The Club - Meeting 403 - Anticipation

Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.” -- Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

 

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.  Mine was pretty good.  Nothing major on the disciplinary or “real life” front.  I do feel like I may have at least started to turn a corner on a period of some disappointing behavior.  As usual, it seems like I have to make serious effort on every front in order to stay in line on any front.  After drifting on several fronts, last week I seemed to finally get dedicated to getting my shit together on several things at once, including alcohol, exercise and diet.  I had let the diet really slip, but I feel like I’m finally getting back on track where health and fitness are concerned.  That’s good, because at my age things can go downhill fast.

 

 

We had a good discussion last week, I think.  It was all about the participation level, not the number of viewers.  Participation was up, even though the number of daily views has stayed static or fallen.  I’m very OK with that.  It’s the number of participants that determines the quality of the conversation, not the number of viewers.

 

A hearty welcome back to both Alan and al.  One of al’s comments was the source of inspiration for this week’s post.  He discussed an incident in which his wife took her mom shopping but came back to take care of some business:

 

“Before she left I had done something to earn a spanking but the kids were still there, so she told me that would be back later after they left to take care of that. Well, a couple of hours later, I saw her car pull up, and her Mom in the car with her. I watched as she got out of the car, leaving the car running and her Mom in the car. She walked in the front door, ordered me to the bedroom and paddled me as her Mom waited in the car. My wife usually spanks briskly so she delivered the usual hundred in short order, and left me sniffling on the bed as she rejoined her Mom and left again. Later, she told me that she had told her Mom she had to stop by to go over a few things with me before I left for the afternoon - and that she would only be a couple of minutes.

 

Even though Mom apparently never left the car, I think I would have found it terrifying to get spanked knowing that my wife’s mother, or mine, was sitting in the car outside and could come wandering in at any time.

 

 

It also raised the issue of “anticipation” in two different respects. First, there was the anticipation following his wife’s declaration that he had earned a spanking and his wife would be back later to take care of it.  Second was the anticipation when she arrived back at the house unexpectedly to take care of it.

 

We’ve covered this topic several times before, but al’s comment put me in the mood to hit it again.

 

I go back and forth about the ideal role of anticipation.  On one hand, I do believe that immediate consequences are best when it comes to modifying behavior. 

 

Yet, I also believe there is value in giving us time to think about what we’ve done and really mull over the upcoming consequence.

 

I’m struck by the way the two time periods in al’s comment are somewhat similar to those in one of my favorite stories on the DWC website, Even More, which I understand al. wrote.  In that story, a husband rants to his wife on the phone about something, she gets fed up and tells him he is going to get spanked when she gets home from work that day.  Later that afternoon, she calls to tell him she is on the way and he needs to be ready for his spanking when she gets home.

 

For me, those two pronouncements reflect just the right amount of anticipation.  She orders a spanking that will happen that same day, reinforces it with a call shortly before it is to take place, and in between the two announcements are several hours for him to worry about what is going to happen to his behind when she arrives home.

 

The trade-off with anticipation is, of course, the immediacy of correcting something right after it happens. Yet, even then there is a short and probably intense period of anticipation, which I assume al. experienced when his wife pulled into the driveway unexpectedly and announced he was going to get it.

 

 

The anticipation of school spankings was also brief but intense.  While it wasn’t long, there was usually some substantial number of minutes between sentence and execution; plenty of time to worry about what was to come.

 

 

While I can think of dozens of instances of feeling butterflies in my stomach about an anticipated spanking, one that always comes to mind is when, early on in our DD experimentation, my wife ordered me to drive home for a spanking.  I swear, that was the longest 20-minute drive of my entire life.  I think I would have a similar reaction if she were to text or call to say she would be home in a few minutes to deliver a promised spanking. I can’t think of an example of that actually happening, and I think I would remember it.  Though, I’m prone to more “senior moments” these days, so perhaps it did happen once or twice that I don’t recall.

