I spent all day Tuesday alone and uncaged. It did feel good to pee standing up, but I had no sense of additional freedom. I think that the amount of time I have spent caged has conditioned me to disregard my penis unless Mrs. Lion is attending to it. Tuesday night, my sweet lioness did some long overdue grooming. I am now completely free of pubic hair; smooth as a baby’s butt according to Mrs. Lion. A couple of hours after the grooming session, she played with me. I had an accidental ruined orgasm. This one was very intense for me, but so close to just edging that there was almost no ejaculate. I didn’t immediately lose my erection, but it faded after a minute or two. Maybe we can experiment a bit on how to bring me back after a ruined orgasm. It does feel good to be back in my cage.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the keyholder / disciplining wife role. So much of what I read by both the dominant women and the submissive men focus on expectations for the top. These expectations vary from bottom frustration when his top does housework or fails to tell him to do some menial task she chose to do, to tops worrying that they aren’t meeting their partner’s submissive needs. Some particularly arrogant writers offer “rules” that all of us must follow.

The simple fact is that we are all different. There is no right or wrong way to conduct a power exchange. There are, however, expectations that we all have. The two I think are most important are the two C’s constancy and content. You may not have heard of “content” in this context before. I use it to refer to some of the most important keys to successful domination. Since we are all different and there is no single road map to success, content is a general term that addresses your particular dominant activities. Let me explain.

If you attempt to establish a power exchange with a simple edict like, “Do all the chores.” and expect the bottom to get a satisfying submissive experience, you will both be disappointed. In many ways submission is a request for attention. The submissive partner wants to do things for his top; at least that’s what he says. What he means is quite different. In most cases he means that he wants to be obedient to you and experience your appreciation or disapproval of the results. That is content. It is the set of exchanges that allows him to experience your power, your appreciation, and your wrath. It’s attention. Enforced chastity doesn’t require more than locking up his penis and occasionally unlocking it and letting him get off. Very few males will be happy with this arrangement. He wants your participation.

The amount of participation is up to you. Many keyholders have their males remove and put on the chastity device. They just hold the key. Many also have the male do the edging and masturbating to orgasm when allowed. She doesn’t touch him at all. Others, like Mrs. Lion are very  hands-on. I am not permitted to play with my penis at all. Any sexual touching comes from her alone.  How you decide to do this is up to you. There is no right or wrong way to do this. The important thing is that there is content, not what that content is.

Consistency is critical in any long term power exchange. The caged male needs to understand the boundaries of his world. It doesn’t mean that everything has to always be the same. Change is fun and is critical to keeping things interesting. It’s just that he needs to understand what’s going on. If you want obedience, he needs to know your expectations. More important, he needs to experience consequences for disobedience every time he disobeys. Missing a chore should provoke a response from you. Any infraction, no matter how small, can go unnoticed. That doesn’t mean you need to spank him for everything. Just make sure he knows that you saw his infraction. A submissive male can become insecure in a world without consistent boundaries. The bottom line is that it isn’t important what you do. What counts is that you do something and you do it consistently.

In my experience, one of the most challenging aspects of being a top is feeling successful. As the bottom/caged male, I get immediate feedback from Mrs. Lion if I am not doing the right thing. A paddle is firmly applied to my bottom if I don’t please. But how does Mrs. Lion know she is doing a good job? Currently, she measures her success based on my reactions to her dominance. I have to admit that when I was a top I did the same thing. But what reactions should she be using for measuring her success? That’s the real challenge.

Consensual power exchange puts setting limits in the hands of the bottom. The top can negotiate, but ultimately has to respect the limits set by the bottom. To fail to do so would make it non-consensual. That takes care the “must not do’s”. How about quality control on the other stuff? In enforced chastity the keyholder has her caged male’s fantasies for starters. A sensible keyholder knows she shouldn’t use the fantasies as a literal blueprint for his chastity. There are quite a few pages and posts here with ideas on how to get started and continue running the chastity experience.

Mrs. Lion has frequently written (for example, here is yesterday’s post) that she judges her domination by my feedback. However, even when I give her positive feedback, she still says that she isn’t meeting my expectations. Usually she compares her performance with fantasies I write here or even with posts I write that talk about keyholder techniques. There’s a fundamental problem with using my feedback as her quality control: I am controlling things by virtue of my reactions.

It’s true that Mrs. Lion is a pleaser. She loves to make people happy. As her lion, she works very hard thinking of me. A good example came up last weekend. One of the reasons she suggested (note suggested, not decided) we go where we went was that it was 60 miles from a place she really wanted to go. But when we got there, she didn’t even suggest driving those 60 miles. Instead, almost by accident, when I noted we had driven halfway there looking at other things, she said, “Well, if you want to go we can.”

