A need for control

My husband and I have been married a total of 27 years (two of those years we went through a divorce) and we have been in a domestic discipline relationship for about 2 years.

I have learned there are mainly three types of submission from a very nice couple on another site. Obedience, service, and control submission. I am a holistic women and have a bit of all three types in me, with the majority, at this time of my life, being control. I need my head of the household to be very involved in my life. I need him to take control. I have only one steadfast rule that is: don't break the connection. At the moment we are working on a few rules around a diet I need to be on for my health. For the most part rules or obedience don't sit well with me. I am much more a control type person. Service at this time in my life is a give-and-take thing with the head of my household. I work more hours than he does most weeks, and am pretty tired most nights. We serve each other.

For me the control is the most important part. It makes me feel safe and very loved. I need him to be involved in my life, to know what I am doing, to give input, to suggest, to congratulate, and to tell me when I am off base. The type of dominance or how he exerts the control is not as important as the control itself.

My husband spanks me for fun and for discipline. I have a very real need! Another woman might just need to feel her man''s control in her life and that is it. Or she may later develop a need for him to express that control in different ways including a spanking. Every women is different.

Sharron

Have you seen the following articles?
Is your new man dominant, domineering, or a dithering wimp?
I want... to be possessed
What the woman gets out of it
Feeling the dragon's fire
Each to his own
Out of control, insane, driven by our emotions? No way!
How it felt to be taken in hand for the very first time
Laying the groundwork for other possibilities
How it felt to be taken in hand for the very first time
Dealing with a man who doesn't do as he's told

2003 Oct 8 - 11:56 | add new comment | latest article | previous article | next article |

Control

Sharron, you said:

I need him to take control. I have only one steadfast rule that is don't break the connection.
That's a good rule. When you say you need him to take control, what does that mean in practice? Can you (or any of you guys/gals out there) give more examples of taking control? I feel this need for control too, but when I was trying to explain it to a guy yesterday, and he asked for examples, I couldn't think of any. Can y'all help me come up with a long list of examples?

by Jenny on 2003 Oct 9 - 21:41 | reply to this comment

Examples of control

If you have a tendency to stay up late and you have an early start everyday, and you get mad at yourself for staying up too late, he might tell you to go to bed by midnight and discipline you if you don't.

If you don't tell him you're going out and he's worried he might tell you that from now on, you call him, or you tell him where you're going when you're going out, or he might tell you you must ask - depends what works for the two of you.

If you're trying to lose weight, he might help you by taking you in hand OTK when you slip up and eat that chocolate bar, or he might send you to jog around the block a few times.

He might have an opinion about where you sit in the bus, and he might expect you to follow him instead of marching off ahead of him.

He might tell you to change if he's taking you out and he thinks you're dressed inappropriately. He might institute an apparel rule that you must follow and if you don't, it's OTK, and you still have to change.

He might tell you not to watch horror movies when he's not there, if you get scared by them. If you do, it's time for you to be punished!

It depends on you and your life and relationship. What works for one won't work for another. It's got to be natural for you as a couple.

by Todd Evans on 2003 Oct 10 - 09:25 | reply to this comment

Control Examples

Hello,

There are many examples of control in one's life and comes from all different areas. The laws of the land are a very powerful control but many break them. I believe the reason for this is the lack of connection. If people do not feel connected to society they could care less about the norms or mores of the land and breaking the laws means nothing.

For me control has to come from a deep connection to my husband, without that connection there is no control. The biggest form of control for us is the connection.

I understand you want very concrete examples and not abstract concepts. Some concreate examples are:

* I am a bit tired and don't feel like talking, but he can see that I do need to talk...he takes control by telling me what he sees and what he wants me to do, usually it is open up to him and let him know what is happening inside at that moment.

* I hate going to doctors and doing anything medical. He monitors my doctor visits by making sure I go, making appointments, and turning me over his knee if I fail to follow through.

* I am being a bit bitchy, and instead of doing the norm that many men do at that point and withdrawl and wait for me to get over it, he controls the situation and lets me know my behavior isn't acceptable. If I don't correct things he helps me, with a hug, a nudge, a joke, a touch, or a spanking if needed.

* We are out together, and I want him to control events, what we do, when we arrive, when we leave...I love input but he knows what I like after all these years....he controls the outing.

* Inside I feel ashamed or depressed because I have done something I am not happy about or proud of...after I tell him he assures me I am very much loved, spanks me, and hugs me. He helps me get past the feelings of self doubt and putting myself down.

