Vol. 250 - Staying in Character, and small things continued

"It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey." - Soren Kierkegaard

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couples Club.  Our weekly gather of men and women who are in, or have a genuine desire to be in, Domestic Discipline or Female Led Relationships.

I hope you had a great week.  Mine included one of those incidents that can make me wonder whether I have any capability at all of actually changing for the better.  Just two weeks ago, we talked about using Domestic Discipline to learn to get the "small things" right, with the hope that developing more discipline about common, everyday tasks, might result in more discipline on the bigger things as well.  I recounted how she spanked sometime ago for repeatedly failing to clean the kitchen fully after dinner, including leaving rice in a rice cooker.  

 So, I really committed to trying to do better.  For a week I made the bed every morning, did a better job of getting some annoying work tasks done every day, and made sure I diligently cleaned the kitchen every night.  Then, earlier this week I got a text from her at work with -- you know where this is going, don't you? -- rice in the damn rice cooker!  Left there for two days.  Damn, damn, damn!  I honestly cannot believe that after committing to do my nightly chores, talking about it with all of you for a solid week . . . I still couldn't pull it off!  So much for . . .

 I also failed--modestly yet still failed--on something that was more personal to me.  I had an injury last year that really screwed with my ability to stay fit.  I lost years of hard-won gains in muscle and strength.  I've been slowly working my way back up, and am pretty close to where I was before the injury. But, I decided that wasn't enough.  I wanted to get in really, really good shape.  Like visible six-pack shape, driven on by the recognition that I am at an age where it really is now or never.  So, I decided that I wanted to do a pretty strict diet for two weeks to kick-start the process, including no processed food, no sugar and a total ban on alcohol.  I did pretty well for several days, then we had a reception at the office, and I one beer, which led to two more, and topped it off with some unhealthy snacking.  Last night, I was on my own for dinner, and while I didn't do too bad for a Friday, I had one beer and some french fries.  Small stumbles, right?  But stumbles nonetheless.  

And, in truth, it was some our conversation last week that put me on this self-improvement bent again.  As ZM said,  "For some reason, this weeks topic is just totally stuck in my head so here I am writing again. I guess maybe it is because it is all just so very domestic, which apparently resonates quite clearly for me. This week, as I have been thinking (pretty much non-stop) about small things, I realize just how much my lack of discipline has held me back, and I have a large and genuine hope that my wife will give my self-discipline enough of a boost that it will result in me finally achieving at least part of the success of which I am capable. Tomy noted above that if Aunt Kay had gotten to him earlier "... I sure as hell would have been a million times more successful in life." I am hoping so very much that somehow this will be true for me as well. While I don't necessary enjoy the pain of spanking, at least at the time, I enjoy even less the never-ending pain of living an undisciplined life."

 Very well said.  Like ZM, I spent a lot of time last week thinking about sweating the small stuff, using my wife as a kind of "accountability coach" to help me stay on track.  I don't know exactly what that looks like and how to get her to buy into the vision, but I need to find some way to get her more invested in helping me get my shit together.  I am a big believer in setting out very concrete steps when you want to change something.  High level, vague aspirations, or even concrete goals without concrete steps to get there, are all but worthless.  So, if any of you have used DD successfully to really help you improve performance, pay more attention, hit goals, etc., please continue to weigh in, and with the actual things you put in place to get there.

One thing that did jump out at me from the comments is that for the couples who successfully used DD to help him perform better, there seems to have been A LOT of very open, ongoing communication, about the goals, the expectations, his progress or lack thereof, etc.  Again, please share how all that came about, how you approached her (or she approached you), what the reporting regimen was like, how any check-ins or other processes worked, forms you used to track performance, etc. 

I also suspect that if I am really going to get her to deliver on helping me perform, more of the process will have to be initiated by me regarding things like check-ins, perhaps even to the point of me going through the checklist and simply bringing her the paddle whenever the failures happened.  Ideally, it would be her taking over the process and managing it, but after trying and failing to get that to really work, I feel like I have to try something else.  Though, that is easier said than done in the moment.

The part of this week's topic that is genuinely new is kind of the flip-side of the debate between Alan, KD and ZM regarding total obedience, though from a slightly different angle.  How difficult is it for the wives who do want to be a Disciplinary Wife and to be the leader in an FLR to do that consistently, perhaps even 24x7?  How readily to they "stay in character" or do they find themselves flipping back and forth between dominance and doubt?

It seems to me to be very natural for doubts to hold back even a wife who genuinely wants to lead.  As many of us said last week, our wives are normal people with normal moral and ethical compasses.  They want to help us grow into the men we want to be, and many of them don't have any problem with doling out a strong punishment when we do something bad that effects them.  But, they also have normal concerns about "not wanting to hurt him," and "even if he says he wants things to be strict, am I being too strict in this particular case?"

I don't have any doubt that many, in not most, Disciplinary Wives have those moments of self-doubt or of pulling back because of concerns about whether he "really" wants this. But, does that suggest that living DD 24x7 just is not realistic or, ironically, is she stressed out and going through the ups and downs precisely because she has one foot in and one foot out of DD leadership, but both she and he would be happier if she just went all out and really donned the mantle of leadership.  I've talked about this a lot with one Domme friend, and she admits that she is happiest and the relationship works best when she is most consistent and most strict.  The doubts do kick in and she steps back, but then things stop working as well and both she and her husband get off course.  For her, it really is easier and more helpful for both of them when she stays consistent and doesn't let the doubts stop her from doing what she needs to do.  She genuinely likes leading, and part of making things work is embracing that instead of getting dragged down by concerns about "bitchiness" or how he may react and, instead, setting high expectations and consistently enforcing them.  It is a bit paradoxical, but leadership becomes less burdensome the more she embraces it.

Thoughts?