The Forum - Vol. 186 - Chastity

Hi all.  I hope you had a great Christmas holiday, at least for those of you who celebrate it.  Ours was a little hectic trying to work in so much with friends and family.  But, it's all good.  I'm now trying really hard not to do much resembling real work.  It hasn't been an entirely successful effort, but I will keep trying.

We had another poll close recently.  It asked, "Does your DD or FLR relationship include enforced chastity or orgasm denial?"  Here are the results:
 

Yes             47 (52%) No             42 (47%)

As I believe Alan pointed out, the question was a little vague regarding whether just being told not to have an orgasm constitutes it being "enforced," and I followed up that for purposes of this poll it should be.  Hopefully the above "yes" votes include most situations in which a Disciplinary Wife or HoH dictates to her husband when or under what conditions he is allowed to have an orgasm, regardless of whether she takes other steps like a chastity device. 

As when I first raised this topic about two years ago, it is one I am going to have to throw to the group and hope they drive the conversation.  Chastity, enforced or otherwise, is not part of our relationship and it's something neither of us have had any real interest in pursuing.  If anything, we're frustrated at how often work and other commitments and the general busyness of life prevent us from having sex more often.  She has also never voiced any concern over any "solo" activity.  So, the first time I raised this topic I had absolutely no interest in it, but recognized that others did.  In fact, according to the above poll, slightly more than half of those who responded are practicing chastity or orgasm denial in some form or other.

I still have no actual experience regarding this topic, but I have been more open to it recently.  Part of the change in attitude is linked to our conscious effort to move our relationship further toward the FLR end of the spectrum as opposed to DD only.  If she had an interest in imposing chastity on me, I would try to comply.  I also just try to keep an open mind about things that may not appeal to me initially but that seem to do something for other people.   In fact, I could characterize the whole service aspect of FLR in that way -- it isn't something that comes naturally to me or that I enjoy per se, but I do see certain benefits to it.  Also with respect to chastity in particular, I have explored some books on Tantra, and orgasm denial or "semen retention" is recommended by some Tantra practitioners.  So, a few months ago I gave it a try in a very limited way, denying myself any kind of solo sexual activity.  The results were mixed.  I did feel an initial increase in my level of sexual or erotic energy, but that seemed to taper off pretty quickly.  But, it was a very limited experiment and I don't draw any real conclusions from it.

So, let's explore it a bit more.  Is enforced chastity or orgasm denial part of your relationship?  If so,  how does it work?  What do you and your partner get out of it?  If it's not currently part of your relationship, would you like it to be?  If so, why?  If it is part of your relationship, which of you asked for or imposed it.

I have also posted a couple of new polls, both going to my never-ending fascination with how we came to be interested in these kind of relationships.  These two try to get at whether our need today for rules and structures relates to the extent to which we had those when we were kids.  We'll make that the topic of a future discussion once the polls close.

I hope you all have a great New Years!  Be safe out there!

Dan

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays

Hello all. Welcome back on this Christmas Eve.  I thought about doing a topic today but decided to focus on those things I hope all of you are enjoying -- family, friends (whether the in-person or Internet variety), searching for that final "just right" gift, or just hanging out and enjoying the time off.  I will probably post a real topic on Monday.  Until then . . .

MR. AND MRS. DISCIPLINED HUBBY 

HOPE YOU ALL

AND

 

AND THAT SANTA, IN WHATEVER FORM 

YOU LIKE

 

BRINGS YOU WHAT YOU RICHLY DESERVE

 

WHETHER YOU HAVE BEEN

 GOOD

 OR BAD

OR A BIT OF BOTH

AND REGARDLESS OF WHICH SIDE OF THE PADDLE 

YOU MAY PREFER TO BE ON

 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to each and every one of you.  Thank you to all of our regulars for your participation and friendship over this year.  Be merry and safe.  

The Forum - Vol. 185 - All I Want for Christmas . . .

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

Personally, I think I have officially run out of gas for 2016.  Work has finally slowed down a little, but only after a crescendo of travel that included flying from coast to coast and up and down one coast over the course of a single week. And every place I went was gray, rainy and cold.  The one bright spot also turned into a mixed bag, and I'm relating this only because it bears a little on last week's topic. 

