Attitude When DD Isn't Happening, and Keeping a List (Club Meeting - 560)

If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm. - Vince Lombardi

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Wives Club – Tribute blog.  Our weekly on-line gathering of women and men who are in, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline relationship of the type advocated by the former Disciplinary Wives Club (archived copy in the “Links I Like” list, below right).

 

I hope you all had a good week.  Mine was okay.  I’m still in the “little victories” stage of convalescence.  I can finally drive again, which is a big deal, even if I’m doing only short, local trips.  It’s meant I can take myself to Chipotle, which was a near-weekly thing before this accident, though I probably should moderate those trips, given that in my present condition I can't even pretend to be able to burn off those calorie bombs.  I’ve also been able to resume my morning trips to the dog park, though I mostly hang out by the fence to avoid getting taken down while my dogs run around renewing their doggie friendships. 

 

In any event, it feels like life is slowly, slowly getting back to normal.

 

Unfortunately—or, perhaps very fortunately, from my butt’s perspective—that hasn’t included a return to Domestic Discipline.  While my leg is healed enough to handle the positioning and tensing of muscles, it hasn’t been clear that my tailbone is there yet.  Ten weeks, and it’s still pretty sore.

 

And, it’s not like DD hasn’t been on my mind.  In fact, I’m in one of those phases in which I’m thinking about it all the time.  I don’t exactly “want” it, especially knowing that, given how long the break has been, the first new one undoubtedly will hurt unbelievably badly.

 

It’s more like a “need” than a “want”, in two related senses.  

 

First, I feel an emotional need to be in our dynamic again. 

 

Second, I “need” it in the sense that I increasingly have issues and attitudes that “need” fixing.

 

It’s a hard thing to admit, but in the absence of having someone impose boundaries, I start feeling like, for lack of a better word, a dick.

 

It’s not that I necessarily let dickish thoughts or attitudes rip but, internally, I feel annoyed more often, more prone to saying snotty things, or at least thinking snotty thoughts, and I generally feel more negative and judgmental. 

 

Looking back, it’s how I felt when I first discovered the Disciplinary Wives Club and DD and, to a large extent I brought the idea of the DWC to Anne because I knew there were too many times when my attitude made me hard to live with. It was only later that I realized that, left to my own devices, my attitude was often just plain bad, but that someone taking me to task for specific bad behavior also adjusted my attitude for the better.  I just plain felt better with boundaries.

 

Being spanked for attitude wasn't a part of my teen or early adult experience.  Now that I've had this epiphany about the role that our DD relationship plays in keeping my attitude in a good place, I really wonder how life might have been had my parents, or a significant other, put me over their knee not for some specific act or omission but just for being a jerk or copping an attitude. I'm sure I would have hated it, but when I think back to what a stress case I was, and how hard-wired I was to be cynical and caustic, I might have felt a sense of relief.

 

 

Like I said, I don’t feel like I’ve been letting my attitude take the reins that often, but I feel this internal tension that I don't feel when Anne is being more consistently strict with me.

 

 It’s even impacting my dreams, which several times lately have featured Anne and I fighting, even though we haven’t had a real fight in quite a while.

 

So, I need a spanking and, moreover, I need the resumption of our DD dynamic, with an increasingly strict wife setting expectations and enforcing boundaries. 

 

It’s an interesting thing, feeling this need not just to be held accountable for specific behavior, but a deep desire to be “taken in hand” and kept under tighter control. 

 

That’s not always been the case.  It's really about not always noticing what you have.  When we're living the DD dynamic on a semi-regular basis, I tend to perceive my spanking needs in functional terms: I do something that we've agreed is spankable, or I do something careless or stupid, and I know I need a spanking to reinforce that there are consequences for bad or thoughtless behavior.

 

But, that’s kind of different from feeling the need for the dynamic itself. What I’m perceiving now is how much, before this accident, I was beginning to feel Anne’s authority as a force underlying our whole relationship. Now, I notice it by virtue of its absence. 

 

Also, it hasn't been that common for Anne to use DD to address general "attitude", as opposed to specific behavior, but it's clear to me based on how things have been going lately that it should be a key area of focus going forward.

