Wrapping up a day on my own

I am rarely at home on my own in our joint flat. Usually I am here for complete weekend if my partner is on holiday. Usually if she is on holiday, she will return at a point in time when I am not here. I try to leave the flat in a great condition but - as there is a cat and a cat minder for a few days between my weekend departure and her arrival. I cannot be taken responsible for most imperfections of the cleaning.

Today for actually the first time she will return with me clearly responsible for anything not up to her pristine cleaning. More so, she has come back from a girls' day at the spa so should not stress - which she easily does if anything is not tidy. So I have a true responsibility to make sure all is fine. I have done so for the last two hours. and now I really write this because I do not dare going anywhere else in the flat and starting to mess it up again.

I hope she will be fine and can continue relaxing. If there is anything, I hope I can help keep her in a relaxed mood and make sure she will request me to resolve it while she enjoys herself. I so wish she would learn to just ask me to redo anything I have not done to her satisfaction.

I can really no understand what keeps her from insisting I redo things if they are not done to her liking. She can be so wonderfully dismissive of me if I ask something she does not feel like doing, so humiliating when it comes to describing decisions I make that she disapproves of. But for some reasons, she has just not the patience to let me try again. I wish she had.

On the Floor

I slept very very well and I am glad I opted for the floor. I got very sweaty last night and she would notice her sheets being a bit smelly if I had slept in the bed. Before I fell asleep I came across this gallery. I have a bit of a fetish for legs and heels and shoes but there were a few images that triggered something else. If you zoom in on the last images where you see the floor of the hotel room, you see how dirty the floor is. I felt so thankful when I noticed this. Thankful that my partner is such a fanatic for a very very clean house. I am glad the floor I sleep on is excellently clean.

Sometimes though, I am sad that she would never make me responsible to look after the cleaning. She does not trust my standards.

No Stag Do

I an sequence of comments last week I was discussing her staying in a nice hotel whilst I was not allowed to. This is kind of happening tonight. I have just driven 5 hours to our flat for the weekend. The flat is empty, she is away with her friends for an early hen night to a nice spa somewhere.

We discussed hen night and stag to a few months ago and she was clear that I won't be allowed one. I should be frustrated but actually, it makes me happy to know she has this wonderful sense of superiority. It makes me happy to know she is enjoying herself.

It will feel weird sleeping on the floor again - on my own without her being in the bed next to me. But I have a long list of things to organise for her tomorrow so I will be busy until mid afternoon when I have to pick her up.

Geeky Sub

I have for a few days felt I wanted to write about the combination of being geeky and submissive. I am a bit on the logically fuelled spectrum of humankind, which probably is a key reason why my feelings as a sub often confuse me so much.

As a teenager, when exploring the interaction of masturbation, internet and submission there is a lot of self-submission available, usually defined through some logical rules. There were plenty of websites, where you could masturbate to some Hollywood beauties' fake naked pictures with comments and refresh delays and there was a chance of 10% or less that at the end you were allowed to get an orgasm. Other people have written stories about games that were very logically minded or depended on time passing. I fell for these.

When introducing an increasing level of submission into our bedroom, I thought it was a great idea to help her by giving her rules. We started a countdown for masturbation 60 seconds and I had to come or a countdown form ten at her leisure.

We did engage in some of these but they proved utterly useless. Refusing an orgasm is only fun if you are close to the edge. Depending on arousal 60 seconds was either way too long or way too short and a countdown at leisure would be timed to either succeed or fail, for a girl with little experience in the tease and deny business it was rather hard to get it just right.

Frustrated as I was, I opted for stochastics. Getting a formulae that would give me a 5% chance seemed a good idea but this meant we had to do something with numbers and my partner just was not that geeky. Even throwing a dice is a bit of a turn off when you are getting down and dirty.

It took me a fair share of time to realise something that in retrospect appears so simple. All I needed to do was whet her appetite to be a little bit cruel/selfish/dominant/spoilt. IF you want to teach someone to be mean, don't use numbers. If anything at all it feels that they are mean to her if she cannot fully follow the maths behind them.

However there is still one number that she does use. The minutes I spent massaging her. If I stop too early I will certainly know how long it has been - though I am sure she sometimes negotiates that number down.

