The Submissive Wife

The Submissive Wife’s 20 Answers

What do participants have to do?

By “participants” here we mean monitored members of the community. There are three ways to answer this obvious question.

To answer it most simply, there is only one thing participants must do here. They must be obedient. If participants are not obedient, by definition they are not participants. From simple obedience flows all the rewards of this instruction.

To answer this question as specifically as possible, participants are asked to submit to dress, grooming, dietary and other requirements and restrictions; accommodate exercises in awareness and watchfulness; accept collegial mentoring and monitoring of behavior; acquire an understanding and appreciation of vulnerability and accountability; surrender control, when control is unhelpful; embrace the intimate, intellectual and spiritual demands of instruction; and support others in the community when called on to do so.

Additional disciplines are given as required. These are all things we do as participants here, always in the context of obedience and generally in the context of community.

Some of those disciplines are quite simple. Others are literally life-altering. But every one of them requires obedience. Small, simple disciplines are often the hardest to embrace, because they see so insignificant. In fact, no discipline is trivial. If a participant wishes to be obedient, she must be obedient to all that she is asked to do. Her safety as well as her happiness depends on it. Almost all aspects of this project use experience as a way to gain understanding. The former always precedes the latter.

Finally, to answer the question yet another way, participants don’t have to do anything—which is one of the principle aspects of this instruction, and one of the largest difficulties participants face. Obedience to any authority other than the law is ultimately voluntary. Thus, obedience is a gift we try to give ourselves, a personal longing for order and harmony, a goal we set for ourselves a thousand ways a thousand times—only to come up short. In this instruction, obedience is present as a precondition. Therefore, all that we do as participants here we do because we want to—or rather because we need to. It is how we reward ourselves for accepting disciplines that are often quite difficult. That we do what we do in the confines of a community that celebrates sexual, emotional and spiritual health provides additional comfort.

his constant reminder that we do nothing in this Project because we are forced, cajoled, persuaded to do so can be sometimes distressing, since some of our disciplines are activities that are often associated with Austen-like persuasion. Nothing could be further from the truth. We do what we do because we understand that if we don’t, we will not gain any benefit from this effort.

However, no matter how demanding the process is, no participant is ever asked to do something considered to be destructive of her own best interests. No part of this is permitted to directly touch your family or your job. Specifically, participants are not asked to participate in an affair or a romance of any kind. This is instruction, not romance and not seduction.

Having said that, it’s also important that to realize that almost immediately you will be doing things you now might consider rather unthinkable.

Site resource: See the section on the components of instruction by clicking here. (Open access.) The comments above apply to monitored members.

anne: “Well, what i found out right away is that what you will be asked to do will vary upon your situation and circumstances and capability. i was promised that this would never interfere with my responsibilities to my husband and children. That promise was kept. But i think it's important that to know and realize that this is instruction (training, guidance, control, whatever you want to call it). This is not some wild way to spark up a romance or have some online affair. How mundane and unproductive. Neither the instructor notr the pther participants have time for that and none of them would be interested anyway. No, this is very different. This is much more directed. Now, that does not mean it is something that will be easy, it does not mean that the guidance is cold and unfeeling and it does not mean you will not be required to do things that are difficult, thought provoking, very arousing and sometimes very scary. And this training does take effort, desire, trust, will, honesty, and on and on. But it is safe. And it is always done with the utmost discretion and privacy. It is work though—as is all emotional and physical growth that requires great introspection and thought. But i found that it’s well worth it.”

cathy: “my experience: what at first i do painfully, reluctantly and with plenty of grumbling, complaining, tears and gnashing of teeth, after a time becomes a song from my heart.”

dina: “It was incredibly erotic, but that was coming from me, inside me, it all just had to come out. [That] made me better as a woman and also as a wife.”

beth: “From the very first day, I felt like I was being jolted awake from a sleep I had been in my whole life. Suddenly, everything was in color…”

m.l.: “There have been so many ‘first’ experiences in the last few weeks. i don’t think i have ever had so many profound changes in my life in such a short period of time. Every time i get comfortable and i think to myself, okay, i can do this, i am challenged with something new. It’s exhilarating and scary and there are times i wish my learning curve weren’t quite so steep. Even as i struggle to put all of these new experiences in context, i feel more alive and aware than i have ever been. This is a powerfully erotic experience. i never dreamed that being obedient and submissive could keep me aroused almost all the time. It’s like a tension that is never released. i have always fantasized about this. Now that I’m having all of this really happening to me—and i still can’t believe it.”

RETURN TO MAIN FAQ PAGE

This page reviewed and edited November 2005.