 

There also are a couple of forms of anticipation that do not work for me but might for others.  First, if a spanking is ordered but doesn’t happen for several days, by the time it actually does occur, it has lost most of its emotional force.  Accountability and penance are big parts of the driver of my need for discipline, and after a few days the connection between the crime and the punishment has weakened to the point that it loses most of its emotional and corrective force.

 

 

Second, there have been a few times when she has sent me up to the room to await a spanking then she’s taken a very long time to come up and take care of it.  For some reason, that form of anticipation has no positive impact.  Kind of the reverse. I get annoyed, which is basically the opposite of being humbled into submission. Somewhat similarly, corner time does nothing for me, before or after a spanking.  I’ve meditated for many years, and as soon as I go into the corner, my mind slips right into a meditative state and I feel more or less nothing.

 

 What is the ideal amount of anticipation for you? Does something like al’s example or the Even More story, in which there is a few hours of steady anticipation then a shorter period in which you’ve been told it is about to happen, change the emotional impact?

 

One thing I’m not sure we’ve ever really discussed is the effect of anticipation on the wives.  How long is their ideal?  If they were irritated or angered by the offense that earned the spanking, does that diminish or build as the duration of the anticipation increases?  

 

It would be great if people share their own best example of anticipation, whether when it really worked to amplify the experience, or when it didn't. How long did it last?  What did it do to you mentally and emotionally?  What state did it put you in?  Scared? Exited?  Contrite?  Annoyed? Do you have any particularly strong memories of anticipating a particular punishment?

 

I would also love to hear from the Disciplinary Wives on this one. What state does anticipating giving a spanking put you in?  Powerful?  Annoyed?  Turned on? All of the above?

 

Have a great week.

The Club - Meeting 402 - Embarrassment, Authority & Bitchiness

"I'm tough, I'm ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay." ―Madonna

 

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 good week.  

The discussion on the blog perked up a little.  I’m sure part of the reason that participation dropped in the first place was a lack of diligence on my part in posting regularly.  I recognize, by the way, the irony of griping from time to time about the ill effects of a lack of consistency in the application of discipline to our naughty bottoms, while not taking care to avoid the ill effects of inconsistency while trying to maintain participation here.  I’ll try to do better in the future. 

There was some good stuff in the comments last week.  Here are a few excerpts that seemed worthy of following up on.

MW: “Combining today’s topics, I wonder if a small real world community could be the next step for the blog, if there were a way to safely do it. I read somewhere that the DWC community would require a simple phone call to weed out problematic members. Just a thought.”

worth thinking about and, rest assured, I have thought about it.  I need to think through what that might look like, and I’m happy to do so. Also happy to take suggestions, either here in the comments or by email.

Several other commenters talked about their experiences or fantasies with various “openness” scenarios my post had asked about.

Alan: “Imagine a world where husband discipline was both common and open enough to allow that sort of sharing among wives. It is a 10 on my fantasy meter although in practice I would probably dread it. Consider what leverage a wife would have just threatening her husband to send him to X, known perhaps as an especially strict disciplinarian or just for the embarrassment of reporting to another women for discipline. 

It might be fun as an experience once or twice but beyond that I think it would turn the average DD husband into an angel to avoid it happening.

 Or imagine what Tomy must have felt when the husband of the woman who was going to spank him answered the door when he arrived (I believe he related an experience similar to this.) Just the trust and communication that would be necessary among couples to make this work is fascinating.”

 

ZM: “On the other hand, I was talking with my wife last night about how it was when we were kids - albeit from different cultures. At home, spankings were generally administered privately, but often others heard the spanking taking place. Plus there was the whole being taken out of the room and then the embarrassment of coming back into the room. And sometimes spankings in homes did happen in front of others, though rarely. But either way, we generally knew when our friends (and even more so those we didn’t like) were spanked, because people talked.”

