My Journey to Submission Pt. 03

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I removed the first six parts of this series due to some fairly emotional negative feedback. Against my better judgment, I've decided to put them back in response to a lot of personal messages I've received. Once the first six are approved, I will continue the series until the end.

If you haven't read these yet, you should know that the story is about a highly intelligent woman who manipulates her husband into a strict and harsh (or, as has been argued by my critics, abusive) femdom relationship in order to satisfy her ever-growing sadistic urges. If this type of story isn't your cup of tea, I strongly discourage you from reading it.

**********

"No, I won't marry you," Ellen said. "Don't be ridiculous."

She made this pronouncement just under a year after I'd put her in bondage for the first time. It was one of those warm spring evenings, so full of promise, that bless Washington every April, about the same time that the Japanese cherry trees blossom around the Tidal Basin. We'd had a terrific day on the Hill, gaining bipartisan support for a deal that we both wanted, and we were having a drink at the rooftop bar in Betsy's, debating where we should go for dinner to celebrate our triumph.

"But I love you," I protested. "And I know you love me. I love every minute we're together, and I don't want to lose the chance to be with you forever." OK, this was a little over-the-top, but I meant every word. And it was not the first time I'd broached the topic of marriage. "Why won't you marry me?" I asked.

***********

Why had I grown so eager to give up my longstanding commitment to bachelorhood?

For one thing, I really did care for her. I'll skip the usual maudlin descriptions of how she made me feel, but the truth is, I'd never really loved a woman until Ellen came along. For another, we had what I considered the ideal relationship. Professionally and among friends, she was my equal, and I treated her with the respect that she deserved. But at home (for she'd long since given up her apartment and moved in with me), she was my submissive -- sexually and in all other ways.

If, during those eight months, you'd snuck into our home on some random evening to spy on our "24/7 BDSM lifestyle," you probably wouldn't have found much out of the ordinary. Unless you counted the fact that Ellen would have always been walking around the house in the nude, except for her tasteful black leather collar (though not if we had guests, obviously).

There was no crawling around on all fours, no eating from dog dishes, no serving as a human toilet or footstool or ashtray, no sleeping in cages, no giving me blowjobs under the table while I ate. Almost none of the common tropes of the live-in sex slave genre.

(To be honest, I get exhausted even thinking about how a couple might observe what some call "high protocol" on a 24/7 basis. You know what a woman never does in a romance or erotic novel? Catches a cold. Spills coffee on her blouse. Interrupts a date for some bullshit at work. Gets in a shitty mood for no particular reason. And so on. You know what she does in real life? All of those things. So I think that it's just common sense to make allowances.)

Ellen also had very few "domestic duties" per se. We were both too busy, and I was too rich, to bother with housekeeping or laundry, and we ate 90% of our meals in restaurants. For obvious reasons, she was responsible for keeping the dungeon clean and our toys hygienic, but the hardest part of that duty was washing soiled linens, and she just gave these to the maid with the rest of the laundry.

We did, however, have a few rituals, which we performed as often as we could.

When I got home in the evening, I'd go to the den and sit in my leather armchair. Ellen would follow after a few moments and kneel at my feet, tilting her head to expose her neck. I'd replace her "work collar" (a discreet platinum necklace that we'd designed together and had specially made) with her leather "home collar." And if there was something she wanted to discuss or get my advice about, then she'd lay her head on my lap, and I'd stroke her hair while we talked.

In the mornings, whenever Ellen was feeling anxious (which was surprisingly often, given her high level of professionalism), she'd parade in front of me after getting ready for work and ask "How do I look?" or "Will you miss me?" or something similar. She knew that my answer to this would always be "You look lovely. Now bring me your hairbrush." And when she did, I'd take her across my lap, hike up her skirt, and lay a dozen swats on her bottom. Not hard enough to bring tears and smear her makeup, but sufficient to give her a reminder of my presence throughout the morning.