A couple of weeks ago, I set a new goal for myself, which was to give up drinking wine.  I've noticed that when I have a night that gets a little out of control where imbibing is concerned, or when I wake up feeling like crap even when I didn't have all that much to drink, 9 times out of 10 wine was the drink of choice or a very significant part of the mix.  It's just too easy to drink too much of it, and it seems to hit my system so fast that I go right from stone cold sober to very buzzed without a chance to moderate.  So, I decided to just stop drinking it.  And, I did so for about two weeks, avoiding it even at a work-related dinner where every other person was drinking wine.  I instead sipped a couple of beers and let everyone else think whatever they thought about my relative level of sophistication.  So, I was feeling pretty good about myself, tracking my day-to-day progress on an app I use to track various habits and goals and congratulating myself as I saw the number of consecutive days without wine growing and growing.  Then, at the tail-end of my travels, I went out to dinner with a business contact, and I was again good, sticking to beer, though we had three or four.  The problem happened when I went back to the hotel.  It is a small place and very into creating a "home like" ambiance for their guests, which usually includes a couple of open bottles of wine at the front desk.  The clerk offered me a glass as I was checking in, and without thinking about it at all, I had one!  We chatted for awhile, and she refilled my glass again and I took it up to my room, and it was only as I was finishing the second glass that I remembered my "no wine" pledge.  It literally did not occur to me once as I was consuming those glasses, even though just the day before I had been patting myself on the back about the self-discipline I was showing!  I was really, truly furious with myself for once again not even thinking about a rule before I broke it!  Now, this rule had been self-imposed, but my wife had in fact imposed a variant of it by banning me from a particular type of wine that seems to do particularly bad things to me.  But, it illustrated perfectly the problem we talked about last week of blazing right past a rule without even making the conscious decision to break it.  Damn, damn, damn. 

Well, on to more pleasant topics.  As I said last week in one of the comments, I am a Christmas junkie.  Despite usually being totally worn out and more than a little overwhelmed by the social commitments, I do love this time of year.  I love watching the old animated Christmas movies and It's a Wonderful Life.  I love coming home and seeing the lights on the houses and all the lawn decorations adorning the yards on our block.  I even like walking through the mall trying to find that perfect gift for each particular someone on my list.  Which brings us to this week's topic:

What if, if anything, would you like to get or give for Christmas or for the new year that is FLR or DD related?  A new paddle or strap, perhaps?  Maybe some naughty little DD or FLR accessory?  Or, maybe it's not a thing you want or need at all, but better or different behavior or some new DD or FLR practice? 

For us, there are a couple of things that come to mind. I did get her a new custom-made paddle.  I wanted something that was unique to her, so she'll be getting that as a stocking stuffer.  On the less material front, we have been talking a while about doing a DD and FLR "boot camp" and things were just so busy this year that it never happened.  I would like to remedy that in the near future, if not this month then early in 2017.

How about you? What do you want Santa to bring you, or what do you want to give your partner to celebrate the season or get 2017 off on the right FLR or DD footing. If you are planning a DD or FLR present, can you let people know where you got it?  I've tried to stay away from recommending commercial sites on this blog, to avoid the appearance I might be endorsing them and, frankly, to avoid disclosing personally identifiable information, but it is also good to direct newcomers to places where they can find high-quality or unique DD implements and accessories.

I hope you all have a great week.  I do think I will be blogging next weekend, but just in case there is a holiday interruption, if we don't talk, have a great holiday! 

If you are new to this Forum, please take a minute to fill out our Guestbook (tab above) and tell us a little about yourself and your DD or FLR relationship or aspirations. 

The Forum - Vol. 184 - Preventative Spankings

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." -- Benjamin Franklin

Hello all. Welcome back to The Forum - Disciplined Husbands and Disciplinary Wives, our weekly gathering of men and women who are participating in or interested in being in a Domestic Discipline or FLR relationship.  I hope you had a good week.