 

 

But, while spanking hasn't been realistically for almost three months, I know it’s coming, and maybe not that far off.  A couple of nights ago, Anne and I were in bed, and I told her how much I was missing our dynamic and wanted to get it back on track. She clearly has some qualms about even trying with the shape my body has been in. But, she made a point of telling me that she’s been keeping a list, and intends to address the things on it as soon as that’s a realistic possibility.

 

I had a powerful reaction to that, in part because, thanks to this extended hiatus, I don’t know how many items are on the list or exactly what they are.  I did have one incident of drinking too much, hanging out with a friend after I was finally in good enough physical shape to sit in a restaurant/bar for a few hours.  It was one of those days when lunch turned into a long afternoon, though I didn’t really misbehave or anything at home.  She even said she understood that I needed to let off some steam after the forced seclusion. And, given my lack of mobility, it's not I've had a lot of opportunities to do much of anything, let alone anything bad.

 

So, I have to assume that most of the things on her list are the attitude issues I’ve felt a lot but caught myself expressing only a few times. But, I really don’t know. And, therein lies the source of my powerful reaction to it.

 

Although we’ve tried several times, we’ve never done a lot with lists or reports. And, when we have, it’s tended to involve me coming up with a form and giving it to her. Or, me journaling about something.  There has never been a time I can think of that she was keeping her own written list of issues she intends to deal with.

 

So, it seems like a big step in our DD relationship that she’s documenting things. It also seems like a big deal that she’s apparently been doing it for several weeks.  And, it seems like a very big deal that I don’t know exactly what is on the list or how long it is.

 

Both her proactive commitment to not letting things wholly slide during this period, her stated intent to address these things once that’s practicable, and not knowing how many sessions that might add up to, is both titillating and terrifying. 

 

Kind of like when I first discovered the DWC and decided to bring it to her.

 

Now, some might be thinking, “Don’t you pretty much know what is on the list?” Honestly, no. This entire period of enforced downtime has been so removed from our usual dynamic that it feels almost like a kind of amnesia has set in.  It also seems like, because discipline wasn’t a possibility anytime soon and I knew it, my mind stopped focusing on behavior and attitude problems in the way I would have when I knew such things might result in a real spanking in the near future.

 

I’m also not sure what she might have in mind regarding the logistics for moving things off the list.  I did a topic here a few weeks ago about whether there are time limits on offenses, and I said that I felt there had to be if I were to feel like I was being held accountable for something real.  

 

Yet, I also have been thinking more often about some of the points Al and others have made regarding the importance of regular, frequent spankings, i.e. maintenance, to keep up the dynamic.   

 

Particularly given how long this hiatus has been, maybe there is an advantage to her taking multiple sessions to check items off the list, not really for accountability purposes but as a combination of (a) payback for any instances of attitude I’ve given her; and (b) simply re-establishing her control and getting our dynamic back on track.  It also seems like her keeping her own list could be another huge step forward in terms of her internalizing our whole dynamic and making it her own.

 

 

This post is more of a general update and some introspection regarding where things stand with us, rather than a concrete topic. So, address anything that seems meaningful to you.  However, I would be interested in hearing whether any of the rest of you have experienced anything like a wife keeping a list but you not knowing what was on it.  Have there been times you knew she intended to address things with a very hard spanking, but you legitimately weren’t sure what those things were? 

 

Also, have you experienced a long hiatus of the kind I’ve described and noticed your attitude deteriorating or your mind going back to old, bad thought patterns?

 

By the way, one unfortunate byproduct of posting later in the week than usual is the topic may not run its course before I’ve moved onto the next one.  I would be interested in hearing from more commenters about the spanking story scenarios and specific stories they recommend. So, please respond to last week’s topic if you have something to say, and feel free to move those comments forward to this week’s topic so everyone will see them.

 

I hope you have a good week.

Spanking Stories and Themes? (Club meeting - 559)

The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell. - Ben Okri

 Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Wives Club – Tribute blog.  Our weekly on-line gathering of women and men who are in, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline relationship of the type advocated by the former Disciplinary Wives Club (archived copy in the “Links I Like” list, below right).