Shoes

I have an incredible lack of understanding for a lot of fetishes (the ones I do not have), as can probably be deduced from this post. However when it comes to having fetishes myself, I have a few and they weigh strong. Furthermore, I am not often to be treated to many of my fetishes as they are not shared between my and my partner.  So when they are catered for, they come even stronger.

My partner does not think of her feet as sexy, so I very rarely get to see them and despite massaging them frequently, I am often asked to massage them through the socks. My fetish for feet is already making itself felt quite strongly when I see the socked feet. Last weekend when I was sleeping at the foot of her bed, I woke up very early and saw her in the bed, all covered but her socks sticking out. I was short of taking a photo as a reminder.

In 'real life' she hardly ever wears any shoes that feature anything resembling a heel. She wears trainers to work where she changes into a very sexy collection of heels but she does not ever wear them back home. I am just the poor guy who listens to her complaining without ever having the benefit of seeing them.

As we will get married this autumn, my partner has been looking for wedding shoes. Last Saturday she got changed to get ready to try her wedding dress. Now in this preparation she showed me the beautiful shoes she will be wearing. At the sight of her naked feet slipping into high heels, I immediately got weak knees. I know if will likely not get this view again until the big day, so I am somewhat worried that on the day I might truly end up kneeling down as she will walk along the aisle.

Conclusions: Helplessness

I am a strong believer of what is called "Learned Helplessness". It is the theory in psychology that helplessness is the perceived absence of control over yourself. To link back to the CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and one of its key pillars the action-belief-consequence system, the belief in learned helplessness is a big support when you try to change your lifestyle.

I have in the past felt comfort in the excuse of being helpless to turn some behaviour off. Take comfort eating. You eat despite not being hungry and it is comfortable. If you feel you should lose weight, you seek comfort in perceiving the helplessness that you are unable to face the challenge. There is a vicious circle waiting to draw its fangs closer around you. If you are in such a circle and manage to break it, then you will realize that you will indeed give up a significant level of comfort that you have accepted and enjoyed over several years.

All around us there are behaviours that society and maybe some friends will try to convince us are not good for us. If we have engaged in these forms of behaviour, we have taken a comfort in them. If there is any doubt in that moment, then it helps to be helpless.

A professional mistress once described to me seeing a mistress as a 'hobby'. I felt devastated, felt I wanted to utterly disagree. If being submissive is a 'hobby', how does that relate to being gay or lesbian? The more I thought about this and reflected on the way I felt when I was truly helplessly bound, the more I realized that I'd agree.

Technically all we want to get in our life are desires. Each person has different hormonal levels and triggers for these desires and hence we are interested in different things. Some desires can be moulded and change over time (substitute tea with coffee) others are non-interchangeable and will persist throughout your life but you can refuse to act them out.

So being a submissive is a 'hobby' just as sailing is then. I might swap sailing for surfing because I learn that it triggers the same emotions, I might struggle finding a substitute for being submissive - but hey who knows.

Now society teaches me that there are many bad things about bdsm and if society fails me then there is my nervous system that might tell me pain is bad. So I am divided between the submission and all that comes with it and it being the right thing to do.

This is where helplessness comes in for me. If I wear shackles that keep me form walking more than a few inches with each step and my hands are behind my back, then I am much more helpless and much less likely to suddenly say, hang on is this really going to make things easier if I do this. That's the cycle I like about bondage and sensory deprivation. I love the emotions that it triggers, I love the feel of the leather, but I also like that if something wants to take over my mind and tell me that there is something not right here, then I cannot help it anyway.

The Rules of Engagement

I just read Thumper's article "Still Hard". I am not sure if I can follow him. I think for both of us the true delight is the experience of giving pleasure. If I have observed my partner correctly though, a long massage that might arouse her can be ultimately more pleasurable than being brought to an orgasm.

I also sometime have the feedback that there is a point when she decides whether she wants to reach orgasm or merely wants to enjoy the sensation. I am constantly trying to find the little signs that give away the route we are on as I know that the non orgasm route desires different sensations than the orgasm route.

Yes, the further we travel on this route the more frustrating it is not to give her the orgasm. But I always feel this is very short sighted. As I wrote previously the highlight to me is the hug. And that can be a lot deeper without her reaching the climax.

Slap!

There is one thing that happened yesterday that has ignited a little smouldering fire that only now very slowly settles in my emotions to a somewhat more prominent role.

