The Club - Meeting 408 - Marking

“Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.” -Thomas Huxley

 

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly 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 suspected it would be a dangerous thing to ask this crowd for advice on what Anne should do about my recent forgetfulness, and rule-breaking, and arguing.  Here’s a summary of the comments:

 

•    “Once my wife punished each and every offense, my memory improved. It wasn't a conscious change. The spankings help condition me to perform my chore.  If you are spanked every single time you leave the garage door open, eventually you will be conditioned to do it without thinking.”

 

•    “I feel you should have been spanked for each occurrence of the garage door situation. We also try to punish as soon after the incident as possible. She would not wait till evening, but rather, upon finding the garage door open, immediately spank you for it.”

 

•    “I feel that when it is a safety issue like the garage door that the response should be strict. You should have gotten a spanking for each and every instance.”

 

•    “This is fairly simple in our house. If there are multiple offenses, then there are multiple spankings, usually on different days. If it is a repeat offense then it is multiple spankings, again on different days.  A couple years ago this meant that for multiple, repeat offenses that were fairly serious for me, I got 2 a day, 3 days per week, for a month. It was just plain awful. ”

 

•    “Like many others, I agree Anne should spank you each and every time the garage door is left open, or for any other thing you continue to do that annoys her. I get spanked quickly after any misbehavior.”

 

•    “At least for me, mixing issues up in one session just doesn’t work. I would keep the spankings for different issues separate, especially because of the entirely different character of each offense (intentional or not, etc.). If this means multiple sessions, I think she should do them on sequential days and in increasing order of importance: forgetfulness, procrastination, and finally outright rule-breaking.”

 

•    “The idea my wife and I have had, but never done, is that if she says I am to be spanked, I could choose to “challenge” it and explain why I thought I shouldn’t be spanked. If she agreed with my reasoning, then fine, no spanking. If my points are all valid, but she still thinks I deserve a spanking, then I get a spanking. If she thinks my reasoning is weak and I am just trying to get out of the spanking, then she gives me the spanking and then some additional pre-determined punishment for trying to get out of it, like 50 hard swats with the paddle or 12 stripes with the cane or something.”

 

Well, there you have it.  The prescription we’ve talked about here many times for actually changing behavior: consistency, strictness and severity.

 

Here is how it played out in real life.  When we were in bed on Wednesday night, she asked me about whether I’d done something that broke one of our rules.  I admitted that I had.  She told me that I’d be spanked first thing the next morning.  Given our usual issues with consistency, I thought there was a fairly good chance she would forget.  Nope. 

 

It didn’t happen first thing in the morning, but by mid-morning I’d received a hard spanking over her knee, with what have become her go-to instruments, the ebony hairbrush, and long-handled bath brush.

 

The next day, I gave her a journal entry that included the above summary advice from the group.  I pointed out that I was doing so very reluctantly as part of suggesting a second spanking was in order because what I’d be spanked for the day before wasn’t the only recent offense; there had been efforts to argue or delay.  It is very rare for me to carry through on suggesting or asking for a spanking, but for once I kind of wanted to push things forward in terms of consistency.

 

She agreed and that morning I found myself bent over the bed for another spanking.  This time, consistent with ZM’s advice regarding arguing, I suggested she use a paddle (though I didn’t bring up his reference to 50 swats).

 

We used to use fraternity-style paddles a lot, but over the last year or so her go-to implements had really narrowed down to the hairbrush, bath brush and a leather paddle or strap.  It’s probably been at least a year and a half, perhaps two years, since I’ve had a hard session with a wooden paddle.

 

Which is the impetus for this week’s topic.  For some reason, the paddle caused some fairly substantial bruising, but most on the inside of each cheek.

 

It’s become atypical for a spanking to leave me with significant bruising or marking, other than some oval-shaped discoloration than can sometimes last a day or two.

 

Even a very hard spanking may leave me with only a few visible marks the next day.  Sometimes my bottom does look in bad shape immediately after the spanking, but the marks typically don't last very long. 

 

That wasn’t always the case.  When we first started DD, a significant paddling with the fraternity-style paddle could leave me bruised for several days.  Yet, even though we were newcomers, it surprised how quickly Anne got comfortable with even very substantial and long-lasting bruising.  It never seemed to make her very squeamish.  In fact, she would sometimes make me drop my pants to show her my butt’s  condition and would express disappointment if the marking wasn’t impressive or faded too quickly.  

