The Club - Meeting 440 - Inevitability and "That Moment"

“When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.” -  Quintilian

 

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 all had a great week.  Seems like a while since we got together.  Though, honestly, I kind of needed the break. There was a little bit of blog-related drama going on with before I left, and it’s probably good that I had to step away for a week. 

 

Anne and I did, in fact, step away, for a week-long road trip.  We saw some interesting sights and, all in all, it went pretty well, even though our approaches to traveling aren’t always compatible, which can tend to make me more than a little irritable. In fact, I wonder whether I’ve ever not earned a spanking while on a vacation involving air or road travel.

 

It is too bad though that I didn’t have time to put together a post before I left, because Alan suggested a good one.  I could swear that we’ve done one like this before, but in searching old posts I couldn’t find one.  Anyway, here is his topic suggestion as set forth in two comments:

 

Part 1: “The Moment When?

 

"Running through many posts the last several weeks have been comments about why and when some wives spank as well as several comments about how hard or not hard enough some husbands are spanked. There have also been several posts about spanking style as well as substance.

 

The one thing that didn’t come up that I saw and doesn’t come up often, if ever, on this blog are posts describing how a husband or boyfriend is about to be punished but agonizes over whether he was going to accept it and cooperate with her, or maybe he didn’t feel like being spanked, and so it didn’t happen.

 

Let me personalize this to illustrate what I am saying. Most of the time, I do make some attempt to talk her (my wife) out of a spanking or at least try to “plea bargain” it some. Sometimes when I am really not in the mood or feel she is being very unfair I will verbally resist it, pushing that much further than I should.

 

But -and this is the key point- there is never any real doubt in my mind that if she decides to go forward, it is going to happen. It isn’t just having respect for her and her authority; It’s also knowing that she can make me submit to a spanking whether I want it or not. She knows all the buttons to push and knows I can’t indefinitely defy her.

 

I actually learned about this with my former GF who said to me one day completely outside any spanking scene, “Alan, I can control your bum anytime we are together.” And I realized it was true as almost a kind of epiphany, (We weren’t living together, and I had defied her several times over the phone, so she was still working on that.)

 

With my wife, the training carried over from my former GF, and we started our relationship and then marriage with a DD firmly in place. So there wasn’t any ”moment when” because she was in charge probably from the third or fourth date and we both wanted and understood that.

 

If Dan is ever looking for a topic, this might be interesting to pursue. When did it stop being a game or experiment and start being real and permanent? Or a better question is when did you realize you had left fantasy in the rearview mirror and she really did own your ass --and you weren’t going to do anything about it except to accept what had happened.

 

If your experience is like mine, you “came under” a while before you realized it. With me, that ah-ha moment was a little shocking, but my former GF was more amused She told me she had known for several months and I was just catching up.

Alan”

 

  

Part 2:

 

“I was always afraid that if I resisted that she might lose her confidence and give up the maternal authority that I needed. So, I never resisted, even verbally.”

 

I get this. Although I was not as cooperative right away as all of you seem to be. In fact, I probably delayed my former GF’s full exercise of the authority I asked her to take when I did resist and tried to talk my way out of some well-deserved spankings.

 

Lucky for me, she stayed with it and eventually found out by herself that she was really “in charge of discipline” no matter how much I resisted. Her favorite warning became: “Are you challenging my authority”? Which I finally learned I did not want to do.

 

But I am proposing a slightly different topic/question for Dan to consider for the blog other than when you decided to surrender to her disciplinary authority.

 

The question I was raising is when did you realize you couldn’t (psychologically) stop a spanking she was determined to administer (I am leaving as a separate question the perennial consent/non-consent issue we have wrestled with often).

 

Put directly, when was it that you said or acted in a way that said, “No, I don’t want to be spanked,” and she said just as directly: “But you are going to be spanked, whether you want to be or not.” And you were spanked.

 

 

That happening to me is the moment that shocked me at the time. And probably was the beginning of a real DD relationship.

