Stopping the spiral downwards

As you may have noticed, it's been two months since my last post. In that time we have had three or four meetings, none of them that successful. During the last meeting I left her with bruises that she had to hide for a week. Since then we haven't met, and thankfully last week she got really upset with me. She was upset about the marks, but more importntly she was more upset that I had not invested in trying to make things better. I hadn't shared the things that were bothering me and I didn't appear to care that things were going badly. It took a lot of chat but finally we started really communicating about what was really important to each other and what was BDSM myth and had no importance. If you read enough blogs and stories, you soon start to think that some of that stuff is real and people really like being treated like shit, or being neglected. The reality is that every relationship, vanilla or BDSM requires that both commit to each other and provide for each other's needs.
What does my sub need, control. Yes, if you have read previous posts, this is nothing new. I have always known this. Why was I more successful some times than others? why did she leave sometimes walking four feet off the ground, barely able to get back to work to tell me what a great session it was and other times, give me a quick "thanks for meeting me". When I started going through the activities that we do, I realized that some activities established control, why others did not. Those others, like bondage may continue the control but binding someone takes too long to establish control. I also realized that the intensity necessary to establish control did not need to be maintained the whole time, but did need to be re-applied throughout the session, especially after pauses. By going through all the things I do to her, I was able to sort through them into those that establish control and those that should be used after control is established. By taking care which activities to use when, I should be able to establish control and maintain that feeling for both her and I the entire time.

Armed with this knowledge, the only thing left is to test my theory. It's a little scary, wondering if this will stop the downward spiral our relationship is in. I am running out of ideas, but I am not ready to give up.