T: “Although, she has a childhood friend that she talks to, who lives across the country, I overheard a conversation one day, and her friend was complaining about her husband, my wife’s response was, no way T would have done that. I would have beat his ass.”

There were a few things that struck me about these and other examples people provided.

First, each of these three excerpts got a reaction from me.  Butterfly feelings in my loins and/or gut.  A common theme uniting them all is embarrassment.  I have a similar feeling reaction to Alan’s reference to Tomy being greeted at the door by the husband of the woman who is going to spank him, to ZM’s observance about the embarrassment of coming back into the classroom after being spanked in the principal’s office, and to T’s overhearing his wife tell a friend about how she would have beat his ass had he misbehaved in the same way his friend did.

Second, I don’t seem to get that same reaction when it comes to discussions of group spankings.  There has to be some actual authority being exercised over the husband for the scene to give me any real emotional reaction.

Third, I seem not to be the only one for whom being subject to someone’s authority is more threatening to the ego than simply being spanked in front of witnesses.  Or, perhaps the issue is that some of the wives find it easier to spank in front of someone than to exercise verbal authority publicly. I noticed that multiple people had attended spanking parties or been involved in some kind of group spanking activity, yet those same people had not been subject to some overt show of authority.

 

For me, I think these two aspects of DD and FLR relationships—authority and embarrassment—are intimately connected.  While I don’t like seeing other people embarrassed, part of me clearly gravitates toward the prospect of being embarrassed by my wife showing authority over me. As I said to ZM in a comment, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of the few spanking dreams I have involve spankings that are about to be carried out in situations in which others know it is about to happen or involve others finding out that I’m a spanked husband.

Relatedly, while last week’s topic centered on various scenarios regarding “openness,” I think the reason I am attracted to openness is not so much a desire to communicate about DD but, rather, something more along the lines of this other excerpt from ZM’s comment:

“But either way, whether given publicly or privately, the one common factor in school spankings in both countries is EVERYONE knew about them, and there was enormous embarrassment and teasing (sometimes met with some arrogant pride) for the unfortunate recipient.

I think this is what I really want and crave, though can of course never fully experience. I want spanking to be common and acceptable enough, at least within a small, selected group of people - or even one person - around me, that when a spanking occurs, it can be openly talked about and laughed about, with all the surrounding feelings, embarrassment, shame, and teasing. But on a wider scale, I kind of want DD to remain a shared naughty secret.”

 

For me, I think the prospect of “openness” does cause embarrassment, but for the embarrassment to have that perverse attraction ZM is getting at, it has to be in the context of some kind of show of authority.  A group spanking scenario seems more like playacting or like a BDSM scene. For me, the embarrassment around the prospect of “openness” comes from someone exercising their authority over me, or someone witnessing or knowing about that imposition of authority, not from the spanking itself.  (I’m speaking theoretically, since I haven’t been spanked in front of anyone else.)  

Further, someone else knowing about it doesn’t have the emotional force if I’m the one doing the disclosing.  T’s scenario, on the other hand, does have some emotional force for me, even though it didn’t involve any real spanking at all and, instead, only a statement from his wife to a friend that his wife would have spanked him under certain conditions. The conversation was itself a demonstration of authority.

 

So, for me, embarrassment that stimulates an edgy reaction seems to require both some openness about having been spanked or the prospect of being spanked plus some expression or communication about it that reflects my wife’s authority.  Alan’s reference to Tomy being sent to another wife for a spanking really hits me, because it involves such an open show of authority by both wives.

In addition to the power exchange involved, I think these instances of what I guess you could call “imposed openness” involves wives who seem to have no shortage of confidence. They impose these instances of openness because they are so supremely self-confident that they have the authority to do so.  Exercising that level of self-assuredness is, to me, incredibly sexy.

