My Femdom Wife Started Making the Rules, Part 2: The Three Page Agreement

Previously: Part 1: The Card on the Fridge

Update, since a few of you asked what happened next, and two people asked specifically about the three pages, which I did not think anybody would care about. Quick context again for anybody landing on this cold. I am thirty four, I do estimating for a building supply company outside Allentown, and I have been married to Rachel for six years. She is thirty six and she cleans teeth for a living. Last time I wrote about the index card she put on the fridge back in February. This one is about the thing that replaced it, which is the closest thing I have to a femdom contract, three typed pages, and I signed it in pen at my own kitchen table on a Sunday in May like a man refinancing a car.

I keep calling it a contract in my head and I want to be upfront that she has never once used that word. She calls it the pages. Go read the pages. That is on page two. She printed it at work on the office printer, which means my entire marriage got reorganized on paper that came out slightly warm and curled at one corner, with the top inch cut off with scissors because the office letterhead printed on it and she did not notice until it was already done. I am telling you that detail because it is the kind of thing that never shows up in any of the stories I read before this happened to us. Nobody tells you it is going to be office paper.

She made me wait eleven days for the femdom contract

If you read the first part you know it ended in the car in our parking lot, engine off, her saying she wanted to write something real and she wanted some of it to be things I would not like. That was a Saturday night in April.

Then nothing happened for eleven days.

I want to be clear that I understand now that the eleven days were the point, and at the time I did not understand that at all. At the time I thought she had gotten embarrassed, or lost interest, or thought better of it, and I was walking around the apartment in a low grade panic that I had somehow used up the one window in my life where this was going to be allowed to be real. I asked her about it twice. Both times badly.

The first time was at a red light on Tilghman on the way to her mother's. I said, very casually, in the voice of a man asking about a package, "So are you actually doing the thing you said in the car or was that a car thing."

She did not look over. She said, "It is not ready." Light turned green. That was the whole answer.

The second time I made a joke about it, which is my worst habit and she has since written a rule about it. We were putting groceries away and I said something like, "Should I be getting a lawyer, is this going to be notarized," and I did that laugh I do, and she stopped with a can of beans in her hand and looked at me for about four seconds and said, "You are nervous, so you are being funny at me. I am going to let you have that one for free. It is the last free one." And she put the beans in the cabinet.

In the middle of the eleven days there was a Thursday, and Thursdays were already hers from the index card, so the Thursday happened anyway. That is the first thing I want to actually tell you about properly, because it is the night I stopped being able to pretend this was a game we were playing on purpose.

I was home and showered by eight. She got in around eight fifteen, ate a yogurt standing up, and said, "Floor." Which by then meant the spot in front of the couch, hands on knees, back to the television. I sat. She sat behind me on the couch with her feet up next to my leg and she did not turn the TV on, which was new and immediately made it worse. Silence in our apartment is not quiet. The radiator ticks and the people above us have a kid.

She said, "Say the four rules."

I said them. I thought I knew them cold. Ask before I touch myself, every time. One true thing I want, out loud, every day. Thursdays are hers, home and showered by eight. Peaches stops everything.

She said, "Rule two. Say it again. Word for word, the way I wrote it."

And I could not. I had the content of it but not the words, and the words she actually wrote were "even if it is small and even if it is embarrassing. Especially then," and I had been quietly dropping the especially then for about six weeks because the especially then is the part that costs anything. She let me try three times. Then she got up, went to the bedroom, came back with the index card out of my sock drawer, which she apparently knew the location of, and held it in front of my face and had me read it off the card out loud like a kid at a spelling bee.

Then she said, "That is why the pages are taking eleven days. Because you will absolutely take a rule I wrote and quietly sand the hard part off it, and you will not even know you are doing it, and if I am going to do this properly I have to write it in a way that does not let you." She put the card on the arm of the couch. "I am not mad at you. I am doing homework. Sit there."

And then she turned the TV on and we did a normal forty minutes with me on the floor. At the end of it she ran her hand through the back of my hair and said, "Nine more days," and I said thank you, and I meant it, which I think tells you most of what you need to know about where I was by then.

The night she read the three pages out loud

It was a Sunday. Second Sunday in May. She said at lunch, "After dinner, kitchen table, no TV," in the same voice she uses about calling the landlord.

So at about seven thirty I sat down at our kitchen table, which is a round one with two chairs and a third chair that holds mail, and she sat across from me with three pages and a pen and her glasses on, and she said, "I am going to read all of it out loud and you are not going to talk until I am done. If you need me to stop you can put your hand flat on the table."

I want to tell you that the reading took a long time. It took about twenty five minutes for three pages because she read slowly and she stopped after most of the items to explain why it was in there, and I sat there with my hands in my lap in a t shirt listening to my wife explain the reasoning behind rules about my own behavior, and somewhere in the first five minutes my hearing did that thing where it goes slightly underwater.

