It’s not a good deal if only one side is happy.

Already, Valkyries has afforded me a new nickname afte rmy last post: Subject-E. 

He says he’s going to start a study, and I don’t know that he’s only joking about it. Perhaps that’s the most maddening part. 

I’m reminded of a time Master Levi said he was going to tie me to the bed, gag me and belt me. I wasn’t threatened by that; I was excited. 

It never did happen, even twenty years on. 

Still, I’m very aware of fucking around and finding out, and so for as much as I want to call Valkyries “cute” and carry on with my day, I’m very aware of the consequences of not taking his threat seriously. 

Some of my forum friends too, it seems, have delighted in tormenting me about my medical kink. Nice.

The last few days have been stressful to say the very least. It all started Sunday night.

The handle fell off of the air fryer, only instead of picking it up, Master raged at it. I was unimpressed. 

To me, rage is kind of misplaced: energy spent raging at the problem could be energy spent fixing the problem. I grew up in a home with two hot-headed parents. I learnt that in the time they spent raging at one another about the problem, I could have resolved the problem myself. 

So that’s what I did, I solved problems. I became a doer.

I realised that our air fryer had had its chips (or its sausages, in this case), so I did something about it. I ordered a new one, a swanky one too. It’s got a digital display on it. 

Monday evening, I faced my own frustrations. 

Our bedroom attaches directly to our lounge, and given half the chance, Huxley likes to bound across our bed and bark at passersby outside of the front-facing bedroom window. Not a big issue when his feet are clean, but quite a big issue when they’re muddy. 

So Sunday I changed the bedsheets, and by Monday evening, they’re covered in muddy pawprints. Understandably not something anyone would want to sleep in.

I’m about to strip the bed when Master stops me in my tracks. 

There’s no need to strip the bed completely, he reminds me, it’s only the duvet cover that needs washing, and he can have that washed and dried in about two hours, tops.. So, he saved my bacon there. 

I ordered a paw washer and a protective blanket for the bed, too. Huxley does not like the paw washer, but tough.

Monday evening and over dinner, Master tells that there’s a gig he “has” to go to, in the town centre. It almost kicks off world war three.

He doesn’t have to go to it, I say. It’s not for work, so he only wants to go to it. Master apologises, reframes his statement, but by then I’m already hyper-aware. I feel like I’m being abandoned once again. 

I’m not sure why Master’s going to gigs without me gets me like this, but it does. It’s not that I think he’ll cheat, or that I feel like I’m missing out — I trust him completely, and I hate gigs and concerts with a passion. It’s not even like he goes to them often — once or twice a year, tops.

So, what is it? 

This feeling of abandonment, that he’s living (or planning) a life without me, is the only thing I can put it down to. We’re normally inseparable; he’s normally so integrated into my life that he knows where I’m going and what I’m doing —and I he likewise — everyday. It’s not because we want to control one another, we’ve always shared our lives with one another. That’s just kind of how we are. It’s just some of the dumb shit that people do when they’re in love.

So when I find out that he’s planning to go to a gig, that I’m sure he hasn’t mentioned before, it lands like a bad smell — my self-protector instincts kick in and I pull away. Not to punish him, but because I wanted to protect him and not let him try and placate what refuses to be placated right now — me. 

I was angry, and I wanted to be allowed to be angry. My anger, for whatever reason that it existed, was entirely justified. 

Master tries to talk with me, but I haven’t had enough time to answer my own questions yet, so I’m a flurry of half-formed thoughts and anxieties instead.

I got so bad, I admitted I’d wondered for a time if we should even be married. I do relationships, I want to do relationships, and I want to do loving, committed relationships with people who want to do loving, committed relationships with me. If he wanted the gig life — if he still wanted to party hard with his single mates — should we even be in this relationship?  Do we have different ideas of what “married life” means? 

We spent much of Tuesday barely talking, and we were both tense at dinner to boot. I wasn’t trying to withhold myself from him, but I was very wary of saying something that would kickstart another argument. Maybe too wary. 

Master asks if we’re going to talk, says he thinks we need to, so I admit that I’ve been holding back for much of the day because I didn’t want an argument hanging over us while we worked. He says that he’s “sorry if I made you feel that way”, and it irks me. I don’t want to be so pedantic, but his is a non-apology apology. I can’t accept that. 

“I’m sorry, I accept your intentions, but I can’t accept your apology. When you say you’re sorry if you made me feel that way, you’re dismissing the impact your actions had on me, even unintentionally. My feelings are as real as yours here, they deserve to be heard too” I say. Master finds me frustrating, says his heart is in the right place. Again I accept that, it really is. 

“Okay, sorry that I made you feel that way” he says. “Better?”

“Thank you, yes, I can accept that apology. Please continue.” 

Master says that he doesn’t know the solution besides not going to gigs, which aggravates him because they are what he enjoys. I say that’s not the solution and was never something I had even considered: I understand how important his gigs are to him, but right now, I wasn’t feeling met by him. Again, I was feeling abandoned. 

“I think there are a few things I need from you for me to feel met by you” I begin.

“First of all, we need to talk domains. Right now, I’m trying to running this shitshow on my own, and I’m failing. I can’t do that anymore Wolf. When I’m working my ass off and you’re lounging with your feet up, watching football and waiting to be waited on? It kills me inside” I say. 

“I’m knackered, and then you tell me that you’re going to a gig? I feel left with all of the responsibility of our home while you go out and have fun, and that’s not fair. I took on the kitchen when you started working away from home again, that was stupid of me and I apologise. I can’t do that anymore, and I shouldn’t have done that in the first place. That has to be your domain.”

“Second, when Lewis asked you out on Friday, the reason you gave him for not going was that you’re skint. Not that it’s date night with me, but that you’re broke. That hurts me. You cried last week when I said I missed our date nights when you were at football, now I feel forgotten about. It makes me wonder whether I really am your most important person.”  

“You are” he says. I feel a discerning eyebrow raise slightly and I curse my body for acting out exactly what my mind is thinking. 

“You are” he repeats. 

“Okay, thank you, but I need to you to assert your married life more with your friends. They’re not married with families, you are”. He nods once slowly. 

“Finally, I think it would really help me if we had something like a family calendar, so that I can see when things like gigs are coming up, instead of just being told about them by word of mouth. That would help me prepare things like what I want to eat, and what I want to do, rather than panicking and being pawned off to my mother’s house for the night because I have nothing else planned.” 

“We can do that too, no problem” he says. 

“I think also, if we can agree ‘yes’ gigs from ‘no’ gigs? Bristol, Bath, south Wales and Somerset? Fine. London, up north or ones that go on til 3AM? No go. It’s not fair that my sleep gets disrupted because you’re stumbling in drunk at 4AM.”

“I always look at the location anyway” he says, “Bristol or Cardiff is fine because I can do that in one night, but London is pushing it, and hotels rank up the cost.”

“As for 3AM? I’m nearly forty, Kitten. I don’t want to be dancing then — I want to be sleeping too!”

So in the end, we managed to find a compromise, and Master spent much of the evening cleaning the kitchen and sorting our new calendar. I think he’s reluctant to admit that having me cook dinner after work is making things easier for him though. It is the truth, he just enjoys cooking too much to be willing to admit it quite yet!

By nightfall, I’m feeling emotional. Guilty, even. 

I curl up next to him, closer now, but still reluctant to talk feelings. Master reads me and smiles. 

“I’m sorry that I’m such a pain in the ass sometimes” I say through my tears. 

“Here” he says, pulling me to him. “You’re not a pain in the ass. And even if you are? You’re my loveable pain in the ass.” 

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Stay safe & have fun,

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