The Club - Meeting 329 - Attitude

Don’t let your mouth get you into something your ass can’t handle. – Unknown

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.

This one was kind of rough for me.  One of those nagging, age-related infirmities I’ve been dealing with really flared up and wrecked my plans to get back on track where exercise was concerned.  It was pretty painful, which may or may not have contributed to a spat I got into regarding someone at work. It was one of those things that you can really rationalize in the context of Domestic Discipline relationship when you are kind of hoping to avoid punishment for it.  The other person’s behavior really was out of line, and it did really need to be addressed. Yet, I feel like my reaction may have been excessive, and even if it wasn’t it created a major time sink as I dealt with the fallout of raising the issue in a very strong way. Basically, I lost my temper and didn’t really pause to make sure I was level-setting my response appropriately.  Given that my temper is one of those things that I think a good hard spanking might give me an incentive to try to control, there is a good argument that I should get one. Yet . . . I can’t quite bring myself to feel the slightest remorse or contrition about my dealings with this jerk. But, maybe it's about needing to be disciplined for not being self-disciplined because, whether the reaction as justified or not, it reflected a loss of control and letting my temper and anger dictate the course of events.

There.  I guess that was my self-report for the week.  😉  But, seriously, I did take up Liz’s challenge. Sort of.  I did report the work incident and one other issue, but I did it this morning and, thus, arguably blew the 48-hour deadline.  Though, to rationalize things once again, I sent Anne a proposal regarding self-reporting after discussing it on the blog last week, and I haven’t gotten any communication back saying she agreed with the plan.  So, we really still need to discuss it and agree to the logistics, including the deadlines.   

I also had a change of plans mid-week regarding the mechanics of self-reporting I originally envisioned using a shared electronic log, using the “Collaboration” feature on our Mac computers' word processing program, which allows you to share a document with others who can then edit it in real time.  But, later in the week I had an exchange with one of the commenters about an app called Wunderlist that we have used for a long time to share things like shopping lists and household to-do’s.  I had thought about using it for a self-reporting tool some time ago, but I didn’t really follow up.  I think I’m going to experiment with making it my primary vehicle for reporting misbehavior.  It has a few advantages:

• Secure & Confidential:  The app owner can create shared lists—such as “Behavior Log”—and invite only designated people to each list.  So, we can have a Christmas present list or household shopping list that all family members can add items to, but I also can create a Behavior Log list and invite only Anne.  Other family members will not see it on their device and they won’t get notices when an item is added. 
• Instantaneous notice:  Whenever I add a new item to the list, like “Lost temper at work,” Anne gets a notice on her app showing I added it.  And, if she has enabled notifications for that app on her phone and computer, she will see the addition and its content right away.  So, she doesn’t have to open a file periodically or login to anything to discover whether I’ve entered anything.  The other thing about instantaneous updates is as soon as I write an item on the list and hit one butt, there is no taking it back.  She now knows and there is no going back to delete or modify something before sending.  Just doing that this morning added to a sense of “inevitability,” that I think some men who are attracted to DD really want and need.
• Archiving: An item stays on the list until it is either marked as “done” or deleted, and you can choose whether completed items are deleted completely or archived.  I like that feature for two reasons. First, since an item will be marked as “completed” only after she has either spanked or otherwise punished me for it, the list just keeps accumulating until she gives me a session over the ottoman (unless she adopts the “waiver” deadline that Liz suggested – we still need to talk about that).  Second, the cumulative list of “completed,” i.e. punished tasks is something we can go over periodically to see whether behavior is improving, whether she is being diligent in correcting behavior, etc.
• Deadlines:  The app allows you to set deadlines and reminders, which are useful for tracking whether bad behavior is being addressed promptly. And, the app shows when each entry was made, which should help her monitor whether I am reporting things promptly.
• Comments: As Liz noted last time, the individual items on a log should probably be pretty short and to the point, like “lost temper at work.”  But, the app also allows you to append a longer comment to each item.
• Encouraging FLR and bossiness: The app allows the user to assign a “task” to another user.  So, if she wanted to, say, assign a chore and wasn’t there to do it in person, she could just enter a task and assign it to me along with a deadline for completing it.

So, this one app accomplishes a lot of what I wanted in a reporting tool or log.  There are, however, two issues.  First, the app was acquired by Microsoft, and they are ending support for it in June. But, they have their own app called To Do, which seems to have almost all the same functionality and which can import data from Wunderlist.  Second, I do still kind of like the idea of having an actual log or table listing offenses and punishments, perhaps with more information about the spanking or punishment itself.  Something along the lines of a log that Alan reported his girlfriend used to keep. So, I may use Wunderlist for reporting to Anne, but task myself with creating and updating a log.