 

I hope you all had a great week.  We got out of the heat and up into the mountains, mainly as a way to get our dogs away from fireworks.  I used to love fireworks displays, and I still mostly do, but one of our dogs gets extremely wigged out.

 

Unfortunately, getting up to the mountains is a mixed bag right now.  The views and getting out of the summer heat are great, but the altitude also causes my injured limb to blow up like a balloon and, while my mobility is improved a bit, I kind of overdid it and am now paying the price.  That, combined with having family around, almost led me not to post this week, but I decided to do a short, lazy one instead.

 

It was prompted by starting to reassess some parts of retirement life in light of this extended convalescence.  I’ve known I’d start some of that introspection at some point, as even in retirement I’m a chronic planner, goal-setter, and maker of to-do lists.  But, I’ve done surprisingly little of it so far, probably because my mobility is still such that most goals involving activities outside the house still seem a little ambitious, so why dangle them in front of myself?

 

But, after being bored to tears for weeks and whittling away way too much time consuming streaming series, it has been on my mind that I’d originally planned to do a lot more writing after retirement, but I’d kind of let it slip.  In an ideal world, I’d write something more ambitious than spanking stories but, sort of like how Stephen King’s imagination naturally runs to horror even though he can write in other genres, when I think about writing fiction, my creative energy often runs to spanking stories. Therefore, I thought maybe I’d put down some concrete goals around developing a more regular writing habit by initially focusing on spanking stories, with a goal of publishing some compilations.

 

While thinking about coming up with some concrete goals around that, it occurred to me that, while I know the various story themes that I gravitate to, it would be interesting to explore with this group the kind of spanking stories that get your motors running. It might have the collateral result of helping each other compile a summer reading list. I suspect this group collectively expends more than a few hours a year reading spanking fiction.  So, let’s have some fun with this.

 

What themes predominate in the spanking stories that you’ve found yourself gravitating toward the most over the years? Are there particular settings that grab you?  Particular kinds of relationships? Or, are you more of a spanking fiction omnivore who gets turned on by any spanking scenario? Are there particular spanking stories or authors you recommend?

 

 

The spanking fiction themes I gravitate to may be obvious in light of the topics I come back to over and over again, though the correlation is probably more loose than one might think, because I realize that some of my tastes probably aren’t shared by others, so I don't do many topics on them.  However, to get things started, here are a few themes that come up in spanking stories I’ve liked over the years.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been good at bookmarking or cataloguing the stories that really got my attention, so I have only a few specific examples to link to.

 

Woodsheds and barns - I’ve always had “a thing” for stories involving woodsheds and barns. For me, the reason is fairly obvious.  I grew up in rural areas, including on farms and ranches, so I spent a lot of time in barns at the time I was going through puberty and my sexual urges were developing. I wasn’t into spanking at all at that point, but I recall keeping a cache of dirty magazines hidden in one of our barns, and today as an adult, barns and woodsheds have a generalized erotic overtone for me.

 

Interestingly, although in real life my spanking experience is all F/m, several of the woodshed and barn stories I’ve read and gravitated toward have involved male spankers.  Though, it's the setting and the hierarchy involved that turn me on, not the gender of the spanker.  One that I’ve liked a lot and returned to several times is titled My Trip to the Woodshed by Dave Christopher.  I’ve found it in multiple places over the years, and it’s currently available at the Library of Spanking Fiction. I'll put links in the comments, in order to avoid triggering Blogger's over-active spam filters.   The plot involves a teenager who has been giving his single mother a lot of trouble and ends up suggesting that she take him to an uncle who had spanked his own sons in front of the teenager, leaving him with a fascination with the prospect of receiving a real disciplinary spanking.  It has some elements that don’t resonate with me, including that the teenager initiates the spanking scenario himself; the whole thing is a little too cooperative for my tastes.  But, it does involve being walked out to the barn for the spanking and witnesses overhearing, both of which strike chords with me.

 

“Iffy” consent - We’ve talked a lot over the years about “consensual non-consent”, and my tastes in both fiction and real life gravitate strongly toward scenarios in which consent is iffy, at best.  Discipline to me, in real life and in stories, seems the most real when it is imposed regardless of the recipient’s wishes.  I don’t have a really good example to recommend, in part because so many authors get very hung up on showing express consent. 

