Open Door – Juggling Kids, Honesty and Disclosure in a Kinky Household

Parenting kids in a kinky household really is different. I suppose everyone experiences parenthood differently, but I think kinksters definitely have unique challenges.

Our kids have been raised in a very non traditional environment.  I don’t think that will really come as a shock to anyone who knows much about our family. First, they were exposed to polyamory from their earliest memories. There was always Mommy, Daddy, and, from the time they were 4 (almost 5) someone else. I wasn’t the first person either of them had in their lives seriously, either. It has always been perfectly natural for them to see multiple people loving each other and sharing affection.

They also see evidence of our dynamic. Both CC and I always called him Sir, and I still do.  When they were very small they actually thought it was his name. We also slept on the floor, each with our own beds on the ground next to Daddy’s. Again, I still do this.  They’ve never thought of it as sleeping on the floor of course, they think, “Daddy’s bed and bridget’s bed.”

Yet, for all this openness we’ve always tried to be very careful about crossing age appropriate lines. They never see or hear us play. They aren’t aware of the specific sexual dynamics that exist between us. In fact, when CC was pregnant with the little guy they told me they consider all three of us to be “married” and then hastened to add, “But you and Daddy don’t have sex… right?” At the time I told them they really needed to talk to Mommy and Daddy about that.

Closure

I’ve had this plan for a while now to write about topics other than specific punishments on The Punishment Book. There are a lot of things that float around in my head and some day I will have some spare time and be able to actually sit down and write about some of them. I was just thinking this week that I needed to make time to write a post for the PB.

From now on I am not going to allow myself to think this thought. It clearly jinxed me. I fear this will be especially long winded story telling, but the back story really does lead up to the conclusion.

My old nemesis has returned, and it’s name is toilet paper. Yeah, really. Running out of TP is Master’s biggest pet peeve and it’s gotten me into trouble in the past. In fact, it is the only offense I can ever recall being punished for more than once. Two nights ago mark the third time I’ve been punished for it.

This was especially hard for me because there was a guest in attendance. Master is dating someone right now. They’ve been seeing each other since October.  We’ll call her J. She is wonderful and I hope to see great things from this relationship. However, last night her presence worked against me because she used the last of the toilet paper in the main bathroom and there was no spare under the sink.  Her natural response was to come out and say, “I am going to steal toilet paper from the other bathroom.” Master’s natural response was to give me the look of death.

Happy New Year

I am now seriously dangerous. I got a new phone for Christmas and can blog from it. I doubt I will ever use it for my trademark novel length entries but I really wanted to try it out because I am a huge dork and these things excite me.

I also wanted to replace that last angst filled post. I still feel that way but as usual a little distance has me feeling more positive. I thank everyone who left their encouragement in the comments.

Our family had a lovely Christmas together. CC came over in the morning and we went to her house for dinner. Master spoiled me with a new motorcycle jacket and CC gave me a rolling knitting tote. Finally I can control all that yarn! My parents also went over board with lots of things I wanted and needed. I feel a bit guilty about the money spent but I try to remember it is what they want to do.

Tonight J will come over and we will play games. It is nice to have another girl around to spend time with sometimes.

Next week we get the kids back. They start school again and I am not looking forward to the homework battle. Hopefully it will be a smooth transition for them. I think the break did them good.

For this next year I have high hopes for our family. We have already layed the groundwork for us to come closer together. CC has started spending more time with us and we are starting to get past some of the raw pain. I hope and except for this next year to build on that foundation. Will it be easy? No. You haven’t heard the last of my bitching. But we are heading in a real direction now instead of a tail spin.

Idiot

Master wants me to stop calling myself that. He said, “Would you stop fucking saying that?” to me this morning after I didn’t hear my alarm and let everyone oversleep and then let the cat out for the 2nd time in one morning despite my best efforts and informed him that I am in fact an idiot.

So before we get any further into this, please keep in mind that this isn’t anything Master has said to me. I am not being emotionally abused or anything like that.  I can just tell when he is annoyed, and I am venting my own feelings.

I can understand it’s not polite to use that word.  Maybe Master honestly doesn’t think I am an idiot- he says he doesn’t. But the thing is,  I am fucking up everything I touch right now. Everything.

The school is upset with us because the kids don’t look as nice on our weeks. Who manages their clothes? That would be me. The kids are having trouble with getting their work done. Who manages homework? You guessed it, me.

