I'm sexually submissive in my personal life with my husband. I can't imagine getting tired of [the power exchange], because everything always changes; the only thing that's not different is that he's the master. Underlying everything is the fact that I would do anything that he tells me to. I'm happy with it. I know I'm very valuable to him. I have a strong sense of self-worth. My husband and I have discussed the difference between our relationship and others'. We look around and think we're happier in our relationship than most. We've never had periods of time where we weren't talking to each other. We've never had any really big fights. I'm not talking about squabbles over priorities for money and stuff that everyone has, but we've never had any serious disagreements in all these years.

I seriously think that our relationship [eliminates the struggle for power]. We're both very comfortable with our roles with each other. I like myself. I look back on my life, and it's been very happy. I've done a lot of interesting things. I've raised three children. My grown daughter is successful and happy; I have two young boys at home, and they're really nice little kids. My daughter understands the relationship between my husband and myself, but not in detail--it's not her business. My sons say, "Ah, Poppa and Mommy are at it again." It's a very natural thing. Again, it's not that my husband says, "Come here, honey, I'm gonna punish you,"--no, no! But I can be in the kitchen cooking, and he'll come in and start fooling around.

The only time that anything ever happened that caused me to question [this openness] was once when the kids suddenly walked in on us. We thought they were outdoors. I was over my husband's lap, and he was spanking me. But nobody panicked. The boys asked, "What are you doing to Mommy!?" They were six and 10 years old. I had my underpants on, but my pants were down around my ankles. It was almost funny. My husband was very natural--to him this is the normal way to live. He said, "I'm spanking Mommy." And they said, "How come you can spank Mommy and we can't?" He said, "'Cause, I'm the boss." Then he explained: "When I'm home, I'm the boss; when Mommy's the only one home, Mommy's your boss." They wanted to know, "How come you can spank Mommy if she's the boss?" So he explained, "Because I'm Mommy's boss, and Mommy is your boss."

We [established] a chain of command, and that was all there was to it. No big hysterical fuss, no coverup. Since then, any time that they've caught any ends of anything, it's always "Oh, this is Mommy and Poppa fooling around, and it's no big deal 'cause obviously all mommies and poppas must fool around." I'd rather see them with that attitude than the attitude that mommies and poppas never kiss or mommies and poppas never fool around. They hear a lot of giggling and laughing; they see a lot of affection. So I don't see anything wrong. They're nice, well adjusted, happy little kids who fight all the time.

I remember when we first became aware [of our interests]. We watched "The Story of O," and I expressed curiosity in being tied up. He tied me up, blindfolded me, and we had intercourse that way. I found it tremendously exciting, extremely erotic. It was very intense. Understanding [about D&S], understanding the motivations, [has] improved it for us. It made me more willing to let myself be pushed farther. For my husband it was a revelation to understand why he enjoys what he's doing with me and why he didn't enjoy other relationships. Nobody's ever responded to him the way I do.

I used to be more casual. Once, when we were sharing a house, we had a particularly noisy night. In the morning, when we showed up for breakfast, our friends offered me a pillow to sit on. Now I'm a bit more careful, but that may also have to do with getting into it a little more heavily. Knowing what it is, we've explored ourselves a little more. We're more aware of what we're doing. That does make a difference.

I like being embarrassed, not humiliated; there's a difference. He'll surreptitiously touch me; he knows nobody else sees it. But I'm sure everybody else is watching us--whether they are or not, it doesn't matter! For example, we have a country home. There's nobody around for miles. We have a huge skylight over our bed, and he'll swing the skylight open and stand up and announce, "Ok, satellites, get your spy beams out now; here she is, laying here naked!" Now, there's nobody for five million miles out there, but I'm still embarrassed. You can just see my whole body turning red.

In my relationships in the past, I was always submissive. I had a strange life. I was not a quiet child. I was one of those nasty little girls who used to tie up her dolls and hang them. Possibly, someone who has more insight than I would say that I was expressing what I wanted done to myself.