I’m not saying that she has to change her metaphorical stripes (everyone knows lionesses don’t have stripes) and become a decisive and demanding keyholder. But it seems to me that I end up running the show. The same is true with enforced chastity. She judges herself by how much she pleases me. I think this desire can get in the way of  her following her own instincts. What’s a lioness to do? She wants to make me happy and when she does I wonder why she is judging herself based on my reactions.

I could stop giving her feedback. But I think that’s not fair at all. She deserves to know how what she does affects me. But what should she do with that information? Recently, I’ve had a problem staying interested in sex. This is due to the situational stress of being out of work and money. It’s understandable. It’s also no secret that I hate being that way. Last week she got my motor running and apparently decided that it isn’t worth the risk to keep me waiting more than a few days lest my libido disappear again. I am delighted that she didn’t ask for my feedback about this strategy, though she regularly asks me if I want to come. If I do, more often than not, she obliges. I’m not complaining. Oh no, I’m not complaining at all.

One of the toughest lessons a top or keyholder has to learn is to trust her instincts and decisions. There comes a point when caged male feedback shouldn’t be very important. Information is generally useful, but after 18 months of being caged, I expect that Mrs. Lion knows me well enough to manage my chastity without my help. By nature, I like to be in control. So, being my keyholder is more challenging than it might be with another male. I respond to the firm application of a paddle. Maybe I need more of that to remind me when my input isn’t welcome. Of course that is completely up to Mrs. Lion. That’s the point of all this, isn’t it?

This weekend was not a very good one. Our camper is stuck. Our brand new smoker needs a new part. The only thing that actually worked right was Lion’s orgasm. It wasn’t his scheduled date, but I adjusted for certain variables. Number one was that I needed something good to come out of the weekend. Number two is that I’m hedging my bets that he will get a job soon and a bonus orgasm along with it. Fingers crossed! Number three is that I can give him an orgasm whenever I want to. Can’t argue with that!

Tonight is punishment night. He’s not looking forward to it at all. I told him we’d be working on him not squirming. I bet he’s dreading it. I always wonder if he gets himself too psyched up for it. Could it possibly be as bad as he thinks it will be? Or is it worse? I remember one time a friend and I skipped some classes. While we were wandering around town we happened to see her parents. She was positive she’d be killed when she went home. In fact, her mother was far worse. She kept telling her to wait till her father was ready to deal with her. When she finally confessed to her father, it turns out, he never saw us. But he said he bet that week of thinking she was in trouble was probably far worse than any punishment he could think of. So I wonder if Lion builds up the severity in his mind to a point that is far worse than anything I will do to him. Not that his butt won’t be stinging. I just don’t think it will be as bad as he imagines.

So far I’ve been sticking to spanking as punishment. I can’t think of another thing that is as powerful. And easy. Delaying his orgasm won’t have much affect now that he doesn’t know what the date is. Besides, spanking stays with him long after the actual swats are administered. He can sometimes feel the sting for hours. The only thing I can see changing about punishment is maybe making it more timely. As soon as he does something, I’d need to punish him. That won’t work all the time, of course. For now I’m keeping things the way they are. But I’m also keeping my options open. He wants me to make decisions. I may decide that his next infraction deserves to be dealt with immediately. Poor Lion butt.

I whomped Lion hard last night. Maybe harder than I should have since his last punishment was so long ago. But, like I told him, it’s supposed to hurt. And I don’t want him to commit those same infractions again. And I know his tough Lion hide can take a lot more than I gave him. And, yes, I am trying to convince myself. I feel bad, but then again, I don’t. I know I shouldn’t. He asked for it. When I did it, it felt okay. When he grumbled that his butt hurt, it felt okay. When I read what he wrote about it, it felt okay. But now it feels less okay. Intellectually I know it shouldn’t.

It’s not that I feel like I need to apologize to him. It’s sort of the same feeling I got when I swatted my kids on the diapered bottoms for doing something dangerous. It had to be done, but boy did I feel bad afterwards. They’d cry and I felt like I wanted to cry too. Although for them it was more of a shock factor than pain. There’s no way they felt the actual swat through all that padding. It was more of a “Hey! Mom! What did you do that for?” I think I just need to get my heart more in line with my mind. It needs to be done. Lion wants it to be done. I can do it. I don’t think I’ll get to a point that I want to do it, but I can probably get to a point that it doesn’t bother me afterwards. Tonight is maintenance spanking night. That may help. I might have gotten too far removed from punishment swats. I guess as I do them more often, it will take some of the sting out of it for me. Ironically it will give Lion more of a sting. Poor Lion butt.

I am getting better at resisting the urge to give Lion an orgasm. I still want to, but I can talk myself out of it better than before. Now it amuses me that he’s so desperate to come. I like getting him all hot and bothered. Mostly I love touching him so much. And knowing that my touch can get him that excited. It always could. I guess; I just realize it more now than I ever did. Add that to the list of things the cage has done for us.