Getting the DD Spanking Relationship Started After a Long Break, and Consistency Success Stories (Club Meeting - 569)

"The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing." — Walt Disney

 

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 wasn’t too bad.  We’re in that part of the transition to autumn in which it’s 50 degrees one day, 80 the next, and at our place in the mountains it feels downright wintery in the mornings.  We spent some time putting up Halloween decorations, which put us ahead of most in our neighborhood. I get the sense that hot weather has stuck around so long this year that people haven’t made the mental jump to the new season yet.

 

Which, of course, didn’t mean that Home Depot hadn’t already replaced all their Halloween decorations with Christmas stuff.  Seriously??

 

The one thing I’m feeling a little unsatisfied with is getting the Domestic Discipline aspects of our relationship started again after our lengthy injury-related hiatus.  I talked a couple of weeks ago about introducing it back in, with a short experimental session with some short canes bundled up like the switches used for a birching. It was a start, but it didn’t really go anywhere after that.

 

Part of the problem is a good one, in that I haven’t done a lot that was obviously punishment-worthy.  At least, nothing very serious. Although that’s a good thing for the most part, I feel like it is, in fact, a problem, because both of us really do want to get our dynamic going again, yet it seems harder to get started when there’s not some big, dramatic behavior or attitude failure to be addressed.  

 

 And, it's not like there haven't been issues around carelessness and attitude, though those are the kind of things that require self-reporting, which seems harder than it should be at a time when I really do want to get things started again. Given that it’s been almost six months since we were in anything like a real DD routine, it feels almost like starting over from scratch, with all the hesitation and embarrassment that asking for DD entailed the first time, but this time with full knowledge of what a real disciplinary spanking entails.  

 

So, my first question for the group this week is, have you experienced a long pause in your DD relationship and, if so, how did you get things started again?  Was it simply a matter of asking for it, or did it take something more than that?

 

I’ve been thinking about this issue of getting started again in the context of what we’ve both said we want going forward.  We’ve talked about it several times, and in some ways it’s pretty simple: We both want her to be more in charge, more in control, more strict, more assertive, such that DD and FLR feel more like our day-to-day reality, instead of like dynamics whose presence wax and wane.

 

And, while it’s more about the structure of the relationship as a whole and not simply about being spanked more, I do feel like if the power shift is real it is going to express itself, at least in part, in spankings that are both more certain and more frequent.  How frequent?  I’m not really sure.  Two or three times a week seems unrealistic. But, perhaps weekly?

 

The easy way to get there would be by committing to a maintenance spanking routine, but neither of us seems interested in that.  For us, setting the bar lower than it has been in the past seems like the better approach. 

 

Former commenter KOJ went through a process that seemed closer to what I envision for us. Here are some snippets from a few of his comments:

 

“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. 

 

“We didn't do maintenance, but 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!

 

“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.

 

“My wife also quickly morphed from misbehaviors in her presence to any misbehavior. She would question me about my driving, my drinking, my attitude to customer service people, my respect level for female co-workers, etc., and punish me accordingly.”

 

For me the goal isn’t about being spanked more often, but it is about being more subject to her control and her discipline, which almost certainly would be expressed through more frequent spankings.

 

When we’ve talked about it, Anne seems genuinely in favor of the idea.  Maybe back when we were in the busiest phases of married life, managing kids and careers, stepping up to be the real power in the household might have felt burdensome.  But, now that we’re in a much more relaxed phase, I get the sense that she’s genuinely into the idea of being more consistently and more openly in control.

 

Another of our former commenters, Marisa, talked about both consistency and openness and the relationship between the two:

 

“It is definitely easier to be consistent in applying discipline, much like it is easier to form a habit and stick with it. I really believe discipline has to be a priority, or why do it?   One way to make it a priority is to make it a habit.

 

If you spank him sometimes but not others, both of you will be frustrated, and your influence on your husband’s behavior will be reduced. This isn’t easy, but much in life isn’t, and if you believe in what you are doing and want real change, there has to be a commitment to it.

 

But there is also the real world I live in. I know absolutely that a spanking administered as soon as possible is much more efficient than waiting. But sometimes I have to wait. We don’t have children, but family and friends are often around and, so far, we have kept private the spanking part of our life (although nobody around doubts who wears the pants in the family).