And on weekends, she enjoyed showering me with attention. She always got up first to make breakfast, while I got washed and dressed. After we'd eaten, she'd ensure that my coffee mug remained full and hot, while I relaxed and read the Post or surfed the internet. And the last thing she did before getting ready for bed on Sunday evenings was to polish my shoes while kneeling at my feet.

Rituals of this nature took just a few minutes a day. But they went a long way to strengthening our relationship generally, as well as our Dom/sub dynamic.

Like any vanilla couple, we had to navigate the myriad issues that naturally arise when two people decide to live together. But a huge advantage of our BDSM relationship was that there was never any reason to argue. Ellen placed herself entirely in my hands. Whenever we disagreed about something, I was always considered right by default, and this worked out perfectly well for both of us, so long as she could trust me to treat her fairly.

Which I did.

Of course, we continued to explore our mutual sexual desires. We'd schedule an evening or a weekend afternoon to spend in the dungeon, and we also found ourselves heading there on the spur of the moment. All in all, we slept nearly as often in the sandalwood canopy bed downstairs as we did in the master bedroom.

I won't provide graphic descriptions of our BDSM sessions from this time. I'd hate to risk embarrassing Ellen, on the off-chance that some clever reader were correctly to guess her true identity. Suffice it to say that I took full advantage of her consent to "do any damned thing with her that I pleased." And, based on her mewling and begging and screaming (How thankful I was for my investment into professional-grade soundproofing!), she seemed unlikely to withdraw her consent anytime soon.

But our sessions were always about pursuing mutual pleasure, never about anger, or as punishment for transgressions committed outside the boundaries of our D/s dynamic. And I always lavished Ellen with aftercare when we finished -- holding her close, paying attention to her feelings and needs, giving her treats. To this day, I remain astonished by her ability to consume an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie at one sitting.

On the nights when we slept in our own bed, I also made love to her fairly often. For one thing, I wanted to show her that I loved her and cared for her deeply outside of our D/s dynamic. For another, she was so beautiful that it was nearly impossible for me to keep my hands off her.

***********

"Why won't you marry me?" I repeated.

She'd gone silent, as though she were working out how to say something that had been on her mind for a long time. She stirred her drink for a while, avoiding my eyes.

I tried one more time. "Ellen?"

Finally, she answered, "Because I have too much self-respect."

"Of course you do," I said. "And I love your for it."

"I know," she said, after another pause. "But as a girlfriend, I can turn a blind eye to things that as a wife I could never allow. Right now, I can walk away if I think it's too much. But as a wife, that could get tricky. And I'm not going to put myself in a position to be humiliated all over town."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked.

"Are you serious right now?" she retorted, incredulous. "Do you really think I don't know about the other women?" Her voice was uncomfortably loud.

Oh, fuck me.

So, it turned out that she'd known all along that I had not entirely given up my old habit of attracting new submissive partners online. Why hadn't I? Especially given everything that I just wrote about how perfect my relationship with Ellen was? To be honest, I don't really know. Old dogs not learning new tricks. Leopards not changing their spots. Whatever the appropriate metaphor is.

I'd cut way back, of course.

For one thing, there was the problem of "when." My relationship with Ellen dominated my free time, and it took a herculean scheduling effort to free up a few hours for a session with someone else. Not to mention the time required to attract, screen and seduce potential partners.

For another, there was the problem of "where." The bed in a typical hotel room has no frame, and I'd learned from embarrassing personal experience that the other furniture is usually flimsy, and that you can't rely on any of the bars or poles to support a woman's weight, especially when she struggles. So a proper BDSM session in a hotel room was a challenge. In the end, I usually just brought the women home. This presented its own problem, namely how to clean up afterwards, so that Ellen didn't find out.

In any event, with a lot of effort I overcame all these obstacles, and I managed to get in a session with another woman every other month or so.

"I'm really glad you're good at your job," Ellen continued, "because you'd make a shitty criminal, with all the traces you leave around. I found a used condom under the bed last week, for fuck's sake."

Now it was my turn to stir my drink and avoid her eyes.