 

I do recall one story that was probably one of the first I reacted strongly to after I discovered my own interest in disciplinary spankings. I don’t remember where I came across it, or the title, or the author.  But, it involved a situation in which a couple had invited a dominant male into their relationship, though I don’t recall the exact circumstances.  The husband had been acting up, and the wife had asked the more dominant male to spank him.  But, she then failed to respond to messages from him to schedule it. So, he shows up while the couple is hosting another couple for dinner.  The wife is furious, but he makes clear that spanking is going to happen and that he’ll create a scene otherwise, which leads the husband to make an excuse for accompanying the dominant male to a horse barn on their property.  He is made to take down his pants and is whipped to tears with a belt. 

 

So, yeah, all sorts of elements that get to me in that one story – imposed discipline, iffy to non-existent consent and, of course, barns.

 

“Unfair” discipline and embarrassment -  I have a thing for stories that involve being subjected to “unfair” spankings in embarrassing situations, especially if there is an element of real humbling involved. One example of brought up before is KD Pierre’s Pride, in which a husband has a difficult relationship with his wife’s friend, and his obstinate refusal to apologize for a recent fight leads to him getting spanked by both the wife and the friend. The spin is the friend confides to him that she knows she is just as responsible for their arguments as he is, but she is going to spank him anyway to take away his pride and humble him.  She is so blatant about spanking him in order to humble him even though she’s at least partially at fault; something about that casual exercise of asymmetric power really appeals to me.  The only thing that doesn’t resonate with me is how he comes to accept it all gracefully in the end; a scenario that cuts against my need for spankings to feel imposed almost against one’s will.

 

Being sent somewhere for a spanking/surrogates -  Although I am attracted to the idea of being spanked in front of a witness in real life, I haven’t come across that many stories with that scenario that appeal strongly to me. What I do tend to get off on are stories that involve being taken or sent to someone else for a spanking.  One example is the second part of the Pretty Legs story on the DWC.  In part one, the husband is initiated into a DD relationship when his wife spanks him for ogling her friend’s legs.  In part two, his wife takes him to the friend’s house to be spanked by the friend.  Although I don’t think the story is all that well-executed, I empathized with the husband’s sense of dread when getting ready to drive to her house so he can be spanked by her.  

 

Another story on the DWC website with a “surrogate” theme is Military Duty Calls, in which a military wife recruits her mother to manage her husband’s discipline while she is on deployment.  He avoids a spanking for a while but eventually screws up.  His wife tells him to call the mother and request a spanking.  That scenario doesn’t have to involve much more than that—being told to call someone to request a spanking pursuant to some pre-existing arrangement—for me to get a stirring “butterflies” feeling in my stomach and loins.

 

A somewhat similar story scenario involves being sent home from school with a note or a college student coming home to a spanking after getting bad grades his first semester away.  In both cases, I think it's the anticipation of earning a spanking in one place, then having to go to another, knowing a spanking is coming, that gets to me.  There's also something about scenarios in which you get spanked by one person while another is aware it is happening or that it is going to happen.

 

Police and semi-public spankings – While I don’t typically gravitate toward “judicial” spanking scenarios, I have read a few that I liked in which someone was given a spanking for speeding or some other traffic violation.  When I first became interested in DD, I didn’t realize how big a role the combination of authority figures and unwanted, embarrassing spankings played in my drives, but they definitely trigger something for me.

 

“More than he bargained for” scenarios -  Although I gravitate strongly toward stories in which the spanking relationship is imposed by the wife, I also have a thing for stories in which the husband thinks he wants a DD lifestyle but is made to doubt that decision once he receives a real disciplinary spanking. I especially like stories in which the “more than he bargained for” applies not only to the spankings he receives but to the reality of being in a relationship in which he is no longer in control.

 

I recently came across a series of stories on the Library of Spanking Fiction, by an author calling himself Noah, titled The Art of the Deal, which involves a husband who pesters his wife relentlessly for a spanking but then has to live with that reality once she gives in and gives him exactly what he thinks he wants. 

