“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”― C.G. Jung
Hello all. Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club. Our weekly meeting of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline and/or Female Led (FLR) relationships.
Once again, before we get started, I would like to thank the female commenters who have recently joined us and to extend an invitation to all others who may be inclined to move from “lurker” to “commenter” status. We like having you around.
I hope you all had a great week. Ours was pretty sedate, as we’re finally getting into our groove on the situation around Anne’s recovery. While getting back to fully normal will take months, we’re more than half-way through the acute phase.
One big surprise was that she became more than a little intent on delivering a spanking earlier this week, though it didn’t actually happen. I probably wasn’t as supportive as I should have been. Honestly, it took me by surprise, as at the outset of this little medical adventure we were given information that led me to envision a much flatter recovery curve with her having extremely limited mobility for weeks. While movement is still very limited, she's moving around more than I anticipated. Still, I couldn’t figure out logistically how it would work, especially our respective positions. She didn't seem to have any great ideas either, and her intention seemed to dissipate as the week went on.
So, I sort of wish I had been more openly cooperative and helpfully creative though, again, it was really a matter of me having prepared myself mentally for a multi-month hiatus (on top of the multi-month hiatus we’ve already experienced).
On a non-DD oriented note, trees here have been turning colors for a while, yet it's stayed consistently hot. Finally, this morning there was a distinctly fall-like chill in the air. Finally!
I thought we had a good discussion last week, especially given that in the past topics that had a potentially heavy BDSM connection tended to go off the rails.
Near the end of the week, a new-ish commenter who goes by “D.D.” left a comment on the topic from two weeks ago. It’s mainly about tears, but it had some very personal observations on the feelings that led to him getting past the crying threshold, as well as what I see as an almost perfect illustration of a wife’s transformation into the kind of “no BS” disciplinary partner so many of us want (or say we want) and that a few are lucky to have. Given that it was on an aging post, I’m afraid most readers wouldn’t find it there. It also has a tangential relationship to today's topic. So, here’s the full comment:
“The first time I cried it wasn't from the intensity of the particular spanking itself but from a culmination of spankings a few weeks after my wife first took me in hand.
I had been spanked and disciplined a lot in those first few weeks, and I think I felt a loss of control. That combined with the shift in my wife’s demeanor made me feel very unsure about what would happen leading into each time I was disciplined. We went from having arguments where she would eventually get emotional and cry or she would be passive-aggressive to now being very cold, matter of fact and strict.
Leading into this particular spanking I was balking and trying to get out of it. I had a sense of panic at the point she brought me into the room and it was time to bare myself and bend over the bed. I had just been spanked the day before for something else and this was the second time I was being disciplined for the same issue in a week. I felt frustrated with myself and the frequency of misbehavior. I think deep down I was realizing I wasn’t the mature responsible adult I thought of myself as. Getting disciplined really highlighted that.
I dont know why but that spanking was the first I really tried to talk my way out of. My wife continued to tell me to bend over and take my punishment and that we would talk after. Eventually, she told me I was now going to be spanked for disobedience in addition to the original reason for the spanking. That got me lowering my pants and bending over. I will never forget the glare from my wife as I finally obeyed. I was already tearing up getting into position and it only took a few swats before I started crying. That didn’t seem to phase my wife. The spanking and scolding were long and severe.
After the spanking was over, she sat me down and said I was permitted to tell her what was so important before the spanking. I tried to rationalize not getting spanked so much but this conversation is what turned into us formalizing our FLR relationship. My wife made a lot of good points and basically doubled down on the fact that things were going to continue where they were heading if I wanted to be in the relationship. She said the only way I was going to get out of getting disciplined like a bad child was to fix my bad behaviors and attitude and always respect her as the authority in the house.
In hindsight, I realized another role reversal was that where previously she would cry and break down during an argument and I usually was not emotional and eye rolled, now I was the one crying and remorseful and she was very matter of fact and in control. I have only cried a few times in the many spankings I have gotten but that was the first one.”
Wasn’t that great? Something about the line I highlighted really gets to me, and I think it's a perfect reflection of some of the feelings I was having when I first discovered the DWC and brought it to Anne's attention.
Onward to this week’s topic, as suggested by Glenmore:
"Perhaps a suggestion
for a future topic might be post-spanking discussions.
Like yourself and Anne, my wife and I usually discuss the spanking in bed afterwards. Interestingly, I'd say she is the one who broaches the subject first, asking how sore my bottom is and teasing me a bit about how hard it will be to sit, etc. I believe she likes to chat about the spanking because she enjoyed it, is proud of it, and perhaps is still basking in that power exchange which puts her in charge temporarily.
In fact, I find that she likes to stay in charge for a day or two after the spanking, bossing me around and showing higher than normal confidence.
Another of the subjects that come up is references to someone knowing about my spanking. She might say, "I wonder what your friends would think if they knew I gave you a red butt?"
Personally, I enjoy the post-spanking discussions and even her teasing. What type of discussions, if any, do others have post-spanking and does she remain 'in charge' for a time afterwards?”
