The Club - Meeting 279 - Resolutions

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.” – Benjamin Franklin

Hello all.  Welcome back to the last meeting of the Disciplinary Couples Club for 2018.  

I hope you all had a great Christmas.  Ours was good.  In some ways, it seemed like a "smaller" holiday.  Less busyness.  Slightly less running around from party to party.  And, smaller but more personal gifts.  And, I like that.  One of my siblings who is going through a rough time financially got me something that didn't cost much but was meant a lot to me.  And, one of my kids decided to get me a gadget I had said I didn’t really want.  She ignored my uninformed inclinations, and apparently knew me better than I know myself because it turns to out be one of the coolest gadgets I've gotten in a long time. I also got a meaningful DD-related gift that I won't specify, but the giver knows what I am referring to.  It was much appreciated, though I'm not sure I will be "enjoying" it in 2019!

Looking back on 2018, it was a pretty good year, if I ignore the career front.  That aspect of 2018 was mediocre at best, with much more involuntary downtime than I’m usually comfortable with. Yet, I didn’t get too wigged out about it, which is itself progress.  And, while I tend to process too much of my life through the career lens, when I take a step back and really ask whether 2018 was a good year, it undoubtedly was.  While our progress stalled mid-year, on the DD and FLR front my wife really did step it up significantly in the first half of the year, and hopefully she will get back on track once kids clear out after the holidays.  Our kids are all healthy and doing well on their chosen school/career paths.  From a health perspective, this time last year I was convalescing from an injury and in a chronic bad mood due to lack of sleep caused by ongoing pain from said injury.  Full recovery took way longer than I expected, but I’m finishing out 2018 stronger and healthier than I was in 2017, and slightly ahead of where I was in 2016. At my age, doing better than holding steady is itself a surprising accomplishment.  While it was not a smooth ride for everyone in our extended family, all of them are still with us as we head into 2019 and their momentary setbacks now look like blessings in disguise. We also have some aging furry friends that are more like family than pets. I was pretty sure more than one of them would not see the end of 2018, yet while things are getting harder for them, all are still with us.

So, while New Years is supposed to be about resolutions, it also should be a time to reflect on the year that was and give thanks for what we accomplished and received and gave back.  In that light, 2018 was, if not an unqualified success, at least much better than other very possible alternatives. 

But, back to those resolutions.  Elizabeth had suggested each husband commit to one, and I generally do end each year or kick off the new one with a list of my own resolutions. Last year, I kind of punted, saying that I wanted the year to be generally about “balance,” and while far, far from perfect, I do think I made some small progress in that, as demonstrated by the fact that it was not a great year for us from a career and financial perspective, yet I didn’t wig out nearly as much about that as would have in years past.  Though, it is a little depressing, every year I run this New Years post and see that while some things get better, there are definitely a lot of "fails."  Since I punted last year, let’s compare where we are in December 2018 on those things I has listed as resolutions for 2016 . . .

GENERAL RESOLUTIONS

• Fewer Saturdays spent regretting my Friday work-related socializing [AT BEST – SLIGHTLY BETTER THAN 2017]
• Learn to better control my temper at work [BETTER – THOUGH I LOST GROUND NEAR YEAR-END. LOTS OF ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT]
• Nurture those important relationships, both work and personal, that sometimes don't get the time or attention they deserve [MIXED – WORSE ON SOME FRONTS BUT BETTER IN ODD CONTEXTS]
• Exit 2018 in better physical shape than I entered into it, as measured by pant size, blood pressure, strength and endurance [MIXED, THOUGH SOME IMPROVEMENT]

DOMESTIC DISCIPLINE RESOLUTIONS

• Self-report any infractions at least weekly [FAIL] 
• Empower my wife to grow in her disciplinary authority [OK]
•  During spankings, instead of "taking it like a man," try hard to let go all ego and control, surrendering totally to her authority.  Let loose and really cry during a spanking. [FAIL] 
• Do a two-day boot camp to focus on our DD and FLR relationship [FAIL]

What is most interesting to me as I look back on this is, while 2018 felt like a “not so great” year while I was in the middle of it, I actually did may some progress on several fronts.  That really is not true of way too many past years, in which I would have a long, long list of “FAILS” covering virtually every listed resolution.  And, even in some areas where I lost ground on the originally intended resolution, progress came from other directions. For example, I lost some ground on nurturing important personal relationships, letting some friendships drift (something I hope to fix in 2019).  But, while I did fail on that resolution with respect to the relationships I was thinking about when I took it on, I "succeeded" in unexpected ways by striking up new friendships related to the DD aspects of my life.  In the past, I tried to keep that aspect of my life under wraps and very separate from my “real” life.  But, 2018 took on a life of its own in that respect, as I found myself unexpectedly opening up with a couple of contacts from this blog and watching the development of an odd and totally unexpected overlap between my blogging and “real” life.  

