The Bumpy Road to Recovery #3

[Bagheera]

Over on CharlieBrown's thread, Strong&Alive wrote the following:

The "vibe" I get from your posts is one of mentally "leaning" on your wife to "guarantee" that whenever you initiate (and no matter how), she will say yes. You want the "security" of a wife that will agree to sex once you intiate, and you counter-balance that with a Nice Guy subtext: "I will only initiate when I think you are in the mood".

You probably feel justified in this mindset, because there is a history of rejection and crappy excuses by her, which have probably hurt your ego. On the face of it that's a understandable and reasonable.

But such an approach IMO (and experience): (1) Undersells your own desire and ability as a man to get the sex you want. (2) Makes for piss-poor initations and crappy sex.

I didn't want to hijack over there, so brought it over here.

S&A, while I don't disagree with you on principle, I do disagree with you on approach. I think that you frequently try to take a utopian, Dieda's "Superior Man," stance to every issue, and don't acknowledge that there may be intermediate steps to get there, and that most of us mortal men can't go from 0 to 100 MPH in a manly flash.

As I talked about in this post, I enjoy blanket permission to 'take' my wife whenever I like, and I can report that this arrangement has helped BOTH myself and my wife in our own SSM recovery tremendously. As I explained before:

The permission that I have to take my wife sexually whenever I choose -- within common sense, and with a specific safe-word just for initiation in place -- was my wife's idea (based upon this Taken in Hand article that she found and shared with me). It fits in well with her sexually submissive nature, but more importantly, it was a very clever way for her to get us out of the old 'sexual rejection cycle' that plagued us for so long. She hated rejecting me as much as I hated the rejections. The pattern hurt both of us.

For the first several months of our recovery process, I laid the groundwork for a healthy sexual relationship. Her needs were being tended to -- she felt truly respected, cared for, and cherished by me for the first in years. We had repaired much of our close friendship and emotional connection. I had relearned how to court and romance my wife again. The problem of initiating sex remained, however, as I've described in my first thread here --> I wasn't being confident, seductive, and 'manly' enough to tip the scales and tumble her into bed.

So my wife turned the arrangement on its head. We talked about it (at length) and in a wonderful display of trust, she essentially turned complete control of our sex life over to me. I can literally 'take' her when I like --> no asking and therefore no rejections. HOWEVER, with such a privilege comes responsibility. I don't abuse the privilege, and her enjoyment remains just as important to me (if not more) as my own. I do my best to choose times that we BOTH can really get into it and and have fun. I'm not perfect, and do make the occasional misread of her responsiveness, but she's pretty forgiving and we both learn from it. So far, this new dynamic is working well for us.

More recently, we've made this arrangement part of our sexual D/s relationship: it is no longer her gift to me (placing her in the giving, dominant position), but something that I demand or expect from her (placing me in the taking, dominant position). She is my woman, my "possession" as it were, to do with sexually as I please, when I please. And she enjoys being "mine," being "possessed," and giving of herself at my demand. Granted, not every couple wants this sort of sexual D/s relationship, but my wife's initial extrapolation of MWD's "Just Do It!" principle worked very well. It got her past the "not tonight, not interested," mentality, and got me out of the "she's just going to say no anyway, she's not really interested," mentality.

Most SSM's involve -two- emotionally and relationally wounded people, and the recovery and healing process requires each to give each other a helping-hand and some forgiveness for not "getting it perfect" the first time something is tried. If one of my attempts at a "manly" approach falls a bit flat on occasion, my wife gives me the A for effort anyway. And if she -ever- made an attempt to "shake her tail feathers" at me (I'm still hoping for that one), I don't care if there is only one feather and it promptly falls off....she'll get a male "standing ovation" for it anyway.

-- B.