The Forum - Vol. 127 - Safe Words

Hi all.  Sorry for the late start today.  I was tied up with something and not close to a computer.

Well, that was a lively discussion on consensual non-consent. Seventy comments (including my replies).  I'm not sure we've hit that many before.

This week's topic is tangentially related to consent.

"Safe Words."  A word some people agree to that can be used to call a halt to the action when it gets too hard, too extreme, outside the recipient's comfort zone,  if there is real injury or danger of an injury, etc.

Do you use a safe word in your DD relationship?  We don't, and my sentiment regarding them is expressed succinctly in the above captioned photo -- if you can call an end to it any time you want, then it's not really discipline.  For us, the whole point of DD is putting my butt's fate in her hands, letting her decide when enough is enough, and making sure that some punishments are way more than I want to repeat.  A safe word seems to me to be an import from BDSM that seems inconsistent with the primary goals of domestic discipline, at least to the extent it can be used to call an end to a spanking just because it is hurting too much, i.e. where there is no medical issue, injury, etc. that demands a stop or some kind of adjustment

 What do you think?  Yes or no on safe words?  Are there some situations (medical emergency, real injury, etc.) where it is appropriate but others (the spanking just hurts a lot) where it is just trying to avoid the punishment itself and should not be allowed?  (Note:  An earlier version of this post lacked this clarification.  I have edited to the post to reflect the comments made by KD, below, which raised this important caveat about medical issues, etc.)   If you do use one, care to share what it is?

Hope you have a great week.

Dan

The Forum - Vol. 126 - Consensual Non-Consent

Hi all.  Welcome to the Disciplined Husbands Forum. Our weekly gathering of men and women participating or interested in domestic discipline and Female Led Relationships.

What a week.  Last week's topic was devoted to work issues, though I hardly needed the topic to keep my mind fully occupied with work.  I began the year a little stressed out because a huge project ended in December, we were off to a slow start for the new year, and I just don't do well with downtime.  I'm kind of like those Jack Russell Terriers that tear the house apart not because they are bad, but because they are bored.  I've learned that even when we are crushingly busy, that is a much better place for me mentally than having downtime.  Except, I have to remind myself to be careful what I wish for, and that is what I am experiencing right now.  Too much work, too few hours in the day.  But, it is better than the alternative.

It was an interesting topic last week, capped off with a flurry of postings from one Anonymous commenter who I had invited to expand on a comment from a couple of weeks ago.  I think he is the only reader I have encountered who not only uses DD to enhance work performance, but really uses it only for work.  Maybe that suggests a future topic about the extent to which our couples compartmentalize DD, using it to address some categories of issues while excluding others. But, that's not our topic for today.

This week's topic is about consent.   Particularly what I have seen referred to as "consensual non-consent."  I can feel KD Pierre cringing, because he and I have seen this topic take a bunch of twists and turns in another forum.  But, it is a hard one for me to even describe, so I invite KD and others to really pitch in helping drive this one.  In a nutshell, my question is, what role does consent play in your DD relationship, what are its limits, and is it necessary or even desirable?  This topic suggests a pretty big range of subtopics:

• Was your DD relationship "imposed" on you in some way?  For example, did your wife finally get fed up with your behavior and tell you that she was going to spank you?  If so, did you agree to it readily, or was there some kind of threat or coercion (ending the relationship, perhaps) employed to get you to comply?
• Have you ever been spanked against your will?  How did that come about?
• Does your consent to the overall DD relationship imply that you have consented to be spanked whenever your HoH wants, even if you do not think it is "fair" or "deserved" at that time?  By entering into a DD relationship have you, in effect, consented to be spanked whenever she wants, even if you do not consent to a particular spanking?
• Is lack of consent a positive in your DD relationship?  In other words, is part of the attraction to DD or FLR that that there is an involuntary element to it?  Does part of you need that element of "non-consent" in order for it to feel like you really are being controlled or dominated?