In out 7 year relationship my partner has slapped me yesterday for the first time. Now I should just ignore this, it was not a serious slap more meant as a joke, but to me it was a milestone. My partner is very physical in the relationship. She does not hesitate a full on body contact fight to kick me out of bed if she wants breakfast and I am a lazy ass tired person in the morning. But she has never ever slapped me.

Yesterday, I had made some comment (I cannot even remember what about) and she disliked it. She asked me to come to her looked at me and slapped me.

Certainly in its own right this is not a huge change. But to me there is something that has changed. She did not discuss, she acted. There was a new confidence that I would accept what she said without arguing or protest.

I knelt down in front of her and said "I'm sorry". 

Conclusions: Isolation

As per my previous post, I am starting this series with the topic of Isolation. I chose Isolation for a number of reasons: It is very close to my heart given my previous fantasies, it has recently featured in this post in a blog that I follow and I feel I can very much connect to that post. Last but not least, Isolation is something I have in one form or another experienced and very much enjoyed.

Definition

I feel Isolation is a poorly defined term and I also feel that thinking a bit deeper about what it can encompass is quite enlightening - particularly if your partner would not touch a padlock and leather shackle at the same time.

Isolation is often described as taking away senses. But some senses apparently can be taken away more easily then others. Just think about taking away the sense of taste. It appears difficult to take that away.

It is also frequently stated that taking one sense away makes other senses more -uhm sensitive. Again, this is somewhat superficial as I can limit a sense's sensitivity (for example by using headphones in the ears) so that the observations of that sense are just dumbed down, but they may be even more important or trigger the person's concentration on that sense. 

Let me try to approach this from an entirely different angle. Isolation is a psychological activity. The senses are not the key, it is altering the perception of the senses. Take the ABC model of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, you have the action which is registered by the senses, the belief and the consequence. The consequence is how a person reacts or perceives the action and this depends on the belief. 

Isolation is a medium to long chain of activities. It does not work in 10 seconds. So Isolation does not just affect a single action but a long chain of actions. An action can alter the belief. Now the poorer we understand an action, the more uncertainty is planted by the inputs to our belief system. 

Isolation is the continuous manipulation of a person's perception of their environment leading to an increasing loss of understanding of the environment and increased caution and distress when responding to interaction.

Just to be clear my definition is a contradiction to what;'s on Wikipedia and is purely personal. It also encompasses a wider spectrum. My definition would for example consider standing in the corner facing the wall as isolation. 

Fantasies

My fantasies on isolation have been long and deep. At a very early age, I was dreaming about being completely isolated from my environment, blacked out for long terms, not knowing or understanding anything that happened around me.

These ideas were usually connected to heavy bondage and mummification. I remember dreaming of a steel container that was perfectly matching the shape of my body for this type of scenario.

If it was only for the isolation, I also would have been very much drawn to the idea of a week in the OWK prison, asked to spend my days in a cell with no natural light and no other input to my thoughts other than having to stand during the day and be allowed to lie for 10 hours a night.

Experiences


Luckily, in real life, the world is much saner. I have learned that isolation works well for me for periods of a couple of hours as long as the setting is not painful or uncomfortable. I try to find something that I can focus on.

I have been tied in a quality body bag with a very restrictive hood for a few minutes (my estimate is 15 to 30). I was sure in that situation, that I could have easily done this for several hours. However having been tied into a cage that was too short for me to lie in was very uncomfortable and I would hope not having to endure this for any long periods. When in bondage (both in this scenario as well as when asked just to stand somewhere whilst not moving, I try to focus on maintaining an erection, having this focus point truely helps keeping my mind occupied.

I do however also consider a session where I had to walk guided by text messages isolation of some sort. It was deeply inappropriate to speak to anyone or interact with any person during this period. I was unsure what and when then next set of instructions would be sent to me. The situation was very inspiring for me. I focussed on a lot of thing I had never noticed in the same environment before. Having to identify things to occupy your mind will draw attention to small details in a way that my normal self is to preoccupied to do in every day life.

I absolutely enjoyed this and would love to experience this in a longer extended environment and maybe a more channelled way of directing my thinking.


Conclusions


As I am not planning to undertake any scenes with anyone other than my partner, I have been trying to think of suitable situations to further explore isolation. Based on my definition I am seeking situation where I have no control over the duration of the event and things that would happen around me. There should be an ongoing or better even increasing level of not understanding how the situation changes from moment to moment.