I am failing at work. My boss and I can’t get on the same page. She is telling people she thinks I have a learning disability and am not capable of doing my job. Maybe she is right.  I just know in my heart that I am going to lose this job, and it makes me sick.  I worked so hard to get it and I work hard every day, but maybe I am just not cut out. I don’t know. I am feeling really discouraged.

I thought it was my boss for a while (she really is horrible), but honestly my level of stupidity is reaching well beyond the office. I guess I never learned how to function in the adult world. My current theory is that I just am not smart enough or experienced enough (or both) to meet the the high expectations and demands of a difficult boss in a highly professional environment.

At home Master has a lot of complaints. They are pretty much all legitimate, although I don’t know what I can do about it. I’ve tried asking him for help, but it annoys him that he needs to help me. He is annoyed if I ask him to do housework, irritated  if I ask him to manage homework so I can do everything else, mad if I let certain things go so I can manage other things… I just don’t know. He is extremely busy and exhausted in his own right. He doesn’t have time or energy to do my job in the home plus his.

The thing is,  I am just not as competent as CC was. I can’t manage it all. I have failed at this aspect of being a slave, and it makes me sad and angry.  I know other people are great at this, and I thought it was a skill I could learn, but after six years I am starting to feel hopeless. Master says I can focus on the big picture or the details but not both. How do you learn that?

In addition to generally not managing things properly, I still am making bonehead moves all the time. I tried to wait for Master to come home before feeding the family, but by then we had to head out for the evening. He couldn’t believe I didn’t feed the kids already and felt I railroaded him into going out to eat.  Tonight we are going to a masonic dinner (he is being installed as Master of the Lodge, yay Master!) and I didn’t realize I needed to make sure the kids had special clothes to wear. Master says it should have been obvious to me because he told me he was dressing up so I should have applied that to the rest of the family. Yeah well, I didn’t.

This isn’t a bash Master session. I just am at a loss. I can’t figure this stuff out and I am just so so bummed out today. He doesn’t want me to say I am an idiot, but what else am I supposed to call it? I feel like crap. I fuck up. All. The. Time. At work, at home, with the kids. With everything. The end.

Discretion and Compartments

I’ve been lucky in many ways. For almost my entire adult life I’ve had the luxury of being “out” to everyone close to me. Although it wasn’t by choice, my parents found out all the gory details of my relationship pretty early on. When you live in a family comprised of one man and two women, the neighbors notice. We even came out to the school. I’ve never held a job where it mattered one way or the other if people figured out what was going on at home. I couldn’t afford to. Having an unorthodox living arrangement and having appeared in adult films come together to make things not worth hiding.

So why don’t I have this same luxury now? Basically, because our wife left us.

Nowadays I am living a much more conventional life. It is just myself, Master, and our three kids. I am his partner in public and now nobody gives us funny looks. There is no longer any question as to whether I am the nanny, or the sister, or something even weirder. Everyone assumes he is my husband and acknowledges me as his wife although I have never used those words with the people we encounter.  The kids’ teachers tell us how wonderful it is that we can all parent together and give the kids more love. Ironic I think that this is such a beautiful situation in the eyes of the new school, but the old school viewed three parents living together and parenting as a detriment.

I no longer have the luxury of staying home with the kiddos, and I have a professional job in a professional setting.  That’s wonderful because it means we are slowly getting our lives back in order, but it does come with a cost.

Lately I feel that nobody knows the real me. I may not have a wife anymore, but I am still bisexual and poly oriented. I am still kinky and need and want direction and guidance. I am still submissive. This is still the life I expect to lead and direction I expect to see our family travel in.

Worst of all? I can’t ever let it be known that I am going through personally difficult times. The people around me all day every day can’t know that I’ve lost someone I consider a life partner and that I am struggling to rebuild my life. I just have to act like this is normal.

I suppose some of it is still in the open. Some people have figured out there is something odd going on since my youngest “step” child is only 3 but I’ve been with my partner for six years.  Coworkers scratch their heads when I talk about how involved I am in the parenting of my “step” children. People still let it be known they think I take on too much of the household management when I happen to let slip a regular detail of our lives. So they know I am submissive and service oriented.

