The Club - Meeting 420 - Resentment and Really Giving Up Control

"One regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality." – Oscar Wilde

 

Hello all.  Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are, or would like to be, in a Domestic Discipline relationship.

 

 

I hope you had a good week. Ours was kind of a roller-coaster.  It started good, with family visiting.  Then it turned bad, with Anne and I getting in a rare argument. Then, it got better with both of us seeming to get over the fight.  Then it got bad again, with Anne getting a very bad case of the flu, which has me sitting around wondering whether I’ll join her suffering soon or whether I’ll succeed in dodging it despite being careless and not getting a flu shot earlier in the season.  (Funny how that carelessness theme keeps coming up for me these last few months, isn’t it?)  Of course, in my partial defense, Anne did get a flu shot and, yet, is sick as a dog.

 

A Christmas season interrupted by family visits, illnesses, and arguments somehow seems kind of par for the course this year.  I don’t know why, but I’m having a really hard time getting into the season this year even though Christmas is by far my favorite holiday. I’m totally uninspired regarding Christmas shopping, even though I usually enjoy trying to find just the right gift for each person in the family.  As for decorating the house, we got off to a good start, getting the Christmas lights up on the house relatively early, but then things kind of stopped. 

 

Our whole neighborhood also seems slow to get cracking on decorating.  Maybe it’s the economy?  It does seem like there are years when the world is unsettled and/or the economy is down or shaky, and for some reason that puts a damper on everyone’s holiday preparations.

 

 

This also is the first year that neither of us is working, so no office parties to go to, which may be keeping some of the holiday spirit at bay. On the upside, it's also probably putting some limits on my holiday weight gain. Though, I decided going into December that I was going to put a pause on most diet efforts.  This year, I'm having the damn Christmas cookies and eggnog.

 

 

Since parties lead to drinking, and drinking leads to spankable behavior, it might be reasonable to assume my behavior would be exemplary this season. Unfortunately, it hasn't really worked out that way.

 

 

Which brings us to this week's topic.  Near the end of the most recent topic discussion, a side-discussion about “resentment” ensued.  Here are some excerpts:

 

Alan: Sometimes there is going to be resentment before or even after a spanking and that is probably unavoidable in a real DD relationship. But if it is happening a lot, that needs to be addressed.

 

Me: Alan, I agree. I might even go a little further and say that if you aren't feeling some resentment now and then, is it really discipline you are doing? Or, maybe it is discipline but isn't very strict or effective discipline? I don't want to sound too judgmental on this point, but it does seem to me that some level of resentment is inevitable if the discipline is real, consistent, and hard enough to be effective.

 

ZM: This is a really good point. It has been rolling around in my mind the past few days. We always tend to treat resentment as a very bad thing - which generally I believe it is, especially if there is much of it - but occasional resentment is probably not only the inevitable outcome of DD, but in fact a pretty good sign that DD is being done correctly and that it is indeed real. 

 

Although it wasn’t really related to anything I’d raised in that week’s topic, it turned out to be somewhat prescient, in that later in the week Anne and I got into an argument that left us both feeling resentful and angry.  I won’t go into details about it, other than to say that I said something that she thought was intentionally hurtful.  I felt like it was, at most, accidentally hurtful and really shouldn’t have been hurtful at all.  Sometimes the two parties to a conversation just don't see it the same way.

This followed on an incident a few months ago in which I got two spankings, on back-to-back days, after Anne got very mad about what she saw as boorish behavior while we were out with some friends.  Again, it revolved around something I said. Or the way I said it, Or both. 

After the first incident, my resentment was at a low-boil for a surprisingly long time.  Close to a month.  After this latest argument, I was mad but only for two or three days.  So, I guess that is improvement?

At the root of both incidents was my communications.  The first was mainly about how I said things and how loudly; Anne’s view was I was being boorish and dominating a conversation.  The second time was more about what I said.

Regarding me getting resentful, it's no accident that both incidents involved Anne attempting to change, or hold me accountable for, my verbal communications.

My whole career involved communicating with conviction.  I’m also very analytical, which means I tend not to arrive at opinions haphazardly. Hence, I’m comfortable voicing them with confidence.  From Anne's perspective, with too much confidence and too little attention to the sensitivities of those I'm talking to.

Deep down inside, I recognize that my opinions do sometimes ruffle feathers, perhaps unnecessarily.  I also sometimes forget that I have a deep, booming voice that may give my communications an attack-like intensity that's not really what I intend.

Voicing strong opinions is core to my identity. Yet, in some contexts it probably does need to be restrained.  Which is why the Oscar Wilde quote above resonates with me.

Because my communication style is so core to my identity, I did initially feel resentful that Anne was trying to make me "censor" myself.  More accurately, she was making me stop and think before I talk.

