Paying Closer Attention to His Reactions

The past few days have been unremarkable. Knight has been completing his daily task list, and has been meeting expectations without any problem. Most nights, I spend half an our or so in some sort of cock tease for him, which always results in an orgasm for me. Since we've gone back to FLR, knight has been slowly and steadily settling back down. He's talking to me more, and fighting the FLR less. It'll take us a bit of time to get things where I want them. But, we will get there.

I've been trying to pay closer attention to his moods and general attitude.  His attitude has improved a lot over the last couple of weeks. Last weekend, knight had kitchen duty all weekend - that meant he was responsible for all cooking and cleaning, and I expected the kitchen to be spotless by the time we went to bed on Sunday. It was punishment for not cleaning my cast iron pans when asked earlier that week. Before we reinstated the FLR, knight would have just blown off the extra kitchen work, and complained that I was being unfair about the cast iron. But, last weekend he stepped up and did exactly what I required of him without argument. It was a nice change. Earlier this week, I gave knight a shopping list and asked him to stop at the store with the kids on his way back from an activity. He did so, but let our 12 yr old talk him into getting an item that was not on the list. Our 12 yr old misunderstood what I was doing for his younger sister's birthday, and thought we needed white chocolate chips. Knight figured 12 yr old knew what he was talking about (because he usually does), and thought maybe I'd forgotten to send him an updated list before he left work, so he bought the chips. When knight and the kids got home, I questioned him about the white chocolate. When I told him he was wrong, he was gracious and apologized for not texting me for clarification.  Again.. a pleasant change from what I was dealing with before we went back to the FLR.

I have noticed, though, that knight tends to make little "mistakes" when I don't actively show my dominance. It doesn't seem to take much to make him feel my control over him. Simple things, like a request for him to stop what he's doing and make my tea seem to make him happy. Telling him "I want you to ..... " instead of asking, or standing at my car door and waiting for him to open it seem to make make him smile.

He is talking to me a little bit more, but I have to ask very specific questions; open ended questions usually get silence, or a confused look.

Hopefully things will continue to improve. I need to work on being more comfortable acting on things. There are things I'd like to do that I have not because I still feel silly and awkward. I'm working on getting over that, and forgetting all the times he simply didn't react when I tried to do something different in or out of the bedroom. We've talked about his freezing. He says he didn't know how I wanted him to react, and not knowing what I wanted caused a firestorm in his head -- he stood there questioning himself, and debating with himself about what he should do, and so did nothing.  I've told him exactly how I want him to react in new situations in the bedroom, so that should solve the problem. And yet, I'm still hesitant to introduce new things because of those past experiences. I need to step back from that, and give knight a chance to show me he will do as I asked.