They know Master has a lot of control. They just don’t know why, and I can’t defend myself or him. I just have to keep saying how happy I am and hoping they believe me and don’t see me as an unwitting victim. This really bothers me.

I don’t really have an answer to this.  I have never figured out the lines in this regard. So it’s all new territory for me.

Oh, and I just found out I am in trouble today for using too many cell minutes. But of course, I now need to go on with my day and not let anyone know I’m having a rough day because I have no way to explain it. Have I mentioned I am terrible at this?

Jumble

As seems to be usual for me, after having a couple of days to chill out about it, I suspect I was too harsh on Master in my last rant.  I feel this even more as I spent yesterday at home due to a snowstorm that shut down our office, but basically got nothing done. Except napping and being emotional -  did a fair bit of that. I think I probably hurt Master’s feelings by writing what I did, and I’m sorry for that. I hope he isn’t still upset with me, but it’s hard to say.

I’m still sick, I can’t seem to shake this sinus infection I have. I don’t want to go to the doctor, but maybe I will. Master is really frustrated with me for being sick so much. I wish I knew what to do because I get my feelings hurt when I feel like crap and he is annoyed with me for not being productive, but I know it is frustrating too to have plans and no way to achieve them.

Things feel really off between Master and I. Nothing earth shattering or relationship breaking, just off. He’s been distant and preoccupied. We had the kids this week and it seems that both of us were on edge and tempers were near the surface. Sometimes I think our parenting has suffered the worst blow in this divorce.

The little guy has been really clingy and sad lately. I feel bad dropping him off at daycare, I feel bad putting him to bed at a normal hour because we haven’t had much time with him. I feel bad leaving him in the room to fall asleep by himself because he wants someone to stay with him. Basically I feel bad constantly because I can’t be there for him the way I like.

Then there are the twins who make life extremely difficult. They are rude, they are destructive, and they don’t care. I know this is a boy thing, and that’s life.  I know every parent goes through it. But it makes me so angry, and I feel like a total failure. We only get them every other week now, and half the time it is a relief when they leave. Then I feel guilty for feeling that way and sad that I don’t enjoy them more when they are here. I lose my temper,  at times, and yeah. I just worry constantly that I’m ruining them, that if we could have a better relationship everything would work out with them.

What I want is for us to snuggle up, relax, have lots of sex, whatever with Master. Try to get back on the same page and feel connected. Master frequently does not feel the same disconnects that I do, so he may think everything is fine, I dunno.  I just know I’d like us to be in a good place before we get the kids back again.

Every time I think I am going to focus more on service I fail. I want so much to be a service oriented person. I want to make Master’s life easier.  Yet usually I feel like I make it harder. I can’t really tell if what I need is to sleep for two days straight and then try to kick ass while being well rested, or if I just need to get over myself. I think Master mostly thinks I need to get over myself. I would say that’s not fair, but obviously I judge him too at times, so who is to say.  How do you make yourself stay productive while fighting exhaustion? I dunno.

I had a nice talk with CC yesterday. She said she still loves us and I told her we still love her.  She says she wants to find a way for us to be closer, just that she didn’t feel it was sustainable how it was. I don’t really know what to say. I am so up and down and back and forth on that. I want to be closer to her too, but I don’t know what options are available to us anymore.  I wish I knew what to think or feel about all this.

Master is seeing a new girl, J.  I don’t know if it will go anywhere, but I really like her. I think I like her so much because I relate to her. She doesn’t have any poly experience before us, and she said she was really nervous to meet me after spending the day with Master. He made her stick around even though she wanted to bolt, and it was fun. We played card games while Master watched hockey.

She’s since brought over cupcakes and bought me Halloween socks! I can see a great friendship developing if nothing else, and it’s nice to have another woman around the house once in a while. Sometimes I think the best way to do poly is with inexperienced people because they don’t come with a lot of expectations about it. I guess time will tell there.

What else? I’m having another one of my periodic freakouts about merging my faith with my lifestyle. I wish Master was willing to marry me, it would make like so much simpler. I understand his reservations and they are all perfectly valid. He doesn’t agree with marriage to begin with for policital reasons. He is concerned that if we get married he won’t be able to marry anyone else he sees and that’s not really fair. He feels the church doesn’t really accept me. Yet, I feel like doing this is between us and God, and it’s noone elses business in the church what other relationships we might have. If we were to be married it would be about he and I, not anyone else. Maybe I compartmentalize too much, I dunno.