 

So, sometimes he goes a day or longer before paying the piper. Is that inconsistent? I don’t think so. I always deliver eventually, and he knows that. In some ideal future, I hope to open up more with close friends and I will be able to discipline on the spot when he misbehaves. Some of us will live to see the day when a wife doing that doesn’t bring gasps of horror from friends. Meanwhile, I do practice consistency best as I can and try to make it a habit.”

 

KOJ had a similar take on the value of openness, though in his case, it was an openness that was more or less imposed whether he liked it or not:

 

“It was shockingly abrupt with my wife, with no explanation. She must have been thinking about it for a long time. She had been hiding her authority over me due to concern about both of our careers. I had no idea that she wanted to display her authority, or at least not hide it. But suddenly she was making the same demands and comments in public that she did in private. I was taken aback. Eventually we talked about it. She was her matter-of-fact self. "You'll just have to accept it like you do your spankings," she said.  I came to realize that power is more powerful the more people know about it!”

 

There is something that I find incredibly powerful about that "You'll just have to accept it like you do your spankings," line. 

 

 

I’m confident it would seem more challenging than titillating as it was happening, yet I can’t help wanting to be taken in a direction in which she decides on her own that there are certain challenging things I “just have to accept” like I do my spankings.

 

And, the underlying reality is that consistency and openness are both within the scope of authority I have consensually handed over to her. I've asked her to hold me accountable.  I've asked her to be diligent in doing that.  I've told her that part of me wants her to be more open about her authority.

 

Although being the spanker in a DD relationship undoubtedly involves real commitment in terms of time and energy, I do feel like once established, being firmly in charge must be easier than always feeling like you’re negotiating the boundaries of that part of the relationship.  The decision fatigue that comes with inconsistency seems so much harder than applying a simple “earn one – get one” approach.  

 

And, while I genuinely don’t look forward to my bottom paying the prices for such consistency, the benefit it has for the spanker is another issue KOJ addressed:

 

“My wife was a very consistent spanker. For instance, I was expected home at 6 pm unless I had called ahead. I got one swat for every minute late without calling -- and she let nothing go; even if it was 6:01 I got the one swat, pants down and bent over the kitchen island, bare bottom with the bread board (and even one swat could sting!). That may seem harsh and micromanaging, but to her it was all training. For me, I appreciated the consistent enforcement of rules. There was no room for error, nor should there be. If I didn't want paddled, all I had to do was call ahead!” 

That element of certainty seems to me to be the most important element of consistency, and there is, in fact, something oddly comforting about knowing that, while you’ve given up significant control to your wife, in the end if you don’t want a hard spanking, that’s mostly within your control via improving your conduct or meeting agreed-upon expectations.

 

 

Over the years I’ve had this blog, lack of consistency is unquestionably the number one complaint I’ve heard from disciplined husbands. I don’t want to make this post an exercise in airing that problem, though there probably will be a fair amount of that. What I’d really like instead though is to hear the advice of those who have achieved some level of consistency that they are satisfied, or close to satisfied with.

 

For those folks, what does consistency look like in terms of frequency?  Is it something you judge in relation to some limited set of agreed-upon rules?

 

Or is it more about her exercising more fully a broader grant of “any time, for any reason” authority?  If her authority is that unbounded, what does consistency mean for you in that context?

 

Where you and your wife have achieved consistency, was it about systems and specific communication tactics, like periodic check-ins, journaling, etc.?

 

Or, was it more about the wife adopting or developing a certain attitude, perhaps displaying the kind of enthusiasm for wielding and displaying power that KOJ’s wife got to?  Did getting to that level of commitment and enthusiasm entail the kind of openness to others knowing about or intuiting the nature of the relationship that KOJ’s wife told him he would just have to accept and that Marisa aspired to?

 

I hope you have a great week.

Your Last Non-Adult Punishment Spanking and Youthful Influences on Adult DD [ 568]

“It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.” - Ashleigh Brilliant

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 . . . probably the closest to normal I’ve had in the last almost six months.  I was afraid that our road trip a week ago might cause another setback, but it proved not to be too bad. I was a little more sore and swollen at the end of it, but I recovered pretty quickly. That was in part thanks to some prescribed steroids, but even after I was off of those, I didn’t experience a big step backwards.  As a result, this was the first week that I’ve been able to go to the gym regularly and do something vaguely resembling an adult workout, which for me is a BIG deal as the gym was a big part of my almost-daily routine before all this nonsense started.  

