Surrendered Wife?
Well the holidays have been intense for sure.
I took a break from writing for about two weeks. I must say I needed it, because my reasons for not sharing are basically because I do not know where to start. There has been so much going on in my head that I simply cannot untangle all these thoughts. That is a reason to blog though, right?
So I found some video's on you-tube. A woman who was something called a Surrendered Wife. She was very religious of course, and I am not so much into the whole submit to your Husband because God thing, but the concepts still humbled me. Not that she was doing it because of God, she did it for her relationship. Anyway, it seemed to be a lot like D/s, just without the Dominant.
I am not fond of the idea of Submission without a Dominant though, but perhaps it is somewhere to start? It seems to take half the connection out. The growth you build as a pair, the opportunity for play and discipline. The comfort and safety you need from your Dominant in order to let go. It is basically submission to an extent without any of that. Though I should explain further.
So the concepts are simple, but also very hard for your typical wife or girlfriend. Basically you actively stop controlling your man. Seems simple, right? But it is not. Woman often tend to control on so many levels due to a basic fear of not having our needs met that we learnt somewhere in our childhoods.
We may have been let down by a father figure, like me. Or maybe we were a younger sister who only got hand-me-downs and we felt hurt and abandoned. Perhaps it was as simple as not getting what we wanted to Christmas, but at some point in time these hurt feelings stuck with us and we decided that if we wanted things done, if we wanted to get what we needed in our relationships, then we need to do it ourselves.
So we learnt how to control. Of course everyone on the planet does this, not only woman. But the point is that we can only change and fix ourselves, not another. So we focus on us, on abandoning the need to control our relationships and letting our men grow into the confident partners we so dearly crave.
So, what is your control drama?
The concept of control is something I am quite familiar with. When I was a young girl I read the Celestine Prophecy books and took great interest. They had a similar idea when it came to control. We all have a control drama which we learnt in our childhoods. Each and every one of us. I always though I was fairly good, and in some ways I am. But over these last few weeks I realized I am actually terrified of giving up control because deep down I fear that my needs will go unmet and unnoticed.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, the concepts of a Surrendered Wife. So, a Surrendered Wife makes it a point to completely give up control over her Husband. Not control of herself though, she puts looking after herself first. Making sure that doing three things she loves for herself per day in order to keep herself pleased and happy. A pleased and happy wife of course makes for a much easier and intimate relationship.
It is simply to stop treating ones Husband like a child who needs constant looking after, and to start treating him as a man who is perfectly capable of being a responsible adult. The idea is that if you treat your Husband like a child, he literally will learn to act like one. If you treat him like an adult, then he will be free to be that strong confident man you fell in love with from day one.
I had no idea how controlling I have been over this last year. It was subtle in ways you could not pin down, but my god was it there. Never was I controlling to be cruel or unfair, but only because I have been so terrified in this new country and so worried that my needs would not be met. I have not trusted my Husband with this task at all. I have not let him look after me in his own ways, and I have taken it for granted when he did. Because it was not in the way I wanted and craved, I over-looked many of the things that he did do for me.
Its not all her fault. It's just she can only change herself.
Now before I go making it sound like this is all my fault, I want to add that it is not. We both have issues that need to be worked on. He needs to give me reason to trust him and place all my faith in his ability to lead. But at the same time, he is going to have a damn hard time leading if I am not going to trust that he can and will. The reason I am talking about me and my issues, is because that is all I can change. It is up to him to work on himself, and it is time I stopped trying to force him to act a certain way. If he is going to do it, he will. If he doesn't, then he doesn't. I need to trust that what he tells me is what he is going to do.
This is not easy. This hurts me and is very scary. Right now I have some things that make it hard to trust in general, and some of these I am unsure how to bring these up without damaging his confidence or seeking to change or control him. I feel like keeping my mouth shut is a little like a lie, to both myself and him. It is not a lie, but its just hard for me to let some things go, or find alternative ways to bring them up.
Some of the ways we control our Husbands are really so subtle you may not even realize they are happening. That is what it was like for me, I thought all of this stuff was fine and normal. Which it is to a degree, at least for females. But men do not work like us, they do not respond in the same way.
Here are some simple and common ways that Woman control their Husbands. Of course they mean no harm, they have the best always in mind. But these things also leave our Husbands feeling disrespected. If your man is feeling disrespected, he is not at all likely to try to please you like he would be if he were feeling strong, loved, supported, respected and confident.
- Brushing off his ideas, no matter how silly they may seem.
- Telling him he should call a plumber when the toilet is broken, even though he offered to fix it himself.
- Offering him your views and opinions on a problem he needs to solve when he has not asked for them.
- Back seat driving in the car, or telling him that he missed an exit and is now going the wrong way.
- Belittling the way he does things, or offering to do them for him. Acting as though you have a better way to solve the problem. (Which you may, but that is not the point)
- Buying clothes, underwear and socks for him.
