Bow and Vow

Nothing to do with Worshipping Your Wife, even the occasional royalty, makes me happier than getting emails from readers about how my book or blog helped advance their female-led relationships. Not always, but usually it is men who confide that my prescriptions actually helped or, even better, that they showed certain chapters or blog posts to the potential goddess in their life, and she took the wife worship message to heart!

One gracious reader, in a recent series of email exchanges, credited my writings for “giving me the courage to openly submit to my wonderful wife.” After a period of “stealth submission,” he “came out” to his recent bride with a letter “explaining everything.”


Submissive hubbies who have gone the stealth submission route well know the anxiety involved in such a “coming out,” finding the right confessional tone and words, then waiting like a prisoner in the dock for the reaction of the beloved, searching her face and body language for the first signs of yea or nay.

My email correspondent hit the jackpot. His bride’s reaction to his confessional letter was everything he had hoped and prayed for. “She thought it was beautiful,” he wrote. Later he showed his wife my book, and she was enthusiastic. My friend is now living a life of open submission, and has since shared my book with another man. He adds, “I am beyond happy.”

He provides some additional details that I’d like to share. Every day he gets down on his knees and affirms his adoration of his beloved. “I honestly don't remember the first time I knelt in front of her and just adored her,” he writes. It just seemed natural. Down on his knees he repeats a series of daily vows that he wrote. “I say these to her every day, no exceptions.”

Here they are, minus a few personal phrases. I find them romantic and tender, candid and, yes, intimately confessional:

Today I promise to show you my love in how I speak to you and listen to you.
Today I promise to treat you with affection and respect.
Today I promise to put your needs before my needs and your desires before my desires.
You are my wife, my lover, my fantasy and my queen and I very much want to please you.
I very much want to serve and obey you.
I want to belong to you. I want to be your submissive husband.
This is who I am and I adore you for accepting me.

This daily ritual serves as a reminder of and rededication to his life of submissive devotion to his wife. And, he writes, borrowing a phrase from my book, it is also part of “daring to be known by her.”

I felt a pang of jealousy when I read this, because my new friend was describing a ritual that I once practiced with my wife, but which several years ago I allowed to slip away through lack of conviction and commitment to the lifestyle. As I explained in my own note to my wife:

When I see you each morning, or at the end of each workday, my heart fills with a newlywed's happiness. But, after 13 years of marriage [note: that was 8 years ago], there is no accepted ritual that permits me to display the intensity of my feelings. So I make do with a casual peck, a squeeze, a touch in passing... Too many months ago, for a brave while, I dared to go farther—to steal a few seconds out of our hectic morning preparations to kneel before you, as you dressed or did your makeup, and to embrace you wholeheartedly and declare my devotion. You were, I recall, accepting of these awkward avowals, and they gave my spirits a euphoric lift, a sense of going into the day draped with milady's colors and enwrapped in milady's perfume... But I let them lapse. And though I miss them keenly, these giddy little rituals, I've been too embarrassed, or too timid, to attempt to renew them.

And here my new email friend, inspired by me, was enjoying this wonderful daily ritual which I had neglected and lost! Why did I let that happen? I made my own vow—to regain what I had lost. To refresh my memory, I did a quick search of some postings I had saved on the topic of daily vows and obeisances. Here are a couple that get to the heart of the matter:

“When [my wife] finally got out of bed I quickly assumed my morning place before Her, kneeling before her, kissing her feet while she sat on the edge of the bed. She allowed this daily morning obeisance for a few moments, then stood and walked away toward her bathroom.”

Even more to the point is this posting from the wonderful blog (linked on my home page) by “Mistress Kathy” known as Femdom 101:

One of the special moments in my life was the first time John knelt at my feet, and we talked as mistress and [husband]. In my view the first time a man has the courage to kneel at his wife's feet is a very special occasion. This special little physical act often helps a couple transcend many of the boundaries that have kept their marriage arrangement from moving forward.
This may seem strange to many of you, but that moment John knelt to me for the first time, was as much of a romantic occasion as our first kiss. [Now, five years later,] there is never a day that John does not get down on his knees in front of me. During that time we talk as husband and wife, and John gives me his full and complete attention. There are no cell phones, TV, or other interruptions allowed. Our talk always ends with a kiss when I give him permission to rise.
What I am hoping by this email is to encourage other aspiring couples to adopt this procedure into their lives. It would make me very happy if at least one couple, who tries this procedure, would give me their comments on how this simple little act of devotion made them feel. I would love to hear as much from the wife as the husband.

So… thank you to my email correspondent. I am rewarded to have inspired you. But now you have inspired me. I make a bow and vow today to regain that wonderful daily ritual, which began for me years ago as an impulsive hyper-romantic gesture. I will keep you posted, and Mistress Kathy, too, on how I do in following through.