As I said when closing out one of these posts a few years ago, given the way the “successes” and “failures” of each year meander and take such unexpected twists, each year ultimately must be judged only in the rearview mirror.  And, while often fail in the specifics, more general progress is made.  Therefore, I will once again keep things "thematic" this year, leaving the details to work themselves out.

RESOLUTIONS: 2019

• Self-Reporting: I will pick up the resolution that Alan said he should make but won’t.  I feel like my failure to carry through on this has been a major impediment to me becoming more humble and her becoming more authoritative.  I’m still mulling how to make this one concrete, but it will be the #1 priority for our DD life.

• Empowering Her:  Again, this is a little too thematic, but I need to find ways to help my wife pick up where she left off in mid-2018 and move things substantially forward from there in terms of her status. Early last year, after reading the book The Hesitant Mistress, she made some really big progress on taking on and exercising more authority and power.  I’m not sure how exactly to measure this, but I want to leave 2019 with her authority on more open display and on a much more solid ground so we don’t move forward then hit a wall as happened this year.

• Crying: Let loose and really cry during a spanking.  Perpetually on the list, but hope springs eternal.

[Yeah, I know the date is wrong on that caption, but I don't have a clue how to change it.]
 
So, please take up Elizabeth's challenge and tell us about any DD or FLR resolutions or goals you have for 2019.  I hope you make it an awesome, consequential, and meaningful year!

Merry Christmas 2018

Hello all.  Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club.

Perhaps like many of you, I will be spending today finishing up some Christmas shopping and wrapping presents.  I felt like I was on top of things this year, and yet somehow Christmas managed to sneak up on me yet again.  Thankfully, I did get a lot of the shopping done a couple of weeks ago, so the weekend will be a little less frantic than might otherwise be the case.
  
I had planned to do a post this week about reporting and keeping track of punishable offenses, to follow up on some of Elizabeth's comments.  But, I think I will put that off until next week and, instead, just use this week's post to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.  I feel like I made some progress this year in personalizing some of the formerly electronic relationships associated with this blog.  It was kind of an interesting year in that respect.  I had face-to-face meeting with a fellow blogger who is on the other end of the paddle.  It was an act of trust by both of us, and one worth taking.  I also deepened the quality of the contacts with a couple of others.  I hope to do more of that in the next year, as I come to care less and less if people know about this important part of our lives.  I'm hoping that's how this holiday season and 2019 play out for all of us -- more genuine and authentic experiences with interesting people who we care about and who care about us.

While I don't have any real topic for this week, if you have an Domestic Discipline themed gifts or activities in mind for the holidays, please share with the group.  I actually do have one small gift for Anne that is discipline related, but since she has become a frequent reader of the blog, I will wait 'til after Christmas to reveal it here.

I hope you all get what you want--or at least what you desperately need and deserve--this Christmas, regardless of your particular DD orientation.

So, Merry Christmas everyone.  Be safe and be happy.

The Club Meeting 278 - Consistency, Openness & The Holidays

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It's what we do consistently.” – Tony Robbins

Hi all.  Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couples Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline relationships.  I hope you had a great week.

Mine was, as usual, mixed. Given the sheer quantity of temptations out there this time of year, I actually had a remarkably successful week where diet, exercise and personal discipline on things like that were concerned.  I had one drink all week, did a pretty good job resisting the piles of baked goods that make their way into our office this time of year, and worked out hard five days in a row.  On the other hand, work productivity remained challenging, even though our workload has finally picked up a little.  Inertia is just a very powerful force, and after being slow for an extended period, it's hard to shift into high gear again. It also was a week in which my patience with some of the "higher-ups" wore really thin.  Which is a significant problem, because as I talked about last week, losing my temper really is an impediment to some greater growth, and accepting some authority is inherent in this thing we do.  For me, it is one of my biggest personal challenges.

