Broken

Imagine a home richly decorated with precious objects. Antiques, paintings, figurines: fragile things, and valuable.

You’re invited into the home. You see something you want, something you have to have for yourself. You reach for it, and as you do, something even more valuable falls off the table onto the marble floor and shatters. You know it was not merely expensive, but emotionally dear to the owner, your friend. You leave the pieces on the floor and run away.

Now imagine you’re in the same situation. You’re by yourself for a minute. You see something that needs fixing. Maybe a painting is badly out of alignment. As you reach up to straighten it, you brush the valuable item off the table, and it shatters. You know your friend will have a difficult time forgiving you. You stay and confess.

In which of these scenarios are you more responsible for repairing the damage?

Only in the first one did you truly do wrong. But you’re equally responsible for the damage in both cases.

With the best of intentions, but with culpable clumsiness, I damaged something priceless—Anne’s trust. When I spanked her, I let my buttons get pushed and it affected my judgment.

Her starting things out with an instruction to me (“Don’t spank too hard”) set me off. I know in hindsight that it would have been better for me to understand this as a request and a statement of her fear, but at the time it just seemed like yet one more inappropriate attempt to control a situation. Anne is a naturally bossy woman, and she seemed to be holding on to her bossiness even when over my knee.

So I told her that it would hurt some, and she didn’t argue. And then I spanked her for a little while—perhaps thirty seconds—and she didn’t cry, didn’t moan, didn’t move, and didn’t complain. I reasoned that meant she should take a little more. That’s when I bared her. Again, she didn’t squirm or protest. But then, suddenly, she pushed herself forcefully off my lap and yelled “That’s enough!” More orders.

I set my jaw, stared her down, and said that there would be more. She got back up with a combination of my muscles and hers, and when I continued spanking her, that’s when she started squirming and pushed herself off again. Then I was angry. This was not easy for me, and I thought it was critical that she not be able to control when things ended. She saw my anger and got scared. I pulled her back up without her cooperation, and finished spanking her very quickly. But the damage was done.

I never lost control. But I did get angry, and she saw my anger when she felt most vulnerable. Not having control was no doubt scary enough. Seeing her man in an unfamiliar guise—angry and intent on dealing out pain—was beyond what she could handle. When she saw in the mirror that she was red and bruised, it was confirmation to her that she’d been abused.

To her, I was like the thief in the first scenario: not just culpable, but wrong.

The spanking took place on Tuesday night. Everything she said to me on Wednesday night was recorded in my last post. Thursday night, she ignored me. On Friday morning, she still wouldn’t acknowledge me. That morning, I sat down before I left for work and said gently that when a loved one shuts you out, it’s difficult to tell whether they just need space, or if they’re waiting for you to begin the process of fixing things. I said that while it only takes one person to break a relationship, it takes two people to heal it. I needed her help to start doing that.

She said she didn’t know how we can ever fix it—that this is obviously a big part of my personality, and that she just can’t accept it. She said she went online and read about domestic discipline, and it was simply evil. She repeated that she doesn’t know how she can ever trust me again. When I told her, calmly, that it wasn’t helpful to use words like “evil” to describe me or what she thinks I want, she hardened and said I was not valuing her feelings. I reminded her that there was a difference between identifying her feelings and labeling me—the difference between saying “I feel deceived” and “you’re a liar,” “You hurt me” and “You are cruel,” and so on—but she’s never heard me when I’ve said that before, and I don’t think she got it this time. She just looked at me blankly.

The fact that her reaction was not reasonable didn’t make her emotional suffering any less real, and I really felt for her. I’d known she has issues around trust and vulnerability, but until things were really broken, I didn’t know how deep they ran. For my part, I had trouble staying strong at the office that day. I had trouble working, and my stomach felt punched. It had been three days, and even now that we were talking again, things didn’t look much better.

Fortunately, we achieved a kind of détente that evening. We watched a DVD and were able to pretend that nothing was wrong—although she still slept in another bed.

On Saturday we were able to talk a little more. She conceded that my intentions had been good. But at that point, it didn’t matter to her that I hadn’t meant to harm. She felt harmed.

I had promised her on Wednesday morning that I wouldn’t touch her again without her consent. By Sunday we were talking and working together almost as normal. In the afternoon I was compulsively goofy for a few minutes, dumb and playful, and when she commented, I said I was just breaking the tension. She said there was no more tension to break.