 

Maybe the question doesn’t apply to you because you decided at the beginning to submit to her always to encourage her discipline or because you had been trained earlier never to defy her, and getting spanked when she ordered it happened every time.”

 

Great topic. While the question asks us to identify a particular point in time when the dynamic changed, the specific change in question is one that I know is near the core of my morbid fascination with domestic discipline, namely the concept of “inevitability.” 

 

As I’ve discussed here many times, for me a big part of the perverse attraction to this thing we do revolves around “imposed” discipline. For me to get much out of it, there needs to be the feeling that my control, my agency, is being taken away.  It’s why parental spankings hold a strong emotional power over me, even if I remember very few of them.  It’s also why when it comes to female authority, for me it is the “authority” that is primary and the “female” secondary. 

 

The more that punishment has an element of inevitability, i.e. that it is going to happen whether I want it or not, the closer it is to the core of what has kept me in this lifestyle for almost twenty years.

 

 

Yet, I can’t really point to a particular moment when I became aware that such inevitability had become the reality of our relationship.  There wasn’t a particular time I can think of when I really did not want to be punished yet I knew she was going to punish me anyway.  Instead, I think I had a sense from early on that if I did ever refuse a spanking that she was determined to give, the whole dynamic would be undermined to the point that it might go away. 

 

Which isn’t to say that I never try to talk my way out of it or, at the very least, delay the inevitable.  I do.  In fact, it’s rare that I don’t make some effort to avoid or, as Alan calls it, “plea bargain” my way into a delayed or reduced sentence.

 

Although it doesn’t involve the inevitability of getting spanked, I can think of one time that brought home that she had, in fact, taken a substantial amount of control and agency away from me, without me realizing it.

 

It happened pretty early on in our DD experimentation.  In order to get her used to giving hard spankings, I had come up with a reporting and points system, in which I gave her a weekly journal entry summarizing behavioral problems that we had agreed would earn a spanking.  Each offense had a minimum number of swats and there were some “kickers” built in to take account of relative degrees of rule-breaking. For example, over-indulging in alcohol might earn a minimum of ten swats. On top of that baseline amount, each drink over some pre-set maximum would earn an additional three swats.  There were other offenses like failing to do certain chores or failing to do certain required but unpleasant tasks at work.  Under our system at that time, swats were all delivered with a heavy wooden “fraternity”-style paddle.

 

In those early days, my bottom was not used to long or severe spankings.  If a weekly tally reached 20 or 25 swats with the paddle, that was something I would dread.

 

Well, inevitably, I had one of those weeks where everything seemed to fall apart all at once.  That Saturday morning, I tallied up the offenses, and it came to—gulp—65 swats!  That was WAY more than I had ever taken in a single session up to that point.

 

I really, truly did not think there was any way I could take that many, which was exactly what I told Anne, fully expecting that she would agree that it was facially excessive.

 

To my very great surprise, she didn’t skip a beat in offering her much less merciful assessment. “Well, then I guess you should have behaved better.”

 

“But, but . . .,” I stammered, “I really don’t think my butt can take that many.”

 

“Well, I understand that.  Yet, you are going to take that many.”

 

I had truly believed when I showed her the tally that she would agree it was too much and would let me off the hook. In fact, it didn’t occur to me that she would not let me off the hook.  I was totally shocked at how little sympathy she felt for my situation and how willing she was to abide strictly by the system we had agreed to and that, in fact, I had suggested in the first place. 

 

 

Her willingness to enforce the rules was expressed cavalierly, without any suggestion of sympathy or the slightest willingness to consider adjusting the agreed-upon system just because the outcome was more than I had bargained for. 

 

I think the reason I remember that event so clearly is not just the realization that I had lost some control but the shock and disbelief I experienced at it.  Not just in our DD relationship but through most of my life I’d had a stunningly good track record of talking my way out of trouble, yet here it just had not played out the way I was sure it would.  The rules really were being applied to me in a very painful way and it was all so out of my control.  It was, as Alan called his experience, an "epiphany."

 

I look forward to your thoughts on Alan’s very interesting topic.