 

As I was thinking about this, I thought about a topic I think I’ve covered only once, back in 2015, namely “bitchiness.” I think many women struggle with overt displays of authority, because they have concerns about being perceived as bitchy.  Yet, I think getting over that concern is probably necessary to really taking the reins, whether in a marriage or a career.  Here is a slightly edited version of part of the post from 2015:

“A few weeks ago, I was at a happy hour with a group of younger members of my office. A discussion ensued in which a couple of our high potential, but somewhat junior, female leaders bemoaned the fact their male subordinates treated them with less respect than they showed to male superiors, including not doing their work in as timely a manner, reacting badly to constructive feedback, and not prioritizing their work assignments.

 I asked what seemed to me to be a fairly logical follow-up question: "Why do you let them get away with it?  If you repeatedly let them treat you with disrespect, don't you share some of the blame for letting that power dynamic fester?" 

An awkward silence followed.  So, I pressed forward a bit, pointing out that it isn't like they don't have tools at their disposal to slap someone down if they are ignoring orders, not responding quickly, etc.  Pull them into your office for a stern lecture, don't put them on key projects, give them a lousy annual review, etc.  If these guys weren't showing appropriate respect to female superiors, then why weren't those superiors making them pay a price for it?

After another uncomfortable silence, one of them offered up a very honest answer: "Because they will see me as a bitch and call me one when I'm not around."  To which I answered, "So?"  Another awkward silence.

"Seriously," I said, "do you think that a male superior would put up with that shit? And, after that male superior slaps a subordinate down, do you think that subordinate doesn't call him a dick, or an asshole, or some similar derogatory word, under the subordinate’s breath as he’s scurrying out of the office with his tail between his legs?" 

They continued to insist it just isn't the same thing, and I continued to ask why, without getting much more than, "It just is."  It was one of those discussions where the perspectives of the people on opposing sides of the conversation were just so different that there plainly wasn't enough common ground for us to really get anywhere.  So, we dropped it and went back to talking about whatever.” 

 

I do think that women generally worry way more about being perceived as bitches than they should.  Certainly way more than most men worry about being called “dicks” or “assholes.”  Or, at least men seem to be more willing to get past their concerns to get the job done.  Am I right about that? 

I hope we’ll get a few wives joining in for this discussion.  Is the prospect of being seen as a "bitch" or being overly assertive an impediment to taking on a DD or FLR leadership role?  Do you hold back in ordering discipline or in making decisions in your relationship because you are, deep down inside, concerned about being seen as "bitchy" or overly aggressive? Do you have those feelings even if he has told you he wants you to be more stern and strict? Do you think that maybe, given his desires to be in a DD or FLR relationship, he might actually get off on overt, stern, aggressive displays of authority?

I hope you all have a great week.

 

The Club - Meeting 401 - Degrees of Openness

Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip. - Will Rogers

 

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.  

 

It’s been another slow couple of weeks here on the blog. I’m actually a little concerned about one of our most regular regulars.  Alan, are you OK?  I’m hoping you’re just out on a long vacation or something.   

 

This is one big problem with relationships that are anonymous and exist purely on-line; it’s very hard to determine what happened when a person you’ve come to like and value just suddenly stops being there.

 

I have to admit the quietness makes me wonder whether the blog has hit a point of rapidly diminishing returns. A few weeks ago, someone (I forget who) speculated that maybe this whole topic of DD and spanking has run out of gas, not just on this blog but generally.  I’m not sure that something that never took off outside a very small niche is ever in danger of having reached peak cultural penetration, but who knows?

 

I also think sometimes that blogging as a whole is in decline.  Certainly, more visually-oriented media like TikTok and YouTube seem to be taking the place of other forms of media, particularly those that take some substantial time to engage with or digest.

 

Then there are the limitations of Blogger as a platform.  It’s clearly not one of Alphabet’s priorities for technology and marketing investments, and it seems like every time they change something it becomes more klugy.

 

There is no danger of me walking away from the blog in the near future, and I don’t think I’d ever take it down just to take it down.  I’ve never quite understood bloggers who run out of gas and decide to take the blog down entirely. Why? It’s not like it costs anything to keep it up.

