The Club - Meeting #273 - Origins

“There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.” – Oscar Wilde

Hi all.  I hope you had a great week.  Mine was OK.  Nothing special.  Work remains slow, but the pipeline shows a few signs of opening up.  I have my fingers crossed, as I really don't do well with these periods of inactivity.  "Idle hands . . ." and all that.

I also can't say that the downtime has contributed to my creativity in coming up with topics.  I finally gave up on thinking up anything new.  A couple of weeks ago when we were in the midst of some, ahem, drama here at the Disciplinary Couples Club, ZM made a plea to focus on things that draw us together around this common interest in Domestic Discipline.  At the top of his list was:

"How it started for you... Who initiated? Why? How?" 

I somehow always have the impression that we cover this one frequently.  But, looking back at the topic list, it's actually been a couple of years since we had a topic specifically focusing on how each of our Disciplinary Couples first got into this.  So, let's do it again.  Tell us your own origin story.  How did you first get into it?  If your current relationship is not your first in which Domestic Discipline played a big role, tell us about both how you originally got started, and how it began with your current partner.

I've posted our story before, but for some of our new visitors, here it is again:

Until about 10 years into our marriage, we had never heard the term “domestic discipline.”  We had a good relationship over those years, but it was conventional and also not particularly well-balanced.   I had always been more than a little, shall we say, “Type A.”  I tended to do everything to excess.  I grew up with few, if any, real boundaries and none that were every really enforced.  When my wife and I first met, she probably found my excess and brashness attractive, but I doubt she envisioned that ten years later not much would have changed. 

My wife was more balanced and centered, but if anything she was a little too much my opposite.  While I was intense and loud and bombastic, she was modest and not particularly assertive.  Despite her many accomplishments, she had a hard time taking charge.  She was raised in a very traditional, male dominated family.  Her dad worked.  Her mom raised the family.  He spent evenings at happy hour with his cronies.  She got mad about it and pouted, and he slept on the couch for a few nights.  My wife brought some of those same dispute resolution mechanisms to our marriage.

    

It wasn't really good for either of us.  Growing up without rules or boundaries had left me feeling out of control as a kid, and here I was as 30+ year-old man, still feeling out of control and overwhelmed with the responsibility of making too many decisions. My wife, on the other hand, was not developing into all she could be.

Then . . . things changed.  While corporal punishment was very prevalent where I grew up, I don’t recall having thought about spankings even once as an adult.  Then, one night we were watching an HBO series called “Real Sex.” There was a segment devoted to adult erotic spanking, featuring a couple spanking each other with leather paddles and a riding crop.  It did turn me on, and since I thought our sex life could use some spicing up, a few days later I bought a small leather paddle at a sex toy “novelty” shop.  My wife had zero interest in being spanked but was happy to try it on me.  Although it was fun, it never went beyond foreplay and was not “real” in any sense.  Sometimes it did drift into a form of role play, in which she would "punish" me for various real misdeeds.  After a few modest swats with the flimsy leather paddle, we would have sex.

The problem was, while the spankings were pretend, the bad behavior was real.  Since it was all foreplay and ended in a nice orgasm, in essence I was being rewarded for bad behavior.  Once she became concerned that she might be reinforcing behavior that made her quite angry, she put an end to the whole thing.  Thereafter, if I came across spanking-related content on the internet I might read it or follow a link to other content, but it didn't really bother me at all that my wife was not interested in making spanking an ongoing part of our sex life. It just hadn't been that big a thing for either of us.

Then, one night many months later I followed one of those spanking-related links to a  website called the Disciplinary Wives Club. It’s been so many years ago, I don't recall exactly what led me to it.  But, I definitely do remember the effect it had on me. It hit me like a sledgehammer.  Like no experience I had ever had before, and nothing at all like the erotic spankings we had dabbled in.  What was so different about the DWC?  Well, even though it was all about spanking it wasn’t porn, and most of the material was not even overtly sexual.  Nor were the spankings it depicted facially erotic. Instead, they were real spankings, intended to be real punishment to correct real misbehavior. There were fictional and “real couple” stories illustrating this disciplinary lifestyle, all of them involving wives spanking their husbands in order to discipline or punish them for bad behavior or rule breaking. 

