“Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club. Our (more or less) 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.
I know I said I wasn’t going to post this week, but I woke up this morning and felt like engaging a bit on DD stuff, though I can’t say I have any particular topic in mind. Honestly, between the ongoing war in Ukraine and the Kentanji Brown Jackson hearings, I’ve been way too obsessed with the daily news cycle, and this morning I finally succeeded in shutting off CNN and all my news feeds for a while. And, while I don’t want to make light of anything happening in Ukraine right now, I did see this Ukraine-related meme recently that I thought was pretty damn funny:
As I said, I don’t have much of a topic in mind for this week, so I thought I’d give a general update and respond to a couple of reader comments. I talked a few weeks ago about efforts to self-report more diligently. For the most part, I’ve kept it up. Though, as I said in the most recent post, the perhaps inevitable byproduct of reporting more regularly is also trying to talk my way out of it more. I’m trying to get better about that too, but it’s definitely a work in progress.
I accept that trying to get out of deserved spankings is something I need to find a way to stop doing, but it’s also kind of a two-way street. Anne and I have talked a lot about how this kind of relationship works better when the wife really takes up the reins and starts seeing spanking (and other punishments) as a go-to tool to address things that she thinks need to change, and it works less well the more I feel I’m in control of the process. Yet, no matter how much we talk about it, it never quite seems to really take hold. A recent example involved me once again forgetting to lock the door to our house when I left, which she has made clear is a big deal to her. In this particular case, I actually thought I did lock it, but apparently not. While I was out, she sent a text with a picture of the lock and emoji that made it abundantly clear how she felt about it.
Given all our discussions, I thought the next line of our text exchange would be her telling me I was in for a hard spanking, but it didn’t happen. At some point, I keep thinking that something in her mind will click, and she’ll start thinking in the ordinary course that an if she’s mad enough to send an angry emoji then she’s mad enough to take up the paddle and address the situation until I’m in lots of pain and she’s satisfied I've learned a lesson. But, it doesn’t seem to happen.
When we talk about all of this, it’s often in the context of me emphasizing that I really do want her to be strict with me. Though, it occurred to me a few weeks ago that I wasn’t even sure myself about exactly what I mean by “strict.” I actually looked it up in the thesaurus and decided that I may actually be using the wrong word when I describe what it is I think I need. Here are a couple of distinctions I found helpful:
“The adjective strict always has to do with rules. Your strict parents enforced rules and expected you to obey them. Your cousin might be a strict vegetarian who always follows her own rules about what to eat. Strict laws demand to be followed, and a strict follower of the First Amendment supports free speech no matter what. The Latin root of strict is strictus, which means "drawn together, tight, or rigid." A rigid adherence to rules is exactly what makes someone strict.” (from www.vocabulary.com)
“How is the word strict distinct from other similar adjectives? Some common synonyms of strict are rigid, rigorous, and stringent. While all these words mean "extremely severe or stern," strict emphasizes undeviating conformity to rules, standards, or requirements.” (from Merriam-Webster.com)
I guess a “rigid adherence to [her] rules] is part of when I mean when I say I want her to be strict, but it’s only part and probably not the most important part. I think the word that more closely fits what I feel like I need is “stern.” For that word, www.vocabulary.com offers this:
“You know when you've done something really wrong, and the person who gets you in trouble has that unforgiving look on his face? The best word for that look is stern, meaning "strict" or "severe."”
It even expressly references a linguistic relationship between discipline and sternness:
adjective severe and unremitting in making demands
“a stern disciplinarian”
We’ve had some exchanges recently regarding what exactly it is that drives our DD interest and how much of it is particularly focused on spanking, versus some even deeper attachment to female authority. When I think about what makes me tick and what led me to my initial obsession with this lifestyle, I think a lot of it was reflected in stories I read on the Disciplinary Wives Club website in which the wives displayed a mix of unyielding adherence to the rules, i.e. spanking whenever one had been earned, and a tone which made it clear they were very serious about what they were going to do.