Then, in the evening, things went bad. Late in the evening, she used her work phone quite brazenly, to send a work e-mail, while I was in the same room. When my face showed my feelings about that, she challenged me about it, although I had chosen not to say anything. I told her that we had discussed that rule at length, that she had said that it helped her, that we had agreed completely on it and that it was good for our marriage. She said that she had a lot of good work-related ideas in the evening, and she needed to be able to send them out. I said that the digital world has a way of taking over our lives 24/7, and that one alternative would be to write down the ideas on paper and send them out in the morning. She said, getting heated, that this was neither convenient nor practical, and that I didn’t seem to understand that everything had changed and we were starting over completely. Furthermore, I was being inflexible and I would have to learn to be flexible. I said that I intended to be inflexible about issues that affect the health of our marriage.

I wasn’t attempting to impose anything, much as I might have liked to. I was only expressing my deep feelings about the principle of prioritizing our relationship. Just a few hours earlier I had told her that I understood she needed to be part of all our major decisions.

But when I didn’t back away from my position, she shouted at me about how I just wanted things my way, yelling at me from other rooms in the house. Her final word was to call at me that things were different now and that I was “just going to have to accept it.” Then she went to the spare bedroom and closed the door for the night.

This morning I didn’t wake her or bring her coffee as usual. She got up about ten minutes late and asked why I hadn’t waked her; I just stared, not knowing where to start. After about five minutes she approached me with a worried face and said she was sorry, without specifying. “Thank you,” I said. “But look at it from my point of view. You prioritized your convenience over the health of our marriage, you assigned selfish motives to me when my motives were not selfish, and you gloated about what’s happened in the last few days.” This led to a new round of argument that didn’t break any new ground.

Before I left the house she softened and apologized. But there is the apology of worry, and the apology of concession. This wasn’t the second kind.

I’m paying for my lapse of judgment. Anne is responding to the crisis by testing my boundaries, acting according to her own lights and her own preferences, not working with me or for the good of our marriage. I understand her anger. I understand her need to state her own boundaries, the harsh lines she drew on Wednesday night, although for both our sakes I hope they might be modified with time. I don’t want to engage in a battle of wills. She has the more forceful personality. I can’t best her in a heated argument or intimidate her into yielding by a display of steely strength. All I have is desire, love, and a certain inner resolve. It may not be enough to keep us together. That will take her resolve as well as my own.

What She Said Tonight

She came home silently; entered the house almost as if sneaking. I knew from the past that this is her way when she’s beside herself with anger: ignoring me completely. I used to think it was her way of punishing me, but then I decided she was mostly trying to avoid saying or doing something she’d regret (and if it also hurt me, she could live with that).

We did exchange a few words. When she came home, I was making pasta with tomatoes and anchovy sauce, using our garden tomatoes from the spectacular 2010 season. When it was ready, I asked her, “Are you interested in dinner?” “Nope,” she said. I figured that was our conversation for the night. I poured some red wine and enjoyed it myself.

But an hour later she approached me as I was changing out of my business clothes. “I have something I want to say to you,” she said. I told her I thought maybe we should sit down, and she agreed. We went to the dining room table.

When she sat, she began what she’d obviously rehearsed in her head. I felt affectionate toward her about that, since I’ve been in the same situation quite a few times. She said, pausing between points:

“You are never going to touch me with force, ever again.”

“You are never going to spank me. The violence is over.”

“I am done with DD.”

She’d never used the term “DD” before. I said, “You’ve been Googling, I see.” “Yes,” said Anne.

“There’s lots of bad stuff if you Google.”

“I don’t care if there’s good stuff, too. I believe you’ve been brainwashed. It’s evil, and it’s never going to happen.

“You can be head of household, but not like that. If this is a big part of your personality, then we will split up.”

She paused and looked at me, all iron and walls. “Okay,” I said: “You’ve said your piece.” She nodded, and she went up to the spare bedroom and closed the door.

I Gambled and Lost

I spanked Anne last night. She says she was beaten and that she’s notified her friends and family to be alert in case anything happens to her. I know she did because I saw her typing away last night after the incident.