 

However, when last week’s paddling left me bruised, she did get squeamish.  I’m really not sure why.  We talked about it afterward, and I reminded her that I used to bruise a lot and that it never bothered her.  The reminder did seem to help, and I assured her that she should not let bruising or marking lead to terminating a spanking “early.”  (Though, I admit I’m glad she didn’t give me anything close to ZM’s recommendation of 50 swats.)

 

One other obvious issue with marking is it might be seen by others, though in my recent case the bruising didn’t last long and was confined to the inside of my cheeks where it wasn’t very visible.

 

I could have easily had such an unintended viewing experience a few weeks ago, however.  I went to see a dermatologist to have a worrisome spot examined.  It turned out to be nothing problematic, but the dermatologist suggested a full-body screening, since I hadn’t had one in a while.  I complied, and I was lucky in the timing. I hadn’t been spanked in two or three weeks, so there was nothing to see.  Though, it could have gone the other way had I timed the visit differently.

 

If I saw a guy with bruising on his butt, I probably would attribute it to spanking but, of course, there are times that supposition could be dead wrong.  I should know better, because I’ve had at least one very significant incident of bruising that had nothing at all to do with spanking. Four or five years ago, I took a bad fall after a business dinner.  I was walking from the second-story restaurant down a flight of very steep concrete stairs.  I’m not sure exactly what caused it, but both my feet came out from under me.  My body’s full weight came down on the intersection of my butt and the corner of one of the concrete stairs.  I could barely walk back to my hotel. The bruising was bad that night and, by the next morning I had a deep black and purple bruising covering both cheeks.  It looked pretty much exactly like what you’d expect from a very severe paddling.

 

Tell us about your experiences with marking and bruising. Does it happen often?

 

Is it an express goal or, rather, something she tries to avoid?

 

When it’s over, does she inspect her handiwork or ask to see the damage the next day?

 

Does she take pride in the tangible evidence of a job well done or, rather, does significant bruising or marking make her squeamish? Do you ever look at your own marks? What feelings arise when you do so?

We've talked before about whether bruising or marking have been seen accidentally by someone who isn’t aware of your DD lifestyle?  But, what about something more intentional?  Have you, or your Disciplinarian, ever intentionally displayed a marked or bruised bottom to someone or consciously left it on display for others to see?

 

 

Have you ever seen someone else’s butt and deduced they probably had been spanked recently?

 

I hope you all have a great week.

 

The Club - Meeting 407 - Arguing, Multiple Offenses & Repeat Offenses

“You can't talk your way out of a problem you behaved your way into!” - Stephen R. Covey

 

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly 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.

 

We had a good discussion last week.  I know it covered some controversial ground, and everyone kept the conversation respectful.  I thought the most interesting part was about whether a drop in the frequency of corporal punishment at home and in schools is likely to result in a drop in domestic discipline over time, since most people did seem to think their interest in DD as adults was connected, at least in part, to seeing or hearing spankings at school or at home growing up. It does seem logical that if people are exposed to it less as kids, interest in it as an adult is less likely to be triggered. 

 

Yet, it’s a really convoluted cause-and-effect environment right now, and I don’t pretend to have any idea how it will ultimately play out. On the one hand, there seems to be less societal shaming of kinky or unconventional sex practices than at any time in modern history, more access to sexual and spanking content on the internet, and the wild success of 50 Shades would seem to indicate a lot of openness to kink, especially kink involving dominance and power dynamics. Yet, studies keep showing that both teenagers and adults are having less sex and delaying it until later in life. So, all the new openness around sex seems and the breakdown in societal mores around sex and kink is correlated with less sex actually taking place.  Further complicating things, while DD has sexual aspects, it’s not about sex per se, so I don’t know how strong any correlation might be between overall sexual trends and trends in DD.  All I know is, it seems very complicated and more than a little arbitrary.

