The Club Meeting 317 - Why Does He Want This?

I hid all the things I was feeling-- and indeed I did not know what they were, except that all the peace of that autumnal journey was gone.” ― C.S. Lewis

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly on-line gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline relationship.  I hope you all had a great week.

Before we begin, can I say how much I love Halloween season? How do you not like a holiday that's all about naughtiness and misbehavior?  No other holiday seems to lend itself so easily to adult themes.

   

The discussion last week really didn’t seem to take off, did it?  Some topics are like that, and I admit “determination” might have been a little nebulous.  To the point that I jumped on one comment as “not on topic,” when in retrospect it basically was.  I should have read it more closely, so bad on me.  We did get into some interesting discussions about workplace etiquette, putting up with workplace douchebags, and whether our wives should spank us for showing too little patience for said douchebags or too much.  While I didn’t think about the latter much at the time, it is kind of an interesting question, isn’t it?  I’ve always thought about punishment for workplace attitude issues from the perspective of someone who displays too much attitude. But, what if the husband lets himself get walked over and stepped on at work? Could a Disciplinary Wife spank some backbone into him?  Perhaps a topic for another time.

But, while it didn’t seem to spark a lot of interest, it did generate this question from “Belle”?

Why would a successful, confident man want that kind of treatment? Please make that a topic! I am the estranged wife of an alpha male and we are considering reuniting. He has asked me for domestic discipline as you describe if we do get back together. He says he needs it but can't explain why. I am baffled and looking for answers, particularly from strong males like Dan and some others on this blog. I understand that dominatrixes say much of their clientele is powerful men looking for relief from always being "on." But this is far different, an alpha male who wants his wife to treat him like a naughty child. Please, someone, help me understand the psychology of this and what I would be getting myself into. I have been searching the internet and most males craving punishment are submissives. Here there are some who are not, and I hope to hear from them. A topic for next week?

A confused wife, "Belle"

I’m sure many—maybe most—Disciplinary Wives shared Belle’s confusion at one time.  Hell, they're probably still confused and curious after years of giving him what he says he wants but never quite understanding why he wants it.  As I’ve reported a couple of times before, my wife seems to have had a mini-epiphany a year or so ago, after way more than a decade in this lifestyle.  She read a book called The Hesitant Mistress—for the second time—and this time something clicked.  She doesn’t really know why.  She told me that even though I told her for years that I really wanted this, part of her had a hard time believing it, because why would anyone want something like that?? Somehow, the book helped her believe that, for whatever reason, I really do want it.  I don’t know if there was a particular line or paragraph that led to her epiphany, but here is one that seems “true” to me in its description of why some men who don’t see themselves as “submissives” still crave discipline (though, ironically it appears in a section characterizing the “submissive” male):

“He wants to be the best man he can be, and that means overcoming his faults. He hates that he cuts corners and procrastinates. He craves correction, even as he hates needing it. He doesn’t want to slack off when no one’s looking. He wants your high standards, your tough love. He wants you to accept nothing less than his best effort. The submissive man will accept guidance only if he knows it’s good for him. He is not a doormat, someone too helpless to protest as others walk all over him. He has the right to complain, to question, to call a halt to any situation he disagrees with. Submission is an escape from the ordinary, not a personality trait.”

So, why did this otherwise “Alpha” male come to be attracted to Domestic Discipline and, increasingly, Female Led Relationships?  Honestly, anything I say about it is, at best, a guess.  And, I also seem to be atypical.  So, Belle, you should take everything I say with a big grain of salt.   

When I say I am atypical, what I mean is I seem to be an outlier in that I didn’t have an early fascination with spanking, while the vast majority of men interested in Domestic Discipline seem to have come to it through an earlier interest in spanking.  Nope, no strict aunt or hot step-mom fantasies that I recall. 

I don’t know, but suspect, that for those men who did have an early interest in spanking that now expresses itself mainly in the Domestic Discipline context, there are two intertwined but distinct personality traits going on: (1) an early and fetish-like interest in spanking; and (2) a “Type-A” personality with somewhat abnormally high proclivities for taking responsibility, being driven to perform, etc.  Either of those tendencies can exist independently but, when you combine the two you get a man who starts off interested in spanking in general, then at some point it narrows to an interest in being spanked as part of being held accountable or driving higher performance.  

In the end, it's not either-or.  For me, and I suspect for some men for whom the need expresses itself as a need for discipline with spanking as the preferred tool but not an end in itself, the need for discipline and accountability is stronger than the sexual component that underlies much of the spanking interest. 

