Finding His Motivation

Things around our house have been fairly uneventful. For the most part my Knight and I have fallen into a comfortable D/s routine, I think. Most of the time my Knight finishes his daily assigned tasks. I was actually impressed the other night when I announced it was bedtime. My Knight asked my permission to stay up a few extra minutes because he had not finished washing pots and pans. I wasn't thrilled about going to bed alone, because I had plans to tease him a bit before we went to sleep. But I was happy to know he was taking that chore seriously enough to stay up and finish. I was sound asleep by the time my Knight came to bed, so he missed out on the playtime, but maybe next time he'll manage his time a bit better.

There have been a few little things that make me think I should get serious about adding some sort of daily action to remind my Knight of his submissive role. It seems that every couple days my Knight gets sloppy about one or another (or several) of his daily responsibilities. I can remind him, but it does not good. It's not until I chew him out that he starts paying proper attention to things again. This has been an on-going issue for years. Before FLR I would let it go for months before I finally got pissed and it turned into a yelling match.  Not meeting his household responsibilities was a *huge* issue for us. I couldn't depend on him for anything at all. Since FLR I remind him as soon as things go undone, and it really does happen less often. Sometimes it's putting gas in the van for me, other times it's making breakfast on-time, or cleaning up after himself in the kitchen or yard, forgetting to do something extra I asked of him -- little things. But what I find interesting now is that when I call him on these things, his attitude changes. He doesn't look me in the eye, he doesn't make excuses (not often, anyway), and his typical answer is, "You're right. I should have done it. I'll go take care of that right now." Before FLR he argued and made excuses as to why it didn't get done. I've also noticed that after he hears from me about something left undone he is more attentive to his responsibilities, and to me, for a while. Until the next time he starts slipping.

His pattern really makes me think he needs a daily reminder of who is in charge around here, and why.  I *thought* the tease and denial would provide that for him, but I guess not. I have him making my breakfast for me every morning for the same reason. I thought that maybe if the very first thing my Knight does every morning is something that serves me, it would give a reminder. It seems we need to have another discussion about why we're doing a FLR, and what he gets out of it so that I can better understand what motivates him.