When I first visited the DWC website, there were two stories in the "Fiction" section that really got to me.  One, entitled "Even More" involved the husband asking his wife for the DD relationship.  That seems to be how these get initiated a big majority of the time in the real world, and it was how ours began.  It did get to me, largely because it was realistic,  and it closely fit where I was at the time -- a husband who had discovered DD, was interested in exploring it, but having no idea what I was getting myself into having never had a "real" spanking as an adult.  There was, however, another story, called "Pretty Legs" that involved a much less voluntary scenario.  A wife announced out of the blue that she intended to spank her husband for a particular bit of bad behavior, and that spanking him would be her prerogative going forward.   He was not exactly fully on board with the concept. Here is a quote that sums it up, after he expresses more than a little reluctance and asks her to just forget about the bad behavior:

"At that point Becky's look became determined; her voice quiet, but assured. "I will forget it after I have brought you to tears, dear, then all will be forgiven. But I don't want you to think for one instant that there is ANY way you can avoid my spanking you. There isn't. And furthermore, in the future, I shall make it a practice to spank you whenever I feel you need it, and you will accept it as you did your mother's spankings. Most men can profit from a dose of maternal discipline, and from now on you will be one of the lucky ones.""

That non-consensual aspect was definitely part of what both fascinated and terrified me about DD, and that has not changed that much even today.

So, what role does consent, and "consensual non-consent" play in your DD or FLR relationship?

I also added a couple of polls on how many people know about your DD relationship and who they are, if any.

Hope you have a great week.

Dan

The Disciplined Husbands Forum -- Vol. 125 -- DD's Role in the Workplace

Hi all.  Welcome back to the Disciplined Husbands Forum, our weekly gathering of men and women participating or interested in Domestic Discipline and FLR relationships. I hope you had a great week. 


Last week, one of our commenters gave a glimpse of an FLR system that is geared toward addressing work-related issues, not household chores and personal behavior problems.  As he described it:  "[W]e began a FLR relationship that is focused not on home-life but my job. Her discipline to me is about my job performance, not the chores that I do. I have to tell her how my work is going and where my shortfalls are. She punishes me for those areas where I could have done better (based upon my self-reported on my performance)."

The way this commenter described both his work life (all consuming), its impact on him, and the centrality of his work role to his family's well-being struck a chord with me.  Hell, his description of his life is something I could just cut and paste into my Blogger profile description.  This follows on a comment a few months ago from a guy who talked about how his stressful job caused him to flame out on those around him, which caused him to be less successful than he could have been.  He eventually left that job and started his own shop, but the behavior problems got in the way.  With the help of his former boss and current disciplinarian, he got his act together, started treating everyone better at work, and his productivity soared.

All of this really hits home with me.  I have had a pretty successful career, but it could always be better, and the areas in which I fail tend to result from me shooting myself in the foot.  Temper problems.  Criticizing loudly every bit of bureaucratic stupidity.  Driving everyone around me to be as "Type A" as I am.  And to be perfectly honest, like most people, I don't always live up to my own standards.  Too many items stay on the "to do" list for too long.  My follow-through isn't always flawless.  In short, there are aspects of my work-related performance that could use some help.

How about you?  Have you ever used domestic discipline to address workplace issues?  Are you ever punished, or do you ever punish your significant other, for misbehaving at work?  For not being productive?  For mistreating colleagues, subordinates or superiors?  How do you find out about those problems?  Whether you are the disciplinarian or the disciplined partner, what impact if any does DD have on your job role? 

Have a great week.

Dan

The Disciplined Husbands Forum - Vol. 124 -- The Plan vs. The Reality

Hi all. Welcome back to the Disciplined Husbands Forum, our weekly gathering of men and women participating or interested in Domestic Disciplined and Female Led Relationships.  I hope you all had a great week.

Thanks for all the input on our "tears" and "immediate consequences" topics.  On the former, it's hard to say that any general pattern emerged.  Some men cry and some don't.  For those who do, some but not all found it much easier to do after the first time.  In terms of the formula, the only general truth seems to be that the physical pain is not enough, and may not even be a particularly significant component for some.  I did get the sense, rightly or wrongly, that just as I seem to be an anomaly where lack of early interest in spanking is concerned, I also may be on the fringes where this combination of fascination and dread of tears is concerned.  As I said in the post, my original attraction to, yet terror at the prospect of, really sobbing during a DD spanking was by far the most emotionally charged driver of my compulsion to suggest this lifestyle to my wife.  Here we are ten years later, and it still hasn't happened.  If part of the goal of DD is submitting to her authority, I do feel like part of me is still failing to do that if I can't give in and cry.  But, we will I suppose just have to see what time brings.

