Nick, you should have taken me up on it.

There is a strong submissive part of me hidden away. I’m the only one that really knows about it or how deep it runs. As a girl-child of the 60’s and 70’s – the true time of the women’s lib movement I knew enough, as I grew up, to hide that submissive side and hide it well. Women had to be independent and take care of themselves. No man was going to ever tell us what to do! Of course underneath all this I was a closet spanko with a deep desire to submit, to be dominated, to be controlled, to be protected, and to be loved. I knew this, but I saw it as a flaw in my character and a deep, dark, shameful secret to keep.

I became that independent woman society told me to become. I went to college, got a job, and supported myself well. I dated a little but never lost myself in a man. I eventually bought my own home, I didn’t need any man. Then I met Nick. We laugh now at my reaction to the first time he asked me out. He had called me at work, asked me out and I accepted. Then I put my head down on the desk and said “Why did I say yes? I don’t want to go out with anybody.”

Obviously I was very wrong. We were meant for each other and we married two years later. I certainly kept my independence. I even kept my own house (just in case, I thought) for a few years. We kept our money somewhat separate. We could both write checks on either account but we just paid our own bills. He never knew how much I spent, he never asked. We were both sensible with money so it’s never been a concern. I was pretty much in charge of the kids and I liked that. We lived together in perfect harmony.

Unfortunately, I never introduced Nick to the real me. My deep dark secret was safely contained behind many, many walls. Then for a variety of reasons after 23 years of marriage and at the ripe old age of 49 I came out and told him my secret. He loved the spanking part, he really loved the change from hating sex to loving it on my part, and he was thrilled at my brand new willingness to explore that sexuality. What he wasn’t too keen on was being dominate. He too was raised during the ‘totally equal’ time.

He told me early on he didn’t want to have to ‘parent me’ he wanted an equal partner. Sigh… okay, so the submissive part of me will remain in my fiction and not in my real life. I’ve accepted that and I’m not unhappy. Nick plays around with it sometimes to please me and I appreciate it but I will never be part of our real lives.

Now to the point of this post – ha, you didn’t think it had one did you? Nick and I are coming up on a hard time in our marriage. I’ve said many times Nick and I don’t fight and I’m completely serious when I say that. WE NEVER FIGHT and rarely disagree. But there is on accepting to that nearly totally true statement and here it comes – we are about, nearly, almost, sorta ready to remodel the kitchen. It’s not the mess and inconvenience that gets to us, it’s the decisions.

Making changes in the house is the only thing that seems to make Nick mean and hateful. We’ll start off on a simple conversation about it and suddenly he’s biting my head off, he’s yelling (he says he isn’t – but he IS), and he’s hurting my feelings. Suddenly I feel once again that it’s HIS house and I should just shut up. If I push too hard he just snaps something that sounds to me like “Forget the whole damn thing. We’ll leave it this way.” It’s the only thing I don’t know how to talk to him about. I think I know why he yells and gets mean. I think he panics. He thinks I’ll talk him into something that we don’t really need and will be too expensive and biting my head off is the only way he know to make me back off. But it makes me back way off and nurse my hurt feelings. It can have an effect on our happiness.

Here is our main difference. The kitchen hasn’t been touched in 20 years. We both agree it needs to be redone. I want a lot more redone and more changes than he wants. Although keeping cost down matters to both of us it is financial possible to do everything I want, but sure it’s gonna cost more. For example (and I’m making all this up by what has been said in the past, not anything we’ve looked at for this particular project) let’s say we’re looking at new sinks. I see one that is really pretty and will give the kitchen the ‘look’ I’m going for, maybe it’s $400, but Nick sees one beside it for $300 that ‘will do’. I don’t want what ‘will do’. This is the one and only time we are going to redo this kitchen. We’ll be living with it until we die or Mollie moves us to a home. I want it to be special. It’s a tiny galley kitchen; I’m never going to have a fine new house with a gourmet kitchen. I don’t want or need one – for pity sake I don’t even cook! Something that I’m sure will be brought up in out negations. But I still want it to be special.

Now to tie the two seemingly different part of this post together, if I had come out to Nick when we were first married and he had firmly taken the reins or if he had wanted the job of HOH when I came out to him 5 years ago his wouldn’t be a problem. All final decisions would go to him. (Sorry Nick, no take backs now! And yes, I do know it wouldn’t have been that simple.) So what do we, as equal partners, do when we just disagree? I do mean all this mostly tongue-in-cheek. I know we’ll survive this and come out with a beautiful kitchen sometime in the future. But I do wish we could discuss it without him getting mad. And yes honey, you DO get mad! I want to feel he’s listening to all my dreams for this project. I feel like if I mention something other than the obvious needed changes, he’s already decided the answer’s NO before I’ve even explained what I’d like to try.

Any suggestions for surviving a kitchen renovation? Have any of you done this within the past few years? Anything you really wish you had done differently? Anything you really wish you’d done but didn’t. You’ll all probably here more of the details of what I want in the future. When I’m too nervous to tell Nick something I usually tell you guys and hope he reads it. It’s not the best way, but at least he doesn’t bite my head off as he reads - usually.