 

Anyway, it’s been an interesting few weeks here.  I feel like after getting off to a really slow start to whatever this new phase of life I’m in is—early retirement, semi-retirement, hard pause . . . whatever you want to call it—things are kind of picking up. It’s probably a result of Anne joining me in the state of joblessness.  It seems like we’re traveling more, planning travel more, going out more in general, reconnecting with friends and making new ones, etc.  I could see this new, more active phase accelerating, particularly since I think she’s a lot more certain that the active work phase of her life is done, while I’m still kind of on the fence.

 

I also feel like things are changing on the Domestic Discipline front, though so far it’s been more about the intention than the actual disciplinary action.  Part of it is Anne seems more focused on it now that work isn’t competing for her attention. But, the other part is some odd escalation in my behavioral issues.  I say odd in that old problems aren’t (in my opinion) getting any worse are actually a lot better than they were a year or so ago.  Yet, on that “small things” front we talked about a couple of weeks ago, things have gotten worse and in weird ways. 

 

During that discussion, I talked about how Anne was getting increasingly mad about me failing to lock doors and also leaving the garage door open.  Not an hour after I left a comment on the blog about that happening, I did it again!  And, this time she followed through and spanked me for it that night.

 

 

Yet, I did it again within a day or two of that spanking, and it has happened several times since.  The odd thing is, until recently this was a very infrequent problem. Now, it seems to be happening all the time. 

 

I am very clear in my own mind that I’m taking her concerns about this seriously, yet the problem seemed to get worse, not better, after she spanked me for it. I honestly have no idea what’s causing the problem.  I would actually worry about whether my mind is slipping in a medically troubling way, yet the problem seems to be manifesting in only this one, very particular way.

 

 While the incidents kept piling up, Anne didn’t give me another spanking.  She threatened it multiple times, but it didn’t actually happen.  I will own up to it; the failure at follow-through was attributable mainly to my efforts at delay.

 

While I feel like her intentions around DD have solidified in the last few months, unfortunately, so far she hasn't developed quite enough strictness to just put her foot down. So, we both bear some responsibility here.  She does need to get more comfortable with not only giving an order but with actually making it stick in the face of some moderate resistance or questioning.  But, I also need to get much better at simply doing what she tells me to do, without argument or undermining.

I feel like my efforts to get myself off the hook and avoid accountability are becoming a bigger problem. It’s not just failing repeatedly to close a garage door.  I mentioned a few weeks ago that I’d gone on a little adventure and, through sheer absent-mindedness and inattention, didn’t take care of some gear maintenance.  It caused some distraction and extra work for myself and others and, honestly, it could have created a safety issue.  I was pretty angry at myself for creating the situation and, when we got back, I had decided I was going to ask Anne for a hard spanking. Basically, for once I was determined to hold myself accountable. 

 

But, then came all the garage door incidents, and I got spanked for one of them.  I should have still asked for a spanking for the separate inattention-related problem, but I didn’t. And, as several days went by, the connection between offense and accountability seemed more and more strained, until I finally dropped all intentions around asking to be spanked for it. 

 

Then, there was an incident last week in which we disagreed on a particular behavior and whether it should result in a spanking.  With the benefit of hindsight, we both had legitimate points. I think I was right regarding the overall issue, but she pointed out that there was one aspect of the behavior that we had specifically agreed would result in spankings.   

 

The bottom line is, no spanking happened, even though it probably should have and would have in the absence of me arguing with her.

 

We had a discussion here last year about these self-defeating efforts to delay or avoid punishment.  I do know it is self-defeating.  I say I want her to be more strict and stern, yet in the moment I can’t seem to help but undermine her efforts.  I truly get that it’s unfair to her, because she tries to be more assertive like I say I want, but then I don’t exactly cooperate with that process.

 

Yet, part of that resistance seems almost inevitable to me, precisely because things are starting to seem more “real.”  When she gets more assertive and more aggressive in ordering spankings, I try harder to get out of them. It’s unfair and counterproductive, but isn’t it also precisely what you would expect when discipline starts becoming truly imposed? I’ve said I want it to feel non-consensual, and when I genuinely don’t want to be spanked and actively undermine it, yet it happens nonetheless, that is a spanking that has, in fact, been imposed.  

 

Therefore,  when I am unsuccessful in undermining her resolve, it actually augments her authority and the FLR aspect of the relationship. Trying to get out of it but failing to do so confirms her status as the real “boss.”   

