Bad Language – looking in the mirror

Memoir – Becoming a submissive wife

Part 6

One of the things that I had to do and really work at doing when we started our full time living as a Dominant submissive couple thing, was put myself in HL’s shoes. It is very easy when you want something and it doesn’t happen to blame someone else, but as far as submission is concerned, and a lot of things in life really, I am a firm believer in looking in the mirror first to see if there is anything that I can do to influence a positive change. The use of bad language was not something that was an obvious one, so it did come in exactly this way, but rather from close examination of my own habits.

When I speak about bad language, I don’t mean profanity. I am not a fan of swearing and would do it pretty rarely. It grates on me, and the current trend to include throwaway expletives for some sort of I am so much cooler than the people I am speaking about and probably the people who are reading this sort of style irritates and has left me even less inclined to use it for effect than I would have done before. Perhaps a favour has been done in making expletives out-moded, but it still is something that will turn me off a piece of writing.

Anyway what I was going to say was that my issue was not swearing like a trooper and putting a pound in the naughty jar each time I f****d up as I slowly learnt to make my Dominant proud; I can control it. My job means I have to be able to control it and my family life means I want to be able to, so if you can then you can and so like many of these things in life, I think it is a choice. My issue of course was far worse; it was real bad language – the kind which is loaded with subtle connotations of blame or guilt and is meant as your armour but ends up being your weapon.

It is the kind that is used to manipulate others to protect yourself, or at least that was what I had told myself. I cane to see though that, at times, it had gone way beyond that and actually it had become a bad habit. Like swearing or something, I suppose! Submissives are not meant to have bad habits, at least, not ones which undermine the very person they are hoping to submit to and in doing so meet the needs of. So a couple of conversations in his shoes got me to thinking. How did all of this make him feel? I knew what I was saying – sort of kind of innocent enough? But what was he hearing? And OMG – was that what I really wanted him to hear?

Looking in the mirror is not always easy. Sometimes you really really don’t like the person who you find looking back at you. And this was one of those times. It happened over a period of a couple of days but the first time I noticed it, it was because HL had not done something that I had expected him to do. “Did you mean to leave the car unlocked?” I said to him after dinner. It was only after I noticed his somewhat defensive answer that I started to check myself. I thought about myself first. What had I really meant?

I use a process:
What was I thinking? Well, I was thinking he hadn’t done something that I wanted him to do and had already pointed out to him on a previous occasion.
What was I feeling? I was feeling annoyed and irritated by the fact he hadn’t done it. I was feeling frustrated as this was not the first time.
What did I do next? Instead of moaning and having a go at him like the vanilla wife I was not going to be, I asked him a question in a respectful way, like the submissive wife I now was.

What? Who was I kidding? My question was not really a question – it was a statement, and it was a statement of omission on his part. That was only looking at the language and without even considering my tone – it was rather patronising to say the least. And as I recall my own voice in my head, I can actually feel my body language changing and the expression on my face becoming a testament to the way that I am feeling. So yeah, respectful submissive wife it was not. That sub had a long way to go!

What happened next was that I put himself in his shoes and imagined I was on the receiving end of my little display.
What would he be thinking? Oh shit I forgot. Again.
What would he be feeling? Bad about forgetting? Frustrated that I was making a deal out of something he saw as trivial? Like a little boy being told off?
What would he do next? Probably something which withdrew him from the situation to keep the peace. He would feel guilty and wouldn’t want a fight.
Yikes – not really conducive to boosting the Dominant husband I was looking for.

As the days drew on, I caught myself at it more than once.
“Did you mean to leave the bread out on the counter?” “Did you decide that we wouldn’t bother to talk this evening?” You get the picture I am sure.
I went about my business, dishing out my Dom squishing loaded with blame type of respectfully submissive questions every time I felt that something had not gone according to plan. Not gone according to my plan that was. WTF (expletive for effect)? I was worse than the swearing like a trooper put a pound in the naughty jar and stand in the corner subs. At least they were letting their Dom, dom. I was making domming virtually impossible and was using the same approach when pointing out those failings too.

So yeah, looking in the mirror was not good at all and borrowing his shoes for a moment gave me a long hard look at where things were going to head if he had to keep walking in them. So I came clean about what my reflection had shown me. I admitted that I knew that my loaded questions were undermining him and I told him that I wanted to stop. I suppose my point really is that not all Dominance comes naturally and not all submission does either. We all have traits and habits and behaviours which have been learnt , practiced and perfected over time.

If my intention had been to make him feel bad and inadequate and silly then it would have been a worthy and worthwhile tactic, but actually my aim was not that all. I wanted to show him respect. I wanted to support him and follow his lead, and let him demonstrate the characteristics which had drawn me to him in the first place. So really I needed to make the changes that I could in order to facilitate that. I guess this is partly what I mean when I talk about active submission; it won’t always be about waiting to be Dominated. In fact if you wait with behaviours which squish the Dom you hope to encourage then you will likely make sure you never feel their dominance at all.

I decided to take part in Mrs Fever’s summer writing project which involves writing memoir. This is the sixth part to my memoir about becoming a submissive wife. The prompt this time was shoes, and one of the key things I learnt was to look in the mirror at what I might be wrong or doing better, and to try to put myself in HL’s shoes and think about how he might feel. If you would like to know more about this project then follow the link and head over to Mrs Fever’s site.

To read the other parts to my memoir, please follow this link:
Becoming a submissive wife