She let me stew in the embarrassment at being caught for a few moments, then continued. "Look, I get that you're not made for one woman," she said. "It's hardwired into you, probably on the same wires that make you such a sadistic bastard." She smiled at her own joke. "And I accept it, I really do. To be honest, my panties even get a little moist when I picture you doing it with another woman. But what I won't accept is dishonesty."

"Why haven't you said anything about this before?"

"I was hoping you'd just lose interest on your own," she answered. "And, let's face it, things are pretty terrific otherwise, so why rock the boat? But there's a difference between not rocking the boat and taking the boat over a cliff. Or waterfall, or whatever. But in any case, I won't marry you."

"What if I changed?" I asked.

This question made her laugh out loud. "Can you name one thing you've ever done to give me the slightest hope that you can change?"

I thought for a minute, but of course, I couldn't. "I suppose that's fair," I conceded. "But is there something that I could do to give you some hope? Tell me what you want me to do, and I'll do it. I'm serious about wanting to marry you, you know."

She looked at me. Then, she started tapping her fingers rapidly on the table, which I recognized from my many negotiations with her as a "tell" that she was about to make her final offer. She did.

"If another woman is going to share my bed, then I want to know about it," she said firmly. "I want to be there. To watch sometimes. To participate even. And I want to have some say over who we do it with. In fact, I'll even procure the women for you. I'm sure I couldn't do any worse than that Goth skank you've got shacked up at the Marriott right now."

What the fuck? Is there anything she doesn't know?

"But the dishonesty stops now," she concluded. "If you can agree to that, and if you really think you can make it stick, then I'll marry you. Otherwise, don't ask me again."

I had to admit, what she was offering was extremely attractive. So I readily agreed, and we went ring shopping that weekend. Since neither of us had much in the way of family, there was no point to a big wedding. We simply got married in a private ceremony a few months later. Mike McCleary and his wife, Jennifer, served as witnesses, and that was that.

***********

You could read nothing but BDSM erotica for the rest of your life and never find a description of a fantasy slave wife who could hold a candle to my flesh-and-blood Ellen.

True to her word, she enticed some amazing women into our life. Surprisingly, I'd never tried a threesome before, and I found the experience revelatory. Again, I won't go into the gory details. But the sense of control mixed with intimacy, which I felt when Ellen lapped up my sperm from the pussy of another woman, or when she and the other fellated me simultaneously, then shared my cum in a long kiss, was on an entirely new level from anything I'd known before.

Some couples find bringing other women into their marriage to be an emotional minefield, but we never had any problems with it. Mainly, this was because Ellen understood that for me, the experience was a purely sexual thrill, and that there was never a threat that I would fall in love or seek to exclude her in any way. More precisely, she saw that my focus during our threesomes always remained entirely on her -- how the experience affected her, what it showed about her love for me, and so forth.

Also, Ellen was much more discerning in her selection of women than I'd ever been. We never found ourselves in crazy town, as I had with some of the doozies (including the "Goth skank") who'd responded to my profiles. Sure, with Ellen organizing my sex life, I had fewer partners than I had before I met her. But my experiences were an order of magnitude more gratifying. And as Ellen's bisexuality blossomed, she began to bring us women to whom she felt genuine attraction, and this often led to deep affection among the three of us.

When she found a woman that excited us both, we'd not only invite her to sessions in our dungeon, but also take her on exotic vacations, or even shack up with her for a while as a throuple. One thing I hadn't considered was that when Ellen met a potential partner on our behalf, she could establish trust much more easily than I, as a man, ever could. Best of all, I never had to worry about when to meet, where to meet, how the relationship should go, or anything else. Ellen took care of everything.

And, of course, when it was "just" the two of us, things were exactly as I described earlier. In other words, perfect.

To sum up: The first two years of our marriage were utter bliss. Ellen was the ideal BDSM submissive wife -- sex-slave, lover, friend, and partner-in-crime, all in one. I loved and respected her more than I can say. She was gorgeous beyond description. She was intensely sexual, and her kinks and fetishes matched mine perfectly. She provided me with more sexual variety than any man could ever wish for. I had no fantasy that she was unwilling to fulfill, and she came up a lot of her own that I would never have dreamt of without her.