 

It’s a fine line, but if she sticks to her guns in the face of my efforts to delay or avoid, something that might otherwise undermine her authority ends up reinforcing it.  As I said about this last year, “[I]mposing discipline in the face of some mild resistance from me results in a virtuous circle in which her confidence goes up each time she gives me a spanking when I really don’t want one.”

 

I know there’s a lot to unpack in the above, and I think I’m going to leave the topic somewhat open-ended. But, I think it boils down to, I’d like to know how you think Anne should deal with both the repeat offenses (garage door closure) and with separate offenses that happen fairly close in time (my inattention regarding safety issues on my adventure, and the garage door, and the other incident where there was at least one aspect of rule-breaking)?

 

And, what about arguing?  It’s interesting that this seems like something that is bound to happen from time to time in any real DD relationship, yet when I searched for past topics on it to crib for this week’s post I didn’t find much.  So, while we’ve addressed repeat and multiple offenses fairly recently, I don’t think we’ve really taken “arguing” head-on as an independent topic.

 

If you are on the receiving end, how would your disciplinarian deal with you doing something like leaving a garage door open after you’d been spanked for that same thing a day or two before?  How would they deal with multiple but different offenses happening close together?  Would that usually result in multiple spankings?  If so, would they all usually happen in the same session?  Different sessions on the same day?  Spread out over multiple days? What about arguing?  Would that be treated as a separate offense and spanked separately?

 

 

For the disciplinary wives (I recognize few are participating these days, but maybe this “nudge” will help), how do you deal with repeated offenses and multiple different offenses?  Do you have a go-to response if he tries to argue or delay?

 

I hope you all have a great week.

 

The Club - Meeting 406 - Non-Adult Spankings and Their Impact Today

If you don't get enough time-outs as a child, you get them as a grownup. ~Andrew Bonifacio

 

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.  It's been generally a good, relaxing stretch here as the summer winds down.  Lots of time spent traveling and tinkering with motorcycles and other projects.  There is nothing at all wrong with that. I even managed to go several days without a computer or tablet.

You all  certainly were productive while I was gone!  During a week when my only post was “Out This Week,” I came back to around 45 comments.  I’m glad you kept the discussion going.

 

As is often the case, the discussion meandered into some interesting areas.  Corner time, others knowing and witnesses (funny how we always seem to loop back to those), shame and fear of others reactions if they knew and, finally, the connection between childhood and adult spankings.

 

I wanted to follow up a little on that last one, because there seemed not to be much consensus on the extent to which being spanked as kids influenced our interest in domestic discipline as adults.  

 

Way back in 2015, when Blogger still had a polling feature, I ran a poll that tried to tease out the extent to which there was a correlation between being spanked as an adult and later interest in DD.   

 

I also tried to find out whether it was connected more closely to one of the parents.   

The poll basically asked how often the respondents were spanked as kids and by whom.  The results were as follows::

 

 

Spanked frequently 14%

Spanked but only infrequently 53%

Never spanked 24%

 

Spanked by mother/not by father 20%

Spaned by father/not by mother 10%

Spanked by both 27%

 

Looking back, it was as poorly constructed as most of my polls back then.  Some rather obvious options I didn’t explore regarding “spanked by whom” include teachers, principals, and non-parent relatives.

 

So, that’s the topic for this week. Let’s flesh it out a little bit more.

 

·      Were you spanked as a kid?

·      If yes, how often and by whom?  Parents?  If so, which one(s)? Non-parent relatives? Teachers? Principals? Others?

·      How old were you when you got your last spanking as a kid?

·      How old were you when you first developed an interest in spanking?

·      How old were you when did you first become interested in adult spanking?  Was your interest in erotic spankings? Disciplinary? Both?

·      Do you think your interest in spanking, whenever it developed, is connected to your spankings as a non-adult, or lack thereof?  Why or why not?

 

When I covered this poll topic in 2015, our previous contributor and co-founder of the Disciplinary Wives Club, Tomy, pointed me to some surveys on the DWC website that covered some of these issues. Something that jumped out at me at the time was that there were several questions that explored the relationship between the respondents’ mothers’ disciplinary practices and later interest in, or openness to, adult discipline.  There were, however, no corresponding questions regarding any possible linkage between father’s disciplinary practices and their adult children’s attitudes toward spanking and discipline.  I wonder why that was?  Maybe some implicit Freudianism at play?