If you adjust that mix a bit, maybe you get someone whose interest expresses itself as a desire to experience more intense, and more sexualized Dominance/submission. Perhaps a Female Led Relationship represents something in between. We are complicated creatures with complex inputs and outputs. 

That’s the best I can really do, while acknowledging that I somehow leapfrogged over the pre-existing spanking interest and went right to an overwhelming desire to be held accountable after discovering the Disciplinary Wives Club website.  Now, I obviously had enough pre-existing interest in spanking to be searching for spanking-themed material on-line, but it really was just kind of a diversion.  After I discovered DD, however. it became an obsession.  So, while spanking and discipline/accountability are intertwined for me, it seems to be the latter that really drives my overall need.

So, why do I have this need for discipline even though I don’t consider myself to be submissive and, in fact, am off the scale anti-authoritarian?  I think it is about both background and balance.  When I put myself on my own psychiatrist couch, I suspect (but don’t really know), that it has something to do with being wired very Type-A with all the need for achievement and performance that comes along with that, while growing up in an environment with no rules or boundaries. So, I had high energy and high achievement needs, but it had no direction and was just kind of energy popping all over the place. 
   

Also, since I had no rules to keep me in line, doing so was all on me.  Not that I did impose boundaries on myself. I tended to do a lot to get in trouble, but always managed to get myself out of it, often by the skin of my teeth. That is a lot of responsibility to have at a young age, and I think now part of me craves having someone with the authority to lay down boundaries because I never had them growing up.  So, why do I want those boundaries from my wife, yet I actively resist authority at work? Well, I grew up with a very, very Alpha dad who was even more anti-authoritarian than I am today and absorbed big parts of that personality.  Carrying that over to work, it's not that I don't want to give into authority.  In fact, part of me does have a twisted desire to have someone at work who is strong enough and powerful enough to put me in my place and keep me in line. It just isn't something I really can pull off, perhaps because I haven't really worked under someone strong enough to do it..

Also, I just think that extending discipline to other areas of my life--work, fitness, meditation and Zen-like spiritual discipline, etc.--will make me stronger and help me reach higher levels of performance, productivity and mental discipline. And, finally, letting go of control is a big thing for me, with both visceral and conceptual components.

That’s the best I can do, and it’s probably not all that enlightening.  Fortunately, we addressed a topic along these lines back in 2016, and ZM provided some more structured speculation around why he wants this.  His thinking may be more typical, since he did begin with an early interest in spanking:

"Why do I need or want this?  I'm really not sure... 

• Maybe I need more clear boundaries, so life feels orderly and not out of control?  
• I didn't have any boundaries while growing up. Could it be that? 
• Maybe I just need the reassurance and orderliness of actions having consequences for the world to make sense? Of course they do, but it is not always as clear as "if this, then that...? 
• Maybe I want or need to change faster to become who I want to be and do what I want to do? 
• I am good, but I have huge dreams so I need to become ever better to achieve my goals. 
• Sometimes consequences are too long-term to change behavior effectively. For example, I know that if I eat less, I will lose weight, look better, be healthier, and live longer. But because these are all long term effects, it can be very hard to stay on a diet since I don't see immediate results. 
• Maybe I lack sufficient self-control, or I live too much in the moment? But for me to achieve my long term goals, I need short-term consequences to effect long-term change. 
• Maybe I sometimes need the closure of having paid for my transgressions? 
• Even if others forgive me, sometimes it is hard to forgive myself, and guilt accumulate 
• There are few situations in life where wrongs are truly paid for (like speeding tickets) 
• Sometimes I just need to have a clean slate. 
• Maybe I get tired of being in charge, and need to be under someone else's control for a while
• It is lonely at the top, with everyone looking to me for answers all the time. 
• Maybe even though others look up to me, I know I am not quite as great as they think? 
• Or maybe I bully others sometimes, and need to feel what it is like to be bossed around? 
• Either way, making difficult decisions is tiring. It can be a relief to have all decisions out of my hands, even if only for a time.

It could be any, all, or none of these reasons.  I'm not sure, but it doesn't really matter, because I do know that I crave "real" discipline, punishment, and control, that which most people would rather avoid. This need for control and discipline is a perpetual enigma which forever lives in the never-never land between fantasy and reality. 

So, sorry Belle, that is about the best I can do.  How about the rest of you? For the men who do see themselves as Alphas, Type-As . . . whatever label seems to fit . . .why do you want to dominate in some contexts but not in others?  Why do you resist authority in some contexts but crave it in others? For the wives, have you been confused by your husband’s DD and FLR desires?  Do you have some insight on what makes him tick on that front? How have you accommodated your doubts and his desires?

Have a great week.

P.S.: Some spanking drawings for Belle to illustrate positions that might work with belt and bath brush.