I’ll kick it off. I’m reading a bit into Glenmore’s second sentence. Anne and I very frequently do have heartfelt discussions about the DD part of our relationship, in bed, right after a spanking. The part that’s true to our experience and may or may not be implicit is Glenmore’s scenario is that the discussion is both post-spanking and pre-sex. It's seldom that we got right to bed after an evening spanking (and the vast majority of ours are in the late evening).
I realize some couples draw a firm line between discipline and sex by never doing the latter immediately after the former. They want a clear separation between the two, I assume to make sure he takes away one, wholly consistent, non-erotic message away from his spanking.
Although I appreciate the logic of that position and intellectually it makes perfect sense to me, it still hasn’t been our norm. We very often do have sex after a disciplinary session. I’m not sure we ever made a conscious decision about it, and I’m also not sure there is as much “cause and effect” between the two as one might think. Rather, I think the pattern was established in the early years when we had kids and I was traveling constantly, and that the two became linked because there were limited windows of time when we were (a) both physically present; (b) not working or occupied with other things; and (c) the kids were in bed or gone. So, both sex and spanking happened on those rare occasions when the stars aligned on all three of those factors.
Glenmore’s wife apparently initiates the post-spanking discussions most of the time. For us, it’s usually, but not always the reverse. And, when she initiates, it often is with some question or observation about the state of my butt as her hand glides over it in bed. Like with Glenmore’s wife, there is sometimes a teasing quality about it or something like seeking affirmation that the session was a job well done.
More often, however, it’s me who initiates the discussion. Again, some of it is habit carried over from our earliest DD experiences. In those early days, I think I was always looking for affirmation that she actually got some enjoyment or fulfillment out of the session, or at the very least that she was comfortable with having given a hard spanking. As with most of us, I had initiated the DD relationship, and she had gone along with the request. It was difficult for me to judge how the experiment was going for her, and I was always a little afraid she might still think it weird or might have some negative feelings about it.
Honestly, I think from early on, it was the opposite. She was not very vocal about her feelings, but I’ve come to suspect that she was beginning to enjoy the power and control, not to mention the opportunity for “payback,” well before she expressly owned up to those feelings.
Even today, I’m still doing some of that probing, asking her how she feels about what she just did or about whatever incremental amount of authority or strictness she exercised in conjunction with it. Part of me is still, after 20 years, still a little nervous about whether she’s experiencing it as “too much” or “too weird.” And, twenty years later my concerns on that front probably are not only wrong but the opposite of right.
The biggest driver of my desire for post-spanking discussion, however, is it’s when I have the deepest feelings of intimacy and respect for my wife, and I often feel a compelling need to talk about it. Aunt Kay’s line about, “The harder you spank, the more he will love you for it,” is absolutely true for me.
Post-spanking, I want to tell her all about how much I appreciated what she did (even though I hated it as it was happening) and how much I want her to embody that very stern, demanding maternal energy—exactly what D.D. described in the comment above--in the relationship as a whole. In fact, while it never seems quite to gel fully, a lot of our talk focuses on ramping up the FLR and maternal aspects of the relationship.
I’m also way more prone to talking to her post-spanking about what I feel and want and need. In the period immediately after a spanking, my ego defenses have dropped away to almost nothing. It's when I feel the most relaxed, although that isn’t the right word for it. It’s more like “drained” or "depleted," but in a good way.
Artwork by KD Pierre
It’s an odd corollary, but I’ve felt that way a few times after acupuncture,
when something about the treatment tapped into some deep pool of stirred up
energy and released it without warning.
I’ve also gotten close to it a few times with meditation, but rarely. After a hard session, things that I would be
embarrassed to say in the waking hours come out freely lying in bed in the
dark.
It’s no accident that when I first suggested DD, that discussion also took place in bed, in the dark.
Glenmore asked whether the wives project being “in charge” for some period after the spanking. I haven’t really noticed that, though I do think the actual content of our post-spanking discussions—which often center on her embracing the FLR and maternal roles more and more fully—may lead to additional strictness or assertiveness.
From past discussions on the blog, I get the impression some don’t communicate very much after a spanking. In some cases it sounds like the recipient is left alone to think about what got them in that position.
Or, perhaps to pull themselves together after the spanking ordeal. Because a real punishment spanking is often, in fact, an ordeal.
Although it’s probably a separate topic, I’ll also mention another form of pre-spanking “discussion,” namely, journaling. I very often will write something in my DD journal after a spanking, going into more detail about the experience, what led to it, what I’m feeling, and how thankful I am that she took me in hand and hoping she will amp up keeping me under her thumb.
Post-spanking journaling and post-spanking face-to-face discussions both help me process what I’m thinking and experiencing. That’s kind of what I’m getting at in choosing the Jung quote at the top of this post.
I'll also mention in passing that one scenario I find to blend both terror and fascination is having to tell someone else that I've been spanked right after I've been given one.
How about you? What sort of post-spanking discussions do you have, if any? Whether you’re the spanker or the recipient, do you like discussing things afterward? What are the common subjects of any post-spanking discussions? Are there things you would like to talk about but don’t?
Have a good week.