Today my husband and I celebrated six years of being together. Through those six years we've been through the best and worst of times. From each experience we grew closer and our relationship grew stronger. One of the things that kept our spark alive was kinky sex. It's been part of our relationship since our first kiss where he pulled me down by my hair a few moments in. In that moment I knew this was a man I could share my wildest desires with. I felt his passion and dominance in that kiss and never looked back.

I wonder then why it took us as long as it did to come to this point. Maybe I needed to build an unbreakable amount of trust, something that's not easy for me to do. Maybe I was just scared he might run away if he knew my deepest fantasies. Maybe I was terrified of my own wants and needs. Whatever the reason, it wasn't until about a month ago that I finally expressed my desire to be his full time slave.

It's something I had been thinking of for quite some time. I felt the need growing inside of me each day. How does one person tell another they want to be owned? Sure, he dominated me in the bedroom, but how could I possibly explain I wanted him to dominate and own me always? Sometimes the universe lines up just so and answers make themselves known. My answer came in the form of being sent The Ultimate Guide to Kink to review. One of the chapters was on slave training. I was at my salon getting my hair dyed. I was about half way through the chapter and it hit me. I simply texted him "I'm reading about slave training in my book."

A few moments that stretched into eternity passed and I got the reply "Oh yeah? You want to be my slave? That's sexy." It's funny how things sometimes work out perfectly when you've spent so long imagining they'd go all wrong.

We proceeded to text back and forth for a while about things I was concerned with and things he wanted. We talked at length that evening about everything - how our relationship would look, what we would do, and set down some guidelines. Oddly enough, I had ordered a locking collar a few days prior to that not knowing this conversation would happen. It's weird even now thinking how everything aligned just so. It arrived about two days after our first discussion. In those days we spent a lot of time reading and researching. I had done a lot prior to mentioning anything to him, but he needed some time to understand what all this meant. We did some practice in those days with him giving orders through the day and me following them. I assume this was his way of testing me to see what things were like before coming to an actual agreement.

A very long and educational two days passed and then my collar arrived. I felt nervous and excited as I unwrapped it carefully from its package and laid it out for him. After our son went to bed that night, he went up to it. I followed behind him into our kitchen. He told me to turn around and carefully wrapped the leather around my neck, locking it together when he was finished. He put the keys in his pocket and I was officially his.

Now, I'm a bookworm and a research fanatic. If I want to know about something, I want to know everything about that something. All the reading in the world didn't prepare me for that moment. I looked up and him and put my hand on the ring of my collar. I took a deep breath and felt it tight against my neck. A wash of emotion flooded my body. My brain went fuzzy and silent. At that instant, nothing existed in me but the thought that I was his and that everything I'd ever wanted was happening. I felt warm all over and more alive than I knew I could. I felt like suddenly all was right with the world and that I was as I always should have been.

It was thus that my life went from that of a wife to that of his slave. In a way, I thought simply acknowledging our places would make everything else work out. I thought all our negotiations at the start would make this change easy enough. I knew what was expected of me and that I wanted desperately to mold to that. I was given a short list of rules to start out with, the intent being that more would be added as I got the hang of the existing ones.

I adapted quickly to the rules. It felt natural for me to obey them, to do as he wished, to please him. Some minor tweaks were made in the first few weeks. I was told to write up a contract for us that would serve as our formal agreement. I used his outline of what was expected and our guidelines. I worked diligently on writing something that would bring together both of our needs. We agreed it looked good, but nothing happened.

As it turns out, changing our titles to each other didn't miraculously transform him. I turned my life over to him when he collared me and I don't think he knew exactly what to do with it. While I had years of fantasizing about how I would act and what I would do, I had given him only a few short days to find his own place. Where before he made very few decisions, now he was left holding responsibility for all of them. When no new rules came, I was left feeling lost in the wind. Did he want this as much as I did? Had I screwed everything up? Had I not followed orders well enough?

Many people in the BDSM community will tell you about communication and consent. These are the cornerstones of a healthy D/s or M/s relationship. I had given my consent, but the communication part is ongoing. He's never been good at articulating what he feels so this part hasn't been the easiest in our shift. He said he thought this change would be good for us. He said I was doing well. When he began to feel overwhelmed by the responsibility I think he didn't recognize it as such.

I write in a journal daily for him. It allows me to work through any issues I'm having and helps keep communication open. On occasion I'll raise a point in an entry and he'll respond to me. I wrote one day about how I felt having not received any more instruction. I wrote about how I wasn't sure if he just wanted to keep things light on the rules or if he was questioning continuing. I feared getting a response that he no longer wanted to do this with me. I didn't know if my heart could handle losing this after getting a taste of it.

It took almost two days before I received a reply. He explained he was overwhelmed with thinking about all the little things that before had been left up to me. I suppose because I'm so much on the submissive end of things that I didn't realize how much work went into being on the other side. I assumed that being the one making the rules must be the easy part. That giving punishment and making decisions wouldn't be as much work as taking punishment or following decisions. Everything had come down on him so fast and he was overloaded.

Thankfully, his decision was not to stop everything. He simply wanted to add things in slower than I did. In my mind I had expected to be given a handful of new rules each day. I expected that he would just know what to do. I had so strongly felt the pull of slavery and submission that I assumed he would have the same pull towards being my Master. That when that collar went around my neck the answers would appear to him as they did to me.

I took a step back and remembered who was driving this cart. At the end of the day, he owns me and thus he decides the pace of forward movement. If I'm pushing him for more ownership then it's me who has started to drive. That's not what I wanted. That's not the dynamic we agreed to. I agreed to follow his lead even if it doesn't always make me happy, even if I'd prefer to have things go another way.

He reminded me in his response that this is a long term relationship. He reminded me that you don't climb a mountain in a second. He reminded me that this is a journey we're taking and that rushing into things won't get us to the finish line because there isn't a finish line to cross. Our relationship is ever evolving and changing. There's no reason to try and make everything happen right this second. He's a wise man and good at seeing the big picture of things. I get lost in details a lot of the time. So it was that he pulled me out of the details and brought me to see the long term view. He gives me so many examples of why I picked a good Master. He can admit that he didn't suddenly become perfect when I gave myself to him. He can move us forward at a pace that won't end up being a sprint ended with a quick exhaustion.

Our contract remains unsigned. I tweaked it again today at his request. It is still his intention for us to sign it, but not until we're both really ready. A more formal collar is on its way to him, to be given to me upon signing. Our wedding anniversary is next month. Perhaps then will be the time. Maybe it will be sooner, maybe later. I remain his until that day and will be his long after. This is just the start of our journey together. We will learn the intricacies in time. In the end it's not the contract, the rules, the protocols, or any of those things that make the dynamic. It's him owning me. It's me following, submitting to him as he requests. And so we continue this path together, him in front and me behind. Together we learn the things that books cannot teach. We learn that our way is not the same as someone else's and we learn what our way looks like. We fall in our places, him as Master and I as slave. All is as it should be.