chapter 1

Carl was only six months into his marriage to Mary when he realised he was bored.
Mary was still as beautiful as the day they had first met. She was still just as slim. She was not a regular visitor to the gym, but played badminton once a week with her freinds, so she was reasonably fit. He did not think he had fallen out of love with her because he did not fancy anyone else. Yet sex was no longer exciting. He did it once a week because he felt he had to more than anything else. He thought there must be something the matter with him. He tried different positions and such, but nothing seemed to work. Mary had to work harder to get him into the mood because he could no longer get it up spontaneously.
Carl was an entrepreneur. He taught yoga and meditation from his own pre-fab treatment room in the garden. He liked to help his clients maintain their health and had learned how to teach EFT (emotional freedom techniques) - a method of self hypnosis involving the repetition of an affirmation while tapping various spots on the body as a treatment for anxiety, phobias and other minor psychological issues. He had gone on to learn NLP or neuro - linguistic programming as a more advanced tool that enabled clients to help themselves.
The results he got from these therapies were quite remarkable, but clients were still wary of accepting the treatment in the first place. Carl looked at other less conventional techniques, most of them involving a form of hypnosis.
His wife was a willing guinea pig. Early in their relationship he had cured her of a lifelong fear of moths. This had seemed a most innocuous phobia, but in the summer months, they could not sit outside in the evening. If they sat inside, they would have to choose to sit in the dark, with the windows open, or sit with the light on and the windows closed and put up with the heat. The noise of their fluttering wings as they circled a light fitting saw Mary running out of the room, trembling and unable to re-enter until the offending insect was killed. She even had to see the dead body as proof, as she would not believe it had simply flown out of the window.

One night, Carl was thinking about one of his clients who had an irrational fear of birds. He had tried several techniques on her that had reaped dividends before, but this client was turning out to be particularly difficult.
He usually prepared the food in the house because he worked from home and could arrange his client appointments around the regular household chores. Mary did what she could, when she could, but since the day they'd returned from their honeymoon, she'd not had to worry about doing the laundry, cleaning or cooking. Carl did it all.
This particular evening, they'd finished eating their evening meal and were settling down to a coffee, when Carl suddenly decided to do an experiment.
He put his wife under hypnosis using a technique that had her going deeper under his control than she had ever been before. He told her to select and eat two biscuits, yet think that she'd only eaten one. Then he brought her back to full consciousness.
He sat back and watched her as she ate two biscuits from a plate of five. The biscuits were usually reserved for when they had visitors. They indulged in them rarely and when they did, one was the maximum. But Mary ate two!
Carl felt an extraordinary feeling of accomplishment. He was convinced he could help his client now. He could not wait to put the technique into proper use.
The three remaining biscuits stayed on a plate in the kitchen.
The next day, Carl saw Mary take two of them to eat with her coffee after lunch. He watched her as she consumed both of them, then asked her why there was only one biscuit left.
Mary was adamant she'd eaten only one. One yesterday, one today. There should still be three on the plate. He must have had one as well and forgotten about it!
Yet she'd definitely eaten two!
Carl was surprised at how much the deceit had aroused him. It was such a small thing, but it got him thinking how far he could push her. That thought had his old man standing to attention. At long last, he had found something that he liked! He made love to his wife immediately with pictures of her complying to his every whim in his head.