freekalette, a question -
If your children and your husband get into an argument with each other, whose side do you take?
Whomever’s I deem to be the “right” side. Our oldest is at that age where she is rebelling a little and rolling her eyes anytime we ask her to rinse her clean plate or put her shoes in the closet, and if it’s a case like that then I feel she is in the wrong and give her a little “respect your elders and keep your stuff nice and neat” talk. If she argues with Joe that, for instance, I did in fact tell her it was okay to leave the yard and go to her friend’s house (and I did, in fact, tell her this unbeknownst to him) then I tell him to back off, because she was in the right. There’s no universal answer for this question.
For my part, I don’t know whether or not they are either. With the exception of **freekalette **herself, no one in this thread has enough information to tell one way or the other. That said, the information she has offered does raise concerns for me and for others, and all I’m really saying here is it concerns me, this is why, and therefore it makes sense that they *could *be getting damaged. I guess what I’m hoping is that if she can understand specifically why some of us are concerned, she will use that information to better calibrate her sense of how her relationship impacts her kids. I certainly rely to an extent on input from other people in order to evaluate my stance and identify potential blind spots. I’m just trying to clarify what I see and feel on the subject so it might be of use to someone.
And now that I’ve said everything I have to say, I will be bowing out of the discussion (unless someone addresses me specifically) and probably should have a lot sooner.
Those generally come after the damage is done, no? But no sense wasting an ounce of prevention for the kids’ sake, when mommy and daddy have their kinky little games to play. Tee hee hee!
Here’s a handy guide I use:
VT’s Acceptability Scale for ages 12 and up
Ordinary: “My husband and I dressed up like Batman and Robin for Halloween.”
Kinky: “My husband and I dress up like Batman and Robin in the bedroom.”
*Unhealthy: * “My husband and I dress up like Batman and Robin 24/7, drive a Batmobile, call our house “Wayne Manor,” and named our kids Joker, Catwoman, and Clayface.”
Just because people generally have the right to parent as they see fit within broad boundaries doesn’t mean that every parent is doing a good job. And in all cases, “X is bad? Well, Y is worse!” is a shitty argument.
Touché. 
In reality (and quite realistically) I understand that all relationships, no matter how wonderful, will have ups and downs. Sometimes fights come out of valid reasonings, like - to pull a relevant example - parenting issues. Other times, they bubble up out of nowhere. Fights may not always be appropriate, but it doesn’t mean they’re not going to happen regardless.
I think this is bullshit, and I also think it’s the mistake freakalette buys into: that you must have ARGUMENT! and CONFLICT! and MAD BREAKING UP! and WEEPY GETTING BACK TOGETHER! or you don’t have passion. She must be naughty so he can punish her! She must act like a child (or a bitch) and then abase herself to him to see if he will still give her affection in spite of it. Do you love me? How about now? What if I do THIS? Do you still love me? What about NOW?
A lot of people manage to start and maintain very devoted loving relationships that are based on mutual respect and, yes, adult behavior, and yet still manage to be passionate to and about each other. They do it without both the explicit game-playing she and her husband intentionally engage in AND without the bullshit headgames they also obviously engage in whether they admit it or not.
I think she sounds like an obnoxious child. I find an adult relationship premised on acting like an obnoxious child so that your partner must either (a) let you get away with it (he loves me! or (2) “correct” you for it (he loves me!) to be pretty fucked up. Again, I don’t give a shit what you do in your bedroom, but I have serious reservations about people who practice that sort of behavior 24/7, which necessarily means modelling it in front of the kids. And I don’t think I need to find studies or examples of how it is damaging to kids; I think it is self-evidently damaging: You have parents who are not practicing good conflict-resolution or communication skills, and who daily demonstrate the inherent inferiority of woman to man. Children learn what they see, they learn acceptable behavior in their homes, from their parents. Screamers raise screamers, religious fundamentalists raise religious fundamentalists, and batterers raise batterers. IMO the behavior these parents are engaging in teaches their children very little that is good and much is potentially very bad, and it is unrealistic to expect children to grasp that mommy and daddy are only pretending! I don’t REALLY think I’m inferior to daddy, I just act that way all the time!
As others have already said, what bothers me about this is the kids, and the 24/7 nature of it. If it was just her and her husband, I couldn’t give a shit.
