The Forum - Vol. 202 - Too Hard

"Some people have to learn the hard way."

Hello all.  Welcome back to The Forum.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline or Female Led Relationships.

I hope you all had a great week.  I added a comment to last week's topic that addressed a real life spanking I received last week.   I don't do that a lot, but this one raised an issue that I thought might make a good topic, because this one may have forced us to think a little bit more about how she can be the most effective in bringing about what we both want, which is making me feel genuinely repentant about what I've done and really changing behavior.

From the beginning, we have taken Domestic Discipline seriously.  Though it clearly has erotic overtones, it isn't part of a kinky game for us.  We have a lot of commenters on here, with relationships that seem to run the gamut from spanking as "funishment," i.e. not really discipline at all, to someone like Fred for whom it is pure discipline with no real erotic or D/s overtones.  On that spectrum, until a year or so ago we were pretty close to Fred's end of the spectrum. DD was more of an event than a lifestyle, and there wasn't a real fundamental change in the power structure.  That has changed this year, with DD more of one tool in a broader FLR lifestyle.  But, the goal really did remain to make me pay a price for bad behavior such that I would be less likely to do it again.

My earliest exposure to Domestic Discipline reinforced that the starting place regarding severity should be, "The harder you spanking him, the more he will love you for it."  And, I still believe there is a lot of truth in that. I also believe that if it isn't really hard, and designed to push him not only to his limits but somewhat beyond them, then is it really punishment?  If it's something you can easily take, then how are you really being punished?

This year, however, I began to have a glimmer of doubt about the "harder is always better" premise.  The doubt was a result of real experience.  Despite doing this for over a decade, one thing I have never yet been able to do is get to a real catharsis, where I just let it go and cry.  Many long-term readers know that tears are something of a fixation for me where DD is concerned, probably because I think it would be good for me to get there, and so far I just can't find the right prescription to to do it.  I do think that severity plays a role in it, and that the instrument needs to be effective enough and the spanking long enough for there to be any hope of reaching the threshold for real tears.  While I've always known that was only part of the prescription, however, it has been only recently that I started seeing the extent to which it not only is not sufficient, it may actually impede the process.

Over the last year, I think we have gone about as far as we can on the "hard instruments" piece of this, and it's really that part that I am rethinking.  Last year I bought three different rubber straps, which I've talked about  in some prior posts.  Two of them in particular are just incredibly, severely painful.  If anything could take me to a point of tears, you would think those would do it.  Yet, I started to suspect that they not only weren't getting me closer, but were but were actually impeding that cathartic, let it all go point of sobbing that I've been both terrified of and morbidly fascinated by for years.  The problem is, those tools hurt so much, that I just cannot give into the process and reach any point of actual submission or surrender when she is strapping me with them.  My mind becomes so singly fixated on just trying to get through it, that there is just no way for me to give in.  I not only do not surrender, I become more resistant to surrendering.  

I really noticed this during our spanking last week. I had gone into with a very conscious intent to be truly repentant, surrendering to a spanking I truly deserved.  She began with her favorite leather strap, and she showed no mercy with it.  It hurt a lot, and I was trying really hard to just give in to the whole experience and NOT take it like a man.  I really felt like I was getting close to being able to just let go and start sobbing.  But, then she switched to one of the rubber straps.  The sharpness of the pain was so much worse, my resistance just skyrocketed.  There was just no way to mentally do anything but resist.  She then went to the thinnest of our three rubber straps, and it too hurt like hell but also wrapped around to catch my hip as much as my bottom. When she switched the side from which she was swinging, she discovered that the end of the strap had been literally cutting into the side of my hip, which brought the whole session to a close.

That session verified for both of us that the notion of severity and 'how much is enough" has some nuances.  I do believe that a disciplinary spanking does need to be more than I can take, but it may be as much or more about duration than severity of each swat.  For me, there seems to be some sweet spot where it hurts a lot, but not so much that my defenses become impossible to surmount.

Any thoughts on this?  Do your spankings reach a point where it just too much to bear?  When that happens, is reaching that state good in that it is at that point that you actually give in and surrender or hit that point of total catharsis or submission? Or, does "take it like a man" kick in so strongly that you can't overcome it?  Are there tools you have used that you have determined really are just too much for a disciplinary spanking such that they become counterproductive? 

I hope you all have a great week. If you are new to our Forum, please visit our Guestbook (tab above) and take a moment to tell us about yourself and your Domestic Discipline or FLR lifestyle or aspirations.