Page one was not the sexy part. Page one was all mine. She had learned the lesson from the index card and she led with it. It said, and I am paraphrasing because I do not have it in front of me at work: peaches ends everything immediately and she will never ask me to justify it, not that night and not later. A second word, oranges, which pauses without ending, which she added because she said she figured out that I would never use a full stop and might use a pause. Nothing in writing, nothing photographed, nothing recorded. Nobody outside the apartment ever knows, with one exception she wrote in herself, which is that if either of us ever wants to talk to an actual professional about any of this, that is allowed and is not a betrayal. Nothing that leaves marks anybody at work would see. Nothing involving anyone else, ever, full stop, no third people, which she read twice and then said, "That is not for you, that is for me, I want it on the paper."

Then she said, "Okay. Page two is mine," and she took a drink of water, and I remember the specific sound of her putting the glass down.

Page two was the week. Not Thursdays. The week. Permission on everything, asked out loud, in words, every single time, no texting it unless she is at work. Home by seven on Thursdays instead of eight, showered, phone in the bowl by the door. One true thing I want, out loud, daily, with the especially then written in bold, and a line underneath it that said if I report the same want twice in a week it does not count, which is a genuinely cruel bit of engineering and completely effective. She decides when, and I do not ask when, and I do not hint, and hinting includes being in the doorway doing nothing, which she identified by name because she had watched me do it. She may take as long as she likes and nothing is owed to me on any schedule. If she asks me a question about this, any question, I answer it honestly on the first try, in a full sentence, without a joke in front of it. And at the bottom of page two, in its own paragraph, the one I argued about, which I will get to.

Page three was administration, which sounds like nothing and is actually the part that made it real. A review date every six weeks, on a Sunday, at that table, where either of us can add, cut, or change anything, and where she asks me three set questions and I have to answer them out loud. A line that said this ends the day either of us says it ends, with no negotiating and no owing. And then two blank lines at the bottom with our names typed underneath them.

When she finished she put the pages down and said, "Now you can talk."

And what came out of me was, "You wrote my rules first."

She said, "Obviously I wrote your rules first." Like I had said something stupid. "If I get the first page wrong, the other two pages are a problem instead of a good night."

I sat there and I did not have anything. I had come to the table braced for something out of a story, something with a collar in it, and instead my wife had spent eleven days quietly building the safest room anybody has ever built for me and then written down that she gets to decide when I am allowed to have an orgasm. Both of those on the same three pages, in the same size font, out of the same printer.

I said, "What happens if I do not sign it."

She said, "Then we go back to the card and I am not going to sulk about it." Then she said, "But you are going to sign it."

I said how do you know.

And she said, "Because you have read the card four hundred times and you still keep it in your sock drawer."

I signed it. Blue pen, hers, the same kind she writes with. She signed under me. Then she folded the pages in three like a letter, put them in the drawer where the takeout menus are, and said, "Do the dishes." Not in a scene voice. In her actual voice. I did the dishes. She went and started the shower. I stood at our sink with the water running and I had the single clearest thought of my adult life, which was: I am going to be like this for the rest of my life and she is fine with it.

The clauses in the femdom contract I did not see coming

Here is where I have to be honest about which parts actually changed my days, because it was not the ones I expected.

The phone in the bowl by the door on Thursdays sounds like a small thing. It is the biggest thing on the page. I did not understand until the third Thursday that what she had taken was not my phone, it was my exits. I had forty years of habits for not being in a room, and all of them live in my hand. Without it I sat on that floor and I was just in my apartment with my wife and whatever I was feeling, with nowhere to put it, which is also exactly what she told me she wanted when I asked her about it weeks later. She said, "You are very good at being in a room without being in it. That is the thing I am actually taking."

The money one I thought was going to be the hard one and it turned out to be almost tender. It is not a findom thing, I want to be clear, she did not take my paycheck, nothing dramatic. It is one line. On the first of the month I move four hundred dollars into the joint account and tell her out loud what I am keeping, and she can say no to anything on the list. That is it. The first month I read her my list standing in the kitchen like a kid reading a book report, work lunches, the barber, a video game that was coming out, and she said no to the video game. Not because she wanted the forty dollars. Because she wanted me to ask for a thing I actually wanted and be told no and have to go to work the next day anyway. I was annoyed for two days. Then on Thursday she handed me a receipt from the game store with the game already bought, and said, "You can have it. Say thank you and then tell me what the two days were like." And I was on my knees at the foot of our bed explaining what it is like to be annoyed at your wife over forty dollars when the reason is on page two. She took notes in her phone.

The grooming line is three words long and I think about it every day. Shaved and short. That is all it says. Not elaborate, not a ritual, no checking. But it means every Saturday morning for the last five months I have stood in my own bathroom doing something to my body for no reason except that she wrote it down once, and that is a strange and very effective way to be owned by somebody, which is a word she has never used and I only use in my head.

