My Part in This

Sitting in church this morning it dawned on me that the root of our FLR struggles are my fault. I waver....I flip flop...I don't always tell my knight how I feel regarding our FLR.  I don't take the time to tell and show him just how precious his submission is to me, and I rarely share my thoughts about what's sexy about our dynamic.  And...since my knight follows my lead in all things..if I'm not open about what I want and think, how in the hell can I expect him to feel comfortable sharing his thoughts?

Sometimes I'm a very strong dominant. I tell him exactly what I want him to do, I flirt and tease and openly control my knight. Other times, I'm more passive - I ask instead of tell, I neglect the teasing and flirting and just kind of run on auto pilot.  Thanks to his ex-wife, my knight pretty much expects me to get angry and stay angry with him for an indefinite period of time over small things. It's an unconscious emotional reaction caused by being married to an emotionally abusive psychopath for over 15 years. My knight can't help it, and  even though he actively works to recognize and eliminate that reaction it still happens occasionally.  When I inadvertently withdraw my active dominance, my knight jumps to "she's mad at me" mode, and he pulls away from me emotionally. If I don't recognize what's going on right away then I end up backing off on the obvious dominance.  The rules and expectations don't change....but I give my knight the space he seems to want and I'm less flirty, tease less, and overtly dominate him less. It's a self feeding cycle that continues until I take forceful control again.

We've been doing this for years. Before FLR my knight would get sloppy in family obligations, and in his responsibilities to me. There would be lots of broken promises, and uncompleted house projects, and he would check out on us emotionally. That would continue until I had enough, and blew up on him.  After the fight, my knight was the picture of family responsibility and perfect dad for a few months. Then the cycle started all over again.

I think, the same type of thing is happening within our FLR, but to a much lesser degree. My knight needs to feel my control over him.... needs to see and feel me being his active leader. It's one of the ways he knows he's precious to me.

This morning, he and I were talking about orgasm denial. Most of the time he loves it, but occasionally it brings back bad memories and bad feelings associated with his ex.  He is hesitant to share those feelings and memories with me. This morning I told my knight that I tease and deny his orgasms because I love him. Then explained the differences I see in him when I deny him,and I told him just how sweet, sexy and amazing I think those changes are.  I don't know if I've ever laid it out for him like that. Sure, we've talked about it in small pieces, but I'm not sure that I ever explained it all out - in detail- for him.

In church this morning it hit me just how many stray FLR thoughts go through my head that I have not yet shared with my knight.  I start to share them, and then I filter my thoughts. I was brought up in a world where sex was not discussed... "good girls" just.. didn't. I'm still overcoming that way of thinking.

FLR is foreign to me.. I'm still learning how this best works for us. Part of that is learning to be open about my thoughts and ideas. If I can't do that  how can I expect my knight to share his thoughts and ideas with me.

So..I've Been Gone a Long Time

I'd like to say my absence has been because of the new book contract, or because we've been busy with family....but that just isn't the case. Sure, I've been busy but that's to be expected when you have 4 kids at home, and a busy writing career. No, the truth is that I've just not been making Qnk a priority. It's not just Qnk that I was neglecting. I also run a natural health website and blog  and that was getting ignored, too.

So, what have I been doing while I was gone? Well.. I've made quite a few herbal remedies, written half of my new book, done quite a bit of middle ages research, re-learned to knit, researched a LOT for novel I want to write, wrote some erotica, learned to sew, and done a lot of reading.  Of course, that's stuff I would have done anyway.  Through it all, I failed make the time to blog. As busy as we can get, if I don't actively and intentionally make time for something it just does not happen.

 We've continued our FLR, although there have been some bumps in the road. Getting comfortable with my dominant role seems to be a "one step forward, two steps back" kind of thing.  I'll start feeling more confident about where I'm leading us, my Knight will say something random that makes me start questioning myself again. That's where we were two months ago, and I'm just now getting past it.  My knight is working on a writing contract. The person he's writing for happens to be a friend of mine, and she mentioned that she was getting fed up and frustrated with her some of her new writers who sign the contract and then don't update her on how things are going. She was pretty pissed, and somebody was in danger of not getting a second contract with her based on his lack of communication. So..I went home and asked my knight if he had taken the time to email and update B on his progress. Of course, the answer was no. So, I told him about my conversation with B and let him know that I would be changing his writing schedule to reflect her needs from her writers.  My knight promptly ignored my schedule changes and it turned into a big argument.  An argument that ended with him yelling at me that he didn't need or want my help. I was pretty stunned. That is really out of character for my knight, and I started to believe that maybe he was starting to resent all the changes in our relationship, and the FLR dynamic in general.

...and of course he wouldn't talk about it in any depth. When I tried to get his feelings on the matter I got one and two word answers. So, I dropped it.  As far as the writing contract goes, my knight did take my advice, and moved to my schedule changes on his own. He also apologized for being an ass and claimed he didn't mean it.....he was frustrated and felt like I wasn't listening to him.I explained that I was listening to him...but I disagreed completely, and really just needed to do what I told him to.

After the smoke cleared, I tried again to tell him how his comment had shattered my confidence regarding our FLR. I told him I needed to know if he was actually enjoying the dynamic, or if he's just tolerating it. For an answer I got, "I've already apologized, what more do you want from me?"

That didn't help.

I didn't stop the FLR, my expectations of my knight didn't change, but I became a lot less obviously dominant. I quit reminding him that he belongs to me, stopped running my fingernails over him as I told him to complete a task. I started asking instead of telling. Granted, he knows that even when I ask, it's not much more than a polite demand, but the difference is obvious in his reactions.

I tried talking to him again about how I was feeling.  And, again, I got nowhere. We fell into a routine of not talking about what was going on.

Until finally I had enough. One night I asked him  quite bluntly if he wanted to continue the FLR dynamic. His answer surprised me, "I don't know."  It felt like he was hedging --- saying he didn't know until he could determine what I wanted.. You know ... the "I dunno, what do you want to do" routine. My knight is the master of that.

I told him that I wanted to continue the FLR and that even though I had been not been acting overtly dominant, that my expectations of him had not changed.  Then I told him I had had enough of the distance between us, and had enough of him just going through the motions and being emotionally checked out on us. From here out I would be quicker to punish and and punishments would be more tangible and not at all orgasm related.  He seemed to perk up a little bit.

He told me that he felt like I wasn't listening to his feelings during the book contract argument two months ago, and that at the end of the argument when I said I would no longer help him schedule his writing time..that he was on his own there.... it had really thrown him for a loop. He said that he depends on me to help him find his writing time, without neglecting me or the kids and  that he needs the FLR to give him the structure of knowing exactly what I expect from him. Then he told me that he's lost without my guidance because not knowing exactly what I want from him at every given moment causes a distracting amount of stress for him. He gets something, emotionally, when  I'm actively dominant over him in our everyday lives.  It reminds him that I love him for who he is.