Don't Look Now, You're Being Controlled

Since I do in-home nursing care for my boss, Bill, we're very close but everything's strictly platonic between us. He swears he isn't submissive but I think he secretly is ;) At any rate, yesterday I decided it was again time to have a little mischievous fun with him. By early afternoon I was lounging by the pool and he was by the deck table painting something. His hands were splattered with paint and pieces of his project covered the table top. Whatever he was doing, he was concentrating pretty intensely on it. Usually that's a sign he's busy and doesn't want to stop for anything.

Just as I was settling in, I noticed I'd left my cell phone in the house. Hmm.... I wondered how easy it would be to get Bill to stop what he was doing and go retrieve it. He would have done it for me if I'd asked, but where was the fun in that? Fortunately I had just the plan to get him to do it without having to ask him directly and without having him tease me unmercifully for being so forgetful. I pulled out the sunscreen and started applying it very slowly to my legs. As I did, I casually mentioned how wonderful it was to sit out there with the sun warming my skin and to feel the muscles in my legs start to relax. As I spoke, he was watching my hands go up and down my thighs and my calves. Lowering my voice so he'd have to concentrate a little harder to hear, I went on to talk about how good the sunscreen smelled, how inviting the water looked, etc. I noticed that his head was almost imperceptibly moving from side to side as I spoke. He was, in fact, moving his head at the same pace as the hands on my skin. Smiling to myself, I then said a very simple, "oh pooh, I forgot my cell phone in the house."

He stopped what he was doing, hurriedly cleaned off his hands, and ran inside the house to get my phone. No teasing, no having to ask, he just jumped to do it even though he was working and I, the employee, was doing nothing.

I'm sure none of this is overly surprising since some women do things like this all the time. How often in such a situation, however, does the man involved realize that he's being controlled? Because it *is* a form of control. What happened was a little thing, but for those who crave control, these little moments can be intensified by simply identifying what's happening. If you're a submissive man, start paying attention. How often do the women in your life do little things to control you?

Control is a wonderful thing. It's so easy to make most of you respond because this control we have is pretty powerful stuff ;) We, of course, love using the power we have.