The Club - Meeting 494 - Post-Spanking Discussions

“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.

 

Art by KD Pierre

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.

 

The Club - Meeting 493 - Pegging for Punishment, i.e. Strap-ons Used for Disciplinary Purposes

"Do you want to have an easy life? Then always stay with the herd and lose yourself in the herd." - Friedrich Nietzsche

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.  Mine was better with respect to keeping to my diet, exercise and drinking goals. Though, of course, there is one day of week left.

 

It was an up and down week on one of my other long-term problems: displays of temper.  It’s election season, of course, and for me that includes an immersion in some small town political issues for the first time.  Community engagement in the Facebook era really does illustrate the best and the worst of our democratic system.  I will say that despite getting provoked pretty badly and baldly at one point, I did better at keeping my cool than I might have in days past.

 

 

That’s despite the fact that while Anne has started issuing spanking threats again—a good sign regarding her medical recovery—given her objective physical condition those threats are pretty empty and will remain so for at least a few more weeks.

 

I'm also disappointed that summer is hanging on tenaciously where we are.  I'd usually have a yard full of Halloween decorations up by now, but with my sprinkler system still on to keep my grass from dying, it's not really workable.  It also inhibits the fall celebratory mood that usually leads me to posting a ton of Halloween inspired naughty pics and artwork.

 

 

I thought we had a good discussion last week.  Thank you to all of you who provided topic suggestions. Some of the comments that didn’t suggest topics also gave me some ideas.  So, I feel like I have enough to work with for a little while, but keep them coming.

 

One request around topic suggestions, however. When I say that I’m out of ideas and could use suggestions, and people are good enough to provide me with some, please DON’T respond to their suggestions during the then-current discussion.  The whole reason I ask for suggestions is to use the results for FUTURE topics.  It can sap the energy from that future discussion if everyone works it over prematurely.  And, after ten years, it’s pretty damn hard to generate continuing energy.

 

Anyway, one topic that seemed to attract a fair bit of attention was “pegging” or using a “strap-on” for disciplinary purposes.  I immediately locked onto it as the topic I wanted to do for this week, not because of the substance but because I thought I might be able to save some time and recycle an old post instead of doing a new one from scratch.

 

 

Thus, I was surprised when I searched all the old posts and found that I’ve never really done a full topic devoted exclusively to strap-ons as disciplinary tools.  It has come up and, in fact, has been discussed pretty thoroughly a few times. But, it almost always happened in the context of a post on “alternative” (to spanking) punishments.

 

What struck me about some of those earlier posts is that I would usually focus in the post on grounding as an exemplary alternative punishment, but strap-ons seemed to grab the most attention in the comments.  That pattern seemed to be on display again last week, when several people, including some of the wives, jumped in with comments or questions after Alan suggested strap-ons as a full topic. And, in looking through my art collection, it certainly does seem to be a prevalent subject.  In fact, I have way more examples than I can use in one post.  In fact, I have to work in this one by Paulo Serpieri because I love his stuff, even if this one doesn't have any facially apparent disciplinary angle.

So, since the interest level seems to be high, let’s do it.

 

As seems to be the case here more often than I like to admit, some of you seem to be a lot more adventurous when it comes to exploring various disciplinary angles than we have been. 

 

We have done strap-on play, but that’s what it was – play.  And, that was several years ago.  Anne has never used it as a disciplinary tool or for role enforcement. In fact, I’m struggling to recall whether we had even started exploring DD the last time we tried it.  I’m fairly sure we had, given how long that’s been, but I don’t think we were very far along in exploring any sort of explicit FLR orientation.

 

I’m very sure that when we did it, I was the one who initiated it, which may be some further evidence that even if I wasn’t consciously pursuing an FLR at that time, some of those dynamics were percolating in my subconscious.

 

I don’t think either of us had a negative reaction to the experience, but since we haven’t done it again in many years, that says a lot about how much it interested us at the time.

 

I think that might be different today, at least it might if the express purpose was either as a form of punishment or if it were being used for role-affirmation purposes. 

 

In either case, I think it would involve Anne consciously trying to make it an unpleasant experience for me, through some combination of the size of the strap-on and the vigorousness of her use of it.

 

 

I also think there would have to be a very substantial change in her usual demeanor, with her taking on a very Top-like, dare I say, masculine persona.