 

 I’ll go ahead and answer my own topic questions:

 

·      Was I spanked as a kid?  Yes, but not often.

·      By whom?  I know I was spanked by both parents but my memories are pretty fuzzy. I think when I was young, my mother was the primary disciplinarian, yet most of my memories (the few there are) involve paternal spankings.  It is certainly possible and, frankly, given the time and place downright likely, that I was spanked by non-parental relatives, including grandparents, uncles and aunts.  But, I have no clear memory of it happening. I do recall one incident of a grandmother getting very mad and threatening a spanking, but I don’t recall it actually happening.

·      I also don’t recall how old I was at the time of my last spanking, though I do remember that one quite well.  I think I was probably around twelve years-old.

·      When did I become interested in spanking? I don’t remember having any interest in it at all, other than wanting to avoid it, until I was in my late 30s.  For a short period of time, my interest was in erotic spankings, though those had a disciplinary fantasy overlay.  I think the only reason I was interested in erotic spanking at that point was it was all I had been exposed to. I don’t think I even knew “real” adult spankings were a thing, until I came across the Disciplinary Wives Club. From that point forward, my only spanking interest was disciplinary spanking.

 

Do I connect my adult interest with being spanked as a non-adult?  I don’t, though I don’t pretend to have a definitive answer.  If anything, I think the connection would involve *not* being spanked often enough and that lack of external discipline being one aspect of having very little in the way of imposed boundaries by the time I was a teenager.

 

In my early childhood, we were living in a part of the country where spanking was always in the background.  Every kid was spanked, or at least every boy.  It was just part of the culture.  I have some memories, but very dim, of being spanked by both my mother and father during that period.

 

We moved when I was in grade school, and I experienced a block of years in which a father figure wasn’t around or I had little relationship with one. I don’t know, but I suspect, that the absence of a father figure may be why I’ve always had a morbid attraction to M/m discipline themes. A few years ago, a commenter on this blog wrote the following:

 

One Saturday when I was 15, my older brother, who was 16, got caught smoking grass. My dad told my brother that he would be punished severely until he had some sense knocked into him. He made my brother wait almost a week.  After dinner on the following Friday, my dad took my brother downstairs to my dad’s basement workroom. Through the vents we could hear the swats of my dad's thick black belt landing on what we all knew was my brother’s bare bottom. Only when my brother was sobbing and begging to be forgiven and swearing he would never touch grass again did my dad stop. . . . I don’t know why but I was so aroused by it all.

 

The commenter was not the only one aroused.  Stories like that have always touched a nerve with me.  It may be no accident that I've always found "woodshed" stories so arousing, and in those stories it is often a father or uncle doing the spanking.

 

 

I think part of the emotional reaction I have to stories involving spankings by a father or uncle is bound up with my need for discipline to be "real."  While I believe real DD relationships must be grounded in consent, the reality is I've always wanted the discipline to be imposed on me whether I consent or not.  Deep down inside, I know that I am capable of physically resisting a spanking by most women, though I don’t don’t there are exceptions. 

 

I also tend to get turned on my spanking art or captions that involve being subject to parental rules, having curfews, consequences for not following the rules, etc.

 

I suspect that as an adult, material that focuses on rules and consequences stirs something in me precisely because I didn’t experience much of those during my teenage years, and part of me wishes I had.

 

For a long time, I've maintained that I had no interest at all in DD until my late 30s, and that is true.  I have started to wonder, however, whether the attraction to female authority came earlier. I've been self-aware for a long time about the fact that I tended to be attracted to older women, and that attraction goes back at least to high school.  While I knew I liked more mature women, however, I don't think at that time I had the right contextual orientation to think of that not so much as an age thing, but possibly more about authority.  I knew I was attracted to powerful women, but I was always younger than them and I connected the attraction to age, not authority or hierarchy.  Now, I wonder if there were some stirrings of an FLR-type way back then but I wasn't equipped to recognize them as that.

 

So, tell us about your non-adult disciplinary experiences and your observations and theories about what impact (no pun intended) they have on you today.  In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this rather ironic bit of spanking art involving fathers and sons.