The Club - Meeting #386 - Others

“A man who can't bear to share his habits is a man who needs to quit them.” ― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

 

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 good week.  

 

 

I’m still really loving this time of year.  The trees have mostly turned where we live, and morning walks with the dogs have taken on a whole new luster. Also, is it just me, or did people put up Halloween decorations much earlier this year?  It seems like the Halloween holiday used to be a pretty time-bound event, with decorations staying up for only a few days around October 31^st.  This year, however, in our neighborhood a whole slew of people put outdoor decorations up on October 1^st or thereabouts.  Personally, I love that it and hope people do the same next year. 

 

We have not, however, been invited to any live Halloween events this year – perhaps such gatherings are still victims of Covid restrictions?  We also don’t have many people in our social circle who are into the kind of social events that could make Halloween even more fun as an adult that it was as a kid.

 

 I’m sorry for not posting again last week.  I was busy with some other stuff over the weekend, though in the interests of full disclosure, I also just did not have much interest in posting anything DD-related.  It isn’t uncommon for me to lose all interest in DD and blogging, but it seems like the cycles used to last longer.  I would be intensely interested for many weeks but then might hit a month-long dry spell. This year, it seems like I’m interested for a week or two then completely lose interest for a week.  Part of the issue may be that I simply don’t need DD as much right now, in two related senses. About this time last year, I hit what may have been a big inflection point where dysfunctional behavior was concerned.  I was coming of a hugely stressful period at work, then started setting the stage for a major career transition, and thanks to Covid it was a rare day that someone didn’t schedule a virtual happy in order to foster a continuing sense of “team” while everyone was working from home.  I also was dealing with a painful, chronic health issue.  It all added up to frequent bad behavior that meant I needed DD in the sense of I richly deserved it.  And, since my particular DD interest is heavily driven by accountability and exceeding boundaries, my subjective, internal need for DD and the structure it imposes also was running high. Now, however, the converse is true.  My behavior is WAY better than it was this time last year, so she feels less need to initiate any kind of correction, and I’m not doing nearly as many bad things that would result in me wanting to be held accountable.  Unfortunately, that also sometimes translates into a declining interest not just in DD but in DD blogging.  Anyway, we’ll just have to see how that develops over time.

 

I hope that you all have been tracking some of the developments in ZM’s relationship, particularly that (a) his wife opened up more or less fully to a friend that he is spanked and that it is discipline, not kink; and (b) there is a real prospect of him being spanked in front of a witness at some point.  It has been feeding into him being, as he describes it, “almost obsessive about wanting someone to know about” his DD activities.

 

I definitely understand being obsessed about DD and/or certain DD topics.  When I first discovered the Disciplinary Wives Club, it became an instant obsession, as did telling my wife about it.  After we started experimenting with it, I was probably still feeling some of that obsession when I told one of our mutual friends about it. 

 

 

I don’t think I have quite ZM’s level of obsession with witnesses and others knowing, but I do feel some of it and certainly commiserate with him on how that kind of obsession can drive you. Thinking through some of the issues he’s raised recently, it occurred to me that for me, others knowing has a stronger emotional force than others witnessing.

 

For example, I get very turned on my art that depicts someone seeing or commenting on the after-effects of a hard spanking, but not so much by someone witnessing the spanking itself.

 

 

I also have a thing for a spanking being heard, though not necessarily seen, and even more so to art or pictures that depict or suggest the recipient telling someone that they got spanked, perhaps as an additional part of the punishment.

 

    

I'm not sure why I have more of a reaction to scenes where some third-party knows about a spanking but doesn't necessarily witness it.  Maybe it’s as simple as, sometimes less is more where erotic visual stimuli are concerned.  I’ve always gotten more turned on by pictures of partially or almost nude women than I do at more open displays of full nudity.

 

I also suspect that this may be one of the few areas in which my current interest in DD and spanking may be related to things from childhood.  Corporal punishment was very open in the culture when I was growing up, yet I only really recall witnessing a single spanking.  Given how prevalent it was, I probably did witness a few others, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if others witnessed me being spanked, but I don’t have any memory of it. 

 

What I do remember is knowing that friends or cousins were being spanked or were about to be or just had been.  I don’t really recall hearing those spankings, but I remember being very aware of them.  Hell, for the longest time I thought that the whole purpose of a “cry room” in church was to give the parents a place to take unruly kids for a quick, efficient spanking. So, I think that for me it was the contemporaneous awareness of spanking discipline that was both a deterrent to bad behavior and a source of morbid curiosity.

 

While thinking about ZM’s current situation, a somewhat new angle on the whole topic of others knowing did occur to me.  While for me it doesn't really rise to the level of an obsession, I do get the perverse, almost morbid curiosity that underlies our interest in witnesses and others knowing. Plainly, many are interested in thinking or fantasizing about it.  Yet, very few ever act on the desire to bring their status as disciplined husbands (or disciplinary wives) more out into the open.  Why is that, do you think?

 

Assuming that you are, like most of us, more or less closeted where your DD relationship is concerned, what is it that holds you back from letting others know? Is there a specific social or professional stigma that leads you to keep it secret from most others?  Are there particular people or groups of people that you are most concerned about finding out?  Why? What do you think would happen if those people were to find out?  Would there be big ramifications, or do we over-estimate how much anyone would really care?

For me, my biggest concern about others knowing was seemingly very practical.  I was in a very conservative, traditional, and competitive profession.  I believed then, and I believe now, that there would have been professional blowback if my status as a disciplined husband were widely known in the office or to others I had to interact with professionally and often in competitive situations.  Also, for a long time I had in the back of my mind that I might run for public office sometime or go for a job that might require a security clearance, and I was pretty sure how something like being outed as a spanking blogger might impact those kinds of opportunities.

 

The thought of family members knowing also makes me squirm and, again, I’m not sure why.  I recall seeing one of my sisters get spanked, yet I would never want her to know I am spanked as an adult (though, in fairness, we don’t have much of an ongoing relationship).   

 

Somewhat similarly, my mother obviously knows I have been spanked, because when I was a kid she did the spanking.  Yet, I would be very embarrassed if she found out I am now spanked as an adult, even if she probably has a lot of insight into how my temperament and behavior might lead my wife to relish taking on that role.   

Finally, I am probably most resistant to male friends knowing, though that one I at least understand a bit. With them, it’s not just a fear of being rejected or scorned but, rather, we don’t really talk about anything related to our sex lives or anything very intimate about our marriages, so it would seem odd to have spanking be the one such thing that was out on the table.

 

 

Will Anne ever tell others? Honestly, I don’t know.  She doesn’t seem to have any friends who would be likely confidantes on that kind of thing, and so far she has never expressed any particular interest in letting others know.  If anything, she is more resistant to the idea than I am.  But, if there is one thing I’ve learned about these relationships it is, as ZM is learning now, never say never.

 

I hope you all have a great week.