 

 

 When reviewing the old “alternative punishment” posts that led to robust strap-on discussions, I found this from Marisa, one of my favorite former commenters:

 

“I have used a strap-on several times as an alternative punishment and I will probably use it again as necessary. I first got the idea from Elise Sutton's blog during a period Jay was having some serious attitude issues. She is over the top on much of her female superiority themes, but she is right about the strap-on. It is very effective in inducing obedience and submission and the effects are long lasting. The problem with the strap-on for discipline is the time a session takes. If I need to I can administer a sound spanking in ten minutes or less. But punishing him with a strap-on takes an hour or more. Hygiene requires preparing and administering at least one enema which is time consuming. Actually, penetrating a man not used to it takes even more time as does making sure he is getting the message I am sending. Also, Jay at least needs much longer after care when receiving a strap-on compared to a spanking. I don't see the strap-on ever replacing a good spanking but when I need to get his attention it really does work. It also is something that can be used with family or friends in the house. A wife that is looking for an alternative to spanking might try it ,keeping in mind the time issues. If you have the time, it can be a good option.”

 

Al and Alan gave some great comments as well, but I hope they’ll join in this week with their experiences and latest thoughts on them. 

 

So, what are your experiences with pegging?  For those of you who have engaged in it, was it purely for pleasure, or for disciplinary purposes? If disciplinary, what is/was the primary goal?  Punishment? Role affirmation/reinforcement?   Displaying her dominance and his submission? 

 

Something else?  Is it something that generally accompanies a disciplinary spanking or is it separate?

 

 If it is about role affirmation or displaying dominance or conversely submission, was the strap-on used only anally?  

 

If you’re willing, please give us some details.  How did you determine the size to use?  Was there a goal to use something large enough to make it uncomfortable?   

 

 

What is/was her demeanor like?  What was the emotional impact on her?  On him? 

 

For those of you who haven’t done it, is it something you are interested in?  Why or why not? If you did give it a try, do you have a vision for things like the parties’ respective demeanors, how hard or aggressive it should be, etc.?

 

I hope you all have a great week.

The Club - Meeting 492 - Disciplinary Spanking Rationales: Does the "Why" Change the "How" or the "How Much"?

"Why slap them on the wrist with a feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer?" – Katherine Hepburn

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 good week. Mine had its ups and downs.  I’ve had a lot of quiet time at home, courtesy of Anne’s convalescence after her medical procedure.  I was actually feeling pretty proud of myself, having used the near total downtime and lack of socializing to reverse a developing bad trend where diet and beers were concerned, including going totally dry for more than two weeks.  Then, I got some relief one day and, of course, what happened?  Socializing that led to bad food, too many beers, and a late night.

 

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on one’s perspective, although Anne’s recovery is going well, we’re probably several weeks out from her being able to take me in hand again. 

 

In the meantime . . . on all the other days at home, when I wasn’t over-indulging, I got good and bored and decided to check out the topics and comments from the earliest days of this blog.  I’ve thought a few times about trying to compile the best of the thousands of comments to date into a topically arranged book.  We’ll see whether I actually get around to that, but I did go through about two years’ worth of topics and comments. 

 

It was interesting watching the blog’s development with the benefit of hindsight.  For the first several months, almost everyone was commenting anonymously without using names or initials.  Yet, I was able to quickly identify a few commenters who are still with us today or were until recently.  I’m pretty sure Al (or al.) gets the award for the earliest comment, but Alan was very close behind.  So, thank you guys for sticking with us for so, so long.

 

I’ve also known there were periods when we had more female commenters, but I was a little surprised at just how many we had early on. Or, at least we had quite a few claiming to be women.  Men pretending to be female disciplinarians has been a problem from the beginning.  Honestly, reading through the early entry reminded me how betrayed I felt the first time I had spent months engaging with a “couple” was were eventually revealed to be a male writing under multiple names and assumed genders.

 

Still, I have no doubt that many of putative female commenters were what they claimed. What struck me on this reading was that many of the female commenters seemed pretty far along the spectrum from DD to FLR. Maybe that was because in those early days the blog’s philosophy hadn’t quite gelled and it drew from a wider spectrum of the kink community?  

