loyalty to my Instructor/husband

[Zorbasan]

or, to summarise, even a 65 yo man could kick my butt.

[Jiffy]

More or less, yeah.

[New Beginner]

Hi A karate chick,

Just to reassure you that everything you're going through is perfectly normal, after I took my shodan some years ago, the first thing I did was begin to decide how the dojo could be better run and rather pompously informed my sensei of all my concerns and 'advised' him etc etc. After a while we had a little out of hours chat and came to the agreement that we were both right and wrong about different things. I also was going to branch away and open a club but in the end we needed eachother, and I owed him so much, never mind whether or not we agreed on everything. Thankfully I made it through these stages to sandan and began learning about karate properly. He tolerates my way and I tolerate his, but at times I really thought that my differences in approach would be the end of our relationship in karate, but there is always a way. My wife is also my kohai, and is superbly talented, but gets no special treatment but as a Senpai her opinion is always valued. If you have made it to shodan then your opinion should always be valued in the dojo and you'll be surprised how highly it is regarded sometimes, and it sounds as though that corner has been turned in your case already.