I still find this
advice from Aunt Kay particularly instructive regarding the whole concept of being taken in hand by a woman with and appropriately stern attitude:
“Attitude is the whole thing in spanking a man. You can work on improving your techniques over time, but you have to start with the right attitude. Think about it. How many times and in how many ways has he shown you that he is basically a spoiled brat, little boy, in a grown man’s body? A million, two million? That's what you are dealing with and if our world wasn't so confused it would be normal for the woman of the house to wield the moral authority and the hairbrush without a second thought.” (emphasis added)
It's that overt display of authority, combined with picking up the brush without a second thought, that I feel like I need and that I hope we are going to work on a lot now that we have more freedom in terms of both time and being in an empty nest.
Paradoxically though, while I consciously feel like I want her to display more and more stern authority, my subconscious seems more ambivalent and also seems to feel like it’s happening more than I appreciate. I’ve had several dreams recently in which Anne is either (a) having an affair with another man and displaying it openly without any concern for how I feel about it; or (b) generally acting kind of haughty or dismissive of me. In the dreams, I’m always upset about the situation, but after I wake up and live with the dream for a while, there is an undeniably attractive erotic edge to it.
Looping back briefly to the subject of reporting, I wanted to share this that ZM sent me:
It is a box he built by hand to self-report to his wife on certain things that might not seem to bear reporting immediately but that she still might want to address. I really like the concept of the box being openable only by her, such that once he rats himself out, he loses control over that confession. I also am very envious of people who have the ability to build something like this from scratch, as I do not have a craftsman-like bone in my body.
On another topic, in a comment on last week’s post, ZM shared a recent event in which his wife invited a friend over while he was being punished. While the friend did not participate or see it happening, she was there in the house and knew it was going on. Alan commented on how this situation probably differs from something like attending a spanking party with people who all share “spanko” interests. I thought the whole comment was very thought-provoking:
But it has to be different in DD relationships where discipline is the focus and one’s ego is very involved and usually the third party is not a spanko as such.
I don’t really remember how I felt in the days and weeks after my initial public spankings. I do remember the mix of burning embarrassment and erotic fascination that bubbled up in me early after.
But then I think I went into a fairly long reflective period about what had happened and what I wanted and even who I really was. All the defenses come down for a while and amid the clarity seems to come some lethargy. Looking back on it I think I must have been reflecting on whether I really wanted to be a spanked boyfriend (husband), did I really want to think of myself that way, and in particular did I want others to know or see it.
Moving DD spanking from a private world to public is a huge psychological step for both partners, so you wife might be going through some sort of reflective pause also. For both my former GF and my wife it was sort of a victory lap, probably partly because of my initial reaction to it. For me I think it was a kind of integration of the role spanking now played in my life.
For me I think a lot of the fantasy was gone and I missed that. But having the real thing was more than worth it. But that all took some time.
Although I haven’t been spanked in any kind of public or semi-public
setting, I do think I get what Alan is talking about regarding how some
spanking or disciplinary experiences can push you into a very reflective
state. I still recall fairly vividly one
of the first times she gave me a very hard spanking for something “minor,” i.e.
failing to do some assigned chore. It
wasn’t the spanking itself, as much as the reason for it and her strictness and
sternness in ordering it and carrying it out.
There was something a little disturbing in the whole situation. It is
what I had been asking for, and here I was getting it for the first time. It definitely triggered some of those “do I
really want to be a spanked husband” thoughts that Alan refers to. I remember feeling kind of pensive and reflective for many days afterward.
One other very short point I wanted to raise with this group. We’ve talked a lot about how crying may be more dependent on duration than severity. About two weeks ago, I had one of my more typical behavioral slip-ups, and Anne ended up giving me a very long spanking for it; probably one of the longest she has ever given me. It still wasn’t long enough to bring me to tears. Moreover, for some reason that I can’t quite figure out, I actually felt pretty close to crying almost as soon as lowered myself over her knees. It wasn’t because of anything like an abnormally high level of remorse.
I hope you all have a great week.