 

I have believed for a long time that our wives are often turned off by the whole whips and chains Femdom thing, and I still think that is largely true. But, the vibe from several of the early female commenters, as well as some later ones such as “Danielle,” was far enough along the FLR spectrum that I wonder whether I’ve been drawing the line in the wrong place.  Something to think about . . .

 

I was a little surprised by the quality of last week’s discussion.  I had treated it as a mere placeholder, seeking new topic ideas and continuing a discussion of our respective DD origins.  Yet, we ended up with a wide-ranging discussion of origins, face slapping, mercy and its lack, spanking duration, humbling, the terms we use for corporal punishment (spanking, thrashing, etc.), and spanking severity, among others.  We covered a lot of ground for a post with no actual topic. Good job everyone.

 

Unfortunately, I was hoping for a flood of new topic suggestions but instead got a small trickle.  I’m still not experiencing a lot of inspiration, so please serve up other ideas.  In the meantime, I’m going to try to stitch together a couple of suggestions that seem to me to be closely related. 

 

The first articulation came from Tom:

 

“I'm curious whether wives have a set method of punishment or vary it depending on the offense, or just their mood. I have had impromptu spankings where the scolding, punishment, and after-spanking warnings were all over in less than 15 minutes, and of course mostly much longer ones. Almost all are over the knee with a hairbrush, but my wife will add on a switching if a switch is available. I have occasionally had my face slapped for being too slow to cooperate or for responding disrespectfully to an order to get ready.”

 

Donn offered a somewhat different formulation, but I think that it’s still closely related to Tom’s topic to the extent Tom’s focused on the reason for the spanking (“depending on the offense, or just their mood”), and how the wife’s reason or motivation might lead to differences in the way the punishment is carried out.

 

 Here's how Donn formulated the possible topic:

 

 "Several writers have somewhat alluded to this question, but maybe an explicit rephrasing might make a subject for future discussion:

 

Thrashings can be administered for: (1) Punishment towards behavior modification (including overt expressions of mood/general attitude); (2) Inducing and getting expressions of subjugation, submission and respect for wife's authority; or (3) Combinations of both.

 

Do members get all of these kinds of thrashings? More some than others? How does your wife accomplish the "subjugation to surrender" thrashings, and how well do they work, for both husband and wife?"

 

I see where Donn was going, though I do see his three options as more narrow than the actual range of rationales couples have for delivering and receiving “real” spankings.  His first category, behavior modification, is obviously a biggie. 

 

His second category emphasizes bringing about a state of overt submission to her authority, which may or may not be a thing for all our respective couples.  There also is a flip-side to it, i.e. giving her an outlet to express and reinforce her authority or place in the hierarchy.  I think of the two together as “role affirmation/enforcement.”  

 

 Miss E also liked Donn’s formulation but proposed a significant expansion, i.e. stress reduction:

 

“I like the topic as you proposed it Donn. Another aspect to a spanking which could be discussed it whether or not anyone uses them as purely for anxiety/stress relievers. I’d been toying around with the idea and last night I decided to actually give it a try. Pregnancy has had its challenges these past few months and yesterday was a mentally taxing day. Up until this point I have always only spanked for a deserving reason and punishment. But I was so stressed last night I felt I just needed something to hold on to, his submission. So I asked him if I could spank him and made it clear it was not a punishment but something for me. He immediately said yes and was so sweetly submissive before it even began. The entire spanking was slow and intimate but we did build up to a nice intensity and he handled it. I’m asking him tonight but I suspect he was sinking closer to subspace with this one vs a punishment spanking. Regardless it was a nice and needed experience.”

 

 

I’m glad she brought that particular scenario--in which it is the wife's stress that gets relieved--up for discussion because, while various commenters have discussed scenarios in which spankings are used for relief of the spankee’s stress or anxiety, we haven’t really discussed using spankings to alleviate the spanker’s stress or anxiety, other than the obvious case where it is the spankee’s behavior that caused it.  

 

There are, of course, other rationales that might impact the way a spanking is delivered. For example there are “preemptive” or “preventative” spankings that are more about preventing bad behavior than punishing it. Those too are usually postured as being for his benefit but could also have psychological/stress relieving aspects for her as well.

