My Journey to Submission Pt. 03

“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?”