The Forum - Vol. 234 - Manliness, Tears, and Trolls

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist. - Pablo Picasso

Hi all.  I hope you had a good week, and a great holiday season.  I admit, I am very sorry to see it go.  I was back at work the last couple of days but accomplished almost nothing.  I think I was in a state of denial about actually needing to get back in a productive mode and just wasn't quite ready to do it.

My lack of motivation at work also seems to apply to blogging, as I can't say I have any scintillating topic in mind for today.  So, I may just ramble a little.  I'll lead off by talking about trolls and spammers.  I felt like they were kind of the bane of my blogging existence last year, though they can also be a fine source of entertainment if you don't take them seriously.  A few months ago, my blog somehow got on the radar of some prolific spammer(s).  I don't know enough about the spam business model to know why they post random comments on blogs like mine.  I suspect they do it to probe whether comments are enabled and, if so, they follow up with some commercial advertisement or link.  I'm also sure some of it is purely automated "bot" activity, with no real human engagement.  But, that in itself gets amusing sometimes, particularly if the bot is kind of stupid and the content drafted by someone who isn't very facile with the English language.  While a few of the spam comments I've been receiving are grammatically correct, most aren't and some are just plain weird.  For you Saturday enjoyment, here is a sampling of the spam I got in the last few weeks:

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"An offensive line has two completely different jobs."

"Fuckwad"

OK, that last one wasn't actually spam and was from a known source, but still worth sharing.  😀

Usually, either my last post of the year or first post of the new year is about resolutions, but as I said last week, this year I haven't really gotten around to making any.  And, the more I've thought about it, I think I'm going to keep it that way, at least in terms of "big picture" stuff.  I am, by nature, a goal-setter and a chronic maker of lists.  I usually have a formal set of goals for the year, particularly around job and career performance, but also covering more personal goals.  I have a pretty good track record, though far from perfect, of meeting the career and finance-related goals and aspirations.  All the others -- not so much.  And, I think there may be a connection between succeeding brilliantly in the former and failing fairly miserably in the latter.  I've been in that stage of life where providing for a family, building a retirement nest egg and similar economic-related goals were pretty important. But, we're now getting to that point in life where it is time to give some thought to what the next phase looks like, and I don't want to be one of those guys who lives to go into that same damn office every day until I die at my desk.  So, I really am more or less consciously foregoing setting career or money-related goals this year, trying to create some intellectual and emotional space to allow things to just happen.

I also can't say that we have many specific DD-related goals for 2018, though in that area there is a consensus that we both want "more," in the sense of the discussion we all had a few weeks ago.  More strictness.  More accountability.  A narrower set of boundaries on my personal behavior and more consistent consequences for treading outside those boundaries.  I think she is genuinely there with me on those goals, at least at a high level.  One indication of that is as follows. One goal I do have is probably shared by about 90% of the population this month -- getting back into better physical shape.  Last year was such a meat grinder from start to finish, I kind of let myself go.  I also had a couple of injuries that sidelined me from working out for significant periods of time.  So, I told her I want to put myself on a pretty strict regimen for at least the next two weeks, eliminating sugar and processed foods, most grains and bread and getting into the gym consistently.  But, Fridays are always a pretty significant challenge, because my whole team is into happy hours.  Thursday night, however, out of the blue she instructed me, "You are not to drink tomorrow."  She generally doesn't just issue orders like that, so it came as a bit of a surprise.  It was, indeed, kind of hard to leave work early and miss any afternoon festivities, but thanks to her order and my compliance with it, for once I woke up on a Saturday feeling sharp and generally energetic.

Which is really my goal with DD.  It's not really about general submission for me, and I don't think of myself as a "submissive" or aspire to be one.  For me, it's more about recognizing that I need rules and consequences, even if I hate them at the time.  Because, when I don't have someone imposing boundaries, things get out of hand.  But, craving that accountability doesn't mean I want to be reduced to a sheep or that I want to "reform" to the point that I'm not having any fun or that I become less "manly" in her eyes or in my own.  In fact, I seem to be going a bit in the other direction.  Without any conscious decision to do so, I've found myself gravitating toward more "manly" and "bad boy" things recently.  Watching a lot of "guy" movies over the holidays.  Listening to music with more manly, one even might say "juvenile" or puerile themes -- lots of AC/DC and newer "bro country" stuff with lots of pick-up trucks and beer drinking lyrics.  I wanted to read a bit a couple of nights ago and wasn't gravitating toward any of the new books on my Kindle, so I read some of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," a very manly poem celebrating earthiness and bodily pleasures.