The previous evening she’d violated the cellphone rule—the one we’d discussed, negotiated and agreed to about turning off her work devices after 7:30 pm. I saw her checking her phone, and I knew she’d seen me see her. In the morning I told her that she’d be spanked that evening. It was hard going off to work after watching her face fall. When we came home in the evening we both had tasks to do that kept us busy until past eight. She made a couple of light references to her impending spanking, so I knew she knew what was going to happen and wasn’t frightened. When the time came, we went over to the couch. I told her I needed her to take off her jeans. She laughed. “You need me to, huh?” It’s one of our peeves about the way people in service industries speak. They’ll tell their customers “I need to you to sign this for me,” or “I need you to wait,” as if we’ve come to meet their needs. But she took off her jeans and arranged herself over my knee.

“Don’t do it too hard,” she said. I told her quite honestly that this was the last thing I wanted to be doing. I said frankly that it was going to hurt, but not nearly so much as if she’d fought or argued with me. She didn’t say anything. I started slapping her lightly over her underwear, and then after a while, a bit harder. I watched her carefully. She wasn’t crying and didn’t even seem very tense. Her bottom was pink, but I removed her underwear and continued.

She shouted for me to stop, and I did not. Although her legs were pinned, she managed to push herself off my leg onto the ground. “That’s enough!” she cried. I told her firmly to get back up, that we were not finished, and I pulled her back into position. After a few more swats she started crying, and she wrestled herself off again. I didn’t let go of her. I told her we were not finished until I decided, and that it would take longer because she fought me. When I got her back into position, I gave her about eight more swats and told her we were done. She pushed herself off before I could comfort her, pulled her clothes together and fled to another room.

When she gathered herself she told me that she didn’t understand me or how I could do what I did. She asked me repeatedly, shouting, how I could be OK with what I’d done. She said she’d seen a new side of me and that she would never be able to trust me again. That she was frightened of me. Where she came from, women didn’t allow themselves to be beaten. That’s when she went upstairs to her computer.

We didn’t speak after that. When I was in another part of the house, she gathered her things and went to the spare bedroom. I took care of her part of the remaining evening chores and went to bed in our own. I was wrung out. When I was almost asleep, she came in and turned on the light. She reiterated her points and said we should split up. She called me a sadist and said she didn’t trust me because I was “into it.” She asked me if I understood that she could go to the police. I only answered her when there was something simple and straightforward to say. Otherwise, I said we could talk about it later when emotions weren’t running so high.

In the morning, I brought her coffee and kissed her awake as usual, but she avoided me. When I was about to leave for work I went to her and told her that there would be no more spanking unless we were on the same page. She just repeated that she didn’t trust me or understand me. She showed me the small purple marks that remained on her bottom. She said she hadn’t decided what to do next, but that she was this close—she held her fingers half an inch apart—to throwing in the towel on us. That was all she had to say. I went to work.

Please don’t tell me my mistakes. It’s abundantly clear that I didn’t lay the proper groundwork for her, that I wasn’t patient enough, and that I spanked too hard. Did I lose control? No, I just used poor judgment.

It’s clear that the only response that could have mollified her this morning was a display of remorse, guilt, and submission. Instead, I went blank. I listened to her, and spoke small responses in a low voice. It’s my mode of behavior when my feelings are exploding and I don’t trust my heart to keep me out of danger. My feelings are still all over the map. I don’t know what’s next for me and Anne, only that things are very bad, maybe worse than we will be able to repair ourselves. Neither of us have much faith in marriage counselors, even if there were many of them available where we live. I don’t know what I’ll say to her when I get home, or what she’ll say to me. She’s not going to get over this quickly.

Words Fail Me

Since I gave my latest letter to Anne two weeks ago, things have only gone downhill. Far from helping her to understand, trust and let go, it seems only to have raised her anxiety. Meanwhile, the emotional effort I put into the letter drained me, and when she didn’t receive it the way I had hoped, it threw me badly. We agreed on a single new rule, and she’s been following it religiously. But meanwhile, I’ve been frustrated and have been losing sleep. I knew I’d allowed our emerging DD relationship to get off track, but I was consumed by fears that it took many difficult hours even for me to identify.