I can think of a number of ways how I can increase this helplessness in every day life. This will not change my environment moment by moment but the level of isolation will gradually increase as she is likely to claim more and more freedoms.

• I encourage and accept that my partner does not inform me of her plans for the day in many occasions. If she goes out, I may know where she is and that I am expected to pick her up or be at home, but I do not request to know how long she will be out for. If I eat at home and my partner has not eaten, I tend to get scolded.
• When watching TV I am not involved in the choice of programme. My partner loves to watch Korean and other Asian dramas where subtitles are required to follow. As I am often asked to massage her whilst she watches these programs I have no means of understanding the programmes but I have asked her that even after she is happy with the massage, She should expect me to wait on her, and not just leave the room.  
• As she is planning the day, I am wherever possible not asking for her plans. I will follow her when requested to and otherwise ensure that I can serve her and have anticipated any needs that she may have. 

Whilst I have started on the above and these are in some way already a reality, I would like to go deeper with these experiences. I am currently thinking about ways that she would arrange more proactively:

During our long distance relationship, she has often asked me not to see her on weekends where she wanted her piece and quiet. I was explicitly uninvited on such weekends for example to allow her to read the new Harry Potter. 

As we will be living together, I would love her to engineer such weekends in the future. My partner is willing to go to some length to establish her freedom and I can see her preparing a program for me for a day or weekend so she can have the house for herself. If for example I was to arrive at home on a Friday night and be asked to surrender all money and cards and then be sent to take a picture of some random - non important item some 25 miles away, having to walk there and back, I think this would be a very sensual idea. 

I also wonder if it could be possible to try something similar to a self experiment that I have tried in the past. my partner has lost a lot of love letters that I have sent her when we first dated. They were stories she loved and that I find hard to get the inspiration to rewrite anywhere near as nice. I could imagine that being isolated from her could help with this inspiration.

I can see several ways how this could work. Being tied to a chair and desk with only a pen and some paper or a laptop to write these stories would be one option. I have often dreamed in the last few months that she could send me to walk to a pub a few miles away, buy a dram and start writing a love story for her, bring it back and repeat the exercise until one day I have written one that would pass her review. 

All this centres around the insecurity of what happens next the loss of control and surrendering power. I am not so much interested in the sensory deprivation. Not because I do not like it - I do - but because unless this is what she desires, this form of isolation would not put me into a mood that I am doing this for her. 

I am not sure if I will ever find a way of convincing her of the last few ideas. They are far to drawn out to really still be interesting but if she ever get to understand me well enough to come up with similar ideas, then I think I have truely arrived at the point where I can stop thinking about these desires and let her fantasy and creativity rule my life completely. 

Conclusions: Introduction

I read the wonderful post Isolation and Confinement by Lady Anna's slave d earlier today.  I was not at all surprised about the way that fantasy turned reality was not quite as congruent as one might expect. I can follow d's thoughts very well. I doubt I have experienced the level of Isolation he described, I had similar experiences and would not expect Isolation to be as pleasurable as my old fantasy world may have assumed. (I have been at a point where I wanted to be submitted to the OWK prison and trust me if there had been an non punishment version with purely isolation and confinement I would have been there)

Whilst driving down South I had 5 hours to ponder about this blog and have decided to share some of the experiences that led me to my current way of thinking and approach to D/s and my relationship. These write ups  will be combination of conclusions from experiences with my partner, a lot or reading on and offline. Until recently though a lot of this reading had created more questions that answers. In many areas I had little if any idea what real life would be like. Three months ago I had the privilege to be allowed to session with an excellent Mistress, for essentially one day (on reflection I am glad it was not any longer).

I had long thought about such a session and probably wanted to learn more from it than I could have realistically learned in a whole month of 24/7 relationship. However I can only say that the more I think about it the expertise put into this session was tremendous and the wealth of conclusions I can draw from it has astonished me ever since.

I am planning to use all these sources for this series of write ups which I shall call "Conclusions". At the moment I think there will be about 10 segments with below topics, but the topics and order may change as I go along.

• Isolation
• Helplessness
• Independence and Dependence
• Service
• Submission and Love
• Pain
• Sexual Arousal
• Punishment
• Comfort and Discomfort
• Out of Session and in Session

I also hope that I will have the dedication to keep this blog alive long enough to comment at some point on the ways my thinking has changed over time.