I'm intellectually aggressive. But there's always been this submissiveness in personal relationships with men. I did the regular dating thing. Your typical nice little Jewish girl from the Bronx. I joined Mensa Teens and went out with boys who were in Mensa Teens, but I also had a completely separate life. When I was 13, I started going to Columbia University. They had a special program for gifted children. I took regular college classes with adults. I started an odd relationship with a man which lasted from the time I was 13 until I turned 18. It was not a sexual relationship. I was a virgin, and we never had sex. There was a very strong element of sexuality in the relationship, possibly even more so because there was never any intercourse. Looking back, it was a very peculiar but definitely [a] D&S relationship. He told me what he wanted me to do, and I did it, and I was very happy. He'd tell me he wanted me to learn Italian opera, and I went out and got records and studied and learned. It was a very satisfying relationship that made my life very meaningful to me. We broke up just [when] I was turning 18.

Afterwards, I had a series of brief affairs. The last one, just before I met my husband, was a very ritualized relationship. It was a friend from Mensa. We'd been casual acquaintances for about a year. At some point we became lovers, and he realized I was fairly unsophisticated. I went along with all of his suggestions. [He'd say], "When you come into my house, you take off all your clothes. Just leave on your sweater, and sit quietly on the couch until I'm ready for you." Or, "When I'm working at my desk, you can stand next to me or sit next to me, but sit very silently, and wait for me. When I want you on the bed, this is where you lie, and this is where you stay until I tell you to get up." I like to play games, so that pleased me. I'd never met anyone who did that before. It was an exciting relationship. We remained friends for many years afterwards.

When I met my husband, I was a guest at his roommate's party. I'd come there with a date. When I saw my husband, I remarked to the man I was with, "This is the person I've been looking for." My husband told me later that he said the exactly same thing to his roommate about me. A week later I was at their house again; we talked all evening and finally went to bed together. In the morning he said, "You know you're not leaving. You understand you belong to me?" and I said, "Yes," and that was it. And now it's 22 years later. It wasn't just exciting--it was that we both knew that we were the right person for each other.

In my professional life, I'm not submissive. I figure out what people's problems are and tell them what to do about them. I supervise large businesses where I'm the only woman. But I find being personally submissive works very well in controlling people who I have to work with. I'm quietly assertive as opposed to aggressive. I don't get any satisfaction from forcing my way. I find that if I compromise, I can get things so that they're usually satisfactory. I'll find a way around rather than straight through. I have a horror of confrontational relationships. I'm not a yeller or a screamer.

While I like ritual, [my husband] doesn't, so a spanking is unpredictable: it could be anywhere or any time. I might bend over to change the channel on TV, and he'll grab me and put me over his knee or over a chair, as the mood strikes him. I like being spanked. I find it very exciting. I can come to orgasm just from being spanked. And he likes to use his hand.

He's also got an original approach to elevators. If there are cameras in elevators, we must be on video tapes all over the country, because as soon as an elevator door closes, he goes wild. He'll reach his hands under my clothes, or he'll expose himself to me, so that I'll screech and tell him to cover himself. If it's a long elevator ride and the place is isolated, he'll have me give him a blow job. I know the police and FBI are going to break in at any moment! We've even been caught once or twice! The responses were amusing, too. They were: "I don't believe I saw what I just saw." I've been embarrassed but never upset. I was more concerned that my husband was pleased.

He once broke up a Tupperware party. A friend of mine was hosting, and she invited all the husbands to watch sports while the wives went into the other side of the house for a Tupperware demonstration. Unfortunately, my husband loathes baseball, and he got bored, so he wandered in and sat behind me, shoved his hand under my shirt, and started fooling around. It took quite a while before anyone noticed what was going on, because I was just sitting there silently, trying not to react. Slowly people noticed and started leaving the room. And then he became fairly blatant. He said something like, "OK, you want to all sit around here and watch?" He's very subtle. My girlfriend took the hint.

She's known us for a while, and she toddled everybody out. There was a big bed, and we started having sex. And of course my girlfriend didn't bother telling anyone, so her husband walked in the middle of the whole thing, saying, "Oh, I thought you were having a Tupperware party!" My husband said, "We are, we are, this is how we sell Tupperware!" When we came out, everybody was staring at us. It didn't bother him at all.