The Club - Meeting 346 - Better

"My dad will hide me anyway but hell, its worth a hiding! Let's do it! What do ya say?" - Chris Chambers in Stand by Me

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 all had a great week. Mine was pretty sedate in terms of actual workload, yet stressful at the same time. I’ve reported in the past that I was approaching an inflection point in my career, and now it is really happening.  All in all, I think it is a good thing, even if a little unsettling. In the end, it’s time to stop doing something that stopped being fun a long time ago. 

  

But, I am finding that shutting down something you spent 25 years building is every bit as hard as it should be. Much of last week was spent letting people know that I’m transitioning out, and that was hard. It also proved hard on my body, as several of those conversations ended up involving too many “virtual” happy hours with cocktails that were all too real. Part of my regrets the excessiveness of it all, but another part of me maintains it is worth it in the end, if I separate with the people who cared about me and who I cared about feeling like I took the time to hang out and engage.  Did it earn me a spanking? Probably. Was it worth it? Probably. Hence the quote above.

I hope all of you in the U.S. had a good holiday weekend. Ours was pretty low key.  Spent time hanging out at our vacation condo.  One of the kids and his/her significant other hung out with us.  Did some walks with the dogs and did a very nice motorcycle ride today.  All the while respecting social distancing and mask wearing rules.  Do you get the impression that mask wearing seems to be what separates states that are doing OK from those that aren’t? 

We are in one of the states that opened earlier than maybe we should have, yet we aren’t seeing a big upsurge in cases. Could that be because we are a purple state that didn’t turn mask wearing into some idiotic political statement? Yeah, I kind of think that had something to do with it. Don’t agree with me? We can debate it later.

  

I almost posted another notice saying “No Post This Week.”  I keep finding myself running out of time on the weekends. I think that is probably a good indicator that things are going in the right direction, because I am spending very little time working on the weekends these days (unlike most of my 25 year career), yet I’m staying busy with family, hobbies, and friends.  Speaking of friends, I had one those “synchronicity” moments a couple of weekends ago.  We went to a graduation party at some friends’ house, and they were serving Busch beer. Busch isn’t really a thing here (is it anywhere?), so it kind of caught my attention in light of the fact that just a couple of hours before I had seen this meme that I thought was amusing:

Now, thankfully despite these fun and productive weekends,  I ended up not needing to completely punt on a topic again, as Tomy had so nicely provided me with a suggestion earlier in the week. He sent me an email stating:

A topic might be something like specific examples of results that benefited the home etc. I know you have mentioned better behavior at work and the implied benefit is there. This is more like asking for detailed examples.  

Arthur mentioned being a "better employee." It brought to mind the story a couple from the old DWC days. The man married a woman who had a teenage son. She was an unapologetic spanking disciplinarian and if the kid messed up, had a bad report card, etc. she took him in the bedroom and spanked the daylights out of him.

Hubby did a lot of his work out of the home - maybe accounting - I don't recall. I think there as some element of it that she helped him with.  It was a small house and hubby, who didn't even know he had a spanking interest, clearly heard everything, and found himself basically turned on by it. He wrote to Aunt Kay and she encouraged him to talk to his wife about it which he did. She agreed on the condition that there could absolutely be no changing his mind.

What resulted in the long run was that their business improved dramatically to the point of their upgrading their home and lifestyle.

So, that is the topic for this week. Are there examples you can give of ways in which Domestic Discipline has benefited not just one of the two parties most directly involved but the household as a whole? 

There isn’t any question in my mind that DD has benefited our household as a whole, though some of it has been indirect. A few that come to mind:

• We found DD at a time in which both of us were increasingly frustrated with my behavior. If something had not come around that (a) gave her more control; and (b) imposed some boundaries on my behavior, I think we could have been heading toward something like Liz has recounted, with her moving out and taking the kids with her. Now, I don’t know that things would have headed in that direction, but it is definitely within the range of likely possibilities. So, without DD there is some chance we would not have had a household at all.

• Similarly, I think that DD kept things kinky and interesting, such that we didn’t really hit that “seven year itch” thing that really does seem to lead couples to look around at alternatives every seven years or so. Interestingly, we started doing DD a little more than 7 years into our marriage, at a point where things weren’t going all that smoothly. In the period since, we have never hit the kind of impasse that other couples seem to hit. I have to wonder whether that is because DD and FLR (a) led to growth on her part that kept her interesting to me; and (b) kept me from fucking up so badly that she would have shown me the door.

• I’m not really sure whether DD has enhanced my career and my contribution to our household earnings over time. But, I am pretty sure that the confidence and better self-image Anne got as a result of it improved her career significantly. Again, while the cause and effect is not perfectly linear, I think that DD gave her the self-confidence to change her career direction, to get an advanced degree, and to take on leadership roles in her career.  When I listen to her on a Zoom call with colleagues today, there is a confidence there that I am not so sure would have resisted without her taking on a leadership role at home.

• My wife grew up with what I consider a pretty piss-poor example of a wife and mother’s role. Her dad worked. Her mom raised the kids mostly without his help.  He drank and hung out with his buddies. She got pissy and confined him to the couch, but other than that, did little or nothing about it. I think that thanks to DD, our kids saw a more productive approach, with an empowered wife who drew meaningful lines and was her own advocate.

• I know my kids have benefited from me thinking before I talk or, more pointedly, tease. I never intentionally hurt feelings, but the prospect of being spanked if I said something hurtful certainly made me think twice about saying something that might have been taken the wrong way and caused resentment.

So, those are my thoughts on concrete benefits of DD for the family as a whole. What can you tell us about how it has helped your household and the people in it?