Arthur reported on his efforts at self-reporting, noting that in some ways it is detracting from his communication with Liz because he always self-reported anyway, and he misses telling Liz about work-related incidents verbally over dinner.  I’m not sure the two are mutually exclusive, though for this experiment they have chosen to use the written reports as the main communication vehicle.  He did observe some positive aspects of writing things down, including making him take a closer look at some of his behavior: “On the other hand, I have made a couple entries of things I have said that I may not have mentioned in conversation because they didn't seem very arrogant until I thought about them. Is being a smart-ass a form of arrogance or just my kind of humor? I guess it's flirting around the edges of arrogance. Is that a slippery slope? Probably. I did get paddled more this week than in a long time (extra swats both Monday and Thursday) and I am not looking forward to this coming Monday. Maybe the log is showing me that I haven't made as much progress as I thought.”

So, I will keep trying to make headway on my own self-reporting and will report back in a few weeks. Though, in all likelihood reporting is not going to lead to any immediate change in our disciplinary frequency.  Danielle reported that one of their sons is living with them again for a short while, and we have a similar long-term houseguest situation going on.  I suspect it will keep us from really changing very much for at least a month.  Though, I will say I admire Danielle’s decision not to change her public demeanor, basically ensuring that her son knows that she is in charge.

But, on to this week’s topic. Arthur and I have both shared our concerns about our workplace behavior, and they are at least somewhat similar.  His concerns are about arrogance, while mine is about temper, but in both cases the behavior is about saying something that isn’t polite, is potentially hurtful, and might be unfair to the person on the receiving end of the behavior.  Or, it’s just kind of boorish and should be beneath us.  Edmund Burke said, “Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.” He was right, and I’m not proud of myself when I act that way at work.   

Worse, I have to admit that my mouth or a display of bad attitude gets me into trouble at home as well.  Like Arthur, I have a pretty sarcastic and smart-ass sense of humor, and I can sometimes take that too far.  I also can sometimes have an attitude, including to my wife.  I even catch myself in it sometimes.  She’ll ask me a question, and if I think it’s silly or uninformed I may roll my eyes.  Or, she asks me an open-ended question and I give her a one-word reply.  And, every once in a great while I will display some real temper around her, like the incident I reported on last year in which she told me to turn off a movie and go to bed and I let my temper show and let her know I thought she was nagging. 

Surprisingly, she hasn’t really resorted to her spanking authority to deal with those “attitude” issues.  In fact, it’s kind of remarkable the extent to which Domestic Discipline in our home has focused on things I do and not so much what I say or how I communicate.  In fact, I can really think of only one time that she spanked me for rudeness, when she thought something I said to the one of the kids—that I thought was a joke—crossed the line into sarcasm that left hurt feelings.  There are times I catch myself doing something like an eye roll, and I myself know I probably should be paddled hard for it.  Yet, I don’t think she’s ever spanked me for copping an attitude with her or for mouthing off.  

   
I’m not really sure why, because we have flagged disrespect as a punishable offense many times.  I think maybe it is because spankings in our house tend not to happen immediately after an offense, and during the time delay between an act of rudeness or attitude and the next spanking, she’s forgotten all about it.  Or, it’s one of those things that doesn’t reach a certain level that seems to be required for her to remember that spanking is an option to put me in my place.  I think it also may be that she has not quite made the mental leap to seeing herself not just as wife who spanks for certain offenses but as a real Head of Household and maternal figure who can and should spank simply for being disrespected. 

While I definitely do not want more or harder or longer spankings, I do think it is a mistake to let incidents of disrespect or verbal offenses slide.  They can have a really pernicious impact on a relationship.   

And, if this maternal-like grant of authority we’ve talked about means anything, surely it means I can’t get away with disrespecting her.  It's also one of those "broken window" things, in which punishing "small" things might have a larger impact. If she makes me more attuned to the need to watch my mouth at home, might that make me consider things more before popping off with something inappropriate at work?

How about you?  Does your mouth sometimes get you into things your ass can’t handle?  Are you spanked for mouthing off or saying disrespectful or rude things to your wife or others?  In this age where Thanksgiving dinners descend into ideological warfare, have you spanked or been spanked for something said to a friend, relative, co-worker, service provider, etc.  Do you think you should be?  

For the wives, do you spank as often for things your husband says as for things he does or fails to do?  Is disrespect or discourtesy something you let slide too often? If you have spanked him for such things, is there a certain special satisfaction in being able to use spanking or other punishment to take him down a peg?

I hope you have a great week.