Our own DD and FLR momentum continues to be checked by the irresistible force of these nasty cold/flu bugs that are going around.  I've had mine for 13 days and, while feeling slightly better, it is still holding on tenaciously.  My wife has also been pummeled by it, so we are coughing, sniffling, not very pleasant to see or hear mess right now, and neither of us has the slightest interest in anything FRL related right now.  Being sick also tends to slow me down a bit on the bad behavior front, and I managed to make it through a lengthy business trip with colleagues without over-indulging or committing any other work-related bad acts.  Though, if we were keeping a strict tally, I am still owed some major discipline from a week ago, thanks to my workplace's annual holiday party, which for reasons unknown set a new bar this year for people toasting the season in high spirits.

Preventing such party-related bad behavior is part of this week's topic.  Last week, Alan brought up the topic of "preventative spankings," characterizing and illustrating their effect as follows:

"These are spankings administered before parties or events in which historically my behavior had earned me a spanking after the fact. Her reasoning was that if she was going to have to spank me eventually, she would prefer to avoid the behavior and get it done before rather than afterward. Most preventatives are done several hours before a party or we get into the car to travel and designed to give me a warm bottom that reminds me what could happen. With one unforgettable exception this does work to prevent really bad public behavior. It does not always make my behavior perfect but I am careful enough that she is satisfied.There are now three or four of these scheduled before holiday events and they have become so routine she actually often puts them on the calendar.This gets to your point about that second ( or third) drink just pushing the reality of future punishment out of your mind.) The reality of punishment is very much on your mind after a recent spanking ( For me that feeling lasts at least two or three days) So sipping your drinks, avoiding family confrontations and boorish behavior is much easier.'

We have never engaged in this kind of preventative discipline, and I used to think it was not very consistent with Domestic Discipline, since it involved punishing before anything had even happened.  But, Alan's comment has me rethinking it.  (Something I love about this blog,  by the way.  My assumptions and predilections often get challenged and I'm forced to rethink some of my shoot-from-the-hip reactions.) As I explained in last week's post, even after a decade of Domestic Discipline it is not uncommon for me to just kind of blaze right through the behavior limits she has set without even thinking about the possible consequences.  Socially-induced amnesia of a sort.  But, I can see how a spanking before the event could serve as an ongoing reminder of the much more severe one that might be coming if I misbehave.

I can foresee some practical problems, however.  For example, because we both have substantial commutes from work to home, and social events are often scheduled near work or at colleagues homes, one or both of us often go directly from work to the event, so we often arrive separately at holiday parties and work-related events, without first having time alone at home.  For those occasions, a preventative spanking would probably need to happen the night before the event, and I don't know if that would still be effective. Or, it might have to be a full-blown punishment spanking sufficient to leave me sore enough the next day to still serve as an ongoing reminder during the party.

So, for this week's topic, have you used preventative spankings?  Have they worked to prevent problem behaviors?  What are the logistical challenges and how have you overcome them?  If you haven't used them, do you think they might be worth trying?

Also, if you haven't filled out our pending poll on whether chastity and orgasm denial is a part of your DD or FLR relationship, please take a minute to do so.  As Alan pointed out, the reference to "enforced" chastity is potentially confusing, and my intent was that it cover things like chastity devices but also simply being ordered not to masturbate or otherwise told not to have an orgasm.

I hope you have a great week.  If your are new to this Forum, please take a few minutes to visit our Guestbook (tab above) and tell us a bit about your DD or FLR relationship or aspirations.

The Forum - Vol. 183 - "Worth it" and Political Recap

“Every time you break the law you pay, and every time you obey the law you pay.” -- John Gardner

Hi all.  Welcome back to The Forum - Disciplined Husbands & Disciplinary Wives.  I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.  I was hoping to come back from our break and vacation a little better rested and rejuvenated.  I also hoped to use the break to get back on track with some of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year and on which I've made little or no progress thanks to not doing much other than work.  I thought I accomplished all that and was hoping to get back and hit the gym with more vigor, hit my job with more enthusiasm, and get my butt hit by my wife harder and more frequently if I didn't do those things, then we both got pummeled with some nasty bug. Seems to be shaping up to be another bad cold and flu season, but I guess I can be thankful for getting mine out of the way relatively early.