 

So, of the rationales Tom, Donn, Miss E. and I brought up, which result in spankings in your household?  To Tom’s question, does the rationale for the spanking, or her mood regarding it, affect the method of punishment or the way it is carried out?

 

 

In our house, virtually all spankings are aimed more or less directly at punishing or, much more rarely, preventing particular behavior.  While spankings do reflect and reinforce her authority, and do lead me to a deeper acceptance of that authority, I can’t think of an instance in which she’s given one specifically for those purposes.

 

As for Tom’s question, Anne is remarkably binary when it comes to severity and duration.  She’s either on or off, with very little variation regardless of the nature or severity of the offense. 

 

The one aspect that does change a bit, and has changed fairly substantially over the last year, is any accompanying scolding.   

 

 

There is almost always some kind of lecture, but it’s often very proforma and perfunctory.  In the last couple of years, however, she has become more comfortable cutting loose with more passion when she’ really angry about something.  However, I don’t think the heightened anger and more severe scolding result in the intensity of the spanking or the punishment method changing.

 

I hope you all have a great week.

Continuing Discussion of "Origins," Plus New Topic Ideas?

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 a specific 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 about as hectic as it could get.  Anne is convalescing from the procedure I alluded to last week, and it’s going to be a multi-week—multi-month, really—grind. We spent this week trying to get settled into some semblance of a routine.  I do think we have it a little more under control than I worried might be the case at this point in the process.

 

It's a tough time of year to be confined to our house.  We had “grounding” as a topic a few weeks ago, and I now have a good sense of what it probably would feel like as an adult.  It’s going to get harder.  Where we live, from year to year September can feel like either an extension of summer, or a prelude to autumn.

 

 Until last week, summer was hanging in strong and, since it’s not my favorite season, I didn’t feel like I was missing that much being cooped up in a hospital room and then in our house.  But, yesterday we got a change in the weather that felt decidedly like autumn is coming.  As our long-term visitors here know, autumn is by far my favorite season, culminating with Halloween.  It's going to be rough being indoors for a lot of the season. But, such is life.

 

I thought we had a great discussion last week.  Thanks to all of you who shared your origin story.  If there is one big takeaway from the discussion, to me it is “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”  Most of the relationships began with a man finding the courage to overcome his embarrassment and talk to his wife honestly about his Domestic Discipline needs, and a wife who was open enough to give it a try even if they didn’t fully understand the “why” part.  Like many of the men, whatever regret I have about bringing DD to Anne's attention is the one I hoped to have from the very beginning, namely that she would take it up with determination and make me experience some of the natural regret that comes with being subject to someone's hard discipline.

My only regret about my own origin story is that it didn’t happen earlier in our marriage, though I don’t know whether either of us would have been open to it. Things happen when they happen.  For me, the challenge is making sure I am open to growing it in different directions, knowing that I may not know when and how such opportunities will arise.  I hope I’m more open to having an unconventional life in the second half of my life than I was in the first, regardless of who knows about it or what they may think.

 

 

Unfortunately, things have been so hectic this week, I haven’t had time to think about an actual topic. If something pops into my head, I might post later in the week.  But, in the meantime, let’s do a couple of things.

 

First. if you haven’t had a chance to talk about your own origins story, let’s please keep that conversation going.  Go ahead and do it as a comment on this post, so people don’t have to navigate back to last week’s.

 

Second, since I’m once again not doing so well at generating new ideas, please give me suggestions for topics you might want to talk about.

 

Have a great week.

The Club - Meeting 490 - Origin Stories

“There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.” – Oscar Wilde

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 a specific 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 good week. Ours has been pretty painful, literally and figuratively.  This was the week that a lot of the medical stuff I referred to a few posts ago really came to a head, at least with respect to Anne's issues.  So far, so good for the most part, but I expect the next several weeks to be pretty bumpy, so I’m going to be playing blog posting by ear.

 

The one clear impact of the medical drama is that, coming on top of what had already been a substantial lull, this period likely will go down as our longest hiatus from domestic discipline since we started almost 20 years ago.

 

On the one hand, that is an obvious downer.  On the other hand, maybe it gives us an opportunity to break out of the old patterns and lift ourselves out of the established ruts, possibly allowing us to set up a deeper, broader dynamic once recovery schedules allow.