 

In short, while I’m still hobbling around, I’m starting to inch closer to being only normally age-impaired.

 

And, the leaves continue to turn, and a few overly ambitious neighbors have put up a few Halloween decorations, all of which always puts me in a good mood.  Love this time of year – for so many reasons!

 

Thanks for the discussion about attitude.  It seems to be something that many wives address and that most of us want them to.  Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of comments or interplay that suggested a new topic for this week, so I’ll have to wing it. 

 

A few weeks ago, when we were discussing some of the DWC pamphlet materials, the subject of maternal discipline came up.  I’m not going to do that one again, but one of the references to “maternal” versus “child” roles got me to thinking about origins and influences. 

 

We’ve talked quite a bit over the years about whether being spanked as kids influenced our interest in DD in later life. It occurred to me, however, that for those who were spanked as kids or young adults, we haven’t really explored the age range.

 

So, a very concrete question occurred to me: For those who experienced corporal punishment as young adults or kids, how old were you when you got your last real punishment spanking? In hopes of getting a few more responses, let’s also include spankings you witnessed or overheard.

 

And, to be clear, I’m not talking about things like spanking play with a high school or college girlfriend, as interesting as those experiences might have been for you.  I'm also not talking about professionals you hired as a real adult. 

 

I’m talking about real punishment spankings that pre-date your adult DD relationships.I’m guessing that for most of us, it was pre-college, but maybe a few with a particularly strict parent or other authority figure got them even after high school? 

 

It occurs to me that it's interesting how attitudes have flipped more than a little on age and spanking.  

 

When most of us were growing up, it probably was the case that most adults thought there was an upper age limit for spanking, and it was pretty low.  

 

Now, it's routinely assumed that young kids shouldn't be spanked at all, while plenty of fiction aimed at young adult women includes spanking themes.

 

Were it not for the dramatic drop-off in corporal punishment generally, I can't help but wonder whether disciplinary spanking would have become a much more prevalent thing for young adults, for the simple reason that so many of them are living at home these days.  

 

It's not hard not to imagine many frustrated parents of those in their twenties--or older--who increasingly "fail to launch" might secretly love to use the basement couch their adult child is living on to support a little adult discipline.

 

 

Or, maybe it was in the high school years?  In the quote above, T. didn't identify the age of his last spanking, but I seem to recall from prior posts that it was sometime in his high school years.

 

 

I suspect for most, though, it was younger.  Junior high/middle school? Earlier?

 

I realize this topic is pretty narrow, so let's expand it a bit by getting into the details?  Who was your last punishment spanking before you got into an adult DD relationship from? 

 

Mother? Father?

 

 

Aunt? Uncle? Grandmother or grandfather?  Other relative?

 

 

Teacher? Principal?

 

Friend's parent?

 

 

If you’re willing, give us some details.  What situation led to it?  Where did it happen? What instrument was used, if any?

 

For me, I don’t recall exactly what age I was.  (I am like the opposite of a savant when it comes to dates and ages.)  But, I’m guessing I was around 12 or 13.  It was a whipping from my step-father, with a belt.  The setting was maybe a little unique, as it was outdoors while we were working on a ranch my parents owned at that time.

 

I also have a very vivid memory of being sent to the vice-principal’s office and assuming I was going to get paddled.  The teacher actually liked me, however, and apparently sent a note telling the vice-principal that he wanted to give me a scare but didn’t necessarily require an actual paddling, so I ended up not getting one. I, again, don’t remember exactly how old I was or what grade I was in, but I think it was probably around sophomore year in high school.

 

 

Other than that, I don’t have a strong memory regarding other spankings in my teens or pre-teens.  I do recall one spanking received by my step-sister, which she got for bullying me (which is now kind of embarrassing).

 

Another way to broaden this topic is to loop back to a topic T. suggested a few weeks ago that relates to his last spanking:

 

“For me, when my wife orders me over the bed, it brings me back to my youth. My last spanking was for stealing. I had trouble holding position as the paddle rained down on my bare bottom. I ended up getting paddled lying face down on the floor. I embarrassed my mother, so she was going to embarrass me. The exposed position and the reluctance to bend over at that moment hits triggers for me. I know we have touched on it, but another in depth topic could be how our youth affects our DD or FLR today.”