- Being on his case about his diet or exercise.
- Giving him lists of chores to do on weekends or when he comes home from work.
- Speaking for him in social situations, or explaining to others what he meant when he said something.
- Correcting him when he is telling stories or sharing experiences.
- Giving him 'the look' of disapproval.
So to us woman, many of these things may seem like not that big a deal. But what they really do is make your Husband feel disrespected and small. They all imply that he is not capable of making choices for himself and that you know better. They completely disregard his ability to be a man instead of a boy. They hurt him and they make him stop trying to please you. Because whenever they do try, they usually get shut down in some way or another. He can't be a man if you refuse to treat him like one.
But, does he feel disrespected?
So how do we know that our Husbands feel disrespected? Its quite easy to tell actually, just not as easy to actually change the things that make them feel this way. Some examples of things he may tell you are as follows.
- "You never listen to me, so whats the point in talking about it?"
- "You never believe me when I give you compliments, you brush them off."
- "I feel like it is impossible to please you and make you happy."
- "You always worry too much and over think things."
- "I need time away from everything, I would rather be at work than at home."
- "Why can't you just be happy?"
- "You always have to have things your way."
- "You think you are so much better than me, so high and mighty."
- "I can't get a word in, and when I do it it always used against me."
If your Husband says things like this to you, then there is a high chance he feels unloved and disrespected. We know how much it hurts to feel as though our men do not care enough about us, to feel neglected and unloved... Well our men feel it too. They feel it whenever we undermine their opinions, treat them like children, nag them all the time, constantly try to change them and turn them into men. The problem is, our Husbands cannot be men if we literally train them to behave like a toddler.
Maybe I found a better path?
So here I am a year into my D/s journey and I feel as though I am finally ready to change. My focus has been on nagging my man, trying to get him to be confident and feel like he is capable of leading. But instead of giving him positive feed back, building him up and showing him how well he does things, I have pretty much only been telling him what he needs to do better, what I expect and all the ways in which he lets me down. Of course I always focused on saying nice things, but just like he always told me, I tell him nice things, but the next day I am upset and telling him the opposite. He heard negative shit on an almost daily basis, the positive stuff seemed more just thrown in there.
I absolutely know that he has things to learn and ways to improve himself for us, but I need to just let him do that. He will not even feel willing to please me in these ways when he knows it is something I am demanding constantly. He won't feel safe to open up with me, be vulnerable and intimate when he is always under attack in some way. The poor bastard has been insanely loving and patient considering some of the ways I have treated him.
I have no idea how I am going to put 100% faith and trust in him, I have no idea how I would do that with anyone. I am afraid to trust him because if I surrender then I fear my needs will not be met. I worry he will forget about the things I hold dear, or brush them off as unimportant. It feels like this whole concept of a Surrendered Wife is the opposite of how it should be. Shouldn't you have reason to trust someone completely before you trust them completely?
But the idea is that he can't be trust worthy until I actually give him the chance. It is not that I don't trust him, because I do. I trust him with my life, I just am not sure if I trust him with all my feelings... And to be honest I think my feelings might just be more important to me than my life. Again, he has never had the chance to actually look after me without me being cruel or unkind in some way. So I have no idea what I am getting into, or if it is even going to work but I do think perhaps it will come in time.
Never did I mean to hurt him, I only meant to fix things and make it all better. But I have learnt lately that they way I went about this was completely wrong. Still, I have no idea where to start or how to make this all work, but I will be damned if I keep treating my wonderful husband like a boy incapable of figuring shit out for himself.
Still, I don't like feeling like I am submitting without a Dominant to be the yang to my yin. It feels a little like some sick and twisted 50's housewife shit. I know its not, but I guess my -born in the 90's- feminist brain makes me resist the ideas. Really, giving up control over another person is something we ALL should do. Unless of course it is a consenting D/s relationship. There is nothing twisted about letting your partner be his own person, rather than just a puppet with you holding the strings. He will be my Dominant one day, its just a learning experience for us both. I feel it is easier to say you are submissive then to really be ready to take on the title of Dominant.
I guess it is just because it is not how I saw it. I don't want to surrender and submit in a traditional way rather than in a D/s way. The power exchange feels one sided, but I know that's only because my man has not even had the chance to explore that side of himself without fear yet. So fingers crossed that letting go makes him feel like he is free to be him without criticism and disrespect from the woman who is supposed to be 100% there for him no matter what.
Either way, there is so much in this book that any woman feeling unloved and over worked can learn from. Hell I think any person can learn from it to be honest. Not just wives, husbands also. I don't want to baby sit my man. I don't want to feel like I have an extra child to watch over. I want my man to be free to be strong and be him, not feel like his every move is watched over by the hungry vulture that is his woman.