No Post This Week

 Thanks all for your comments on last week's post. Alan offered a new post idea, which I agree would be a good one. Unfortunately, I had a family event that took me out of action most of today, and I leave on a trip tomorrow. So, I hope you have a good week and, for those in the U.S., a relaxing three-day weekend next week.

The Club - Meeting 439 - How Hard is Hard?

“Karma is a tricky thing. To serve karma, one must repay good karma to others. To serve Karma well, one must sometimes deliver bad karma where it is due.” ― R. Mathias

 

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 all had a great week.  Ours was relatively sedate, with one germane exception that I’ll talk about below.  Much of it was spent indoors, as we’re having one of those cold, wet springs.  Which I guess is OK, since it helps break drought conditions in some parts of the country but, from a purely selfish perspective, it delays the real start of motorcycle and hiking season in our part of the country.

 

Now, onto that germane exception that leads to this week’s topic.  Last week, we talked about journaling and self-reporting.  Although I’m often guilty of chickening out of my own best-laid plans around reporting, and although I’m usually of the opinion that “a spanking delayed is a spanking denied” is a good thing to aim for when you're on the receiving end, this time I gritted my teeth and gave Anne a journal entry that reminded her of the bad behavior that happened while her arm was out of action and while we were dealing with Covid.  I suggested that she now deal with it, the lengthy delay between offense and punishment notwithstanding.

 

She did so, enthusiastically, and the result was a sore bottom that stayed that way for several days, perhaps because it has been almost two months since my last disciplinary spanking.

 

My throbbing butt kept the notion of “severity” front and center, but I had been thinking about the issue anyway. Therefore, I wanted to get the views of the group regarding this question: How hard is hard?”

 

 

To some extent, it was on my mind because of some of the answers to last week’s topic regarding reporting. There seemed to be some correlation between our various approaches to reporting and the severity of the spankings we receive.  Some are very into making sure that no bad deed goes unpunished, but it seems like that approach is more prevalent among those who have admitted at one time or another that their spankings are not as hard as those described by others here.  

 

Conversely, among those who say they get very hard spankings, few seem to be rushing to self-report offenses or to put in place other processes that might result in getting spanked more often.   

 

In other words, isn’t it common sense to conclude that it’s probably easier to self-report if your spankings are relatively bearable?

 

It's also true that some in our group are seemingly receiving very hard spankings. Here are a couple of recent comments from T. The one about having a “swollen" rear end resonated with me, since my own butt gets pretty swollen from Anne’s spankings.

 

“It was reassuring to finally find someone who was willing to spank the living daylights out of you when needed.” – T.

 

“Well, as I am writing this my rear end is sore and swollen. My wife followed through on her promise to beat my already sore butt. I was hoping she would forget or not follow through. She had a wonderful dinner with her friend and then immediately ordered me upstairs. It’s the first time I’ve ever been spanked two days in a row. It was not pleasant by any means.” – T

 

Perhaps paradoxically, many of us have been inspired to seek out a DD relationship based on descriptions of harsh punishments, or the after-effects of such punishments, in sources like the Disciplinary Wives Club.  And, there have been no shortage of such descriptions here on this blog. For example, there was this from the recent post entitled “A Commenter’s Advice on Giving a Real Disciplinary Spanking:”

 

By the time you are finished, his bottom will probably look horrible and will be swollen and have some bruises.

 

 And, here are a few from the DWC:

 

Some of the physical punishments described are meant to be painful. There is no question that welts will be raised and bottoms bruised, but chastisement should never leave permanent marks.

 

A dose of corporal punishment should have a dual effect. It should be extremely painful while it is being applied, and the area it was applied to should remain very tender for a period of time afterwards.

 

If you give a spanking the way it should be given, the results should still show a week later. He should wince every time he tries to sit for days after.

 

When handling discipline issues be firm but fair, strict, demanding, aloof and unyielding. Don’t be afraid to degrade and humiliate, and above all, when that bare bottom is turned upside down across your knee waiting for the paddle or hairbrush, don’t disappoint him. When you let him up, his eyes should be wet with tears, his knees should be quivering, and it should be obvious by looking at his bottom that he is displaying the marks left after a GOOD session.

