The right sentiment, the wrong approach

So after my last post Dan and I had a long conversation over the course of a week or so and we ended up in a really good place, though we were still preparing for the big conference and that was taking up lots and lots of time. We managed to work together very much like the team we are. I felt closer to him again. Part of that long conversation involved me taking DD off the table - I told him I wasn't wed to it, but I was wed to the closeness it seemed to bring to us and if he didn't want to do DD that was fine, but he needed to come up with another way to bring us that closeness. I told him I believed he was getting a lot out of DD and if he did want to do it, he needed to own it and own what it brings to him as well as what it brings to us. He gave it some thought and agreed - he did get things out of it and he liked what it gave to us he definitely wanted to do it.

Flash forward - we've made it though the conference and it's two weeks later and during the last month or so he's been really nicely HOH-y. Lots of swats, lots of decisions, I feel protected and cared for...... but

Of course there's a but - enough time has passed without there actually being any spanking that it's starting to feel a little ... uh... staged, fake, uh something along those lines. Like it's just lip service. I can totally see his mind working. He knows he should spank me, but it's not like I'm running around like an idiot giving him all these obvious reasons and I know him, he doesn't want to fuck it up so he's doing nothing. I can see him think about it - hmmm maybe I should use that as a reason to spank her - but what if she doesn't like that reason - what if it's not good enough - I want to do this right. I totally appreciate his thought on this and I've been really wanting to let him figure this out. I've said from the beginning that I fully expected we'd have a longer road to travel to get to some semblance of regular and consistent DD and I've been totally correct on that score. I really feel like we're sitting on the cusp - he gets it - it's good for him, it's good for me, it's really good for us. He's just heaped all this extra pressure on himself because he's worried he'll get it wrong which has led to total inactivity.

I've been thinking in the past week or so.... okay I'm ready for you to do something. I really don't want to have to "turn the crank" again. I don't want to be in charge, I don't want to decide, but okay now, I'm ready.

So now we get to this weekend. We've got a lot on our plate this weekend and it was really stressing me out. I asked him for help and that didn't go well - mostly because of a bunch of mis-communications but we ended up yelling at each other which we almost never ever do. Then today, on Saturday I had just a stupid day - lots of things didn't go all that well and I was still stressed all day. I can see Dan is worried about me, he wants to take care of me and make the stress go away - I love him for that.

but... he came into our room tonight after the kids were down and closed the door and said... I have a theory of what might help you. I think I've waited too long to give you a stressbuster. It's two weeks after the conference and I think I should have been helping you out more and I think it could be helpful to you. So if you're willing and if you want me to, I think tonight I could give you a stressbuster. I told him that I didn't really "get" stressbusters. Oh, he said, well I could spank you because you were snippy to me, or because you're va clempt (don't know how to spell that), or cuz you yelled at me last night. Hey, you yelled at me too. Yeah, but I don't like to be spanked. Then he said - you have absolutely no sense of humor about this do you? Nope, I said. Well, I'll be downstairs if you need me. And he left.

I told Melanie about this conversation and she asked how I felt about it. After some thought I told her "I feel like it won't work for me if he's asking for my permission, particularly when if I don't specifically give it he leaves." I really think if I'd said.. yeah honey that sounds like a great idea it would have totally pissed me off. I sat there and stared at him thinking - oh wow, go Dan I'm glad you finally got there on your own - I should totally let him do it so I can then give him positive feed back and we can move down this path but - I couldn't do it. I was already too stressed I just couldn't add more to me and that's what it would have been.

What would have worked for me....
Over the past couple of weeks.... There have been lots of times when I could see it crossing his mind... I should probably spank for that, we-ell maybe I should wait for something bigger, yeah I'll wait. I think he should have just done it - just gone ahead and spanked and then let us talk about it afterward. Maybe he'd have done it for something I didn't agree with and it would have pissed me off, maybe it would have been blah, maybe it would have been wonderful. I won't hold an attempt against him.

For me - DD is about feeling protected. Feeling cared for. Feeling paid attention to. Why him deciding he should spank me makes me feel that way I have no idea. But it's not the spanking, or it wouldn't matter if I was the one to decide it needed to get done - so it has to be that it's his decision to do it. He's watching me, he's seeing something, anything, some way I could be better; nicer, more respectful, more careful with myself, my health, gotten more sleep. Something. Anything.

I really think we both get something unexpected out of this, but until we practice this regularly and consistently and unfortunately for my butt I think that means actual spankings, we won't learn what actually works for us and what doesn't. It might turn out that we rarely have spankings. It might turn out that we have them scheduled every other Sunday no matter what's going on. We might find out that longer but lighter spankings work best for us or that shorter and harder ones are better or as is my guess there is a place for both.

But we won't learn anything until he's ready to decide to do something and not just decide to ask for my permission to do something.

Kelly