I'm Marilyn, or Mrs. B. I am a stay at home wife and mother rapidly approaching my 30s. I've been married to my husband, Bill, for 10 years. We have one child, a son, who I will call "Little Man" or "the toddler" here on the blog, if I mention him much at all. We live in a small town in the southeastern United States.
Like most couples, our marriage has had its ups and downs. I was only 19 when we got married, very proud of my "independence", and still thinking I had to prove myself to everybody. I started out in our relationship loving my husband very much, but also being pretty headstrong and stubborn. If I didn't get my way, I complained, whined, pouted, threw a fit, or just went on and did what I wanted to anyway. Eventually, he just let me start having my way all the time, and I wondered why he never seemed to take the lead or make a decision. When he did, I either ignored it or criticized him if things didn't work out perfectly.
Over a few years, we got to the point where we still loved each other, but didn't like each other much anymore. I looked at both of our parent's lives, and knew I didn't want our marriage to turn out like either of theirs, but was at a loss for what to do. Early in our marriage, I read a book called Fascinating Womanhood, which suggested respecting and admiring your husband and letting him take the lead in your family. Parts of it made me mad, but I thought I'd try it anyway, because it seemed to promise I would get him to do and buy things for me if I praised him and let him think he was in charge. I wasn't ready to really let him lead back then, and I resented parts of it even as I tried to win his favor, so that experiment was a failure.
A few years later, I had "gotten saved" in the Protestant sense of the term and started attending church (after many years and much prayer and studying to find true Christianity, I was later received into the Roman Catholic Church). I was really interested in what the Bible had to say about marriage and families, so I began studying scripture and doing research online. I was a little surprised to see that scripture was so clear about male headship and submitting to your husband's authority, but also glad to find many women who embraced those things. Looking at marriage from a new perspective, I decided to really try submission this time and try to obey my husband and make him my priority. I read several books on marriage and womanhood and started trying to incorporate their teachings into my life. These helped me to realize my mistakes and come to respect and honor my husband as the head of our household and to see the importance of submitting to and obeying him.I still have a lot of work to do in that area, but the change over just the past year or so has been huge.
One continued problem is that I still have a lazy and rebellious streak. I am at home all day, but it is so easy to get sucked into forums, facebook, and gaming all day. That makes for one messy, disorganized house, which my husband cannot stand. Since I am seemingly not able to motivate myself, I asked him to help motivate me to get my daily work done. We are starting out with a chart/list of chores that I should have completed each day. Each thing that is undone is worth a certain number of "swats", depending on how important the task is. At the end of the day, before bed, I will tell him what I have not done, and will be spanked accordingly. We may end up incorporating some other elements and ideas of domestic discipline as things progress, depending on what we both feel is appropriate and realistic and on whether or not he wants to do research or get more involved in it.
This blog is a place for me to document these changes and to work out my thoughts and feelings on them. It is not intended to be a sexually explicit, S&M lifestyle, or "punishment" blog but it does sometimes deal with intimate details about my marriage and relationship with my husband, so please keep that in mind if you choose to read, follow, or subscribe.