The discussion did highlight that for most people, "immediate consequences" following a disciplinary infraction is the preference, though one that is hard to achieve.  Particularly for those with kids around.  I am convinced that the presence of children, or lack thereof, is one reason that one of our polls showed the DD population tilted so heavily toward the over-50, post child-rearing crowd.  Something I had not really thought about was whether it was possible to build in an incentive for the disciplinarian to take things in hand quickly, then Ed described the 24-Hour Rule in his household, in which his wife either delivers the spanking within 24 hours or he is off the hook.  That sounds to me like a step in the right direction.

I am still finding myself a little uninspired when it comes to new and original weekly topics.  Now that we have a few years under our belt, I need to go back to some of the early stuff and do some recycling.   This week's topic, however, is something that may not be totally original since we've touched on this theme a bit before, but it was suggested by one of our regular commenters and has not really been done as an independent topic.

The topic is, has your DD relationship changed significantly from the original vision and goals?

For us, while many things have stayed the same, there have undoubtedly been surprises along the way.  Especially the last year.

It's hard to say that we really had a vision for DD when we started.  We didn't even really know what it was.  I had never heard of anything like it before I encountered the DWC website.  So, all I really knew was I wanted to try something like "that," whatever "that" was.  For her, I think she was genuinely attracted to something that gave her a means of exercising more control, venting some frustrations, and exacting some penance.  Of course, the overarching goal was for me to have an incentive to behave better.  Beyond that, we really had no idea exactly what we were getting into.  One thing that is reasonably clear, however, is there was no explicit goal to have a much broader power exchange.  Yes, we wanted to help build up her authority and confidence, but it was all very centered on this central idea of spanking as punishment for particular behavior.  Very much like how Fred characterizes his relationship.

Over the last year, that limited vision began to morph into something different.  It really began, I think, when this blog started getting some participation from Disciplinary Wives who had taken that next step into "Head of Household" status.  Their descriptions of the level of control they exercised reinforced my own deep-seated needs to have boundaries imposed.  I think DD does that, but in the form we were doing it the emphasis was really on the consequences for crossing a line, and not so much about how and by whom the line gets set in the first place.  The "rules' that we had in place--those things that would result in a spanking--were something we both agreed on, and often something I suggested.  But, an HoH system goes beyond that.  It is about not just enforcing the rules, but actually making them.

Interactions with our strong Disciplinary Wives, and especially with one FLR blogger, Rhiannon at http://learningandlivingaflr.blogspot.com led me to start pondering the possibility of expanding from Domestic Discipline into something like an FLR/HOH relationship.

Angela and I talked about it and have taken baby steps in that direction over the last year.  It has not been easy, and there is definitely an aspect of "be careful what you wish for, you might get it" in this experimentation.  The most conspicuous example of that is around what I call "service domination," where she can, and to my chagrin increasingly does, direct me to do more chores around the house and things of that nature.

 It's not the chores themselves that bother me.  I've always been pretty good about carrying my weight on things like that. It really is being ordered to drop what I am doing (frequently work) and respond to some impromptu command to bring in the groceries, or take out the trash, etc.  The irony is I suggested that she start doing that kind of commanding, but once she did, I hated it.  Unfortunately, she did not.  She kind of gets off on it, and it is the one aspect of our FLR-related vision that has really taken root.  Therein lies the challenge, of course, in implementing a real change in the power relationship and in designating a real Head of Household.  It creates an actual hierarchy of decision-makers and, if you are the person at the lower level in the hierarchy, you do what you are told regardless of whether you enjoy it. 

In fact, you may be doing it precisely because you don't like it, because submission that is easy really isn't submission and the goal is to force you to stretch to submit in situations you don't like. I'm learning that is the hard part for me -- taking orders from someone.  Angela has, in fact, spanked me for not doing dishes. But, it was not the spanking itself that was the hardest part to take.  Rather, it was the order to do something that was more of a priority for my HoH than it was for me, and recognizing that now that we appointed her HoH it is her priorities that count and not my own.

So, with that every long-winded account of how our goals and vision have changed, how about yours?

Have a great week.  And, go Broncos!

Dan