 

 

Then there was this, from an entry entitled “How I am Spanked” in the “Real People” section of the DWC website [more on that website’s status, below]. It describes what I would consider a very hard, multi-part spanking, and its after-effects:

 

“My last spanking, on Wednesday, was intended to be very severe, because it was something for which I have been badly spanked several times.  She decided that I would get 100 with our frat paddle, 200 with our wooden spoon, 300 with our small paddle with holes, and 400 with our bath brush.  These were not done all together. [A detailed description of the spankings, broken up over the course of a day, follows.]

 

It is Friday. When I woke up on my back this morning, I was immediately aware of how much my bottom still hurts.  There are bad bruises, particularly at the creases of both cheeks.  There were little blisters where the holes of the paddle impacted.  It will hurt to pull up my underwear for several days, as will sitting.  Aunt Kay, your advice about how hard wives should spank is right on.  If I wanted some little play spanking, I wouldn’t be bending over like I do.  My wife has learned how to spank very hard, with little regard to either my crying or the appearance of my bottom.”

 

 

There is also no shortage of spanking memes and drawings that include threats of severe spankings.  Many of us may have heard these as kids, or may still hear them today.  

“I’m going to blister your bottom.”

 

Or, the ever-popular,  

 

“You won’t sit for a week.”

 

My question for you all this week is, how do your own spankings compare to the descriptions above?  And, what condition is your bottom objectively in at the end of a hard session?

 

For my part, the severity of Anne’s average spanking is pretty comparable to those above, with the exception of the “How I am Spanked” story, which I view as exceptionally hard.

 

Further, in the early days of our DD exploration, my butt was left in a condition not at all dissimilar from what the How I am Spanked author describes.  I usually was very bruised, swollen, and felt the effects for several days.

 

Today? Honestly, while the marking has changed dramatically, the rest of the after-effects that indicate a spanking was “hard enough” haven’t changed.  I still get very swollen and experience soreness for several days.

 

However, I’m not sure whether the arc of discomfort that I experience is typical, as I tend to get most sore two or three days after the spanking.

 

Using Anne's most recent spanking as an example, I was spanked on Sunday afternoon.  While I could sit and always can, the reality is it did hurt to sit at dinner that night, and I could feel it in bed that night.  It was the same the next day. And, while I don't think I technically "blister" after a spanking, I could feel this one every time I pulled my pants up or down.

 

The following day, the pain level actually increased.  That is fairly typical for me these days. Two or three days after a very hard spanking, instead of tapering off I feel an ache deep in my glutes. 

 

On Thursday, the pain began to fade, though it still was significant.   

 

On Friday, I no longer felt it when sitting or lying down, but I could still feel the soreness if I pressed in the right place. 

 

Today, six days after the spanking, the pain is mostly, but not entirely, gone.

 

So, I still get plenty sore from a hard spanking.  But, I barely mark at all anymore. 

 

Well, that’s not quite true.  My butt often displays a discolored pattern, kind of like this but lighter:

 

 

 

 

But, I very rarely show any real bruising regardless of the severity of the punishment. The only real exception is that if a strap or cane extends to my hip, it may leave some bruising there. Though, as I’ve discussed a few times, Anne really doesn’t like the cane, even though it does have the “advantage” of leaving me with both welts sometimes bruising.  

 

How about you? How do your spankings compare in severity to those described above? How about lasting marks? Does the degree of marking/bruising depend heavily on the instrument used?

On a different topic, I wanted to give a brief update on the status of the DWC website, since a few of you have asked me about it. The current website is unviewable, with weird vertical lines running across the page and with no actual content visible. I have no idea of the technical cause. I have pinged Aunt Kay’s husband about it, but he doesn’t have anything to do with maintaining the site. He did connect me with the former DWC husband who has been babysitting it, but I haven’t heard from him yet. It has been enough of a force in my life that I’m really hoping there is some way to preserve it. I’d be willing to help do that, though the help would have to be non-technical in nature, since I have no HTML coding skills and don’t have access to any of the embedded graphics and other files.