 

 

In the short term, it does mean I may need to recycle some content on the blog; more so than I generally like doing.  As I was pondering that, it occurred to me that we do have several new regular participants including, for the first time in a while, multiple Disciplinary Wives.

 

While we old-timers all know each other’s “origin” stories, i.e. how we found ourselves in these unconventional relationships, some of the newer folks haven’t shared theirs.

 

So, let’s do that.  Although many have probably pieced together mine, or read it all in an older post, it has been a few years since I did a full post on origins.  So, I’ll kick it off, relying mostly on some previous posts but adding or changing where I’ve gotten new or deeper insights.  I hope some of the old-timers will join me in telling their stories, even if they've done so before.

 

I grew up in the heart of the Bible Belt, which also seems to have been the heart of the “spanking belt.”  However, despite the fact that corporal punishment was pervasive both at school and in most homes, I don’t recall getting it a lot myself.  It probably happened more than I have specific memories of, though that goes to show that while it was all around me growing up, it wasn't something that got a lot of conscious mind share. 

 

My mother had a forceful personality, but as I got older she became increasingly erratic when it came to parenting. My stepfather was a hyper-masculine force of nature but also very anti-authoritarian.  When I was in high school, he told me that his basic approach to rules was that he wasn’t going to lay down any as long as whatever trouble I got myself into was something I got myself out of.

 

The result of their parenting styles—hers erratic and his almost entirely “hands-off”—is that I grew up with few real boundaries and none that were really enforced. 

 

At the time, I thought that was a teenager’s wet dream.  I’ve now come to appreciate, however, how much pressure it imposed, being given carte blanche to get myself into trouble but knowing I had to get myself out of it. (I’ve come to believe that teenagers, especially high energy ones with a proclivity for risk taking, need enforced boundaries.)  

 

And, on basic good behavior things around the home, there was certainly nothing like this going on:

While I can speculate about why my not-very-rigorous disciplinary background developed into a fascination with the idea of imposed boundaries and power dynamics later in life, it really is just speculation.   

 

All I know for sure is that, unlike most of the husbands who come to this blog, I did not have any early interest in spanking, let alone any fetish-like fascination with it. 

 

In fact, from at least high school through the first decade of marriage, I don’t recall thinking about it at all.

 

Yet, it's also true that I always had a thing for older women.  With the benefit of hindsight, I now think it probably was strong female authority I was gravitating to, rather than a pure age thing. Though that wasn't something I understood at the time, had any of the older women (teachers, principals, friend's mothers) I crushed on tried to impose their authority on me in more forceful ways, been into it, I don't have much doubt that I would have given into it.

 

 

But alas, such an early introduction to female authority expressed in a disciplinary fashion never happened.

 

Anne was not older than me and didn't have that air of maternal authority when we met.

 

While we were never what I would consider repressed, our first decade of married life was pretty conventional.  Overall, we had a good relationship, but it was not particularly well-balanced.  I had always been more than a little, shall we say, “Type A,” with an intense personality.  I also was prone to doing everything—both positive things and negative things—to excess. 

 

When my wife and I first met, she probably found that brashness attractive. But, I doubt she envisioned that, ten years later, very little would have changed.

 

Anne was less brash and bold than I was, and probably more emotionally well-balanced, but I think it's fair to say she had trouble asserting herself.  She was raised in a very traditional, male dominated family.  Her dad worked, her mom raised the family, and there was little overlap between those roles. When they argued, which was fairly frequently, she pouted and gave him the silent treatment, and he slept on the couch for a few nights.  Anne admits that she brought some of those same dispute resolution mechanisms to our marriage.

   

My intensity and her lack of self-assurance did not create a good balance.  And, while we weren't unhappy, neither of us was living up to our potential either.  Thanks to my temperament and anti-authoritarian tendencies, I had a tendency to "step on my own dick."  And, as much as I may have thought I liked having no rules growing up, I was now in my late thirties and still feeling out of control and sometimes overwhelmed with the responsibility of making too many decisions.

 

My wife, on the other hand, was not developing into all she could be.  Despite accumulating degrees and professional accomplishments, she still had a hard time taking charge.  She also had her mom’s tendency to pout and flounce instead of taking me head on when my excesses became, well, excessive.

 

Then, seemingly out of the blue, something happened to shake up that thoroughly conventional, yet thoroughly dysfunctional, dynamic.

