The Forum - Vol. 218 - The Conversation

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it. -- Maya Angelou
 
Hello all.  Welcome back to The Forum.  Our weekly gathering of people who are in our would like to be in Domestic Discipline or Female Led Relationships.  I hope you had a good week. 

Mine was busy and a little stressful, though it was also one in which I found some preconceptions challenged, and in a good way.  Several weeks ago, I alluded to a problem I had created for myself at work.  It involved misinterpreting (maybe) something that someone had said to me, resulting in me going off on them in a way that wasn't appropriate regardless of whether I did, in fact, misinterpret their intentions.  I got a hard and well-deserved spanking as a result of it.  Well, this week I found myself spending a large chunk of time with the person in question.  Turns out we have a hell of a lot in common, and not just in terms of volatile and aggressive personalities.  We not only grew up in very similar environments.  Eerily similar.  Interacting with him was also interesting, because it gave me an opportunity to watch someone whose behavior is so similar to my own, and what I observed was that his aggressiveness and controlling approach to things was effective.  I've spent a lot of energy at work the last year or so trying to tone down my own level of aggressiveness, because it has capped my upward movement to some extent. But, the bottom line is, for my profession it kind of works.  I was thinking about all this in relation to comments Fred has made here from time to time about not wanting to use DD to become more submissive in any other aspect of his life. Weirdly, I was thinking about those comments right before he suddenly popped up again with a comment after several weeks off.  I also had been thinking some things along these lines due to the  death of Sam Shepard, one of my favorite actors and playwrights, whose characters and writing often explore themes of what it means to be a man.  So, the week had that sense of the Universe sending me some signals that in experimenting with FLR and trying to be more submissive at home, I really don't want to be any less aggressive, controlling or, for lack of a better word, manly in the rest of my life.  The challenge, of course, is not to over-rotate on this and fall into a pattern of truly unhealthy and unhelpful behavior.

Anyway, we didn't get much of a conversation going last week.  I suspect people are distracted with summer quickly coming to an end.  Re-plowing old ground may also bore some of the regulars, but I still want to go in the direction I set out last week, focusing more on content that helps people who think they want one of these relationships explore how to do it. 

"I want you to spank me.  For real. If I do something bad or something you don't like, I want you to take down my pants and give me a real spanking.  I want you to use spankings to make me truly want to do better and to make me really regret it when I don't."

That's what this week's topic is about.  How do you have that conversation?  Last week we talked a little about why some of us were driven to Domestic Discipline and what we hoped to get out of it.  I assume that for most of us, the desire preceded the reality. In other words, we realized we wanted to try this kind of relationship, and then took some action to get there.  For my wife and me, that took the form of a conversation I initiated.  As I explained last week, I had found the Disciplinary Wives Club website, became more than little obsessed with it, and ended up telling my wife about it.  While I may have started the conversation with a lighthearted, cavalier tone ("Hey honey, I found this interesting website today . . ."), I did in that same conversation fess up that this was something I wanted to try, though I was also honest that it kind of scared the hell out of me.  She was intrigued enough to take a look at the website the next day.  Had I not been honest about my desire to try this, and had I not put myself out there and shown some real vulnerability during that first conversation, I'm not sure she would have gone any further.  It was me admitting that I wanted to at least try this and being very open about why that gave her the emotional incentive to follow up and to take it seriously.

For us, the biggest hurdle was probably her concern that if I "wanted" to be spanked for doing something bad, wouldn't the spanking just reinforce the bad behavior?  To get over that, I was clear from the begging that I wasn't suggesting erotic spankings or spanking as foreplay. Not in any way, shape or form.  I was suggesting real spankings, like some of us got as kids from parents or at school.  These would be spankings that would leave me chastened, reddened, very sore and possibly in tears.  The goal was to make the paddling bad enough that I would really, really want to avoid another at all costs.  I also told her that I recognized that my behavior was often hurtful or inconsiderate but, because of the way we were both raised, she did not feel she could do very much about it other than pout and engage in other passive-aggressive behaviors.  The conversation was very much about us consciously deciding to empower her and dis-empower me, in order to bring a sense of balance to the relationship.  I emphasized that she would be able to set the rules and enforce them at will and that, while it would be a struggle for me, I was agreeing as a condition of the new relationship that I had to give in to her discipline, whenever and wherever she chose.

It was also important that she see that this wasn't about dungeons and leather and all those S&M or BDSM trappings that may turn on some women but likely scare off many more from.  So, that too was part of the conversation. I wasn't asking her to change who she was or adopt some new persona.  She got to stay exactly who she was but with new authority and power.

That initial conversation was critical to getting us started down this path.  Without it, my recently discovered obsession with this thing called Domestic Discipline would have remained just an unfulfilled fantasy. 

Did your Domestic Discipline relationship start with a similar conversation?  Did you have to convince a reluctant spouse?  How did you get them to be comfortable with the idea at least enough to try it?  And, while we don't get a lot of postings from dominant spouses who initiated the disciplinary relationship, it does occur.  Holly being one example, but there are others.  I would love to hear from more women who decided they wanted this kind of relationship and acted on it.  What was that conversation like?  

Also, I've added a new poll, this one on written DD contracts and formal written rules.  

I hope you all have a good week.