Nice story, Tracy. I hope I find a love like that one day.

Missy May

There are some things it's best for husband NOT to know, and how much you owe on your credit cards is one of them. That sort of thing only unsettles them. Letting him cut up your cards is setting a dangerous prcedent, it will be putting ideas into other husbands' heads, we don't want this sort of thing spreading. I certainly hope MY husband never gets to hear about it.

Sorry, but I don't think it is wise to let husbands know EVERYTHING you get up to. A woman should have SOME privacy in her life. And letting him cut up your cards!No, really, that's simply going too far. When I hear something like that it makes me react like the Widow in Taming of the Shrew reacts to Katherine's abject grovelling"Lord, let me never have a cause to sigh, till I be brought to such a silly pass!" Spanking is one thing, but depriving a woman of credit cards comes under the heading of "cruel and unusual punishment"

All right, KrosRogue, all right. I admit it. Yes, I DO have issues about trusting my husband. Because he has a very short temper. Because he gets very angry. Because, a very long time ago, when we were first married and things were very bad between us, there were a couple of times when he hit me (yes, I mean hit as in hit, not spanked). I'm not saying I didn't give him severe provocation, I did. Nor am I saying he hit me very hard (I'm not talking about broken noses or black eyes or anything like that). It was a very long time ago, it has never happened since, and we get on much, much better these days than we did then. But it does mean that I can get a bit frightened when he gets in one of his tempers. It makes me (God help me, I'm going to use the V word) VULNERABLE. Okay? Yes I have issues about trusting him. I wishe he didn't get angry so often and so easily. I wish he didn't yell at me. I wish he didn't yell at the children. I wish he could do that calm, quiet authoritarin stuff. I wish he was more like the men I read about on this website. I wish he didn't think this Taken In Hand stuff was all a bit of a joke. I wish he realised that it actually makes people HAPPY. I wish he was more like you. There, you did it! You got me to OPEN UP. You got me to EXPRESS MYSELF. You got me talking like a lame self-help book. are you satisfied now? I HATE you KrosRogue

There, you did it! You got me to OPEN UP. You got me to EXPRESS MYSELF. You got me talking like a lame self-help book. are you satisfied now?

And I bet you feel much better for it, right? Okay maybe you don't but I sure understand all the contradictions you are living with much better than I did before.

I was thinking about the subject of temperament this morning. I said MB's temper frays sometimes when we are struggling with our Taken In Hand relationship. I should clarify that. My husband is one of the slowest people to anger I have ever known. When I say his temper is fraying that means he is getting close to exasperation - not exactly a threatening frame of mind. Well it didn't used to be. ;-)

His level-headed approach to life is strange to me because I am as mercurial as they come! I don't know how we would manage (if at all) if he were given to the mood swings that I am. Trust would have been a lot longer in coming, that is for sure.

If your husband sees that the Taken In Hand aspect of your lives can benefit him, maybe then he'll learn to participate in an effective and engaged way? OMG now I sound like a self help book!!

What I mean is this...I wondered why MB finally converted to enjoying Taken In Hand after he had been a kind of wary participant at first. That's easy: self interest. When he looks after me (on a number of levels) I reciprocate by paying more attention and looking after him better.

It's not quid pro quo or anything that clinical. It wouldn't work if it were. For us it goes like this: MB watches over me enough to step in and help wrestle my burdens and demons with me (very often OTK BTW). When he does this I have all the emotions that Annie wrote of:

I feel deeply connected. A very peaceful calm stays with me for a very long time, if it has been an emotional experience, which it always is. It is one of my most powerful experiences, it changes me. It creates a calmness within me that radiates a joyful existence.

I am grateful for his taking the time and bringing that connection so I respond in all sorts of positive ways. I do what I can to make life a little easier for him and I try to ratchet up the fun factor. The details of that are specific to our relationship. I am sure you know a trick or two of how to get your husband's attention in a good way. If you don't, maybe someone knows a self help book you could buy...

When I respond to his authority by being a gentler, kinder wife, MB watches over me a little more attentively still. We have been building this positive cycle for years now and I don't ever see it going backwards.

I wonder how things might change if after your next spanking you did something your husband loves but was totally not expecting?

FWIW

Maddy

Louise,

I have no desire or intention of controlling you or getting you to do anything. That intent is reserved for the woman whom I will eventually choose to be my wife. My messages to you were merely expressions of my opinion of what I want in my marriage, what I consider an ideal marriage. This I will have.

If my forcefulness influenced you to take steps to improve your relationship, I'm glad for you. I wish for you a long and happy marriage, filled with love, trust, and excitement.

KrosRogue

Louise,

From what I can discern of the picture you paint of your husband, I don't think he will cut off your shopping activities. He may restrict them to a more financially responsible level, but I think you will still be able to enjoy enough of it to stave off any potential withdrawal symptoms. ;-)

As for whoever will be my future wife, you are probably right. She may very well have to be on her toes, but I hope her attitude would be much more like dancing and far less like walking on eggshells.