 

I don’t feel like I’m done with writing and engaging with others who are into Domestic Discipline.  I’m just wondering whether this platform for those discussions has run out of fuel.  In the past, I couldn’t think of any alternatives that weren’t subject to the same limitations.  Lately, I’ve had some other thoughts. Stay tuned.

 

Like I said, it's not that I'm done with DD.  In fact, it’s been on my mind a lot lately.  I’ve always thought it kind of odd that I don’t dream about DD or spanking very often, given how much time I’ve put into thinking and writing about it.  

 

It seems like my subconscious is mulling over certain aspects of it more these days.  In the last couple of weeks I’ve had at least three dreams with themes involving either telling people about our DD relationship, knowing others are about to find out, or DD couples getting together.  My subconscious clearly seems to be mulling the whole “openness” thing. 

 

To the point that it may even be trying to “out” me. Anne and I took a trip recently.  I have two locking suitcases at home, one a little bigger than the other.  I had been storing most of our spanking tools in the bigger suitcase but decided I wanted to use that one for our trip.  So, I transferred all the spanking tools to the smaller suitcase.

 

At least, I thought I did.  When I got to our hotel and unpacked some clothes, I found a leather tawse pressed all the way against one side of the suitcase; a side that had been oriented away from my line of sight as I was packing.

 

The tawse wasn't the only spanking instrument in the bag, but it was the only unambigously so. I had brought her ebony hairbrush with us.  If my suitcase were to be searched by TSA, an agent who wasn’t kinky probably wouldn’t think anything about the brush.  On the other hand, one who was into it him/herself might wonder or even surmise that in our relationship its intended use isn't brushing hair bur, rather roasting bottoms.  But, they wouldn’t really know.  

 

A tawse on the other hand?  They wouldn’t know which of us was the receiver and which the giver, but there wouldn’t be much doubt about the basic fact that we were into spanking in some form or fashion.

 

My bag was not, in fact, searched on either leg of our trip, but it could have been.  I honestly don’t know how I would react if some official went rummaging through my bag and found something so obviously spanking related.  I’m sure they come across vibrators and other sexual paraphernalia all the time.  I don’t know whether a tawse would even make the average TSA agent’s Top-10 list of most interesting or amusing items found in passengers’ bags.

 

Given my subconscious mind’s nocturnal wanderings around themes of being discovered or found out, or interacting with other couples, maybe I even sort of want to be discovered? 

 

Maybe, though I haven't taken a lot of action in that direction even though, looking back at some posts from a couple of years ago, it seems like I was in this same mind-space back then.  As I said then, in pertinent part:

 

***

[Last year], I was going through a phase in which I wanted to have deeper, more meaningful communications and relationships with people who are into this lifestyle, including some of the regular commenters on this blog. I also found myself increasingly wanting people, or at least certain people, to know about this aspect of my life or to know more about it. 

 

Moreover, as I observed at that time, I am constantly reminded of how hard it is for my wife to punish bad behavior consistently and with some degree of immediacy when we are so paranoid about anyone else catching on to our relationship dynamic. It’s an irritant, because the part of me that was fascinated by DD from the moment I first encountered it also seems to gravitate toward the “humbling” impact of her exercising her authority more openly and about others knowing that she’s the boss. None of that has really changed over the last year. If anything, it's grown as I reach a point in my life where the possible risks of being exposed seem less and less weighty.

 

Yet, my adventures in openness have been pretty tame so far.  I wear a pendant that a few people who are in the BDSM community and very into its culture might recognize as the symbol for a submissive male. That’s not quite what I consider myself to be, but it’s about as close as I can find for ready-made paraphernalia that puts my status "out there" a bit as a disciplined husband who has been “taken in hand,” by his wife in some form of FLR relationship.