 

How about you? Do you have specific spanking stories you recommend? What kinds of scenarios do you find most appealing?  Are there particular settings that you gravitate to?  Particular relationships?  Give us the details!

No Post This Week

 Hi all. I hope you're enjoying your weekend.  I'm severely lacking in inspiration for topics.  So, there probably won't be a post this week.  If I don't post in the meantime, enjoy the 4th of July celebrations.

What Gets You Spanked? Rules vs. Standards vs. "Any Reason" (Club Meeting 558)

“The Code is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules.” – Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Wives Club – Tribute blog.  Our weekly on-line gathering of women and men who are in, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline relationship of the type advocated by the former Disciplinary Wives Club (archived copy in the “Links I Like” list below right).

 

I hope you all had a great week.  Mine was good, all things considered.  Inching forward, one step at a time, toward some independence.  One thing being this immobile for this long has taught me is there really is such a thing as having too much time on one’s hands. I had a dream last night about being recruited to go back to my career, and I suspect that had something to do with feeling more than a little stir crazy.

 

 

I thought we had a good discussion last week about “warnings”.  Sometimes a topic that I think will be pretty narrow or uninteresting brings out some good observations.  In this case, the post was mostly about my own somewhat recent experience with warnings and how I was warming up to them, but people came up with some good things about them that I hadn’t thought of.

 

There was quite a bit of convergence around one point: If the couple feels there are already clear rules, then there may be little room for warnings in their dynamic.  Several of you expressed some spin on that point:

 

“I can understand that warnings might be reasonable at the start if a DD relationship, but once it gets more mature, it would seem to me to be superfluous. We know the rules by now and a warning just feels like procrastination.” – TG

 

“I don't get warnings. I had an extensive 'training period' and supposedly know how things are to be done and how to behave.” – Spanked Cowboy

 

“I don't get warnings. The "rules" are quite clear.” – Tom

 

Hillbilly expanded a bit, giving one reason why rules that are always enforced can be a good thing for the wife:

 

“On today’s topics, warnings for attitude, etc. happen sometimes. But most often around here, the rules are my warning. When I break one, the first time or the fifteenth, I can expect a spanking. That frees up her mind from deciding how much to tolerate. I don’t have to wonder, if it’s in the rules, it will get me a paddling. End of story.”

 

That’s a good point, and I think it relates to some of the discussions we’ve had recently about “fairness”, as the one of the things wives are often pondering when “deciding how much to tolerate” are fairness questions such was whether this one offense crosses a line or is a wobbler, whether he’s been warned about it often enough, etc.  In fact, it's always seemed to me that rigorous consistency should be easier for the spanker, because it would involve less of the decision fatigue that comes from too many judgment calls.

 

When we first started DD, I recognized that fairness considerations might lead to indecision, so I came up with a system that involved agreed-upon offenses and a minimum number of swats for each offense.  It removed a lot of the angst around spanking decisions for her, because our agreement was right there in black and white, as was each week’s tally of swats. She wasn’t wholly locked in, as she could always agree to give more swats.  As she gained confidence, most of that structure fell by the wayside for us.

 

MW noted that warnings also can help foster confidence, especially around getting used to communicating about authority:

 

“Warnings would also help her get used to the language of spanking and let me practice responding to her authority.” - MW

 

I see that as a major benefit of Anne’s increasing use of warnings and the way her specific verbiage has changed.  In the past, her warnings might consist of a pantomime, such as swinging her hand in a spanking motion.  Or, she might use a euphemism for spanking, like, “Do you need a session?” 

 

Contrast that with her warning from a few weeks ago: “If you do that again, you’re going to get spanked.  This is your only warning.  Next time, it’s a spanking.  Got it?”

Euphemisms and gestures land very differently from a direct, declarative statement that uses the word spanking or a direct equivalent.  In fact, some declarations might be even more powerful, if they were designed to amplify the consequences, such as, “If you do that again, I am going to blister your butt.” Or, “If you do that again, you won’t be able to sit down for a week after I’m done with you.”

 

In any event, Anne’s more frequent and more explicit warnings indicate she’s mastering the “language of spanking” was MW put it.

 

As I said, there was some consensus in the comments to the effect that because the rules were clear, warnings didn’t serve any purpose.  That suggested a topic for this week, namely, to what extent do you have rules that are, in fact, clear?

