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ORIGINAL: SimplyMichael

The problem with ritual and protocol is that is must serve a need, many people go shopping for "cool stuff" and bring it home and try and force it into the relationship.  It must flow out of the relationship in a natural way.  Think of it as emotional foreplay.  What works beautifully for one relationship may not work at all for another.

In an early relationship of mine, in an attempt to declaw a rather nasty attitude, we invoked some ritual to ease her transition upon my arrival.  It didn't work because it set us up for failure.  The ritual was she was to open the door, eyes downcast and only look upon me after I reached out and lifted her chin.  Well, a busy working mother of a 2 year old couldn't always muster that at the drop of a hat (my arrivals due to travel time were rather random) and so it would frustrate us both.  Now part of that was due to the fact that were were both highly reactive to each other so failure on either part would cause drama.  Today, I would probably set the rule as two fold, she was to come to me when she was ready and present herself or I could request it (so that she was not in complete control of when and I could judge if she needed her chain yanked or if I should give her time to adjust, that whole delicate timing issue)

I have a hand signal that BSB knows the meaning of, when I give it to her it tells her to assume a certain position and ready herself.   I was frankly stunned at how flawlessly she executed it the first time I used it in public but oh my god did it make my cock hard and because of the subtlety with which it was all done it made me very very proud and impressed the hell out of someone who wasn't easy to impress.  (yeah, I can be shallow too)

A ritual I love is Sunday morning, getting up early, doing my best not to wake her.  Slipping into the kitchen to make a scrumptious omelette, English muffins, and tea.  Then waking her up slowly with little kisses and sitting in bed together sharing food with each other.  Then throwing clothes on to walk down to the farmer's market and buying food for the week. 

Another is sitting at a cafe I frequent and sharing stories and fixing the problems of the world during a long lazy morning.