Overview

I am Gray. I was here in the blogosphere several years ago. You can find my prior life at Journey into Submission.

Now I am at a different place with a different partner and a different focus. Austin and I have been engaged for about a month, living together for about a year, and dating for about two and a half years.

I have two daughters, Chloe and Tabby. They are in those dangerous adolescent years between innocence and common sense. Austin has one son, Jackson, who is also dangerously adolescent but even more so because he is a boy. The five of us spend one week together then the kids go off to their other houses and it is just me and Austin for a week. We are all in school... the kids are in middle school, Austin is finishing up his first degree, and I'm working on my third and fourth degrees. Austin works full-time, I am employed part-time by my academic department, and the kids get paid to do chores. The dog is the only non-productive member of the family.

Just about the time we became officially engaged I requested that Austin start tapping into his male energy more strongly, embracing his masculinity, and facilitating my transition to nurturing the more feminine aspects of my personality. I started reading about Domestic Discipline, Taken in Hand, and Head of Household, something clicked into place, and I passed some especially insightful and useful blog posts on to Austin. He took to them like a duck to water, soaking up all of the essential details and embellishing with a few of his own, to the point where we are now.

I won't say this transition has been easy - I've been pretty much running the show for the past year and suffering both the agony and the ecstasy of keeping such a chaotic and diverse family from flying apart and wounding each other with shrapnel when things go wrong. I've paid the price in terms of mental health and was almost desperate for something to change when Austin was finally at the place where he could embrace the challenge of fully fleshing out his masculine identity. Always before he has been hesitant to become the leader for fear of alienating his female partner but this time I have practically begged him to show me how strong he can be so I can melt into the softness I so want to embody.