 

And, if you do have clear rules, are all your rules clear and concrete, i.e. none are so vague or subjective that she does, in fact, sometimes have to make a decision around whether a stated rule has been broken?

 

Further, if you do have rules, do they cover all spankable offenses, or can she determine on the fly that you should be spanked for something that has not been covered with an express rule?

 

Norton’s comment seemed to suggest there may, in fact, be two sets of circumstances under which he could be spanked:  First, when an agreed upon rule has been broken.  Second, if he displays some behavior that she doesn’t like or disapproves of but isn’t covered by a rule, in which case a warning might be more appropriate:

 

“We have been practicing DD long enough that both of us understand immediately when a rule is broken, so a warning seems unnecessary in those cases. A warning is more appropriate if I display any behavior she doesn't like or approve of.” – Norton

 

Without really laying it out explicitly, I think that’s the way it’s always been for us.  There have always been some small number of express rules, but there also have been things that are more like “guidelines”, e.g., the Captain Barbossa quote above, that are real but more vague or subject to discretion. 

 

And, there is a third mostly unnamed category that is inherent in my agreeing that she has “for any reason” spanking authority. 

 

It seems like as time has gone by, more and more of the things that might get me spanked fit into those last two categories, as opposed to concrete, “yes or no” rules.  It’s true even of things we began with that are still considered potential problem areas, like drinking too much.  When we first started, we defined expressly what “excessive” meant and even assigned a minimum number of swats for each drink over the allowed amount.  Today, it’s more of an “I know it when I see it” standard and usually coupled to something else that’s conduct based, like getting mouthy or staying up way too late.

 

That may sound "loose" to those of you who say you have very clear rules.  Yet, I don't really feel that way.  With disrespect, I feel like she sets the bar too low and lets me get away with too much, and I've told her that.  Being spanked more for carelessness is something I requested.

 

I've also yet to experience what seems to be a somewhat common experience in which, once the behavior improves, she simply escalates and sets more, or more exacting, rules.  Our old commenter KOJ discussed the phenomenon:

 

"We definitely had a set of rules, all of which she established and enforced with spanking. But she also was very much into spanking for "disrespect" and ungentlemanly conduct," and that could take almost any form. Occasionally I would be surprised by her reasoning, but usually she was spot on.

 

Did spankings decline as she "trained" me? Yes, but not as much as one might imagine because she kept setting the bar for my behavior higher and higher. Plus, she both needed to and enjoyed asserting her female authority, and nothing did so as directly and dramatically as ordering me to take down my pants.

 

There were times when I noticed her getting antsy and I knew she would soon be finding a (good enough) reason to put me over her knee. Sort of a gender reversal from the more typical situation of the disciplined husband needing a reset. It was her demonstrating that "I'm in charge here, and don't you forget it!"

  

 

There also are times where she's expressed frustration about something but there's never been an express declaration of intent to spank for it, then at some point she's had enough.  It's kind of a gray are, because there wasn't a rule per se, and there wasn't a "if you do it again, you'll be spanked" explicit warning but, on the other hand, her annoyance has been made clear, often more than once.  

 

 

Further, it seems like more and more things fall into looser buckets, like not being “careless” in a way that causes loss of money or time.  There also are things like “disrespect”, where we both probably know what it is, but we seem to set different bars for it, with her being more tolerant than I would be if our positions were flipped.

 

How about you?  Is your dynamic very rules-based, or is it looser standards? Does she confine spankings to agreed-upon rule breaking, or does she have more discretion than that?  Can she simply add a rule at will? If so, is there always a warning before breaking that new rule results in a spanking?

 

Are there only a few rules?

 

Or many?  Have there ever been too many?   

 

Finally, when we’ve had these discussions about rules in the past, there hasn’t been much discussion of what your specific rules are.  If you’re willing, please give us whatever part of your lists your comfortable with.

 

I hope you have a great week.

Warnings vs. Immediate Spankings (Club Meeting 557)

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning. - James Russell Lowell

 

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Wives Club - Tribute.  Our weekly on-line gathering of women and men who are in, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline relationship of the type advocated by the former Disciplinary Wives Club (archived copy in the Links I Like list below right).