 

For me, it probably is accurate to say that my youth affects my desire for DD spankings more than spankings affected my youth.  The reason I don’t remember many spankings is because I didn’t get many as a youth. That one incident was the only one from my step-father. By the time I was a teenager, he had adopted the explicit rule that, unless I got into serious trouble I couldn’t get myself out of, there would be no rules.

 

And, while I’m confident my mother spanked me, it was when I was pretty young.

 

Yet, I do feel that spanking and discipline or, rather, their absence did affect me and my adult DD desires.  I was fairly out of control in high school and even more so in college.  With no external discipline, I didn’t develop self-discipline so much as I showed a lot of talent for getting into trouble but also getting myself out of it. But, having that kind of responsibility at a young age left me feeling chronically overwhelmed and on edge.  

 

I’m often in the dark about exactly where my DD interest comes from, since I didn’t have an early spanking interest, but I am fairly confident that it had something to do with an absence of spanking/disciplinary consequences in my youth leading to a later perceived need for boundaries, and a strong attraction to DD when I discovered in my thirties that it was “a thing”.  I'm sure it's no coincidence that I have a fairly strong reaction to memes and stories that involve being taken in hand by a strong adult while in high school or college, because that was the period in which I most needed the boundaries that I didn't experience at an earlier age.  

 

And, while Anne and I don't do age play, she once said something to me along the lines of, "You're like a boy who keeps pushing and pushing his mother's buttons until she's finally had it with you, then you act all surprised to find yourself in for a spanking."  I think both of us are into the idea of me being in that late teenage/young adult phase and needing a spanking, probably because like a lot of men, that's where my maturity retreats to sometimes. 

 

A somewhat related issue, particularly with respect to who was involved in our late childhood/early adult spanking experiences and how that affected us, came from ZM a couple of weeks ago.  I had talked about how the DWC pamphlets and website materials encouraged husbands being spanked by other DWC wives, noting: “That grant of authority for the husband to be spanked by other DWC wives, to me, borders on Femdom.” ZM responded

 

“[M]aybe true, however, when you consider the distinctly maternal slant in these pamphlets, is it really all that different than when we were kids, where we knew that we might be subject to discipline from aunts, teachers, and sometimes even our friends’ parents if our parents happened to know them well? There is a part of me that craves that sort of openness when everyone knows you are subject to authority, and for the most part knows when anyone got spanked. And of course, in other ways I am glad it isn’t that way…”

 

ZM’s comment illustrates perhaps another way in which my youth affects, if not our DD, at least my DD interest, today.  Like ZM, part of me kind of craves an openness in which others know that I am subject to Anne’s authority and at least some others know not only that I get spanked but are in the know regarding particular spankings. 

 

In my ideal world, Anne would have an actual DWC-like group of friends who were totally open with each other about disciplining their husbands, including all the gory details. Like ZM, I relate that desire to what I experienced as a kid, living in an area where relatives and family friends felt they had total authority to spank someone else’s kid, and all of them knew that their spanking would likely lead to another at home. The culture was just incredibly open about spanking, both in general and in the particulars, and it's certainly possible that it left me with a craving for such openness today.

 

 

How about you?  At what age did you receive your last punishment spanking before getting into an adult DD relationship? What were the circumstances?  Do you think it influenced your adult DD relationships or desires?  In what way?

 

Have a great week.

Disciplinary Spanking's Role in Attitude, Mood and Mindset [Club Meeting - 567]

“For the first year of marriage I had basically a bad attitude. I tended to place my wife underneath a pedestal.” - Woody Allen

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 had a great week.  Ours was eventful, at least by our recent standards, on a couple of fronts. 

 

First, we took a little road trip, knocking a couple of national parks off our list.  

 

Nothing too adventurous, as hiking and similar activities one might set out to do in a national park is still beyond my capabilities.  But, a piece at a time . . .

And, in any event, it was prime “leaf peeping” season.  I love this time of year, although our dry summer apparently meant "this time of year" came faster and is staying shorter than most years.

 

Second, and more germane to the subject of this blog, we dipped our toes back into DD spanking.  Though, in context, it’s probably more accurate to say we dipped our toes back into plain old spanking, as there wasn’t any real discipline involved.  It was more about testing the waters or, more specifically, testing my tailbone and its ability to withstand any level of spanking with any instrument.  We used a cane, and a tool I recently bought that is sort of like a birch bundle, comprised of three small-diameter canes.   

 

My thought process was that, while canes have never been effective for us, they have the benefit of flexibility and, therefore, might be less prone to re-injuring a still sore tailbone.

