Rewind to 1967. You may have been just a child or not born then, but please humor me. I am a freshman at a small liberal arts college in a major metropolitan area. There is a “mixer” in my dorm and the boys are standing on one side of the room while the girls stand on the other. One of the girls is tall, lean, and good looking. Like an eager border collie, I cut her out of the herd. We hang out together quite a lot. But the relationship does not quite click, she gets back together with her high school boyfriend, and they get married. End of story. Well.............. not exactly.

Fast-forward 2 years. I am now a student at a large public university in the same metropolitan area. One weekend day the phone rang and one of my roommates says it is for me. It is her. She is also a student at the university and has seen my name in the student directory. I said, “You must not be married any more.” She said that was true. We hung our together again, mostly at her place since I had roommates and she didn't. But again the relationship was not quite right. The signs were obvious really, but I didn't get it. I was just dumb with a capital “duh.” She could have picked up a book, smacked me in the head, and said, “Listen bozo, if you want a real relationship then act like a man.” But it is just as well she didn't because I would have said “ouch” followed by “huh?” and walked away, shaking my head. I was not ready to be a leader then; I may not be now.

That was not fascinating, so what is the point? Here is the point. When you meet one that could be right, you may need to smack him in the head and explain the situation. If he says “ouch” followed by “huh?” then you probably have not missed anything. Eventually one will say “ouch” followed by “bend over now young lady.” That might sound silly, but it could work.

I'd like to know what signs, if any, led you to reach your conclusions. And (sigh) I have a tough enough time with explaining what I want in a relationship to grown men, let alone countenancing explaining it to a college aged child, while I was a college aged child. (I am so frequently misunderestimatedstood. I may do it on purpose, be misunderstoodstood, that is. Perhaps I engage in deliberate misunderestimatingstoodhood, but that's one for the shrinks. Perhaps I should get one? Nawwww...) Anyhoo, heck, I can't even play doubles tennis, much to the ire of my poor tennis coach. I spend a disproportionate amount of time saying to my poor partners, "What the **** is the matter with you?" and, "You know the object of this thing is to get the ball back over the net, right? Preferably in an area where one of our opponents is *not* standing?" All too often I end up suggesting he or she go sit down, and let me finish the fricken match in peace. Hey! I never said I was a *nice* person; I just claim to be interesting. But, Rich, what signs or signals did you perceive from the tall, lean girl from your shadowy past?

Remember that I was in my late teens and early twenties back then. It was a very long time ago. Also realize that men don't always "read the signs", something about emotional IQ or lack of same. As best I remember it was little things like making me dinner, listening politely when I babbled my youthful opinions about everthing, etc. It was also other things that I just can't explain and/or don't remember. Most of my writing is technical and my style has all the emotional content of a recipe for oatmeal. I was trying to make 3 essential points: men don't always get it, a woman may need to be overt about her intentions very early in a relationship, and "you probably have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find the prince".

Well, I don't know that making you dinner or listening while you babbled on are necessarily signs that a woman is submissive, these things are just indicate normal civility to me, I mean listening while men babble on is something most women do, for a lot of the time. I listened to men babbling on a good deal when I was young, but I think it was just politeness more than submissiveness. I still listen to my husband babbling on quite a lot, mostly about his latest engineering project. I mean, your girlfriend may have been submissive, or she may just have been civil. I personally found that indicating to men that I wanted to be spanked came quite easily, they usually gave me an opening of some kind. My second long-term boyfriend was the first person I ever raised this matter with, and I forget now how it came to pass, but I think we had one of those "If you don't behave yourself I'll spank you" "Well, why don't you?" sort of exchanges, which I had on subsequent occasions with other men, including my present husband. At any rate, he caught on pretty quickly. We had quite a fulfilling sexual relationship, though he wasn't particularly dominant otherwise, but then at that time in my life I wasn't aware that I wanted it to extend beyond sexual dominance. I think that would be a much more difficult thing to indicate if you didn't know the man extremely well already, it took me 22 years to get around to mentioning it to my husband. And every prince has got a bit of frog in him, you have to take the frog along with the prince. As Dr. Pat Allen observes, if you wait for Mr Perfect you'll wait a long time. Look for someone who's more frog than prince, but don't expect 100% prince, because you won't get him.

Sometimes we men just aren't thinking big enough. Your write-up reminded me of a woman I dated when I was younger. We were very active in spanking and submission when we played. I loved getting her in a submissive mindset for hours. However, I actually decided against a complete relationship because I knew I wouldn't be able to stop myself from trying to keep her in that mindset 24/7. I thought it would be wrong/disrespectful to try to keep her in a submissive mindset all the time. I mean there is sex and there's real life, right. Okay, this was before the internet. Before I knew submission was more than sex games. It was just me and her being kinky during sex. She would never have been able to discuss this out loud. She could ask for a spanking. Well, hint very well, but she'd never been able to ask to be taken in hand. Even if we'd known what that was. As for why I feel she would have been interested in an online relationship, well, she came for a week's visit in Hawaii the last time we were together during which we stayed in our dominant and submissive roles continuously.

I was around in the sixties and seventies too and I think it is a major generalization to say that traditional women who listened to men's conversations and cooked them a meal on some dates had to "hide." That's just not so. I remember holding a conversation, which includes listening and not just talking at my date. Also I considered making dinner for him a good way to reciprocate in a dating situation. So far as I can see, it didn't mean the woman was "traditional" or that she wanted the man to take her in hand. Certainly it didn't mean that to me, at all. I think there may be some subtle things you remember that you can't quite put into words, that indicated her desire for a man to take her in hand. Or, maybe it wasn't there at all, and the relationship petered out for a much more mundane reason: it ran out of chemistry.