Those stories really, really got to me. Especially the ones involving tears.  Many of the wives announced at the outset that the spanking would not end until after the misbehaving husband was crying – perhaps long after.  Something about that affected me in ways I find hard to describe.  Looking back, I’m not sure it was the spanking per se that really got to me.  Rather, it was the prospect of giving up control in a way I had never, ever done in my entire life.  It was really, truly terrifying.  Yet, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. 

I could not imagine raising the prospect with my wife, but after days of thinking of nothing else, I could not imagine not raising it.  The lure was just too strong, though it  made my male ego tremble.

After a few days of living like that, I initiated the discussion while we were in bed getting ready to go to sleep.  The lights were off, which was good because I was so embarrassed that I don’t think I could have faced her with them on.  I began with something like, "I found this funny website on the internet. . .." and explained the basic premise: women taking control by using real corporal punishment on their husbands.  She started to object that she was not interested in using spanking as foreplay anymore, but I stammered  out how this was different.  These spankings were . . . real. 

She didn’t say much, as I stuttered my way through a description of the relationships the DWC depicted.  When I was done, she paused for several moments, then asked whether I was suggesting this as something I actually wanted to try.  I almost lost my nerve, but finally told her the truth; the idea scared the hell out of me, had left me with butterflies in my stomach and little sleep for three days but, yes, I did want to try it.  

Then, it all came spilling out.  How I felt our marriage was unbalanced.  How unbalanced I felt inside.  How I needed someone to rein me in when I acted up.  And, what I thought it might do for her.  How I didn’t like her feeling like she was playing second fiddle in our relationship. How I wanted so much more for her than that. How I knew there was a strong and decisive woman in there and that maybe this would help bring that woman out.  She listened intently but noncommittally.  She did she would take a look at the DWC website, though I suspected she might let the whole thing drop. 

Nope. She called me at the office the next day. After a few pleasantries, there was a pause, and she stated: “Well . . I visited that website.”

"And, . . .?" I asked, tentatively.

There was a long pause.  "Very interesting," she replied.   

That was it. Interesting.  "So . . . what does that mean . . ." I stammered.

"Well, I guess it means you need to go buy me a nice, heavy wooden hairbrush.  Bring it home with you tonight."

The rest, as they say, is history.  I won't go into the rest of the details here, other than to note that finding a sturdy, wooden hairbrush was harder than I anticipated.  I finally found something serviceable, after walking around a mall for an hour, with this peculiar mix of extreme arousal and equally extreme anxiety.  

Before the first spanking, we established a set of rules. First and foremost, she would control when and how hard I was spanked, period.  While she would listen to my views, she would control the process at all times.  Second, every spanking would be serious.  She still was concerned that “play” spankings could reinforce bad behavior, so our spankings had to be "real" each and every time.

It's odd that while I recall virtually everything leading up to that first spanking, I don't recall a lot about the main event.  I suspect that is because we followed a prescription that was iconic but resulted in a less-than-memorable spanking:  over-the-knee position, with a hairbrush.

We graduated pretty quickly to wooden paddles and leather straps, and she graduated to a very proficient spanker surprisingly quickly. 

Over the years of doing this blog, and several years before that in various DD groups, I've heard variations on this story many times.   We husbands are so concerned about how to broach the topic of Domestic Discipline but once we do, the wives take up the paddle or strap with surprisingly little diffidence or reluctance and are soon spanking like a pro.

Over the years we have been doing Domestic Discipline, my wife has grown into a much stronger, confident woman with a voice all her own, and the relationship has gone beyond merely discipline.  Instead of just enforcing rules, she imposes them.  She sets boundaries for me and expects me to respect them.  

So, how about you?  How did your interest in Domestic Discipline (not just spanking) arise? What did you do to make it a reality?  Please share as many of the details as time allows.

I hope you all have a great week.