 

The “good” news is it went more or less as anticipated.  The birch-like tool did sting a fair amount, and the combination of that tool and the cane did leave more marking than I usually display, which I assume was a function of not being spanked at all for over five months.   

 

But, there wasn’t anything very satisfying about it.  Anne was pretty tentative, understandably, given that it was basically a test run to see what my butt could handle. And, because it had that limited purpose, it didn’t feel disciplinary, despite the fact that it was painful and did leave significant marks.  

 

It's probably time to acknowledge that, while I always feel like I should appreciate the cane, given how iconic it is, for whatever reason it doesn't do anything for either of us.  Also, the whole scenario emphasized just how core the accountability/consequences element is to me; without it, the act of spanking itself does little or nothing for me.

 

Still, the fact that the session didn't result in any "bad" pain, means we can start trying to get back to our normal DD routine.  I think it’s probably wise to start with the hairbrush before graduating to her bath brush or a paddle, but those are coming for sure.

 

How do I feel about it?  Well, there is an element of timidity and anxiety.  This has been the longest pause we’ve taken since starting DD twenty-plus years ago.  It feels like starting over, because it kind of is, with all that a "first real spanking" entails.

 

 

The anxiety is exacerbated by the fact that I’ve spent almost six months hyper-focused on protecting my injured areas, and it's a significant mental challenge to purposefully create a situation in which pain in that area is the goal.

 

I also suspect it may take some time to get used to having spanking lingering in the background as a live threat.  I don’t feel like I’ve taken advantage of my physical impairments to get away with anything, yet the lack of any prospect of real consequences had more of an impact than I might have foreseen. 

 

I talked about this a little bit a couple of months ago but it didn’t get much response, so I’ll highlight it again.  One of the things that has surprised me about this hiatus is the impact on my attitude.  More specifically, how the complete absence of DD as even a possibility highlighted just how much DD has affected my attitude and mindset over the last 20+ years.

 

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. A stressed out, pessimistic, anxiety-prone dick. 

 

It’s not that I’ve been acting like a dick.  As I said, I really don’t think I took advantage of this hiatus to act out.  Yet, I also think that in the months immediately prior to my accident, Anne had been getting more assertive about things like disrespect, caustic comments, etc.  Even if I didn't consciously let loose with more of those attitude-driven behaviors, both of us probably were aware of the problem with DD no longer being a live possibility to address them.

 

 

And, regardless of any objective deterioration in behavior, at some point it dawned on me that my attitude and mindset had degenerated and, moreover, that I used to feel like this all the time before DD came into our lives.  Over the last six months, I’ve felt annoyed more often, been more prone to saying snotty things (or at least thinking snotty thoughts), and I generally have felt more negative and judgmental.

 

What dawned on me was that this was my basic mindset before I first discovered The Disciplinary Wives Club and DD.  And, while I wasn’t as clear back then as I am now regarding what exactly it was about DD that appealed to me so strongly, I did recognize that there were too many times when my temper or argumentative attitude made me hard to live with. In fact, when I pitched the idea of DD to Anne, one of the main points I made was that it would give her a way to keep my attitude in check by imposing consequences if and when she was the victim of it.

 

Over the intervening years, I’ve recognized that DD could fix individual instances of a bad attitude.  In fact, it could even fix the content reflected in an attitude, such that I could think I was right about something we argued about but, once my pants were down and her bath brush was descending with force, suddenly I could see the legitimacy of her point of view.

 

I also knew that part of me craved boundaries.  What this accident and lengthy recuperation have brought home to me is that, when left entirely to my own devices, the absence of any prospect of a hard spanking for  particular bad acts results in a generally worse attitude and mindset. I just plain feel better when someone imposes limits and boundaries on me.  

 

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. In fact, I believe that lack of discipline when growing up contributed significantly to feeling chronically stressed out in my 20s and 30s.  Without external boundaries, I always had to try to control myself and get myself out of trouble, which seemed great when I was a teen but laid down some bad emotional patterns.

So, for me, the maternal attitude reflected in this meme never happened:

 

And, it wouldn't have had to be a parent doling out discipline for bad attitude.  I recall teachers in junior high and high school calling me out for attitude issues.  Yet, though corporal punishment was still very much a thing back then, none of them took the next logical step of paddling me until my attitude improved (or until I learned to fake it better).  There were a couple of times that I got sent to the principal's office with the expectation (in my mind) that I was going to be paddled, but it didn't actually happen.  Again, I wonder how my mindset might have benefited if it had.