Now, that said, I will say something that seemingly goes in the opposite direction.  I am hoping this Christmas signals the high point for the current fashion of faux outrage, of taking offense at absolutely everything, and of proactively looking for things to get your panties in a twist about.  Witness the latest, i.e. the "controversy" around the song Baby It's Cold Outside.  If this isn't the silliest example of political correctness run amok, it's hard to think of a better one, though the PC crew seldom surprises me with the depths they will plumb to find something new and trivial to get all worked up about.  Sorry PC advocates, seducing and being seduced are still perfectly legitimate for most sex-positive people who aren't professors or students at Yale.  The fact that this is, in fact, totally faux outrage that has not one thing to do with the lyrics of the song itself becomes apparent when you look at it from just a slightly different angle. Don't think so? Take a look at this version, this time with Lady Gaga in the role of the seducer intent on keeping Joseph Gordon-Levitt in her arms and on her bed.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtoW4aV-CIc.  Lock her up!  I also found this on BuzzFeed, from a feminist putting the song in perspective and in its historical context:

"See, this woman is staying late, unchaperoned, at a dude’s house. In the 1940’s, that’s the kind of thing Good Girls aren’t supposed to do — and she wants people to think she’s a good girl. The woman in the song says outright, multiple times, that what other people will think of her staying is what she’s really concerned about: “the neighbors might think,” “my maiden aunt’s mind is vicious,” “there’s bound to be talk tomorrow.” But she’s having a really good time, and she wants to stay, and so she is excusing her uncharacteristically bold behavior (either to the guy or to herself) by blaming it on the drink — unaware that the drink is actually really weak, maybe not even alcoholic at all. That’s the joke. That is the standard joke that’s going on when a woman in media from the early-to-mid 20th century says “hey, what’s in this drink?” It is not a joke about how she’s drunk and about to be raped. It’s a joke about how she’s perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because she’s living in a society where women aren’t supposed to have sexual agency."

It's all in the way you choose to look at things, isn't it?  Right now, I kind of feel like look at things in whatever way offends the most sensitive people around me.   For 2019, I think I need to set a resolution of every day making at least one tight-ass, whether on the political left or the political right, clutch their pearls in offense at something that comes out of my mouth.

Speaking of consistency, it's sorely lacking in our DD relationship right now.  Well, not really "sorely."  Whatever soreness I am experiencing is purely from recent hard workouts.  This is the case, despite the fact that before this week, my behavior had been pretty consistently bad.  And, when I reversed course a bit this week, it had nothing to do with increased discipline or control being imposed on me as part of this thing we do.  Rather, the cumulative impact of lack of sleep and cold symptoms that I can't get rid of four weeks after getting the cold convinced me that I had to get my shit together on diet, exercise, meditation and alcohol because the alternative just wasn't something I could keep dealing with.  But, in an ideal world, the bad behavior would have gotten nipped in the bud much earlier, with a decisive enforcement of the rules and a terrifying application of her strap, paddle and cane.

Why is consistency so hard in these relationships?  I know many parents who are inconsistent in setting boundaries for their kids, but some are pretty good at it.  They see setting and enforcing boundaries as part of the parental gig and something that is absolutely necessary for the recipient's own benefit.   So, why is it so hard to import that mindset into a DD marriage, particularly given that unlike the recipient of childhood discipline, in these relationships the person on the receiving end of the paddle usually has asked for it literally, not just via his actions.  

For us, I think it comes down to entrenched roles, priority-setting and concerns about openness.  First, she fights the entrenched socialization of traditional gender roles and also the "kinkiness" factor that makes taking on the role of a Disciplinary Wife an act of social daring and bucking conventions.  For my part, I tell myself that I need to be better about formalizing a system of self-reporting and asking to be spanked when I know I deserve it, yet I don't follow through, because I have my own entrenched socialization that resists the embarrassment of admitting, in writing or in a face-to-face conversation, that I've done wrong and deserve to be punished for it.  Second, while this aspect of our lives is important to us, apparently not quite important enough to find ways to do it even when other things intrude.  Third, I am convinced that our lack of openness about this has been a major impediment over time, because we put so much effort into hiding it that we limit her opportunities to openly display that she is in control, because we are caught up in the conventions that say this isn't "normal" and that people should keep any non-conventional power arrangements strictly private even when not overtly sexual.

