A Gentle Nudge

I have been busy organising my little office space and in amongst a box of old papers I found something. It was a story, a piece of fiction I wrote for my husband almost a decade ago. It was fun and risque and all about our newly discovered dd lifestyle. It was a fun little fantasy and summed up how we were back then.

At first, as I read it, it made me sad. There is so much we are missing out on now. But then I had an idea.

Dangerous, I know.

If reading it reminded me of the fun and laughter and delight that came with the exploration of a new dynamic in our relationship, would it do the same for him? Was it worth a try? I thought so.

I've long since stopped even trying to have conversations about the way things used to be. It makes him tense and guarded and only seems to add to his burden. Conversations, no matter how gently I approach the subject, become confrontational to some degree or another. But a story? What harm could reading a story do?

And so I slipped it between something I knew he'd look at, along with a note reminding him when, and why, it had been written, and went to bed.

I don't know what I expected really. My expectations weren't particularly high, I wasn't expecting some cataclysmic change of heart and an abrupt return to what I see as normality but I wasn't expecting total silence either.

He came to bed and said nothing. All the next day he said nothing. NOTHING! I went to bed that night very disheartened. I knew he'd read it as I'd checked it wasn't still where I'd left it. (I couldn't very well sulk about him not mentioning it if he hadn't even seen it, now could I?) It lay discarded at the side of his chair so he must have read it. Mustn't he?

OK, so all that proves is that he'd seen it. I have no way of knowing if he actually read it.

But I think he did.

Yesterday, as we tackled various jobs around the house that we've been putting off for months, we worked together. Not him doing one job and me doing another, but together. The way we used to. I'm not much good at DIY but he is, and we quickly fell into roles of teacher and pupil, master and apprentice. Husband and wife.  I don't want to read too much into it but I'm kind of hoping that my little story did its job and reminded him of just how good things can be between us when we get the dynamic right.

Yes, its a long way from getting back to dd. But I think its a step in the right direction.