I highly highly doubt there are any other Orthodox Christians who lurk here, but if there are, advice is welcome.

I guess that is all for the time being. Master and I are going to a Haloween party tonight. Hopefully it will be fun!  My costume involves a mask, I have a feeling I won’t be wearing it for all that long.  This sure was a jumble of thoughts. Stream of consciousness at it’s best or worst, dependning on how you look at it. Thanks for reading.

 

A Meaningless Rant

In the interest of not nagging Master, I am going to take 30 seconds and complain here instead. I hate to have to do disclaimers, but for anyone who wants to tell me he is an ass and I should leave him if I’m not happy, I’ll just say that this is not a reflection on our relationship. Just a rant.

WHY oh WHY is it unacceptable for me to relax on the weekends, or be sick (which I am, again), or otherwise have a “break” day without it being insinuated that I am not dedicated to doing the things he cares about,  but when he has a list a mile long of things that need to be done around here, he can spend hours on the computer and playing with the kidlets?

The List:

1. The little guy is depending on him to finish his Halloween costume.  It clearly is going to come down to the wire and that is really annoying when I know several hours work and it could be finished today, or mostly finished.

2. Our garbage disposal has been jammed for a week.   It is making it a huge pain in the ass to deal with cooking and cleaning. He was going to fix it yesterday. Now he “doesn’t have time” to get to it this weekend.

3. He was going to go into work today to catch up on backlog.

4. Our washing machine is still broken and he didn’t call on it all week despite my begging him and reminding him every day.

Finally, every time I leave the house  it is a risk.  I can’t leave the kitchen clean and come home to it clean because nobody in this house knows how to pick up after themselves but me, I guess. The living room is also on the trashed side of things despite my cleaning it yesterday. So, I just spent 3 hours off doing laundry at the laundromat because of the above mentioned washer, and I’ve come home to a worse mess than I left.

That’s just a few of the more glaring things. None of it matters. I guess that’s why I am the slave and not him. However, I am still annoyed today. Maybe I am having my not-period. I don’t bleed anymore since I got my IUD, but I still get emotional periodically. This feels like that.

For the record, so far this weekend I have:

Cleaned the living room and kitchen.

Sorted laundry for 5 people

Done laundry for 5 people

Planned meals for a week

Gone grocery shopping (and hauled a propane tank)

Chased three children around a hockey rink for two hours while Master played hockey.

Cleaned the litter box.

Cleaned the kitchen again.

Cleaned the Living room again.

Cooked meals for the whole family multiple times

Reorganized the freezer.

All while fighting off a seriously angry set of sinuses and exhaustion due to my lovely cold.

Is it my most productive weekend ever? No, it’s not. Does it annoy me anyway? Yep.

Yeah, Master is I am sure doing plenty more than I am giving him credit for. I am probably being totally unfair to him. But right now it’s me who wants sympathy before I go off on him in a totally unslavelike manner!

Bah Humbug.

To The Person Who Found This Blog…

searching for, “Help! I’ve never done laundry.”

I am sorry. I suspect this was not what you were looking for. Good luck!

Course Corrections

My Master is going to beat me.  I don’t know exactly when, and I am not even 100% clear as to why. Yet, it has become clear to both of us that this is what is going to happen. We both need to clear the air.

I’m terrified. I haven’t been seriously beaten in a very. long. time.

It makes sense, our dynamic has more or less taken a backseat to the events of the last couple of years. First, Master and CC were changing and having issues and most of the focus was there. Then, they were splitting and the focus was there. It’s really been at least two years since we’ve been focused on each other and our dynamic in any real way.

There are a lot of things that are different now. I am not sure we will ever be back to that “pure” Master and slave dynamic we had in years past, but it’s certainly a goal of ours. Running a household and supporting each other through a painful breakup has changed things in ways neither of us would have guessed.  It put a huge amount of stress on each of us individually and on our relationship. There have been moments when I was not at all sure we were going to make it together.

I’m not there anymore, though. We are finally in a more stable and pleasant place. The future looks positive rather than bleak.  We are moving forward and building our new lives together. Even the financial issues that seemed bleak and overwhelming are beginning to resolve themselves, albeit slowly. But, we still aren’t totally satisfied with the way things are.