And the speech one. The speech one changed who I am at work, which I did not sign up for. No jokes in front of real answers. Full sentences when she asks me something. The first week it just made me slow. By about week three I noticed I was doing it in a meeting, somebody asked me a question about a lumber quote and I did the thing where I make a crack first and then answer, and I heard myself do it, and I actually stopped mid sentence in a conference room because my wife had written a rule about it. My boss thought I was having a stroke. I am not making a joke about that, I mean he actually asked if I was okay.

The rule I actually resent

At the bottom of page two there is a paragraph I argued about at the table and lost, and five months on it is still the one.

It says that before bed, every night, I tell her any time that day I lied to her, shaded something, or let her believe something that was not quite right. Her exact words were "including the small social ones," which I pointed out at the table covers basically all human speech, and she said, "Yes."

I said that one is not about sex.

She said, "No. That one is about you saying sorry eleven times a day and never once telling me anything true. I am not spending a year building you into somebody who kneels nicely and still lies to me about whether he called his father."

I said that is not fair, and she said, "It is not. Do you want it off the page?"

And I sat there and I wanted it off the page so badly, and I said leave it on, and she said, "Say the whole sentence," and I said leave it on the page, and she wrote her initials next to it, which she only did on that one.

I hate it. Five months. I still hate it. Not in a hot way. There is no part of standing at a bathroom sink at eleven forty at night with a toothbrush in your mouth saying "I told Dave I had a dentist appointment so I could skip the Tuesday call, and I let you think the car thing was already handled, and it is not" that feels like anything other than being thirty four and found out. She does not punish me for them. That is the worst part. She says okay, or she says thank you, or sometimes she says "that one was not even a lie, you are getting scared of your own voice," and then she turns the light off. Once I told her something bigger than I meant to, about money, about a credit card I had not mentioned, and she went completely quiet for a second and then said, "Okay. Thank you for the first try." And we dealt with it on a Saturday with a calculator like normal people.

So I resent it and it is also probably the single best thing on the three pages, and I am aware those two things are allowed to be true at once now, which they were not two years ago.

The first review date

Six weeks after the signing, end of June, hot, the window unit going in the bedroom and not reaching the kitchen. Same table. She had the pages and a pen and a printout of something from her phone notes.

She asked the three questions. They are on page three in her handwriting underneath the typing, so I know them by heart now. What is on here that you are relieved about. What is on here that you are quietly hoping I forget about. And what do you want that is not on here at all.

First one was easy, I said the first page, I said knowing oranges exists means I have never needed it.

Second one I lied. I said nothing, and she put the pen down and waited, and I lasted about twenty seconds, and I said the daily want, I said I have been saying smaller and smaller ones on purpose. And she said, "I know. Week three." And she drew a line and wrote something next to it.

Third one took me nine minutes. I timed it afterward off the clock on the stove, because I could see the clock from my chair. Nine minutes of me not being able to say a sentence, and her not helping, and the window unit going in the other room. What I finally said was that I wanted her to tell me what she gets out of it, out loud, once in a while, because I still catch myself believing she is doing me a favor.

And she took her glasses off, which she basically never does mid conversation, and said, "That is going on page three and I am going to do it badly for a while because it is not a thing I am good at." And then she said the thing I have been chewing on since June, which was, "You keep thinking the pages are about me having power over you. The pages are the only way I have ever gotten you to tell me anything. If you ever get able to just say it, we can burn them."

Then we did administration. She cut one thing, which was a rule about texting that was not working. She added two. One of them was small. One of them was not small at all, and it is the reason I came within one word of saying peaches about three weeks later, and that is the part I actually have not been able to write down yet.

Where this leaves me

Five months in. The index card is still in my sock drawer and the pages are still in the takeout menu drawer and we are two review dates deep. I have said oranges once, for about forty seconds, over something completely unrelated to anything either of us expected, and she stopped so fast and so completely that I understood page one had never been decoration.

I do not have anything wise to say about any of this. I still argue with her about the dishwasher. She still eats crackers over the sink. Last Thursday she had me kneel for twenty minutes and then told me to go to bed and did not touch me, and I lay there furious at a piece of office paper. If you are where I was, with the folder of tabs and six years of saying nothing, the only thing I would actually pass on is that the part that worked was not the kneeling. It was her writing my protections first, and it was a review date, and it was a woman who did homework.

If you want a version of this that is not somebody's marriage, the piece about her side of the drawer gets at a lot of the same waiting from a completely different angle, and if you are the one thinking about writing something like our pages, how to be a dominant woman is close to the kind of thing Rachel was clearly reading in February. There is more in True Stories, and plenty more in User Submitted Stories.

Part three is the rule she added in June and the night I got one word away from ending the whole thing, which I have been putting off writing for a reason.

If you have your own, post it at submit a story. Somebody needs to read it.