 

In the past, I wasn’t willing to provide any “knock-off” DWC website or blog with a  referral link, but now that the original site is completely inaccessible, I am OK directing people to this Wordpress site where someone, several years ago, copied most of the DWC text content.  One reason I’m fairly comfortable directing people to it is the anonymous owner seemingly hasn’t tried to profit off of it or exploit it, so I assume it was done by a fan who just wanted to make sure the content remained available.

 

Unfortunately, I don’t think it is 100% inclusive of the DWC stories, as I searched for the “How I am Spanked” story and couldn’t find it. But, I had copied it to a word processor file of my own some time ago, which is how I got the above-quoted portion. 

 

FWIW, that story also led to an interesting (to me) experiment.  At the beginning of the story, the author shared that he sometimes is spanked using a variation of the card game that appears in the DWC fiction story entitled A Learning Experience. Here is how that story describes the game:

 

·      After shuffling the deck, the husband or wife draws a card. If it is a joker, he gets 10 swats with her sorority paddle. If it is any other card, that card became the “match” card.  On each subsequent draw, he would hope to “match” by drawing the card of the same color and suit as the "match card," because that would end the game.  Example: If he drew the 10 of hearts, the match card would be the 10 of diamonds.

·      Working sequentially from the top of the deck, each time a card other than the match card or a joker is turned over, the husband gets a "penalty" of 2 swats with the hairbrush.

·      If the next card turned over is a joker, he gets 10 with the sorority paddle.

·      Each time a joker is drawn, after he gets 10 swats, it goes back in the deck and the full deck, other than the match card, is re-shuffled.  So, basically, the game starts over but with the same match card.

·      The game ends only when the match card is drawn.

 

The author of the How I am Spanked story describe his variation as follows:

 

When we use the cards, we follow the game found in the fiction story, A Learning Experience.  In our version, I get the face value of each card that doesn’t match the target and 20 for each joker.  In addition, if I match before drawing two jokers, we place the matched card back in the deck.  Also, our deck has four jokers.

 

Honestly, the penalty from the original story—two swats with a hairbrush each time a non-matching card is drawn—just didn’t seem very intimidating, even cumulatively. I mean, how much pain is really going to be generated by two swats with a hairbrush with a significant pause after each set?

 

On the other hand, the variation from the How I am Spanked story—with 20 swats with the sorority paddle per joker, in a deck with four jokers—seemed over-the-top intimidating. 

 

In light of my pondering the issue of "how hard is hard," I was curious how such a game might turn out.  But, I wanted a slightly less over-the-top set of rules. So, on one of our recent rainy days when I was by myself, I got out a deck of cards and played 10 theoretical hands, using a variation in which the wife would deliver the face value of each non-match card with a hairbrush or bath brush, plus 10 swats with a paddle for each joker, with only two jokers in the deck. 

 

Again, this was purely theoretical, just to see what could happen if Anne was ever to impose such a game. 

 

The results were more variable than I anticipated.  Somehow, on the first two rounds, I ended up matching the match card relatively quickly, resulting in theoretical spankings that would be way shorter and milder than those Anne typically delivers. But, it got bad—and in several instances very bad—on subsequent rounds.  Here is how it played out.

 

Round 1: 37 with the brush + 0 with the paddle

Round 2: 59 with the brush + 0 with the paddle

Round 3: 109 with the brush + 10 with the paddle

Round 4: 132 with the brush + 10 with the paddle

Round 5: 344 with the brush + 40 with the paddle

Round 6: 303 with the brush + 40 with the paddle

Round 7: 351 with the brush + 0 with the paddle

Round 8: 387 with the brush + 40 with the paddle

Round 9: 485 with the brush + 50 with the paddle

Round 10: 171with the brush + 0 with the paddle

 

While I doubt we'll ever play the game in real life, I could see it being useful if the parties disagreed on the severity of spanking appropriate for a particular offense.  Why not leave it to chance?  Or, perhaps it's not chance but, rather, fate or karma?