Another Year & A New Page

Friday is our sixth anniversary. We went out to dinner last night to celebrate because we will have kids that night. I feel a lot of things, but I am not actually sure how to put most of them into words.  So instead of writing about that, I am going to write about my journal.  You know, the book that I write in filled with paper pages.

I’ve always kept a journal for Master.  From the first time he came up to my dorm room and took me out for pizza and a spanking he has expected that I will write in it about my feelings. He  used to assign specific things to write about, “How did you feel when I did this?” “How are you feeling after your punishment?” etc. etc. However after a while I sort of took it over and wrote whatever I felt like.

Initially I did this on a special website he’d created just for the purpose. It was like livejournal, and all of his girls had one. Ultimately that site went away, and for a while I used email.  Then I stopped writing all together for a while because I felt he never read the emails and it didn’t feel much like journaling anyway.  It was only a couple of years ago that he gave me my first paper journal.

There is one exception. The first Christmas I was with him, he gave me a journal. It was a religious devotional journal and he had gone through and read every single meditation, then put marks next to every one that he thought could apply to M/s relationships as well as religion. For the next year I went through and wrote responses to each of the marked passages.

The only one I did not write about was the final one which talked about God being “Master” “Lord of my life” “Head of our home.”  I told him I did not want to write about that hypothetically, and I would fill it out when those statements were a reality for me. Last summer when Master finally collared me and I started referring to him as “Master” (although he had been my Owner for several years prior to that) I dug the book back out, but I still couldn’t fill out that last page. Now it feels wrong. That book represents a version of me that is in the past now. I was young, virginal (yes, really), fresh. I had a lot of ideas that don’t necessarily match up with the me of today. It feels wrong to insert my current incarnation into a book that documents the me of yesterday. So it is still sitting on my bookshelf with one marked, empty, entry.

The last journal he gave me was at Christmas a couple of years ago. We had all been going through a rough time, especially he and CC, but he and I as well. I think the journals were his request for more and better communication between us.  That never really happened with CC, but I have diligently worked to fill the pages of that book even though there are at times long pauses and at times negative entries.

It seems the longer I am with Master the harder it can be for me to write. I don’t really understand all the reasons for it, but I have some guesses.  First, the novelty has worn off. Initially I could write tons of entries and think deeply because everything was new.  I wanted to get my head around what it is I was doing and think deeply about everything. Now, things are not so new. I am used to the feelings I feel from living this lifestyle and I don’t feel such a need to analyze everything.

Also, Master and I have gone through a couple of dark periods with my writing. My journal has at times become a place to write the dark things that are too difficult to say. It became a way to communicate any negativity I was feeling without ever having to confront him about it. But, the problem with that is that it is easy to get tunnel vision, and using the journal for that single purpose is very damaging. It means Master no longer wants to read it, and we lose a lot of essential communication that way.  If he does read it he may get the wrong impression or think I am always unhappy (as some readers have done on this blog, too) and he has become very discouraged at times from my writing.

As a result of this darkness that has pervaded in my writing, and also because of the events of the last year, I have been very reluctant to write in my journal lately.  Then, over the weekend I was at the bookstore looking to spend a gift certificate I got for my birthday when it hit me.  I wanted a new journal.  It all made sense. Master and I are starting our lives together over in many ways, and we are certainly going forward in a new direction. I wanted to acknowledge that by opening a new book, literally. So on impulse I bought a journal and wrote these same sentiments in it.

Yet, even as I was writing I began to feel sentimental about the book he had given me. I really wanted to fill it up. It was a gift from Master, and the thoughts inside of it are all intimate pieces of me. So, I thought perhaps I could re-purpose it.  That was my feeling when I gave the new journal to Master to read, that the old one would make a good punishment book, or maybe a place to write him letters directly going forward.  I asked Master for his input on how best to use it as well.

However by last night I had decided not to do either of those things, but to put the new journal on hold.  I wanted to fill the old one up and not reject it or give up on it. So, imagine my surprise when Master told me he didn’t want me to do any of those things. He didn’t want me to keep using it as a journal, nor did he want me to do anything else with it. He told me to leave it and just start using the new one.  This small order made me cry, and I told him, “I want to finish it.”

“It is finished.” He said, “Just because a book has blank pages doesn’t mean it is incomplete.”

So, on to the next book and chapter of our lives. Happy Anniversary Master.