 

Although I didn’t have wide-ranging experience, I had always been pretty erotically-oriented and open to learning about various kinks. I had become a fan of an HBO series called “Real Sex,” which explored all sorts of kinky lifestyles.  They devoted one segment to adult erotic spanking, featuring a couple spanking each other with leather paddles and a riding crop.  It turned me on; not extraordinarily so but enough that I had Anne watch it.

 

She had zero interest in being spanked but was happy to try it on me. So, a few days later I bought one of those flimsy leather paddles sold in adult “novelty” shops.

 

Although our experiments with erotic spanking were fun, it never went beyond a sort of “BDSM Lite” foreplay.  There were role play aspects, in which she would "punish" me for various real misdeeds.  After a few modest swats with the flimsy leather paddle, we would have sex.

 

The problem was, while the spankings were fake, the bad behavior was real.  Since the spankings merely stung a little, and it all ended in a nice orgasm, I essentially was being rewarded for bad behavior. 

 

She became concerned (rightly) that she was inadvertently reinforcing bad behavior and soon put an end to the whole thing.  That phase lasted for two or three months at most.

 

It didn't bother me that she had ended our spanking experiments. It hadn't been that big a thing for either of us.  But, I remained interested enough in it that I would read spanking stories when I found them in publications like Penthouse Variations, and I assume I was interested enough to look for Female-male spanking materials on-line.

 

I don’t recall exactly how I found it, but at some point I came across a link to the  Disciplinary Wives Club. Although I can’t remember exactly how I found it, I certainly do remember the effect it had on me.

 

It hit me like a sledgehammer. 

 

It was like no erotic reading experience I’ve had before or since, even though it was not, in fact, overtly sexual.  Sex was barely even mentioned.

 

Instead, the DWC advocated for real spankings, used in the context of real punishment, to correct real misbehavior. There also were sections offering tips and advice to aspiring disciplinary wives. Then and now, I think the advice from Aunt Kay to disciplinary wives that really hit me in the gut was:

 

A spanking should be an event to remember. Don't worry about how red his bottom gets. The more color you put into it, the better you are doing. Don't pay any attention to his cries and pleas and promises. He will tell you anything to get you to stop. Allow him to squirm within limits. If it gets out of hand, give him a smack or two on the back of his thighs. If you give a spanking the way it should be given, the results should still show a week later. He should wince every time he tries to sit for days after.

 

That advice served to emphasize how different DWC-style spankings were from the erotic foreplay we had been doing.  Moreover, it served as notice that a DWC-style spanking would only be both physically and psychologically painful, causing severe pain to both the bottom and the male ego.

 

Something about that affected me in ways I find hard to describe.  Looking back, I’m not sure it was the spanking per se that really got to me.  Rather, it was the prospect of giving up control—being forced to give up control--in a way I had not done in my entire life. 

 

The prospect of losing control to the point of sobbing over my wife's knee was disturbing on a level I can't really describe.  Yet, I found myself desperately wanting to tell Anne all about it.

 

 

I couldn’t get it out of my mind.  After two or three days of thinking of little else, I could not imagine NOT raising it.  The lure was just too strong, even if it made my male ego tremble.

 

So, less than a week after discovering the DWC website, I initiated a  discussion with Anne.  We were in bed, getting ready to go to sleep.  At least she was getting ready for sleep. I hadn’t slept well in three days.

 

The lights were off, which was good because I was so embarrassed that I don’t think I could have faced her with them on.  I began with something like, "I found this interesting website. . ." and explained the basic premise: Women taking control of their marriages, using real corporal punishment on their misbehaving husbands. 

 

She started to restate her position that our spanking games had reinforced my bad behavior, but I quickly stammered out that this was different.  These spankings were . . . real.

 

She didn’t say much as I stuttered my way through a description of the DWC philosophy, emphasizing the reality-based, severe spankings that empowered wives to take more control. I told her honestly how I felt that our relationship wasn’t balanced, and that maybe we needed something that would empower her to hold me more accountable and, frankly, take me down a peg or two.