 

Have a great week.

The Club - Meeting 438 - Journaling & Communicating About DD

“Men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness.” —  Coco Chanel

 

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 all had a great week.  Mine was . . . not fun.  And, it caps off a full not fun month.  It’s really all about health or lack thereof.  Ironically, it all began with a beach vacation, where I thought I would unwind and rest up.  Not that I have that much to unwind from these days.

 

 

Unfortunately, unwinding turned into a little too much socializing with one of our adult kids and her significant other.  I left the vacation more exhausted than when we left.

 

On the first day home from vacation, along came Covid, with Anne joining me in said illness a couple of days later.  Thankfully, this time both of us recovered—or mostly recovered in my case—fairly quickly.  About the time I was feeling better, however, I had to travel for an unexpected family funeral. I didn't sleep well during the trip and after the funeral some of us staged our own wake-like remembrance, which was great but also contributed to the energetic hole I had been digging for myself.  It also was one of those "life is short" reminders, as the decedent was almost exactly my age.

Then, this week, Anne and I  both caught an entirely separate virus.  She’s now feeling better, but I’m still not feeling entirely back on my feet. Is this what getting old looks like – hobbling from one injury or illness to another?

 

 

I had kind of hoped aging would work more like this (I know I've used this pic recently, but I really get a kick out of it):

 

 

But, with a month of injuries (Anne’s hand issues) and mutual illness, there has been almost no action on that front. Or, on getting back on track where discipline is concerned.

 

For once, it’s not because I’ve been delaying with the goal of avoiding entirely.  As I discussed in last week’s entry, I had been feeling contrition for some past acts, and the need for accountability was lasting an unexpectedly long time.  This time, I actually succeeded in following through with a journal entry that reported the unpunished bad acts that were still on my mind and suggested not just one but two separate spankings to deal with two separate kinds of bad acts.  It wasn’t an easy thing to do—both the reporting and affirmatively asking for two spankings in one week—which is consistent with some of your comments from this past week:

 

“My wife will often take the initiative and make me submit to a spanking. But she will equally as often delay, postpone or simply let slide misbehaviour. This inconsistency is frustrating for me and when we have discussed it she will admit that she sometimes does not feel completely confident in taking the full responsibility for the decision to spank me. To be fair, I know when it is due or needed 95% of the time and a well-executed spanking clears the air & clears my head. So I have agreed to let her know when I feel the time is right or overdue. This is really hard for me but she responded very positively to my very first admission that I felt it was needed. She agreed, thanked me for my honesty and delivered the necessary punishment.” – TB

 

“Well, as I am writing this my rear end is sore and swollen. My wife followed through on her promise to beat my already sore butt. I was hoping she would forget or not follow through. She had a wonderful dinner with her friend and then immediately ordered me upstairs. It’s the first time I’ve ever been spanked two days in a row. It was not pleasant by any means.” – T

 

I do think Anne would have responded with some solid and, frankly, overdue spankings had we not run into these ongoing health issues and other distractions.  Though, as I knew would eventually happen, my guilt and/or need for accountability did eventually start to fade, though it’s not gone entirely.  As Alan noted, however, Domestic Discipline isn’t always just about discipline, i.e. modifying behavior.  Instead, sometimes it may simply be about retribution.

 

“The other issue you raise is the length of time before discipline is no longer needed or appropriate. This taps into one of the purposes of punishment that we don’t discuss as often as we do deterrence and behavior modification. I am thinking of “retribution,” which is punishing simply because the person committed an offense where the suffering should be proportionate to the severity of the offense committed -- punishment for punishment’s sake aside from or absent any other purposes of the punishment –and no matter how long it has been since the offending behavior.” - Alan

 

My discussion here about giving Anne a journal entry regarding the need I was feeling to be spanked even if it was arguably overdue led to some discussions among the group around journaling and reporting.  I know we’ve covered the topic of self-reporting fairly recently, but a couple of comments suggested some areas I wanted to follow up on (to some extent because, once again, I’m kind of coming up empty when it comes to truly new topics).