 

Further, as I’ve discussed, to my knowledge, there are two (and sort of three) people who know who I am and that my wife gives me real disciplinary spankings.  

 

Compare that to the description of Disciplinary Wives Club gatherings that Tomy’s wife, Aunt Kay, sent me a few years back and that I posted again last week, including her description of sending him off for a session with another wife:

 

"We made friends with other couples and that was a whole other unexpected outcome. I never imagined disciplining anyone but my own husband. But it became easy for me after a while. I learned that some men need a lot more intensity than my Hubby and I had some really fun times delivering longer and harder sessions than he could ever endure. I still recall smiling to myself as I watched him head off with another DWC wife to get a spanking. When we did things together with other DWC couples; like going to dinners, events, visiting for weekends, there was such a sense of liberation. Just hanging out, being able to talk about lifestyle stuff was amazing. It was like we knew we were special, we shared a kinky little secret when we were out among the rest of the world."

 

 

We’ve done nothing close to any of that.  Part of me really wants to explore it, though that part is at war with the part that obsesses about confidentiality and not creating any kind of electronic rabbit trail that would allow anyone interested and snoopy to link my on-line and “real life” identities.  I assume my wife feels the same way and may even be more concerned about it. Though, honestly, that is an assumption on my part. I’ve never really asked her. . ..

 

 

It occurs to me that I always assume my wife is reluctant to meet others, communicate with others or display her authority more openly, simply because she hasn’t initiated any of that, other than a handful of cryptic references to spanking made with family around.  But, maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to make assumptions about her willingness or openness to new things just because she has not initiated them, particularly since . . . why should she be embarrassed? She’s not the one getting spanked.

 

***

 

I’m not sure how much has changed since then.  In terms of developing closer relationships with people in the lifestyle, in some ways, maybe a lot, though not enough to satisfy my itch for connection.  I’ve deepened my relationships with at least four people I’ve met through the blog, though very little of that interaction has been face-to-face and I’ve met only one of them in person. 

 

In that post from a couple of years ago, I put together a list of things associated with various degrees of “sharing” this lifestyle and asked people to identify how many they’d done.  Here is my current status on each, along with a few new/modified ones:

 

• Worn something symbolizing your DD or FLR status? Yes. 
• Left a spanking tool, including innocuous but iconic tools like a hairbrush or bathbrush, on prominent display in a context that might hint at its naughtier use? Yes, but only a hairbrush and bath brush, and not in a place that clearly signaled their intended use.
• Openly displayed or traveled with a tool that is most definitely associated with spanking, such as a paddle or strap? Only unintentionally so, though I have gotten much less diligent about hiding and storing them securely. 
• Made a cryptic, reference to delivering or getting a spanking within earshot of friends or relatives?  Anne has made some cryptic references.  I haven’t, at least nothing suggesting that spanking and DD is something we do.

• Engaged in or been subjected to some very overt display of authority in front of others? Not really, at least nothing that overt and unambiguous. 

• Openly told a friend or family member that you get spanked by your wife or that you spank your husband? Yes, though only one friend and no relatives.
  

• Told someone openly that you are going to be spanked or recently were or that you are going to deliver one or recently did? Not that I recall.
  

 

• Exchanged emails or talked by telephone with someone about your DD or FLR relationship? Yes

• Talked face-to-face with another person who you know is into DD or FLR? Yes. 
  

• Gotten together socially with one or more couples who are into DD? No

•   Been spanked by your wife/spanked with others present or able to overhear? No.
  

• Been spanked by someone other than your wife or spanked  someone other than your husband during your current relationship? No.

 

• Engaged in any kind of group spanking activity? No.

How about you? Which of the above have you done?  How open have you been so far about your DD relationship? How open would you like to be, or at least how open could you see yourself being under the right circumstances?

 

And, before I go, thoughts and prayers for so many suffering families, and hopefully a little more than thoughts and prayers from those in a position to do something about it.

 

 

 

 

 

Have a great week.