>>> No, in this last scene, the reason I went as long as I did was that, at some point in the middle, Mr. Underwood said, "You're doing very well."

Okay, for 99.9% of those of you reading this, that last line meant absolutely nothing to you. Y'all never met Mr Underwood. <<<

Dear Guy with the name that's so hard to spell that I'm not going to even attempt it tonight,

I both understand that statement and don't understand it. I don't understand it because I'm part of the triple nines and a decimel point people who haven't met the person in question and so can't possibly imagine the individual ripples of the personality that made that asking particularly powerful for you.

I do understand it in the sense that some (a rare few, in my experience) dominants have a similar motivating effect upon a person. I'm lucky enough to live with one. And I experience somthing similar pretty regularly. Such a trait, along with a strong talent of command (in fact, an ability to motivate is part of the talent of command, as far as I'm concerned) and a relishing of control (if you don't relish control, the responsibility that comes with it quickly becomes odious), comes in real handy when a sub has a bad habit that is very difficult to stop but which must be stopped. It can make all the difference between whether the negative behavior or feeling eventually fades away or continues to ruin the person's life.

I occasionally do work that requires me to motivate people, and I'm fairly good at it--to do it right requires good timing and good observation skills--but I lack that element of command in my makeup that would make it devestatingly effective. Still, I've got enough of the other two qualities to get me by, and I'll often fake the third when the situation requires it.