When it’s taco night at my house I walk around chanting “taco, taco, taco”. I just really like taco night.
Marc
Kambuckta you raise some good points. I understand the point you are trying to make, about the relationship being all about the couple. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that most marraiges are about the couple. Yes, in some (most?) married couples, children are a factor. Just as the romatic love one feels for their spouse is different from the nurturing love one feels for their child, the nature of the relationships are separate as well.
Finding time and energy to take care of the kids is easy; it’s finding time and energy to step away from that and into taking care of each other that requires patience and skill. It does lead to times when Joe or I feel that we’re “just” Mom and Dad, when we don’t often get to show our affections in the ways we’d like, but C’est la vie. We suck it up, and move forward, and do the best that we can.
Jodi just because something is in my head and my heart doesn’t mean I have to act on it. I internalize a lot to maintain an appearance of normalcy in day-to-day situations, as I’m sure everyone here does. Because I am spilling my guts here doesn’t mean I waltz around with a megaphone 24/7 going “Woohoo!! Look at me!! I’m kinky!!”
Then you’re not doing it 24/7, are you. That’s not a criticism; I think it’s a good thing.
In the case of couples with children, you are wrong and you are exposing your self-absorbtion by even expressing this sentiment.
“A factor?” No, they are THE factor. Your children are not goldfish. They’re not just a “factor” or a chore. They need to be the center of your life. If you’re not capable of making them the central focus of your life – and making them MORE important than pleasing some man (especially a sadistic and domineering man) then you have no business being aparent.
Except in your case, you don’t separate them. You’re like a furry who never takes off the bunny suit. You’re always in character as a subserbiant child, never present as an adult and as a mother.
What a load of self-serving crap.
But you’ve been saying that you DO play these games 24/7. Are you now saying that’s not true? Do your children always see you as submissive to your husband or do you can that dynamic in front of them? It sounds like you’ve ben sayinbg your always in some kind of submissive mode, whenter it’s overtly sexual or “kinky” is not particularly relevant. If you’re teaching your kids that your husband is your “boss,” then that’s a problem, whether it’s sexual or not.
Yeah well, you might not be so cheerful if your Dom decided to dip his taco a la Clinton.
*Assuming of course that was not an agreed upon limit. You nOObs gotta be quite precise before you get into this D/s stuff. 
Uh, I don’t think Clinton was the one with the taco, nor would Joe, here.
Then its just kinky on the VT scale, not unhealthy.
(I like the VT scale, its very similar to my own scale)
I know I promised to stay out of this thread, but I wanted to second this and add that I find it strange, freekalette, that you see your relationship with your husband as being completely distinct from your relationship with your kids. They are different relationships, sure, but when you’re all together, I would think the dynamic should be more that of a family, not concurrent separate relationships. I’m not a parent, though, so ymmv.
Also, I wanted to expand on what Diogenes said about children being *the *factor in a marriage. I agree with this as well. I know people often go overboard with this in our culture, but the fact of the matter is, their needs, while not supplanting yours, are more important because they are the truly vulnerable ones in the relationship. It is a mark of immaturity that you can’t see that and take it to heart, rather than treating your happiness as just as, if not more so, important at their expense.
So…are you Batman or Robin?
Just curious.
Since religion has been brought up earlier in the thread, I’m going to use it to make a point. Please not that I am NOT attacking or endorsing anyone’s faith, religious beliefs, spirituality, yadda yadda yadda. I am simply drawing a parrallel.
If I were a deeply devout Christian, going by standard definitions, that means that I have devoted my soul to God. I love him with all my heart. God is the supreme being, and my life is dedicated to serving him according to my Christian beliefs. As a parent, does that mean that I love them any less? Would I scream at them that they were sinning every time they told a lie or took an extra cookie at snacktime? Even if I believe deep down that stealing and lying are sins, and Jesus is the most important person who ever lived, I’m not gonna mistreat my kids. (I’m sure I’m mucking up some details on religion here, but you get the gist.) I still love my kids and try to teach them to be the best that they can be, no matter what. A lot of my family members are Baptists, and most on Joe’s side are Catholics, and they all treat their kids like the centers of their world. What makes you think I’m any different?