So, it's certainly been an interesting few weeks.  Regardless of how you personally feel about the U.S. election, we are where we are.  Based on our poll results, it may be that a majority of our readers are happier than others.  The results were:

Democrat	27 (28%)
Republican	38 (39%)
Independent	21 (21%)
Libertarian	6 (6%)
Green	4 (4%)
Other	0 (0%)

 But, people did not exactly vote the party-line this time.  Instead, here are how folks actually voted:

Republican	44 (45%)
Democrat	40 (41%)
Libertarian	5 (5%)
Green	3 (3%)
Other	3 (3%)
Didn't vote	2 (2%)

Now, one observation on the actual vote tally is our readership is either more politically inclined than the general population, or they lie like a rug, because a hell of a lot more than 2% of the population didn't vote at all.

Regarding party affiliation, the results are not wildly different from those in a similar poll I ran a year ago, but it is interesting to me that once again, a year later and with greater participation in the poll (96 vs. 60), the readership for this blog again does not mirror the electorate as a whole.  According a Gallup poll taken in October of this year, 27% of respondents identified as Republican,  36% are Independents, and 32% identify as Democrats. Our readers, on the other hand, trend more heavily Republican, and Independents are wildly under-represented compared to their presence in the population at large.  Without getting into wild speculation about whether Republican men just like being spanked and dominated more than those with more Democratic and Independent leanings, I still suspect that a lot of this skewing of the political affiliation really reflects the skewing of the age demographic.  The last poll I did on that topic showed that this blog's readership skews heavily toward those over age 50, and Republicans are a larger portion of that age group, and older voters also are more likely to identify with one of the two major parties as opposed to Independent or unaffiliated.  Anyway, I'm sure many of you don't have the slightest interest in this, but as I have freely admitted, I am a bit of a political junkie.

On to other things.  In addition to this nasty illness I've picked up, I am suffering through a somewhat well-deserved hangover following our first holiday party of the season.  Particularly given that I was already feeling lousy, I planned to limit my alcohol consumption but, as usual, "best laid plans . . ." and all that.  I stayed at the party later than my wife, and got away with that only by pledging not to drink more, which I of course promptly broke.  It was not a "party like a rock star" kind of night, but still enough to leave me cranky and tired.  And, this comes after we had just agreed that she would amp up the severity and the number of spankings for this particular kind of infraction.  And, I knew that going into the party, and yet did it anyway.

Therefore, this week's topic relates to the above quote.  For those of us in DD relationships, there is a price to be paid for misbehavior.  But, the simple fact is that we often engage in that misbehavior because it is, well, fun.  We like doing something, and not doing it comes at a certain price in missed fun, etc.  So, are there things you like so much, or maybe habits that are just so hard to break, that you consciously decide to do it even though you know doing so will probably get you spanked, because part of you thinks the activity is "worth it" -- worth taking a good hard spanking?

Now, speaking for myself, that isn't really how it works.  The #1 thing I do that results in me draped over the bed or ottoman with her applying the paddle or strap to my naked bottom is over-indulging with alcohol.  Part of it is just habit.  I grew up in a community that drank a lot, my college experience was like something out of Animal House, and my profession is notoriously boozy.  But, the plain fact is I also just enjoy it, particularly the social aspect.  

I like hanging out and talking to friends and colleagues over beers.  Sometimes several of them. But, I can't say that I ever really consciously think, "I am going to have that third drink, even if she spanks me for it."   Instead, I tend to just not think about the prospect of a spanking at all.  I have the first beer, and then all thought of future punishment just vanishes from my head.

Speaking of being draped over the bed or ottoman, I do want to report that while our DD and FLR hit a lull while on vacation and hasn't recovered much due to our illnesses, prior to leaving for vacation our new system of bi-weekly check-ins was resulting in me getting away with way less and my behavior actually was improving. So, ladies, consistency in application really does seem to be the key to going from punishment to actual discipline that results in some behavior change.  It's also proving that where FLR is concerned, practice does make perfect.  At our party last night, we were talking to another couple, and my wife handed me her wine glass and said very directly, "Go get me another."  It was very pointedly NOT phrased as a question or a request.  That would never have happened a year ago.

Finally, in honor of finally putting up our tree today, along with some lights on the house (why do I feel like we are constantly behind . . .)

Have a great week.  If you are new to this Forum, please take a minute to stop by the Guestbook (tab above) and tell us a little about yourself and your DD or FLR relationship or aspirations.