When we're living the DD dynamic on a semi-regular basis, I tend to perceive my spanking needs in functional/behavioral 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 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--backed up by spankings and spanking threats--as a positive force underlying our whole relationship. Now, I notice it by virtue of its absence, and I notice the weakening of what was a strengthening background of respect and deference.

 

 

This realization about the strength of the correlation between DD and the quality of my day-to-day attitude feels profound, not because I wasn’t aware of it in principle but, rather, because the chronically stressed out, negative mindset of my 20s and 30s—which the frustration of my recovery and the lack of DD allowed to creep in again—seemed so distinct that it was almost like that younger version of me was an entirely different person.  One who probably could have profited from much stronger discipline much earlier in life.

 

Several years ago, one of our then-regular female contributors, Marisa, drew this connection between spanking, humbling, and attitude.

 

“That 'humbling function' allows you to let go of that ego, accept authority and become the (mostly) wonderful, charming and loving men you really are. It frees you to be yourself and that is what we are after. That is also why spanking without the mental and emotional parts of it doesn't really work. The message never gets through because you are not prepared to hear it before you have been humbled. (Parenthetically, I think a man who needs to have his pants taken down by his wife in order to behave should be plenty embarrassed).” 

 

In terms of severity, I don't really know how hard a spanking needs to be in order to result in an "attitude adjustment".  It might be that it's more about the consistency of the DD relationship itself and feeling like the boundaries are always there.  Maybe it doesn't take a lot as long as it happens at the first sign that an attitude problem is taking root.

 

Yet, I also think that the cathartic impact of a hard disciplinary spanking plays a key role.  As long-time readers know, I've always had a morbid fascination with crying, and I think part of that is it seems like it would be such a profoundly humbling experience, and part of me associates that kind of humbling and surrender with dropping the ego issues that lead to bad mindsets.  It's about clearing out the bad stuff to let in the good.

 

 

I note that among the DWC fiction stories is one called Attitude Adjustment, in which the wife--while exhibiting a loving/nurturing approach--delivers a hard two-part spanking with a brush and a strap, to cure her husband's moodiness and bad attitude.  She doesn't take it easy on him just because the spanking is to correct a bad attitude, versus correcting/punishing bad conduct. To the contrary, when she's tempted to stop, she instead gives him a dozen hard ones with the strap because she knows that he needs it and that, in the end, sitting on a sore bottom for several days will help prevent the bad attitude from returning.

 

What role does DD play for you with respect to attitude and mindset?  If it is an important tool in fixing attitude, is it about temporary moodiness, temper, etc.? Or, have you experienced the more fundamental kind of transformation I’ve been exploring; one in which it feels like after DD became a part of your relationship, your attitude/mindset shifted to such an extent that it was almost a personality change? 

 

I hope you all have a good week.

Disciplinary Spankings as Incurring a Cost - The Necessity of Severity (Club Meeting - 566)

"He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else." ― Benjamin Franklin

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).

 

Hello all.  I hope you had a great week.  In many ways, my last week or so has been a big improvement over the 18+ weeks that came before.  It had been a tough month.  After progressing depressingly slowly but somewhat steadily in literally getting back on my feet, I had a major setback that lasted almost a full month.  It’s only been the last week or so that I’ve gotten back to where I was over a month ago.  But, once I got there, I pushed out of my comfort zone a bit.  I took some walks in the forest that weren’t super easy even when I was in good shape. And, on the five-month anniversary of my accident, I got back on a motorcycle for the first time. I was super tentative, but that probably was good, all things considered . . .

 

Anyway, it was nice feeling like there was progress made, even if I paid a bit for the over-exertion.  I was starting to feel pretty damn isolated and bound by a seemingly never changing routine.  Usually, it's great to have unstructured time on your hands, but I can testify that there is such a thing as too much time with too little you can do.