KrosRogue

You worded that as a simple statement rather than a complaint, so I would guess that perhaps you were a bit wild with the expenses on EBay. Regarding Amazon, if you tailor your expenses around what he thinks is reasonable and do it for a long enough time, you may win his confidence in your future performance at EBay. Even if it doesn't happen, a bit of temperance should go a long way to insure your good standing with Amazon. ;-)

KrosRogue

No complaints even with the lock, eh? ;-) It seems you both are making very good progress. I think it can only get better for you from here.

As for me finding the right one, I need to make myself right first. I wrote elsewhere about my struggle to get my act together enough to be able to nurture a good relationship. I need to fix "me" first before I can move on to the more pleasant experiences in life.

KrosRogue

So, you found a backdoor to EBay, eh? Wheee, that must have been a thrill. And your husband found your tracks in the "History File"? Ouch! Well, friendly word of warning, you being computer illiterate and all; there are at least a dozen other ways that he could have found the same info, and almost as easily as using the "History File". I am sure he will be watching a bit more closely now, but as you said, "Case Closed". I presume by that you mean there won't be any more "accidental mouse-clicks"? ;-)

I know you are wishing me well with the comment about my woman having an interesting life, but just for grins, I thought I might point out that the life implied is embedded in a Chinese curse. ;-) I don't know the exact wording of it, but it is something like "may you live in interesting times" or "may you have an interesting life". Rather strange wording for a curse, as I would think a dull life would be less desireable.

KrosRogue

I think it loses a little in the translation, not to mention the differencs in cultures, - but I was once told interesting in that context == full of strife and problems or something similar. It's used in a similar context in the UK - if someone had an "interesting" journey to work, f'r example, it was likely to have been full of delays, bomb scares, muggers, derailments and so on.

--

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" Hamlet, somewhere.

Louise,

He may not think of it as a joke, but he could very well have been amused at what you did as well as being serious about enforcing your discipline. I know I would. I think it's possible that you may be amused by the situation as well. I think the mix is part of what makes the whole interaction so tantalizing. This seems very close to what I meant in an earlier comment about me keeping my woman on her toes while fostering an attitude of dancing.

KrosRogue

Yes, I think he probably was amused, especially at the idea that I could ever have imagined, even in my widest dreams, that I could possibly have outwitted him in anything at all technological. I thought the ebay thing was finished with, but unfortunately for me not so. On Monday afternoon he checked the computer to see if I'd been making any illicit ebay trips (I hadn't, even I'm not that stupid). However, he did happen to look at my ebay page and noticed the bit where they tell you how much you'v spent in the last 31 days. After contemplating the total for a while, he decided to impose a penalty of one smack for every dollar I'd spent. And it's an awful lot of dollars. I argued that as we're in the UK it should be in sterling, which would have almost halved the number. However, he pointed out that he'd logged onto ebay.com where it's shown in dollars, that most of the stuff I'd bought was from the US anyway, and that if I said any more he'd add on the postage charges too. He's spread it out over the week, he wants to finish by Sunday night as he's going to the US for a week on Monday, and he doesn't like leaving things unfinished when he goes away. I've spent more time contemplating the workshop floor this week than I normally do in a month, I think it could safely be described as an interesting week. Don't tell me, you think this is funny don't you?

But, let me tell you, this is not in the LEAST bit funny. I am definitely going to need the whole of next week to recover. I don't know how I could EVER have thought that having my credit cards cut up would be tough, this is much, MUCH worse.

I LOVE the idea of my husband restricting my shopping activities -- first, the dominance/control aspect is totally hot to me. I like the idea to "ask permission" to log onto EBay, for example (I would like to be told "no" once in a while!), or having to account for what I spent on a shopping trip. (Very humbling to someone who is used to being in charge of her own spending!) And from a practical standpoint, this type of control would help me keep my spending within reasonable limits, which I admit, I'm not very good at doing myself!

I'm a wife of a Marine officer. He is dominant by nature...he's a Marine!! I'm not really having a problem, but I need him to come out of his shell sexually. He is sexual, don't get me wrong, but he seems to be apprehensive to just "do it". Meaning do something new and exciting. Crazy or wild. He's very controlled with his actions, probably because he is a Marine, but I want him to let loose on me. I'm doing a lot of researching and self improvement while he is deployed to Iraq this year. Yes...gone for a WHOLE year with no sex! It's rough, but it will be awesome when I see him!! With that said, I want to please him SO badly, but I just don't know how to show him what I want without taking away any of his masculinity or making him feel unaccepted. I want him to be more dominant, but how do I slowly introduce more of that to him. He isn't a wuss by no means, just reserved. I don't want to shock him by just coming out and telling him of one of my fantasies of being taken and raped. I don't think like a dominant man, so I don't know how to bring that out in him!!

Thank you!