My subconscious may be trying to force the openness issue.  I've talked about the fact that I usually wear a necklace with a pendant that supposedly, in BDSM world, symbolizes a male submissive.  It doesn't quite fit how I view my role, but I can't find anything more DD-specific.  It usually stays safely hidden under my shirt, but not lately.  It popped out three times in one week.   The first time, I had to go to the doctor, and when the nurse told me to take off my shirt, at first I totally forgot about the necklace.  The second time, I got on an elevator to leave work, along with a couple of the younger people on my team.  I turned to talk to one of them, and as I did so I felt the same pendant get caught on my shirt collar as I turned.  It had somehow worked itself out of my shirt and was hanging outside the collar in plain view.  The third time, it somehow worked it's way outside my shirt as I was sitting in my office.  The damn thing is like The One Ring constantly working to reveal itself, for those of you who are Lord of the Rings geeks like myself. Of course, as I've observed before, the only people who would know what the symbol means are those who are in the lifestyle, so why get embarrassed?  Well, what if the male doctor is a male Dominant and does recognize the symbol?  Would I be embarrassed?  Quite likely, though I do ask myself why I'd really care.

When I tie all the above together, I think as the kids have gotten older and as we have fewer financial insecurities keeping me tied to a particular job or career, I'm asking those mid-life questions about the extent to which I am leading my own life, or one that has been imposed on me by social convention.  Part of me is just tired of hiding this part of my life.  It's not like I feel a desire for some dramatic coming out of the closet ceremony.  Rather, I just don't feel as much need to hide it, particularly if doing so means we never take this to the level we both say we want.  For that reason, I keep encouraging Anne to come out and be more open about the fact that she is in charge.  I think you will soon see her take up that challenge a bit, perhaps on this blog and perhaps a bit more in real life.

Of course, the holidays are probably the time of year when maintaining consistency in the disciplinary aspects of the relationship is the hardest.  Friends and relatives are around more than ever.  It takes a certain proactive effort to just maintain the dynamic let alone extend it.

I know this entry has rambled a lot, but that tends to happen when I wake up on a Saturday without a firm topic in mind.  To the extent there is one that you see in the above, feel free to comment on any aspect that strikes your fancy.  But, in order to pretend I do have a real topic in mind, how about this: If you have actually succeeded in bringing a degree of consistency into your DD relationship, how have you done it?  

• Husbands, what actions have you taken to give your wife the control and support she needs to take on this role? What have you done to help ensure that you do, in fact, pay a price for your bad behavior when you know you deserve it.  
• Wives, given all you have going on in your life, and given some of the societal and emotional hurdles, what steps have you taken to make sure that you actually consistently give him what he has coming?  Another question for the wives: Is it harder to be consistent or harder NOT to be?  The surface level answer would seem to be that being a leader is hard, and doling out DD punishments consistently could be a very difficult thing, because of the need to be "on" all the time.  But, might the converse be even more of a problem? The "on again, off again" ebbs and flows might keep the disciplinary wife always on edge and never quite getting into a personal zone where she really feels in control. Thoughts?

One note on last week's topic.  I suspected that an open invitation for more wives to participate would probably flop, and it kind of did.  I suspect there just aren't really all that many female readers.  Also, we talked last week about how women in these relationships have a very practical bent; that may express itself as having better things to do than spend a weekend surfing DD blogs.  I also think there is a dynamic among "Tops" that they just aren't as interested in discussing all this as we "bottoms" are.  I have no idea why, but that is how it seems to work.  But, thanks to new commenter Elizabeth.  I hope she will continue to participate and maybe that will encourage other "lurkers" to join in.  Thanks to Anna as well for sharing some of the interesting new developments in her disciplinary adventures. Perhaps Peter will have something to add?

Have a great week.

DCC Meeting 277 - An Invitation to the Wives

Hello All.  Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in or interested in being in Domestic Discipline Relationships.  I hope you had a great week.

Mine was a mixed bag.  On the one hand, it felt like some blockages were finally breaking up on the work front, with some new projects finally coming in after a multi-week drought.  On the other hand, we missed out on a massive project, for reasons that pushed every one of my anti-authoritarian buttons.  

Whether and when I should be disciplined for workplace issues is something I continue to struggle with.  It's a complicated dynamic.  On the one hand, I've done fairly well in my career to some extent precisely because I don't pay a lot of deference to convention or hierarchies and don't readily take "this is how we've always done it" as an answer.  On the other hand, I don't doubt that my temper--or more precisely my reputation for having a temper--has held me back in some ways or at least put upward mobility at risk.  On the (third) hand, there are weeks like this one when someone "above" me does something conventional and safe that ends up costing us a huge opportunity, after I warned this would be the likely result, and it becomes very hard not to go off about it. 