There are numerous examples in my life, and in many peoples lives, thinking of where I need the control I need him to be involved. I need him to take the time to know what is happening with me, to feel my moods, to feel my inner turmoil and to not ignore it but to take it all as an opportunity to enrich us and help us grow. He is the Head of Relationship...HOR. Without this leadership I am pretty much lost, and feel very frustrated, sort of only half here. I need the control submission in my life to feel the masculine dominance that I crave.

Hope this helped answer your question.

by Sharr on 2003 Oct 12 - 09:37 | reply to this comment

Control vs. Obedience

Jenny...I think you have to decide if it is control centered connection (submission) you seek or if, in reality, it is more obedience centered connection. It does not matter what label you put on whatever your individual needs, but for myself I see most HOH/HOR relationships with the woman being more obedience driven than anything. I think it is important that you describe for yourself your needs and how these needs must manifest in your behavior.

By obedience I do not mean she wants her husband to micro manage her life or to take away or diminish who she is as a human being. I mean the need for him to enforce obedience in behavior that is intended for connection.

I will give an examples from my own experience. My partner loves to shop. She shops for the practical purpose of buying groceries, necessary things for the house and she also shops for those little knick knacks that really make a house a home. Now that we are together for so long, she often shops with the idea in mind that what she is buying is for *both* of us and that is her mindset. Apart from the practical, her shopping is a behavior intended for connection.

What happens is this very behavior can sometimes get out of whack. She may tell me she wil be gone for a "couple hours" when I request it, but once shopping gets caught up talking with other women, taking extra time at the stores, being way too late getting home. This isn't so bad in itself, except there was no emergency situation, no reason she could not have called me and I end up feeling worried/frsutrated that she would disregard what could have been a fairly important request from me that she would not know about. She is late, in this case, because "Oh, I'm just going to be a few more minutes," minutes which easily turn to an hour or more. She has a need for my control in the relationship, the behavior of shopping is itself intended in part at least for connection and still she has allowed the behavior to distance my control emotionally. Her real need is for emotional and spiritual connection with me, not for shopping.

Could I simply remind her that once again she has failed to call me after I made a specific request? Does this mean she is being rude or simply not interested in my feelings? For us, it means neither. For me, it simply means her behavior of shopping, for whatever reason, became a more powerful form or behavior of connection to our relationship than actually being physically home on time. This is not ultimately what she wants. She wants me in control and she does not want her otherwise perfectly reasonable behavior to diminish that control.

We could talk about it and we do while she is standing in the corner after she is soundly paddled. Spanking for this kind of discipline of connection involves some deep rooted emotional responses not only from the woman but from the man as well. It is easy for a woman to understand her own complexity at some level, but not so easy for her to understand the male experience at the deepest level of this most poweful intimate connection. The experience of physically spanking is important because it is only through that gateway that we gain the control of our intimacy. Though the spanking is certainly not erotic by any reasonable standards, and most often we do not have sex immediately afterwards, it works for us nevertheless because we use it enrich our intimate and erotic connection so that *we* are more important than any outside behavior we do.

It amazes me sometimes when I hear people say something like "Oh, I can understand spanking for fun, BUT these people are talking about DISCIPLINE." Oh, My! Why should it be surprising that we can develop what is an erotic interest for most of us into something more meaningful, more powerful, more enriching? Why is it diffuclt to understand intellectually that such a powerful behavior as spanking for discipline will lead for some to the deepest form of physical, emotional, spiritual connection possible in human sexuality? I don't get those who judge us, but I do get that my partner's behavior is intended to connect her emotionally to me and when her behavior does not do that she is not meeting her most fundamental need as a woman in the man/woman dance of connection. And that I believe is the need for control beause it is really the need to establish how we relate and how we best connect since, I think, intimacy and genuine love is the primary need of us all.
Frank

by Frank Nelson on 2003 Oct 14 - 00:56 | reply to this comment

Obedience vs Control?

Frank --

Could you explain the difference between "control centered connection (submission)" and "obedience centered connection"? It is not clear to me what the difference is there.

by Helen on 2003 Oct 15 - 17:59 | reply to this comment

Who wants such a partner?

Excuse me: The person you've described above is a child. Who in the world wants to be married to an adult who doesn't have enough self-control to do these things on his or her own?

I'm serious. I seriously want to know: Is inability to control one's behaviors attractive to some people?

As a woman, I know that it's certainly not attractive to me when a man I'm involved with can't get himself in bed on time to wake up refreshed for work the next day and so on. To have such a man as a partner would be like having a junior-high-school student as a partner, in my opinion.

Are men actually attracted to women who can't do these simple things? Is this the kind of woman you want for a wife? Do you expect her to get to teh point where she does get herself to bed on time? Or, if she gains a great deal of self control, would she then no longer be as attractive to you?

by a Taken In Hand reader on 2003 Nov 11 - 21:10 | reply to this comment

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.