 

When I was done, there was short pause, then she asked whether I was suggesting this as something I actually wanted to try. It was much like the wife’s reaction in the DWC fiction story Even More, which I later learned was authored by our long-time blog commenter “al.”  Like the character David in that story, I almost lost my nerve but finally told her the truth: the idea scared the hell out of me, had left me with butterflies in my stomach and little sleep in three days but, yes, I did want to try it. 

 

She listened quietly but intently, but that night she was noncommittal, saying only that she would take a look at the DWC website.  She's told me later that she did think it was more than a little weird.  I honestly thought she would just drop the whole thing and never follow up on checking out the DWC site.

 

Instead, she called me at the office the next day. After a few pleasantries, there was a pause and then, “Well . . . I visited that website.”

 

Gulp. 

 

"And, . . .?" I asked, tentatively.

 

Another pause, then just two words.  "Very interesting.”  

 

"Interesting?  . . .  What . . . what does that mean exactly?"  Words to that effect.  I was really on pins and needles and don't remember the exact words, only that they came out in an embarrassed, halting fashion.

 

"Well, I guess it means you need to buy me a nice, heavy wooden hairbrush on your way home from work tonight."

 

 

I don’t remember exactly what I said in response to that first DWC instruction.

 

What I do recall is walking around a mall for an hour, trying to find a good quality hairbrush. They aren’t easy to find these days.  I also recall the butterflies in my stomach, though that hardly describes it. Since all I really had to go on in imagining the spanking that was to come were the stories on the DWC website--the ones in which the husband always seemed to end up bawling--I was in a state of very high anxiety.  Yet, I also remember that over the course of the hour or more I spent going from shop to shop, I had a raging erection.

 

It was the strangest, most peculiar, most paradoxical mix of extreme arousal and equally extreme anxiety. 

 

When I got home, we sat at the kitchen table and talked through a set of rules.

 

First and foremost, she would control why, when, and how hard I was spanked.  While she would listen to my views, she would make the decisions. 

 

Second, she remained concerned that “play” spankings could reinforce bad behavior, so her spankings would be long, hard and, in short, "real" each and every time.

 

 

Despite all that, unlike the woman in the above captioned pic, I don't think either of us really understood just how profoundly the relationship might change if we really implemented this.

 

I mean, we kind of got it.  But, we didn't really get it.  Honestly, I think it's taken us twenty years of spankings and discussing spankings to get to where we both accept that I really do want a very substantial power shift.  

 

Instead, I think that when she said she found it "interesting," what she really meant was she found it intriguing as hell, particularly the prospect for being able to inflict some well-deserved payback for bad behavior. But, she also didn't quite believe I was serious or wouldn't back out.

It's odd that while I recall virtually everything leading up to that first spanking, I don't remember a lot about the main event.  I suspect that is because we followed a prescription that was iconic but resulted in a less-than-memorable spanking:  over-the-knee position with a hairbrush.

 

We graduated quickly to wooden paddles and leather straps, and she became a surprisingly determined spanker virtually right out of the gate.  I was shocked at how few reservations she had about really roasting my butt, almost from the very beginning.

 

Over the years of doing this blog, I've heard variations on that story many times.   We husbands are so concerned about how to broach the topic of Domestic Discipline but once we do, the wives take up the paddle or strap with surprisingly little diffidence or reluctance and are soon spanking like pros.

 

Over the years we have been doing Domestic Discipline, my wife has grown into a much stronger, confident woman with a voice all her own, and the relationship has gone beyond merely discipline.  Instead of just enforcing rules, she imposes them.  She sets boundaries for me and expects me to respect them.  

 

 

Twenty years after that first spanking, she’s still determined and intent on making her spankings hurt and hurt badly, every single time. 

 

So, how about you? For the husbands who initiated DD:

 

• When/how did your interest first arise?
• Howexactly did you approach your wife/partner?
• What did you say?
• How did you work up the courage? How long did it take you?
• What was her initial reaction? Did it change?
• How long until your first spanking? Was it all you expected it to be?

 

For wives whose husbands asked them to consider a DD relationship:

• How did your husband approach you?
• What was your initial reaction? Did it change?
• How did you decide to spank him?
• What was that first spanking like? How did you feel?

 

And, if you are one of those rare wives who initiated the DD relationship, please tell us all about it!

 

These “origin” posts always work better when the discussion is more than surface level, so please give as many details as you’re comfortable sharing.

 

Have a great week.