 

I hope you all had a good week.  Mine wasn’t bad.  I went into it with low expectations, after a medical appointment last week left me thinking it might be several weeks before I’m (literally) back on my feet. So, I was very happy when, at a scheduled follow-up this week, I was advised that it will only be two more weeks until the worst of the mobility restrictions are lifted.  And, I got rid of an external brace that was very uncomfortable and making it impossible to sleep effectively. 

 

So, baby steps, again . . . literally.

 

A side effect of some increased mobility may be that my ability to get myself in trouble soon may be returning to post-accident levels.  While my ability to physically take the consequences may not be quite there yet (I also injured my tailbone in the accident, and it still is pretty tender), my interest level has been ramping back up slowly but surely after this long break.

 

And, it has been a long break. Not just from the act of spanking but from the whole dynamic. It’s a shame, because right before things got side-tracked, I felt like we were on the threshold of things going in a new, stricter direction, with Anne taking more and more control.

 

It wasn’t so much that Anne was spanking more often, though there was an uptick. Rather, it seemed like it was on her mind more regularly than it was a few years ago. And, I knew that because she was vocalizing her thoughts more often, and that new verbal expressiveness often took the form of express threats of an impending spanking if I didn’t stop whatever I was doing that was pissing her off.  And, she was plainly feeling less need for validation from me when it came to deciding what was and was not OK behavior and attitude.

 

Even though there wasn’t a huge leap in the number of spankings, it certainly felt like she was becoming stricter. And, in fact, she was, but it was being expressed through increased verbal assertiveness and control.

 

There was an incident that happened shortly before my accident that illustrates where things seemed to be heading.  We were in the kitchen, and I said or did something that annoyed her.  Initially, she didn’t say or do anything about it, and at first it seemed like she was about to get up and walk away. But, then she turned to me, looked me straight in the eye and said something to the effect of, “If you do that again, you’re going to get spanked.  This is your only warning.  Next time, it’s a spanking.  Got it?”

 

Later that night, we talked about her stern warning and the fact that, to me, it felt like it represented a change of sorts. I told her that it had been both intimidating and, at least in retrospect, a major turn on for her to be so assertive, even though she had chosen not to take it to the next step and actually order a spanking.

 

She said that she was proud of herself because, even though she didn’t spank me, it was the kind of thing that she usually would have just let go.  This time, however, she caught herself in the mental act of choosing not to address it and, instead of walking away, she consciously decided to give me that verbal dressing down.  

 

I told her that even though we’ve discussed several times that she should be quicker to react with an actual spanking, something about her approach this time felt right. And, I meant it.

 

In general, I do feel like Anne cuts me too much slack and lets me get away with too much.  Yet, there has been a significant and, I believe, meaningful change in the last year or so.

 

In the past, she left too much bad behavior, and particularly bad attitude, go completely unaddressed.  But, in the months immediately preceding my accident, particularly when it came to sarcasm and disrespect, she had become for verbally assertive, and the content of her assertions often involved a spanking threat, like: “Do you want to get spanked, because I can take you upstairs and spank you right now?” 

 

It was a step forward for sure, but it still felt like it was tentative and left me with substantial control, since she was, in fact, asking me a question and giving me a chance to adjust my behavior (or not). It was a threat, but it was open-ended.

 

Her warning described above felt different. 

 

On the surface, it might seem like less of an immediate threat, since it coupled a warning with a statement that I would be spanked for it next time it happened.  Which is, strictly speaking, letting me off.  But, that wasn’t how it felt, probably because it didn’t invite any response from me.  It was a simple statement that she was giving me this one warning, and next time I would be spanked.

 

Maybe that’s why a warning, coupled with a firm statement about future consequences, also flipped one of my other big triggers – maternal discipline.  Something about the scenario felt very maternal; more so I think than moving straight to a spanking would have.

 

I think I associate warnings with maternal discipline because, when I was growing up, warnings were far more common than actual spanking. I’ve said before that one reason I crave discipline as an adult is probably because I didn’t get much of it as a kid. But, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t threatened with it regularly.  I was, and not just in private and not just by parents.  It was pretty common where I grew up to be reprimanded in public, by parents but also other adults, and those reprimands were frequently coupled with a warning about spankings to come. 