The first time, it pissed me off.  I couldn't look beyond the fact that she was censoring me to appreciate the reason she was doing so.  But, eventually I did have an epiphany of sorts, and not just that she might be right to make me think more before I speak.  It also finally occurred to me that my feelings of “unfairness” were part and parcel of the reality of her exercising control.  

In that incidence, while she did spank me—twice—the spankings had little if anything to do with the resentment.  It was really the tone and content of the preceding lecture, and the fact that was intent on making me change how I do something that is core to me, i.e. communicating with others.

The lecture was very humbling, and my ego clearly didn’t like it. After the spankings, it kept whispering in my ear why I was right and she was wrong.

Honestly, it felt a lot like being punished as a kid.  When has any teenager accepted responsibility after a hard scolding by a parent or other authority figure?  Didn’t we always assert we were right and the authority figure was being “unfair”?

 

In those days, even after a spanking, wasn't it rare that you really accepted you were wrong?  At best, you complied with the spanking and life went on.

In the end, the incident and my reaction to Anne cracking the whip and enforcing her expectations about something as fundamental as how I must talk to others served to drive home just how deep-seated my issues with authority are.  Given how negatively I react to being controlled, it's probably inevitable that Anne imposing real constraints in important areas will lead to resentment or feelings of “unfairness.” 

Part and parcel of accepting her authority is capitulating to it when I least want to do it. Really accepting it goes deeper, however.  It involves that epiphany happening when you accept not just the reality and inevitability of the authority, but that here exercising it and you accepting it are things are right. That it's what you asked for, what you want, and definitely what you need.

  

It’s hopefully a good sign that, while our second argument was far more heated than the first, I got over the resentment far more quickly and, importantly, within a couple of days I recognized that she's right that I have to accept some limits on how I communicate.  

I’m not going to lie – part of me does continue to really chafe at someone trying to censor the opinions I voice or how I voice them.

Yet, when I’m honest, I know my predicament is because of my own failure to impose some stricter “time, place and manner” restrictions on how I talk to others.  There's no doubt my failure to rein myself in at work led to a reputation for being “pugilistic.”

I’m quick to talk here about how much I want and need imposed guardrails, yet it’s also the case that I feel anger or resentment when they are imposed.  Which is, as ZM pointed out, the best indicator that they are real.

In those moments when they are the most real, I can’t help but have doubts about whether this is something I really want -- giving someone else the authority to set limits on my behavior, including behaviors that reflect an “essential part of [my] personality” as Wilde put it.   

But, when I have those doubts, I’m reminded of a comment from Danielle about  Anne imposing some limits around workplace socializing:

“You also seem to think that the following behaviors are not issues for couples who aren’t in FLR’s:

 

- coming home late for supper

- having a third drink at happy hour

- receiving texts from your wife asking you not to stay out late

 

If you think those aren’t bones of contention in non-FLR marriages, I think you are fooling yourself. Sure, lots of guys will ignore their wives’ nagging about such behavior, but many will likely have bitter arguments with their wives about it, and in the worst case such disputes can lead to marital breakdown. The only difference between a FLR and a regular marriage is that a wife in a FLR has more leverage to curb behaviors she doesn’t like.”

 

She really hit the nail on the head.  It wasn’t like we didn’t have arguments about things like my tendency to be domineering back before we discovered DD and FLR.  If anything, before DD those arguments happened more often, were more intense, and lasted longer.  

 

 

Where do things go from here? Well, I suspect this will be a “work in progress” for some time.  Anne and I both need to recognize a few, perhaps uncomfortable, truths.

 

First, the more often she uses her authority and the more often I give in, the more comfortable we both are going to get with it.  Practice makes perfect.  It’s a good reason for her to exercise her authority more often and on “small” things.

 

Second, there inevitably are going to be things that don’t feel “small” to one or both of us.  Hopefully, her practice with exercising authority on small things will pay off in exercising her authority more easily when emotions are running high.

 

Third, I need to accept, and learn to concede more quickly, that there are going to be times in this kind of relationship—one that I initiated and continue to want—when being bossed around is going to be emotionally uncomfortable for me. Put quite simply, I’m not always going to get what I want. Period.   

 

When that happens, we both need to accept that although resentment is inevitable, it’s her role to impose her authority and my role to comply, as difficult as that may be.  And, when there really are good reasons for her imposing the boundaries she’s imposing, then my resentment really is all about ego, isn't it?

 

What are your thoughts about this?  Does being disciplined, or having rules enforced, sometimes leave you feeling resentful?  What do you do when that happens?  Does it make your wife more reluctant to enforce her rules, or has she gotten comfortable with it? 

 

I hope you all have a great week.