 

Which almost led me to skip posting, for the third week in a row, as Anne and I are about to head out on a little road trip.  But, I hate it when more than a couple of weeks go by without a substantive post.  So, I decided to see if there was more to be made of a suggestion TG put out there last week:

 

Dan, I know you’re always interested in possible contents for posts and discussions. This may be a little too vague and esoteric but I’ll put it out there any and you can use it or not, as you wish. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently, trying to understand better the motivations and emotions behind this DD lifestyle that we’re in. We’ve covered much of this stuff in the past. My view is that these punishments provide her with a way to work off any anger, assuage any feelings of guilt I may have, and overall, hugely benefit a marriage as problems don’t hang around poisoning the atmosphere for hours or days. I’ve been coming to the conclusion, however, that there’s more to it than that, related to cost - in the sense that to be real, a punishment must have some kind of real cost associated with it (I don’t mean monetary.) I guess I’ll elaborate if this turns into a discussion. The second area I’ve been pondering will only resonate with some of the participants here. I have had an interest in spanking since my teens (on either side of the paddle) but only discovered DD when I found the DWC website around 2000. Spanking was obviously sexual for me until then, but I’ve never been into the idea of gentle. Whether giving or receiving, I always expected it to be at least quite hard, with a good after-glow. So my question is, for those who have such an interest, and I guess people who use maintenance spankings as well, what distinguishes a real punishment spanking from any other kind? Is it just a matter of intensity or is there more to it?”

 

I wasn’t sure I fully got the first point he raised and asked for clarification. He replied with:

 

Hmmmm. I’ll try, I don’t promise it will be very coherent, but here goes….. One can apologize for something said, done, or not done. It’s only words, it’s easy and costs nothing. I’d suggest it may be a good start but it can be just a brush-off to make it go away with minimal effort. So I guess the next step is buying flowers or something like that. It’s something I do sometimes for no particular reason, but I’d never do that to say sorry. It’s always felt to me like a cop-out. Again, there’s no real cost to this - I don’t count a few dollars for the flowers. I suppose this feels like “I can do stuff that I know will upset her, whether deliberately or carelessly, and just make it better without it really inconveniencing me in any way.” I see a punishment spanking as something that, in terms of genuine physical pain, costs me something. It should be long and hard enough that I really want to avoid it. If I’ve screwed up in some way, it shouldn’t be too easy for me to repent, and saying sorry or buying flowers is too easy. It also clearly is related to behavior modification, which I think we’ve discussed before. The punishment should be severe enough to discourage a repeat of whatever the behavior was. (Which of course ties into my second question) So I guess “cost” to me is a genuine consequence that I really want to avoid. I’m not sure that that’s any clearer, but hopefully it will help.

 

As an aside, TG’s reference to flowers conjures up one of the very first spanking drawings that I recall getting my attention after I found the Disciplinary Wives Club and became near-obsessed with experiencing real discipline.  It was this one by Jay Em.

 

This one, and several other pieces of Jay Em’s work, tie in nicely with some of TG’s musings, as a recurring theme is a husband (and in a few instances a son or daughter) being held to account in circumstances where they seem to be surprised that they are unable to talk, or emotionally manipulate, their way out of it.  It also ties into one of TG’s points about the nature of a true “cost”: “If I’ve screwed up in some way, it shouldn’t be too easy for me to repent, and saying sorry or buying flowers is too easy.”

 

I think one reason I needed clarification about this point about “cost” is that, for me, the “penance” element—which I tend to think of more in terms of “accountability”—is so firmly at the core of DD for me that, without it, I wouldn’t consider a spanking to be “real” at all.  It’s so central to my DD interest that I don’t think of DD as existing without it.

 

It’s why, for me, DD has always required two elements: First, the spanking must be for some real offense, misbehavior, or significant carelessness.  Second, the spanking must be severe enough that it feels like authentic punishment. 

 

A third element that isn’t absolutely required but adds a critical additional element of realism is that the spanking is “imposed”, i.e., I’m going to get it whether I agree with it or not. In other words, I’m being punished because someone else thinks I need to pay a cost, to use TG’s description.

 

TG’s comment raises the issues of apologies in relation to DD and suggests that the problem with them is they are simply too easy.  I largely agree, though I will say that I personally find apologizing for bad behavior very hard at times.  And, sometimes the verbal recognition of responsibility adds to the humbling process.

 

 

But, I still get his point.  Apologizing, with or without flowers, is sort of a “necessary but insufficient” element of getting to the other side of the bad behavior.

 

And, the fact that an apology isn’t always sufficient doesn’t mean it isn’t sincere. It very well may be. When searching for appropriate memes for this post, I found examples going both ways.  In a few, the wife expressed something to the effect of, “You say you’re sorry, but I want to make sure you really are.”