 

 

Which leads to a complication:  For the warning to be effective, and for it to have a distinctly maternal vibe, it has to be credible.  When I was growing up in my original hometown, warnings were very credible, because whether at home or at work, they were very frequently followed by an actual spanking if the offender didn’t immediately correct course.  However, the converse can also be true.  I associate warnings with a maternal vibe, but only if there is a credible threat of follow-through.  I don’t associate my own mother with maternal discipline, because at least as I got older, her warnings became less and less credible.

 

Another complication with warnings is that a warning can easily be made and then forgotten. Or, so much time passes between the warning and a repeated offense that our wives may see a repeated warning as “only fair”. 

 

It’s a very realistic concern.  My description above of the offense that led to Anne’s “this is your one warning” warning isn’t vague because I’m embarrassed to describe it. It’s vague because I don’t remember it. Neither does Anne. I asked her about it a couple of days ago and, while she remembers making the warning, she too can’t remember what set it off.  Now, to a big extent, I think that’s because my intervening accident turned our lives upside down to such an extent that it’s hard to remember all sorts of stuff that happened earlier than seven weeks ago.  However, our mutual forgetfulness does suggest that if warnings are going to be a part of the process, maybe there needs to be some kind of documentation around them.

 

 

On the surface, her “this is your one warning” approach seems inconsistent with the many, many times we’ve talked about how she should be much quicker to spank.  And, it is still true that she lets me get away with too much.  It’s also true that we both say we want a stricter approach, and maybe warnings don’t seem so strict.

 

Yet, it doesn’t really feel that way, and I’m not sure that certain and immediate spankings, without any warning, are ever going to be realistic for us. Even if I’ve said that’s what I want and need, there is a certain perceived unfairness about being spanked without any warning and, like probably most of the wives, being fair is part of Anne’s basic psychological makeup.  While it might work for some wives, a “no warnings – right to spanking” approach to strictness probably just isn’t consistent with who she is at this point in time.

 

 

My all-time favorite story on the Disciplinary Wives Club website, Even More (written by our long-time contributor, Al) includes an interesting exchange regarding warnings and fairness. It takes place right after the husband and wife have agreed to try DD:

 

“They had no sooner arrived home than Susan followed David into the bathroom to discover that he had left the toilet seat up. "Damn it, David," Susan exclaimed, "we just talked about you not leaving the seat up this afternoon. You know that was one of the things we agreed you would be spanked for."

 

David stammered, "Sorry, I just forgot. You know it takes a while to break old habits. But I promise I won't forget again." David really had forgotten to lower the seat, lost in thought about all that had transpired through the day. And he was nervous. In spite of all his fantasies, the reality of the contract and the purchase of the hairbrush was beginning to sink in. He began to wonder if he had made a very big mistake.

 

"Well, David, we're just going to help you make sure you don't forget again. It looks like we'll be breaking in this hairbrush sooner than I expected. Take off your pants and meet me at the sofa," Susan replied curtly.

 

David gulped, "Don't you think I should get one warning, Susan? Don't you think that would be more fair?"

 

"David, you just signed a contract this afternoon agreeing to no arguments about your discipline, and now you're already arguing. You asked for this arrangement, and you're going to live up to it. Now, do as I said."

 

That fictional exchange illustrates some of the nuances around warnings.  David thinks he should get one warning but, the offense had been designated just that day!  So, he had, in effect, been very recently “warned”. 

 

I can see how Anne might backslide into thinking that a long period between a warning and repeat offense suggests not the threatened spanking but a refreshing of the warning. But, maybe not.  When I brought up her warning a couple of days ago and asked whether she remembered what it was about, she made a point of saying that I probably shouldn’t expect many warnings going forward, because I’ve already been warned more than once about most of the things that piss her off. 

Only time will tell.

 

 

I don’t have a well-defined set of sub-topics for this one.  Feel free to respond with anything that seems relevant.  I would like to hear, however, which you prefer (in practice or in fantasy) - at least one warning, or right to a spanking.

 

Have a great week.