***********

So why did I do it? Why did I fuck it all up by continuing to seek out women on the side?

In the time since Ellen first tied me to the wooden post in the basement, I spent many hours down there, bound in the darkness, alone with my thoughts. So, I had plenty of time to ponder this question. Here's what I eventually came up with:

The most obvious answer (and the one that my wife would have most readily agreed with) was that I was the stupidest piece of shit that ever lived. And that's true, I suppose. But it doesn't really explain anything.

A somewhat better answer was that I liked the thrill of the hunt more than the act of sex itself, and that my arrangement with Ellen deprived me of that thrill. Another possibility was that what really turned me on was the very act of cheating. The transgression, in and of itself, brought sexual gratification, in the same way that small boys get a thrill out of doing something naughty, regardless of what it is. Still another (and the one most likely to be favored by BDSM aficionados) was that Ellen had been "topping from the bottom" by putting herself in charge of arranging our threesomes and other aspects of our sex life, and that my cheating on her was a kind of visceral response to that.

Any of these answers, or some combination of them, or something completely different, could have been correct, I suppose.

But sometime, much later in submission, I had a sudden revelation, one that I was hesitant even to credit at first.

***********

It was a Saturday afternoon in March.

A random Washingtonian walking across Kalorama Park on that day might have wondered why an obviously well-to-do, middle-aged man was wandering around in the cold rain like a blithering idiot, inspecting all the low-hanging branches of the trees around the park's perimeter. The answer was that Ellen had instructed me to make a new switch for her to use on my buttocks.

The task was harder than you'd think.

I needed to find a branch that was long and straight enough, but also strong and flexible, because there would be hell to pay if it broke in her hand during use. It had to be thick, so as to produce sufficiently intense pain, but not so thick as to become "thuddy." Ellen much preferred to inflict the searing agony of a "stingy" instrument, marking my flesh with fiery red welts that nearly -- but not quite -- broke the skin.

A careful reader will recall that Ellen had once said, "Only one of us is an avowed sadist, and it's not me." Well, it turned out that she'd been completely wrong about that. I'm not saying she lied. People change, or at least they uncover aspects of their personality they never suspected were there. In Ellen's case, this turned out to be a very nasty sadistic streak, which often manifested itself in acts of surprising (even to me) cruelty.

Not that I'm in a position to be judgmental.

As I walked around the park, my dread at the anguish that awaited me grew in my mind. So too did my humiliation at being ordered to create the instrument of my own suffering. I looked around every few seconds, desperately hoping that no one I knew would appear and ask me what I was doing out in the rain.

Finally, I stripped a suitable branch from a young maple tree and hurried home along the blessedly empty sidewalks. Once I'd taken off my wet clothes and put my collar back on, I got to work on the switch, whittling away the twigs and knots, peeling off the bark, sanding it smooth, rubbing olive oil along its length. The whole process took about an hour -- one more hour for me to wallow in dread and humiliation.

I brought the new switch to Ellen for inspection. I noticed that she was wearing her spike-heeled boots instead of her usual slippers, which I knew to be a sign that my punishment was to be particularly severe. She didn't bother to look up at me, but merely took the instrument from my hand for a few seconds. "This is acceptable," was all she said. She handed it back, and I understood that I was dismissed to carry out her further instructions.

I went to the dungeon and placed my creation on the table. Then I selected several items and took them to the wooden horse, where I'd been instructed to prepare myself for punishment. The steps for this were a bit tricky and had to be done in the proper order.

On one side of the horse, there was a chain connecting the two legs, near the bottom. In the center of this chain, I hung an open padlock, the key to which I'd left on the table. I then went to the other side of the horse and put fur-lined leather cuffs on my wrists and ankles. I spread my legs and connected my ankle cuffs to rings on the horse's legs. Then I pulled a soft, quilted black hood over my head and tightened it around my neck with a drawstring. Over the hood, I donned a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, and I flicked the "on" switch.