Maybe in my struggle with worry, it didn’t occur to me to ask what it is I really want from Anne. Why do I want so badly to explain things to her? Why is it so important to me that she understands where I’m coming from? When my letter wasn’t successful, it only intensified my drive to be understood. I didn’t yet realize that my intense efforts to explain myself to Anne could do more harm than good.

So when I woke up Saturday morning, I thought: maybe I was wrong to bombard Anne with so many words, however well thought out. She works with Web content and is always going on about the need to make it short and to the point. If I had to distill my letter down into the absolute essentials, what would it say?

It was fun. I got it down to 115 words. The bottom line. If she heard these words, surely she’d understand me. She’d know that I’m trying to make both our lives better, to live with integrity, to take care of her and to act in the true spirit of love. I memorized the words so I could say them accurately, naturally and confidently.

We had a lot of work to do on our home this weekend, so much that our “Sunday summit” was delayed until evening. Anne was sore in the muscles from housework and yard work, so I offered a massage.

Twenty minutes into the massage, the scent of the oil filling the room, her body language indicated a willingness to move on to more mutual activities. I told her that she was extremely alluring, because she was. “But there’s something I want even more than sex, and that’s for you to hear me.” I explained that I’d been thinking about my letter, and how I realized that it had been a lot to digest. I told her that I’d boiled it down as much as I could, and I wanted to share that with her. It came down to six things.

“One: I am committed to not just maintaining, but building intimacy and a feeling of connection between us—forever.”

I paused.

“Two: I am committed to being the best man I can be, and to always be true to myself.”

No reaction. But was she tensing up? I was continuing the rub, but she didn’t seem to be enjoying it anymore.

“Three: I am the leader of our little family. That means I listen carefully to your feelings and opinions, and then I take responsibility for the decisions. Even when I leave the decision to you, the responsibility is mine.”

She turned to get out from under my hands. She didn’t like what she was hearing at all. What was it with me and control? Why do I have to be the boss? (I don’t want to be the “boss,” I said. A boss just gives orders.) She doesn’t need me to be her dad. (Being your dad is the very last thing I want.) Why does one person have to be the authority? Why can’t we just have an equal partnership? (Because I think teams work better when the members each have roles.) I want to make the decisions, too! Why do you have to be the one that makes the decisions? (Because I’m the one who wants it more.)

It was not a particularly patient and loving discussion. It was, after a couple of minutes, a strained and tense one. Once again, I was pressured for specifics, as if I could map out everything in advance. As if there was anything about discipline that she wouldn’t reject in a panic in that defensive state. Her challenging, no-good-answer questions put me on the defensive, too. I didn’t throw accusations at her, but I came close. Why can’t you just let go and trust me? I’m a good man, and I love you! Why are you fighting me?

There was the old trope of how I should have told her about my dominant desires earlier. Preferably before we were married. “Would you have married me?” I asked. Her face said probably not. “I might have,” said her voice.

I told her I’d hoped for an answer from her, or at least some sign that she was open to me on this. “I thought that was implicit,” she said. “If I wasn’t willing, I wouldn’t be here.” She said that a couple of times. I didn’t find it convincing, and I wasn’t sure I wanted the kind of grudging willingness that comes when the only alternative is leaving altogether. “Where would you go?” I asked. She said she’d get a little apartment in town. Oh, great, I thought. She’s got an exit strategy.

The discussion didn’t so much end as lose steam. We each backed off and offered signs of love and truce. I offered to go downstairs and prepare the coffee machine for the morning, which is her nightly job. But she wanted to do it. So I just did my own nightly jobs of cleaning the cat boxes and getting Anne’s bedside glass of water (three ice cubes).

When we got back into bed Anne hugged me. “You can be the boss,” she said. “I trust you.”

This morning she said, “I’m sorry. I’m going to do better.” I told her it wasn’t about her “doing better.” “Yes it is,” she said.

I’ve tried to explain myself. It means so much to me that she understand. I don’t want to take from her. I don’t want discipline to be a compromise, something she puts up with so she can stay with an otherwise decent husband. I want her submission to be a gift, freely offered, and there can be no freedom without understanding.

But my words don’t help. They only trigger her fear and her defenses.

I never got to finish the six points I’d distilled from my letter. I never got to the end, where, having mastered my own fear, I would risk that definite “No” and ask her straight out whether she was with me.

