I think I gave Alan the wrong idea when I showed him an article someone had written about the M/s lifestyle. There was one paragraph that mentioned that it's easy for the master to sit back and channel surf while being served drinks. It seemed that this was the one paragraph about the whole article that stuck out in Alan's mind.
I think that somehow I expected that he would get the same thing out of the article that I did. I'm afraid that quite the opposite happened I'm afraid he felt that I was complaining that he's been a lazy Master which wasn't the case at all.
I felt that the article was talking about complacency from both parties and I thought it was a good reminder to not get comfortable. I actually felt that it was I who was in danger of becoming complacent. It would be so easy for me to settle into a routine and not submit as fully as I could or should.
It's not easy to become a slave to a man you've been married and "equal" to for more than half your life, no matter how much you desire it. It's SO easy to fall back into old behavior patterns, especially if he's too tired to enforce his expectations. I think this is where active slavery is important. I have to have the self-discipline to continue behaving as his slave even when he's too tired to actively master me.
It's sort of like our eating habits, sometimes one or the other of us will get stressed and want to fall back on our old habits and get something sweet to soothe ourselves with. The one who isn't stressed has two choices; see it as an opportunity to "relax" and junk food, or to exercise self-discipline and to say "No thanks that just doesn't sound good to me."
If anything is important to you, you have to continue to work actively to achieve it. M/s is like a good marriage, it takes work to keep it fresh and alive. But if you're coming to it as a married couple, I think it requires a little more work. You don't just pick your roles and voila! I think each partner has to be actively involved.