So, I feel like my bad boy wants to come out and play a bit this year.  Yet, I also want and need her to rein me in if that becomes destructive to me or hurtful to her or others.  When looking for some of that bawdy music over the holidays, I found a song by The Pretenders called "Bad Boys Get Spanked."  I hadn't run across it before but love the opening lines:

You're not supposed to do that

You know you're not allowed to

But you seem to get some kind of kick

Out of doing what you're not allowed to

You deliberately defy the rules

'Cause the law's upheld by fools

Shit on that

Bad boys get spanked

That's the direction in which this year seems to be going -- I want to let the little boy run loose a little more and not take things as seriously as I did last year, but there will be consequences if the bad little boy pushes the boundaries a bit too far.  It also seems to be the case that she increasingly sees herself as the person setting those boundaries, such that instead of the two of us agreeing to behaviors that will be punished, she is likely to exercise more of her own discretion and "lay down the law."  We talked about this in terms of an excerpt from one of the few books on female dominance that I've found to be worth reading, called the Hesitant Mistress, which contains the following "Warning":

THIS book will teach your partner how to be more dominant. That means she will learn how to actually be more dominant, not just how to act like a dominatrix long enough for you to get your jollies off in the bedroom.

Your partner will learn how to say no to you. She will learn how to train you. She will learn how to punish you and hold you accountable for your actions. She will learn that she can demand whatever she wants from you, despite whatever you might want from her.

You have been warned.

That seems to be where things are heading for us, and right now I just want to kind of run with that and see where it takes us.

There was one exchange of comments over the holidays that I really enjoyed.  ZM crossed a major threshold that I still have not been able to get over, namely tears.  Here is the exchange between him and Alan:

ZM: “Yesterday, I got to experience a first, in that I was spanked to tears for the first time ever, at least as an adult. This has been a topic of endless (and perhaps morbid?) fascination for me, to say the least, and I really couldn't believe that it happened. The punishment was for several prolonged bouts of bad attitude. My wife has been under huge amounts of stress in recent months due to parental health issues, and as she was administering the punishment, I just felt so incredibly bad when I thought of how unhelpful my attitude has been, and how rather than supporting her I was making things more difficult. This guilt, combined with a delrin cane (which is basically just horrible), and in the diaper position (which makes everything so much worse), finally broke down that barrier that I have never really been able to cross before. I kind of have a feeling that once the dam has broken, it will probably be more easily breached in the future. Also, my wife is just getting incredibly good at this whole thing, plus she really enjoys it. She doesn't enjoy administering these real punishments at the time, but later as she reflects upon it, it leaves her pretty excited. Anyway, I guess the coming year promises to be most interesting!”

Alan: “Yes it happens more frequently after a "breakthrough". Having your wife encourage crying as mine does also helps. But it takes that combination of real regret ( shame , really) plus a punishment that just goes on and on until you just give in to it.”

ZM: “Alan, Mine had pretty much decided beforehand that tears were going to happen, and she continued until they did. Afterwards she said she would have liked to go a bit longer, but it was hard to see me crying. She decided that next time, she go until she decides it has been enough and then will add a certain number of additional strokes, probably by rolling two dice (resulting in 2-12 additional) just to make sure she didn't under-punish and to give fate a bit of say in the matter.  I agree that it was mostly driven by guilt, combined with a non-relenting spanking. I don't think she punished harder than usual, but certainly longer, and plus she had said before that the next punishment would certainly result in tears, so I think she set the stage for it and that helped me to get into the proper state of mind. Anyway, the tears took it to a whole new level of "real" feeling for us.”

I hope I can have a similar exchange in 2018, yet it has alluded me for over a decade.  It may seem incongruous to say I want to give my inner male and/or my inner boy more room to roam this year, while also wanting to experience crying from an adult spanking, but I don't think they are really that inconsistent.  I want the boundaries that I lacked growing up, and I want her to help rein me in when I get out of control.  I want the upside of being mischievous and naughty, but I also want to really experience the emotions that happen when a bad boy gets really, really punished.  While I'm going to save crying and tears for a separate topic, in preparation for that, I've posted a poll on reader's experiences with them and desires for them.

Well, there you go.  I know it doesn't raise an actual topic, but maybe it gives folks something to react to.  Though the whole topic of manliness, bringing out the little boy and being punished like one, and whether that is consistent with the manly virtues our wives want in us most of time sets up a general theme.  I'm also kind of toying with the idea of adjusting the mix on the blog of concrete topic and "stream of consciousness" or "journaling" kind of content.  I still like the topical approach, but it is getting harder and harder to come up with things we haven't beat to death.

Have a great week!