Welcome aboard, atrain35! My wife and I have been together for 20 years, and D/s off and on for a significant portion of that time…. Long before 50 Shades. Actually, back to the ages of Anne Rice’s “Exit to Eden” and the “Sleeping Beauty Trilogy.” Whatever you do, do NOT watch the “Exit to Eden” movie starring Rosie O’Donnel. The only similarity that it has with the book is the title.
As for getting you and her into an appropriate mindset, it sounds like you might want to figure out if you’re interested in “bedroom only” D/s or if it’s more around the house as well, but not with visitors around. Also figure out what type of D/s you want to play with, either “plain” D/s or more M/s. It makes a difference. For finding her limits, I am a big fan of looking through various “BDSM checklists” to get some ideas of what kind of activities are out there and use one or more to form the basis of a discussion (or your own checklist) of what she’s not willing to accept, what she’s willing to do for your pleasure, what she’d enjoy, and what she REALLY WANTS, as well as things she’s done or tried in the past and things that she has an interest in.
I can’t remember where I found it, but I’m having my wife work through one that was taken out of the book “Virtually Yours” and converted to an online Google spreadsheet, with a few custom additions of my own that I thought were missing or I specifically wanted to add. That checklist seems to be written for use with partners that don’t have an extended history, but is pretty comprehensive. PM me if you would like me to share it.
A lot of the journey depends on trust, respect and (probably more than anything) communication between you and her. I recommend that you spend some quality time in the “Blog” section of this website and start from the oldest posts and move to the most recent. There is a LOT of good info there, as I’m discovering. I’ve only been here a couple of weeks, so I’m pretty new, too. 🙂
Again, welcome!