 

 

In others, the wife acknowledges the apology and its likely sincerity but decides that, for whatever reason, it still requires an additional “cost” in the form of a spanking.  The gist was usually that, although she didn’t doubt he was sorry for what he did or didn’t do, she wanted him to be sorrier than that.  There is an inherent recognition that while expressions of regret may be genuine, a spanking inherently increases that regret in a very tangible way.

 

 

It also seems generally true that even if the husband is truly sorry and feeling regret when he apologizes, a spanking ensures that he stays that way for a while.

Another thing about the cost of a spanking -- the wives and husbands' respective perspectives are likely very different as it is happening.   From the man's perspective, the cost imposed by a spanking seems very significant at the time it's happening or about to happen.  

Yet, from the wife's perspective, it's just part of making you the "sorry boy" she knows you sometimes need to be.  Perhaps not always, but she often likely comes at it from a much more casual perspective.  You've done something wrong, and she's going to make you pay up for it, but in the scheme of things, it's not that big a deal.

For her, right?  She's clearly right about the fact that, in the overall scheme of a DD relationship, each spanking is just one of those things.  It doesn't last all that long, and after she makes you pay the appropriate cost for your conduct, you both move on.  Yet, for us spanked husbands, it feels like so much more than that at the time.

 

Another angle on the role of paying a real cost in the form of a hard spanking is that it may increase the stakes in a way that leads to better decisions.  In my work life, I was pretty prone to thinking about authority and rules in terms of: “It’s better to say you’re sorry than to ask permission.” In many life situations, that may indeed be true.  However, the risk-reward calculus changes a little when an empowered Disciplinary Wife enters into the picture.

 

Regarding severity and TG’s observation that, for him, spankings must be hard for him to have any interest in them, I share that bent.  For me, it’s all part of a package – for a spanking scenario to do anything for me emotionally, it has to combine the elements of a real offense, that is punished with a real spanking, and the reality of the spanking hinges to a large extent on it being very hard to take.  

 

I think there is also a connection between the severity of the spankings and Anne's perception of her own power and the reality of the hierarchy we've agreed to.  She's always said that it's not the spanking itself that she enjoys (though I think that has changed over the years) but, rather, the feeling of power she gets when she tells me to get ready for my spanking and watches me comply.  She has said that part of that dynamic involves knowing how hard it must be for me to submit to her in that way, knowing how hard she is going to spank me.

 

Looking back, the lines on the DWC website that held the most morbid fascination for me when I first discovered it were those that emphasized the severity of a real disciplinary spanking and the cost one imposes on the husband:

 

“The training methods suggested do involve strict discipline, and strong doses of corporal punishment. . .. Some of the physical punishments described are meant to be painful. There is no question that welts will be raised and bottoms bruised . . .”

 

“A dose of corporal punishment should have a dual effect. It should be extremely painful while it is being applied, and the area it was applied to should remain very tender for a period of time afterwards.”

 

“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.”

 

To those who don’t have this bent, it may sound not just harsh but overly so.  Yet, the DWC emphasized that the men who want a real DD relationship want and need the spankings to be that hard:

 

“If you feel the least bit sorry for him during all this, remember, a submissive man does not want a weak or lenient woman. He wants someone very strict and dominant. If he wanted anything different, he wouldn't be over your knees in the first place. This isn't a small child you are holding over your lap by force -- this is a grown man who needs and wants a hard spanking.”

 

As TG points out, his need to pay a significant cost is tied up with the issue of severity, which may or may not be present with non-punishment spankings, like maintenance.  We don’t do maintenance, so I will let others comment on his particular questions around that. I do recall that some who use maintenance regularly, like Al, have opined that although maintenance spankings are less severe than punishment spankings, for them they are still substantial. 

 

A final note on severity.  I saw this picture a while back, and it caught my attention for a couple of reasons. First, I have a thing for spanking pictures and art involving women ascending stairs, though it's usually the spanker climbing stairs with a paddle.  Second, the level of damage to her bottom is pretty true to how much I used to mark after a hard spanking of the type we've been discussing in this post, though I now don't exhibit anything close to this.  Anyway, something about this one attracted me so much, I've wanted to find a reason to post it. 

 

 

I hope you all have a great week.  Because we’ll be on the road, I may be less active in weighing in on this one.  It’s also why I posted a little earlier in the week than usual.