically okay because life has this way of getting in the way some of the time. However, getting to read those private thoughts is very important to me and so I’ve told him that it needs to be more important to him as well. A daily schedule would be wonderful. A daily schedule excluding most weekends is more realistic, since we spend most of our weekends together and I don’t usually let him away from me long enough to actually do a journal entry. Time with him is precious and I want to spend it using him in other ways than updating his journal.

These were what came to mind mostly, and the first things that I wanted to implement before I continued in this fashion. Something else that I’d brought up to him in general, not specifically like these three things, was implementing pet play more often. I think he needs the release, plus I like the fun of it. So we have focus, we have a direction to go in, and hopefully once these are like second nature to us, I’ll have another three or four things to focus on.