She’s given me her answer, and her answer is that she’s here. Until she’s not. That’s the best answer she has to give me.

Meanwhile, I’m saving my words for this blog. Maybe she needs the strong, silent type after all.

Riding the Roller Coaster

I didn’t get nearly as much sleep as I usually do over the weekend, when we usually catch up on the sleep we missed during the week. Anne asked me what was wrong a couple of times, and said I looked sad. But I was just tired.

On Sunday I got up before Anne and started working on the bread dough I’d made the previous afternoon. I’ve been learning to bake. It’s something I’ve wanted to learn for a long time, and we’re tired of having to remember which stores have good, fresh bread and on which days they have it. Not to mention having to pay over four dollars a loaf. So these days our morning toast is bread we’ve baked ourselves.

Even after sitting overnight, the dough that morning was way too wet. Getting it out of the bowl onto the floured board to be shaped was a challenge.

It’s not why the dough was so wet, but I thought I was following the directions by wetting my hands before picking up the bread. Anne said that couldn’t be right, that you’ve got to flour your hands. I shrugged. “Read the book,” I said. “That’s what it says.”

But it didn’t. The book said you wet your hands when you’re making the dough. When you’re working with the dough you’ve already made, you flour your hands. So elementary.

“You think when Santa’s in his workshop, and he’s making a toy plane, he ever gets tired and puts the propeller on the wrong end?’” I said to Anne. “So Santa’s helper says, ‘hey, Santa, you think maybe the propeller might work better on the other end?” Anne allowed that this probably happened. “That’s when old St. Nick starts doubting himself and hitting the bottle,” I said.

“It’s Mr. Gower all over again,” agreed Anne, referring to the druggist in It’s a Wonderful Life who distractedly fills a prescription with cyanide, and turns to drink.

A couple of hours later I was wondering if we had any cyanide around. I was helping Anne reformat and update her résumé. She wanted to look at mine for comparison, and I said I’d go get a printout. When I picked up the printout, she’d gotten up to do some other task, and when I approached her with the paper she kept walking away, not noticing me or what I was saying at all. And when I called her on it with a “Hey—hold on!” she snapped at me mightily. And we had an angry five-minute row that ended with her sobbing and burying her face in her hands.

Anne almost never cries. I can think of only one other occasion in the past six months, and that was when a pet died.

On this occasion, it wasn’t anything I said to her. It was just stress. She felt better afterward, and I realized that the substance of what we had been arguing about was completely value-free. It was a stress argument, not an issues argument. It was the stress of one’s work as a perfectionist being edited by another, the stress of her job, the stress of potentially applying for a new job, the stress of where we live, the stress of maybe having to move.

We went out and did some successful Christmas shopping. When we came home, we worked together to finish Anne’s résumé, then she cooked a nice dinner we both enjoyed. I did the dishes, and we went to the bedroom for our “Sunday summit.” I think she’d been looking forward to the lovemaking all day. It was certainly unusually good for both of us—lots of laughter and easy passion.

Afterward, I told her there was something bothering me. She tensed up. I told her I’d been hearing the “F” word more often than I liked. I said that while I thought the word had its place, it should be reserved for when it was really needed.

She started a slow burn. She said this isn’t how she thought our “summits” would go. That every week, I’d find some new way to be dissatisfied with her.

She heated up as she returned to a theme that we’ve discussed before without finding a resolution. She feels that in love, you should accept the other person as they are uncritically, letting what bothers you slide. I feel that if something is bothering you, you have to say something about it to avoid accumulating resentment. (At least we agree on what we disagree about.)

Before long she was boiling over, shouting: I didn’t accept her, I didn’t even like her. All I wanted to do was change her. She was never going to change. Not ever. And if I thought I could dictate to her, I’d find out how wrong I was.

This wasn’t steely anger, this was rage. At one point she got quietly mean and gave me that look—the narrowed eyes and the predatory smile that says I’m going to hurt you, and I’m going to enjoy it. I think that’s when I jumped out of bed to meet her and got pretty much in her face (I may have pointed a finger). I did some shouting of my own. “You are not going to use sarcasm on me,” was one of the messages I remember. I might also have told her that what was important to me was damn well going to be important to her.