 

 

Glenmore offered this technological solution to developing consistency through reporting and reminders:  

 

“My wife and I have tried various tools in the past and while they work for a while the issue is that they take time and effort to complete so they end up falling by the wayside. Recently we have experimented with using Alexa's skills to create a list she can review at any time with no effort. I have set up a list called 'Glen's Report Card' and can ask Alexa to add anything to it. My wife can then ask Alexa what is on my report card and Alexa will give her a list. The list can be cleared once the offenses have been taken care of.” – Glenmore

 

Alan offered this in response:

 

“We have tried many reporting and behavior-monitoring systems over the years. Of all of them, the scheduled behavior review with a written record or log-in hand containing things she has ordered to be listed is the only structured system that has worked very well. And, importantly), the log entries need to come from her. She has to be invested in the behavior at issue. It is a simple process. I am told to put an entry into the log, and then it and anything else she has ordered in the log get discussed when during a regular behavior review.” – Alan

 

I’ve always thought that Anne and I would both get more out of the DD and FLR aspects of our relationship if there were more consistency, and I’ve always thought a reporting process would help.  However, where it always seems to fall apart is that I am inconsistent when it comes to journaling and reporting, especially when I know that it’s likely to lead to a spanking.  While I was doing a little better for a while, it often seems like any process that I have to initiate is doomed to failure.  As Glenmore observed:

 

“One of the conclusions we can come to is that there are now lots of easy and convenient tools for us to report bad behaviour to our wives, but we are sometimes reluctant to do it because of the consequences. I suppose that type of reluctance is natural because as kids we wouldn't report poor behaviour to our parents or teachers no matter how easy it was.”

 

So, that brings me to one of my follow-up issues regarding journaling and reporting:  For those of you who do have some kind of journaling or reporting process in place, how do you ensure that it actually happens?  Any ideas from the group on how to somehow make the process more self-initiating, or at least create more powerful incentives for it to happen regularly?

 

 Is the process something you initiate or is she more in control of it?

Also, for those of you who do keep a journal or log that you share with your wife, what is the content like?  Is it a simple listing of offenses, or is it more robust than that?  Does it include you sharing more about how you feel about things that are going on in your life that you’d like her to focus on dealing with?  Or, maybe some heartfelt confessions and explanations for repeated problematic behavior? 

 

Mine does go pretty deeply into what I’m feeling, especially regarding behavior that I’m upset with myself about.  I also tend to talk about things she has done that were particularly effective or that really brought home to me the reality of her authority.  She has commented that she really likes the journaling process, because it allows her to get deeply into my head and get a better understanding of things that are going on with me.

 

Which brings me to a third question around journaling, though it’s more about communication issues writ large.  This comment by GH got me thinking about it:

 

“I have said I have a feeling that giving spankings serves some purpose for my wife that isn’t purely disciplinary, i.e. not about “educating me” or managing my behaviour. She says it is satisfying to be able to punish me, but she is vague about the nature of that satisfaction. Because I used to keep a FLR journal that was open to her, she knows a great deal about my feelings when it comes to DD, but I know little about hers. That contributes to the power imbalance between us. I often imagine my wife getting sexual satisfaction from spanking me, but she says the satisfaction isn’t sexual. Beyond that I am in the dark.” - GH

 

I’m in the same boat when it comes to not having a robust understanding of Anne’s feelings about DD and about exercising power and authority.  She will respond if I ask her a direct question about things, which I sometimes do though I tend to focus more on confirming that she is on board with my desires for things like increasing strictness and her stepping up to more extensive control.  Thus, even when I do get insight into her thoughts it tends to be hers in relation to mine.

 

Do any of you have any kind of process in place—whether journaling or maybe as part of your reporting process—in which she takes the lead in talking about her feelings when it comes to DD and FLR issues, or about her authority and power over you?  Do you think she would find something like that valuable or, as GH reports, does a more unilateral reporting process contribute to a power imbalance that one or both of you prefer?

 

I hope you all have a good week.