Simple, Right?
I’m famous for wanting to try new things. It’s a very good thing that Mrs. Lion is so patient and understanding. I keep coming up with new ideas to expand our enforced chastity, FLM, or domestic discipline. I’ve noticed that others do this as well. I think that, at least in my case, when the Pandora’s box of sexual possibility opens, it’s entirely too easy to try to make everything that comes out into reality. Most of us have enough of a filter to leave some of the more extreme possibilities in the realm of fantasy, but we can get into some trouble on the boundaries of good-to-do and this-can-cause-serious-problems. Where this boundary lies is varies by each person.
The problem with each new idea is that it adds more stuff for Mrs. Lion to do. My overactive imagination can burn her out very easily. It’s not that I want too much. The reason is more complex than that. In the fantasy everything follows the “happy path”. We each play our roles perfectly and everything is exciting. Makes sense. It’s my screenplay about what turns me on (at least in my mind). But when we bring that fantasy out into the real world, it never seems to work the way it did on the silver screen of my mind.
A good example of this is enforced chastity. My mental movie had me locked up in a device and driven mad by the need to ejaculate. Mrs. Lion cruelly teased me with no relief. In the fantasy I had to earn the chance to come. It wasn’t very complex and was extremely hot to think about. The reality was nothing like that. There are over a thousand posts here about our efforts to include enforced chastity in our lives. It wasn’t as easy as buying a chastity device and locking it on. Over time we figured it out and now we are expert at my enforced chastity. It only took us nearly two years to get to this point.
Then I wanted domestic discipline. The movie in my head showed me breaking rules and getting painfully spanked by Mrs. Lion. Simple, right? Oh no! Mrs. Lion agreed to try it. That was several months ago. We both don’t do very well at it yet. In order for her to be a disciplining wife, Mrs. Lion has to decide what behavior she wants to correct. She has to have some method of tracking infractions. She has to decide how to punish me. All I have to do is present my bare ass for spanking when I break a rule.
It turned out that my fantasy of domestic discipline is a huge homework assignment for Mrs. Lion. She has agreed to continue working on it. She’s amazing! How many women would be willing to take the time and energy for this? Nonetheless, we have a very long way to go. We have yet to work out a routine that includes frequent discipline. Mrs. Lion has made remarkable progress. Like enforced chastity, it’s not so much that she has to do more. We both have to internalize what domestic discipline is to us and then build the necessary habits to make it a routine part of our lives.
My point is that most fantasies are very difficult to translate into real life. OK, it’s not difficult to do a scene where you both act out the roles in your fantasy and essentially act out your script. That’s not too tough to work out. But it is an entirely different story to try to turn the fantasy into a 24/7 reality; to actually add it as a permanent part of your life.
I’ve learned this over the last couple of years as we struggle with making two fantasies come true. Two is a very big number when you consider all the work it takes to change your life in even a small way. The only reason we have persevered is that it turned out the fantasies revealed some amazing benefits for both of us. Enforced chastity has dramatically increased our communication with one another. We talk more about everything, not just getting me off. We both feel much closer.
Domestic discipline, to me at least, may have an important benefit for us too. Since it involves Mrs. Lion identifying behavior she likes and dislikes in me and then reacting in a concrete way, I hope it will teach her to become more aware of what she wants and then assure she gets them. I think it starts with punishing me for failing to do what she wants. I hope that habit will grow into expressing her wishes and believing they will come true. In our case, if the power balance goes to my side, then I know she will suppress her wants and needs. With her in charge, maybe she will consider what she wants first. Simple, right?
Try, Try Again
Last night did not go well for us. Lion was interested but not really. I was using lube but he was still sensitive. It’s not a big deal. Initially Lion thought it was because it was late and this eye infection has been kicking his butt. This morning he said he thought maybe I was just too rough. Then he said it might just have been him being too sensitive. He asked if we could try again. When I said we could, he thanked me.
It always amazes me when he thanks me for agreeing to try something again. Especially if it’s something like edging. I mean, if it’s something new and neither of us really liked it then I could see saying no. But if it’s something we always do then why would I not want to try again? Does he imagine I will say no? Maybe he’s worried that I will give up on him. When he’s sick he tends to be more of a toddler, but I haven’t really encountered a man who isn’t. Maybe he equates the failure of one night with overall failure. If something didn’t work once, it may not work again. I don’t believe that. If something doesn’t work once, we try again. If it doesn’t work multiple times, we try it a different way. After all, if we didn’t try kink a different way (with the chastity device) we wouldn’t be where we are today. I may give up easily on some things, but Lion is not one of them.