We argued about other things. All old themes. How I’m not “honest” because I never told her before what I’ve found the courage to say now, because I never acted before the way I’m starting to act now. (I told her I’m getting pretty tired of that accusation.)

We reached a point where there was nothing more to say. She put on a robe and left the bedroom to do her pre-bedtime chores. I did the same and attended to mine.

After about ten minutes of silence she came to me with the reddest eyes I’ve ever seen. “I just don’t see why we can’t accept each other in the limited time we have left,” she said, and collapsed into racking sobs.

I took her in my arms and spoke softly and comfortingly. “I know.” “It’ll be all right.”

As I mentioned on the “About” page, we’re in our fifties. One of our pets recently died of old age. Our surviving parents are doddering. We’re both very conscious of the stage of life we’re preparing to enter.

She broke away, calmer but not fully reconciled.

We went to bed. Before I fell asleep she reached out and took my hand.

In the morning, she hugged me. “I’m sorry for all the ups and downs yesterday,” she said.

“Growing pains,” I told her.

“I’ll cut back on the ‘swears,’” she said.

“I know.”

We kissed goodbye.

This kind of fight has always been traumatic for me. So I should be upset, but I’m not. I’ll have to think about why that is. I have some ideas.

The Dark Days Just Past

Anne and I are on a bit of a high right now, so it’s hard for me to look back at how bad it’s gotten sometimes.

It’s interesting how many couples who practice domestic discipline found it at the brink of divorce. Of course it makes sense that most often, people find the courage to try something radical when they find the alternative unbearable. But isn’t it a shame?

Anne is a first-rate human being with a number of outstandingly wonderful qualities that I’ll find other occasions to talk about on this blog. She’s also a demanding, high-confrontation, emotional powerhouse of a woman who will bait and berate you until you don’t fall down. And by “you” I mean me. Yet I never had any strategies in response beyond logic, protest, outrage, and withdrawal.

My ineffectiveness and sense of victimhood only led Anne to be more aggressive—and fighting fair was never on the agenda.

Although after a few years we’d each taken steps to mitigate the worst of our faults, it was mostly by suppressing them instead of replacing them with healthier patterns.

After a long time, I started realizing how deeply I wanted to be the acknowledged leader of our family. I even took some tentative steps toward creating a framework for that, but I quickly backed away when it didn’t go smoothly. In retrospect, I realize how I was asking her to do the work when I hadn’t fixed myself yet.

During this period, despite the progress we’d made in many ways, Anne’s angry outbursts became more frequent and she became even more verbally abusive. Meanwhile, I started to sense that the time was coming for me to really step up, work on myself, and bring everything I am into my marriage. I became far more assertive in my (new) job, and a more reliable partner at home. And I realized that the best parts of myself, the strong and nurturing and loving parts, are intricately bound up with my desire to set the direction for our marriage, and even to discipline.

In October we went for a long walk in the country during which I planned to ask her for a DD relationship. It didn’t get that far. No sooner did I mention my desire for leadership than she let me have it with both barrels, excoriating me for all manner of weaknesses. She took charge of that conversation and we spent the last twenty minutes wrestling over the issue of the dishes I leave in the sink in the morning.

When we got home it got worse. She told me I hadn’t been honest about who I am, that she was cheated when she married me, and that I should go out and look for someone I’m a better fit with.

I didn’t argue with her. I was exhausted and humiliated. I went to bed at five in the afternoon. That was rock bottom.

---

After midnight that night, I got out of bed and wrote her a letter. It took an entirely different tone than the relatively romantic letter I’d written her to accompany our walk in the woods—a letter she had literally thrown at me afterwards.

In the second letter I wrote down some of the things she’d said to me and about me. I wrote that if half of them were true, she shouldn’t be married to me. I told her that I had taken all the verbal attacks I would take from her, and that while I might never get all I want from our marriage, I have boundaries that she may not cross. I told her I believed in spanking. I told her that at her wedding she became accountable to me just as I became accountable to her, and if I didn’t see accountability from her and a new focus on our marriage, I would divorce her within a year. And I meant it.

---

The transformation in Anne was amazing. The next day she was loving, patient, and cooperative, and she has been consistently in the five weeks since.

Is the change due to a realization on her part that she’d finally pushed things too far? Or was it the firmness of my second letter?