I also have been experiencing sustained bouts of insomnia, which has always been a problem for me but for whatever reason has been much worse lately.  I normally wouldn’t comment about it in this forum, except that the lack of sleep and a resulting temper tantrum directed at something that aggravated my sleep deprivation probably will, and definitely should, get me spanked long and hard sometime in the next few days.  Like this Christmas-time spanking, but with something much harder than her hand:

 It was against that sleep-deprived backdrop that I awoke this morning to this article on sleep and dreams: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/why-we-sleep-and-why-we-often-cant/amp.  It’s one of the best descriptions I've read of what it’s like to chronically try to sleep and fail. Unfortunately, I doubt the sleep-deprivation problem will get much better until after the holidays, given the sheer number of holiday festivities and weekend gatherings.

With that self-indulgent whining wrapped up, on to this week’s discussion. Last week, I got the following comment from Jerry, whose wife Colleen posted earlier in the week:

“We see that you have changed the title of your Blog slightly to accommodate our fabulous spouses who keep us in line. Colleen said she would like it if there were more women posting here, and we think one thing that would help would be to have a weekly question for them as well (or in place of) for us. Colleen said that she feels that since the questions don’t apply to her and her group on the other side of the paddle she has no way of adding to the conversation. That may help to attract more spouses to post regularly. I know your job running this Blog has to be a serious load on your time. We really appreciate it! Maybe eventually one of the ladies would come forward to assist with the women’s question.”

I agree it would be great to get more women posting.  One impediment is there is a simple numbers issue at play here – far more of this blog’s readers are men.  Last time I polled the demographics, it was about 9:1 men-to-women.  I also always just assume that the women will sort of flip the topic around and comment from the other side.  But, you know what they say about assumptions. . ..  So, I will try to be more expressly inclusive with future topics, phrasing them with suggested angles for both the Disciplined and the Disciplinarian’s respective points of view. 

But, this week, let’s take it a little further.  I’ve done this a few times before, but it’s been awhile.  This week’s topic is not really a topic at all but, rather, an open invitation to the Wives, whether regular readers or those whose Disciplined Husbands can beg them to come over to the computer and spend a few minutes telling us all about yourself and your DD relationship from your perspective as the Disciplinary Wife, HoH, Domme or however you see your role in this thing we do and share.  While you can talk about anything you want, a few things I know I’d like to hear about and that the men have covered recently:

·      How did you come to be a Disciplinary Wife?

·      How long have you been in your DD marriage?

·      Do you enjoy the role of Disciplinarian?  If so, what do you like about it?

·      Do you enjoy spanking your husband and imposing other discipline or punishment?  How does it make you feel?

·      How much authority do you exercise over him with respect to both discipline and non-disciplinary facets of the relationship?

·      How has your DD role or your authority changed over time, and how do you feel about that?

·      Is there a specific spanking, or a specific DD event, that is particularly memorable?

Remember, you aren’t just satisfying the curiosity of the Disciplined Husbands. You're coaching, mentoring and teaching other women who might be willing to give this lifestyle a try or who already have but are interested in other women's ideas and collected wisdom.

You’re also giving useful advice to the Wives who choose to lurk but not comment, and you also can use this as an opportunity to give each other some encouragement. 

(By the way, Sean/Jack - don’t even bother posting under one of your made-up female personas.  We both know I’ll just delete it.)

In addition to this open-ended invitation to the Wives, this also is an invitation to my own wife, who for purposes of this blog wants to be known as Anne.  She has become a regular reader, and she’s told me that she’s thought about contributing but hasn't so far.  That's fine, and she can and will do things at her own pace and in her own due time.  But, I’ve also been joking with Tomy lately that if he ever feels like shouting out to my wife the advice he thinks Aunt Kay (his wife and the founder of the Disciplinary Wives Club) would have given about how to handle me, he should feel free, since Anne may be reading and might even respond.  While it is totally her choice (of course), I hope she will feel free not only to weigh in on topics but also to respond to comments from her Disciplinary Wife perspective and her evolving position at the top of our chain-of-command.

I hope you all have a great week.

DCC Meeting 276 - Fathers & Sons

If you don't get enough time-outs as a child, you get them as a grownup. ~Andrew Bonifacio

Hello all.  Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, Domestic Discipline relationships.  I hope you had a great week.