If we didn’t try things again, we wouldn’t have each other either. It took Lion four tries and me two tries to find the love of our lives. I guess he’s a slower learner than I am. Either that or he was just biding his time until I happened along. I’m just glad we found each other. There’s no one that I’d rather try things over and over again with than Lion.
Three’s A Charm
This is the third time I have written this post. Each time just as I am about half finished, something else comes along that demands (in my mind, at least) my response. My first attempt was about how our relationship keeps evolving because enforced chastity has pushed us to communicate more. The second was about ruined orgasms and why I can’t seem to sense them coming, and now this, and hopefully my last attempt is about communication.
The ESP in the blogosphere seems to be working overtime. Steeled Snake wrote a post about improved communications in his relationship. Then, a few hours later, Thumper’s post was about the damaging effect of “drive by” comments. And, Mrs. Lion’s post was about our improved communications and her take on how to handle a no-play night. These may not seem closely related at first glance, but I think they are. Each post, in its own way, discusses changes, mostly positive in communications. Steeled Snake and Mrs. Lion discussed how our relationships have improved because of enforced chastity. Thumper wrote about how he has been hurt by thoughtless, or at least clueless, comments from readers.
Comment spam eventually infects every blog. As Thumper pointed out, his blog is about him, not reviews or discussion of external events. Of course our blog is about us and some of the most intimate details of our lives. The big thing all three of the posts have in common is to state that communications from people we know and trust tends to add to our lives. So, we all agree that our relationships and lives have been improved by a combination of our kinks and the very beneficial side effect of good communications the kinks provoke.
All of us, who blog on these subjects, for one reason or another exposed our lives to a great many strangers. We’ve invited these strangers to comment on what we write. When I started this blog, I hoped that comments would provide valuable feedback that would help our relationship get better. To a pretty large degree that has been the case. I’ve gotten most of the bullshit comments on our static pages (How to Get a Good Fit, etc.). The reason is that almost every reader gets directly to those pages as the result of a search.
Search traffic is great. It’s how a lot of our regular readers got here. But most of the traffic driven here by search engine queries is hit and run. These people read what they searched for and then leave. Some, feel the need to offer comments of generally poor quality. So, my reasoning is that by not allowing comments on those pages, the casual reader won’t get a chance to write clueless, frequently hurtful comments. Search engines also drive traffic to our posts as well. We do allow comments to our posts. I did some analysis and found that comments from people who know us and decide to respond to a post, do it within the first week of the post’s publication date. So, we automatically turn off comments after two weeks.
These changes have made a big difference in quality. They don’t seem to have affected people who have taken the time to get to know us. Like Thumper, our readers can also send us a direct message via Contact Us. I am on twitter (@thecagedlion) and I read it regularly. Every post is tweeted within a few minutes of publication, so responding to that tweet is another way to chat. If you follow me on Twitter, you will get a tweet each time there is a new post.
I like getting comments that offer constructive feedback, even if we disagree. I have no plans to turn them off. I am very hopeful that my fellow bloggers will choose to post about some of the things we write and open up a community dialogue. My decades in the real-life leather community have taught me that there is tremendous value in community. We bloggers read each other’s posts. I hope that Thumper shining the spotlight on pingbacks will prompt all of us to open a blogger dialogue.
We’re Not Going Back There
We didn’t play last night. I was in pain. Lion was allergic. We’re a mess. But today Lion says “someone” wants to come out and play. He says he hopes I feel better. Even if I don’t, we’ll play. I don’t want him cooped up in the cage because of me. And even if Lion didn’t feel like playing tonight, I might unlock him just because.
Lion is concerned that we would go back to our inertia of pre-chastity. I could see myself just coming home every night and vegetating. That’s my normal state of being. But there’s no way I want to go back to the way things were. With or without the cage, I hope I would maintain things the way they are now. We were never not close, but we are definitely closer now. And we are more likely to share what we’re feeling rather than bottle it all up inside. I’m sure there are still things we’re afraid to discuss. Sometimes those things come out in a post. Sometimes we figure out a roundabout way to discuss them.
The point is, we may not be able to play because one of us feels ill or life intrudes, but neither of us wants to go back in time. We’ve made too many strides to give up. Even if we can’t play for a number of days in a row, we need to keep play in the forefront. Perhaps we’ll need to make sure we talk about it every night. Maybe something along the lines of, “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well. We can just snuggle if you’d like.” Or maybe, “I’m sorry I’m not feeling well. Would you mind if we just snuggle tonight.?” This way we’re acknowledging that play isn’t going to happen, but we haven’t forgotten that we should have.
I don’t know. Just a thought. It may be very elementary to some, but I think we need to keep on top of things like this to maintain what we’ve worked so hard to achieve.