The holidays are upon us.  I really love this time of year.  As soon as the Christmas lights go up, my mood seems to improve.  Left to my own devices, I'd leave them up well into February.  The only thing I don't like about this season is, ironically, all the holiday parties.  Although I hide it pretty well, I am an introvert to the core, and going to parties every weekend for a month or more really wears me out emotionally.  I also can expect my wife to "wear me out" physically, with her strap and paddles, multiple times this month, given my proclivity for over-indulging at such gatherings.  And, of course, turning the tables is entirely out of the question in our family.

Our topic this week extends from a couple of last week's comments.  In exploring a tangent regarding the relationship between frequency of corporal punishment as a child and our later interest in adult discipline, I referred to these result from a poll we ran back in 2015 that explored how often our readers were spanked as kids and by whom:

Spanked frequently 14%

Spanked but only infrequently 53%

Never spanked 24%

Spanked by mother/not by father 20%

Spaned by father/not by mother 10%

Spanked by both 27%

Tomy followed up by pointing to more comprehensive surveys posted on the DWC website.  www.auntkaysdwc.com.  I had some spare time on my hands this week, so I went back and gave them another read.  One thing that struck me was that there were several questions that explored the relationship between the mother's demeanor and disciplinary practices and  our later interest in, or openness to, adult discipline.  But, there were no corresponding questions regarding relationships between disciplined husbands and their fathers.  It does seem like we just kind of assume that if our parents had some role in forming our interest in F/m corporal punishment, it must relate to our mother's approach to discipline or the extent to which she exercised domestic authority.  But, is that correct?  Might it be that our fathers influence our later attitudes toward discipline as much or more than our mothers? 

I had already been thinking about that issue when ZM posted about his early spanking experiences, and noted that while he is sure his mother did spank him, he doesn't really remember any of those spankings, but does remember spankings from his father.  This is my experience as well.  Also, like him, there was a substantial period when I was growing up that I did not have a father's influence in my life, and until recently I'd never really thought about whether that might have influenced the need for boundaries that fuels my interest in adult discipline.

When I'm honest with myself, there is something about M/m discipline that I find morbidly attractive.  A few years ago, a commenter on this blog wrote the following:

One Saturday when I was 15, my older brother, who was 16, got caught smoking grass. My dad told my brother that he would be punished severely until he had some sense knocked into him. He made my brother wait almost a week.  After dinner on the following Friday, my dad took my brother downstairs to my dad’s basement workroom. Through the vents we could hear the swats of my dad's thick black belt landing on what we all knew was my brother’s bare bottom. Only when my brother was sobbing and begging to be forgiven and swearing he would never touch grass again did my dad stop. A few minutes later Dad came up, had his dessert, and as Mom cleared the dishes he brought my younger brother and me down to the workroom where my brother was still bent bare-assed over a work bench. His ass was raw. Dad told us to look and learn, and we were then sent to our rooms. I don’t know why but I was so aroused by it all.

The commenter was not the only one aroused.  Stories like that have always touched a nerve with me.  It may be no accident that I've always found "woodshed" stories so arousing, and in those stories it almost always seems be a father or uncle doing the spanking.

I think part of the emotional reaction I have to stories involving spankings by a father or uncle is bound up with my need for discipline to be "real."  While I believe these kind of relationships must be grounded in consent, the reality is I've always wanted the discipline to be imposed on me whether I consent or not.  In fact, the more she takes control away from me, the more compelling the whole thing is.  Yet, there are limits to how much that need for unilateral imposition of real discipline can be fulfilled, because deep down inside I know that I am capable of physically resisting.  I think one reason that I find woodshed stories involving male spankers so compelling is that physical resistance against a father figure might actually not be possible.  That kind of spanking is going to happen whether the recipient cooperates or not, and something about that real loss of control stirs me.  

The talk last week about spanking frequency and who delivered made me want to update our 2015 poll.  Unfortunately, in trying to do that I found that Blogger has eliminated the poll gadget.  So, no more polls for this blog.  Which kind of sucks, but I guess we'll have to live with a more narrative approach.  Tell us all about who handled discipline in your family.  Your mother? Father?  Other family members?  And, do you think that discipline or lack thereof from your father influenced your desire for discipline today?

UPDATE:  Anna's comment, below, suggested the following question, which is perhaps a more direct phrasing of what I was going for with this topic: "How many of those that crave spankings were raised in a household where the gather was absent in terms of ordering discipline? That does, in fact, reflect the way I grew up, for the most part.  Like ZM, early on I did have a father figure who acted as a disciplinarian, but there was a period where that was not the case, and during key periods I did have a father-figure around but he probably needed discipline more than I did!

I hope you have a great week.