The Club - Meeting 456 - Specific Reasons or Generalized "Resets", Reporting and Asking, etc.

“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 Couples Club.  Our weekly meeting of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline and Female Led (FLR) relationships.

 

Once again, before we get started I would like to extend a specific invitation to any of our female readers, if they still exist, to move from “lurker” to “commenter” status. While I’ve always said the blog is open to both men and women, one of our commenters suggested I expressly invite our female readers to join the discussion.  Please consider the invitation enthusiastically extended. 

This will be our last post before Halloween, so . . . Happy Halloween!  It’s always been one of my very favorite holidays though, honestly, other than decorating the house and handing out candy, traditionally we haven’t really done that much for it. This week, for the first time in ages we went to a Halloween costume party.  It was for adults, but nothing risqué.  (Darn it.)

 

 A good time was had by all, though not too good.  

 

However, something did happen that has some potential bearing on some of the things we talk about here on this blog.

 

Over the last few months, I’ve developed a new friendship with the host of our Halloween party. It’s a pretty new relationship, and neither of us knows all that much about the other’s personal life. But, it was clear from the first time we got together with our wives that his “wears the pants” in that family.  He has a big, bold personality, but hers is clearly the more dominant. As the party was kicking off, she took the floor to explain some of the planned festivities.  Her husband was off to the side chatting with someone.  After trying for a few seconds to talk over him, she called out: “Hey, will you please shut the fuck up? I’m talking here.”  Her tone was kind of teasing, but also kind of not. She’s clearly someone who is used to issuing orders and having them obeyed.  This was not the first time I've felt that vibe from them.

 

Over the entirety of our DD relationship, I’ve come across only one other couple who made me seriously wonder whether they might be in a similar dynamic.  The interactions I’ve had with this new friend and his wife over the last few weeks definitely have me wondering whether they might be a second.   

 

The odd thing is, I’m feeling some interesting qualms about whether I would want him to know about our DD, even If I were convinced he’s in a similar dynamic. It’s gendered as hell, but it’s clear to me that for all my professed openness to letting others know, I do have a bigger issue with men knowing than I do about women.

  

As I’ve noted before, early on in our relationship I told a female friend about our DD experimentation.  I don’t recall being all that embarrassed about it, even though she was vanilla and I really had no idea how she might react.  Yet, I find myself way more resistant to even the possibility of opening up to another man, even though in his case I do have some reason to think he could be in a somewhat similar dynamic.  Now, part of it is clearly about the longevity of the relationship and differences in how well I know him versus my female confidante.  But, I don’t think that’s really the only thing at play.  Anyway . . . food for thought.

 

I go through phases where I seem to have lots of ideas for blog topics, then I inevitably hit a dry spell. The latter is happening now and has been for a few weeks. Since I’m lacking for real inspiration, I thought I might explore one of my favorite comments from last week--one from TB--and see whether we can parse it a bit more deeply.  Instead of quoting the whole thing then probing it in a series of observations, I’m going to take it piece-by-piece, mixing up the order of our comment exchange a little and hitting on things that caught my attention.  Instead of narrowing down to a particular topic, I invite all of your to jump in with anything his comment or my observations bring to mind.

 

DD started for us as a way of satisfying my lifelong interest in spanking. We were playing about one night, she started to spank me and I opened up about my interest a few days later. It gave her some power over me as she was able to access a part of me that I had kept secret from everybody.

 

As I told TB in my comments last week, this resonates with me strongly, though I had not thought about my interactions with Anne in quite this way before. I do recall vividly the conversation in which I first told Anne that I had discovered The Disciplinary Wives Club website, suggesting but not quite coming out and saying that I was interested in trying it. I definitely was very embarrassed and felt very vulnerable explaining it to her, not knowing how she would react.  When she called me at the office the next day and told me she thought the whole thing was "interesting"--enough so that I should buy a brush on the way home--my heart definitely skipped a beat.

 

 

But, at the time I didn’t think about it in terms of giving her some power over me.  Yet, clearly it did. At a minimum, it involved me giving her an embarrassing insight into my psyche that wasn’t reciprocal.  The confession alone, and the inequality in our knowledge of each other that it invoked, was a first tentative step in elevating her in the power hierarchy and taking me down a peg.

 

As I observed to TB, it also makes me wonder whether that kind of unilateral revelation and the power dynamic it creates is at the root of many of our DD interests and fantasies, including particularly “witnesses.” 

 

I've always known that a big driver of my DD fascination was a deep-seated desire to give up control.  But, when I’ve thought about witnesses, I’ve tended to focus on the acute embarrassment it would entail and not much about someone else witnessing, or even just knowing about, a spanking inevitably involves giving that other person a certain power over us. And, it’s not just that they might say something to someone else.  Rather, the fact that they know this very personal thing about you kind of elevates their power and diminishes yours vis-à-vis that relationship, doesn’t it? 

 

After a time I asked her to explicitly link the spankings with behavior changes that she (and I) wanted to see. I wrote out several versions of 'rules', we experimented with a 'points' system but eventually have settled on a set of general principles, a sort of charter that we both use as a way of measuring how I have behaved and whether a 'reset' is due.

 

From the outset, we linked spankings with behavior changes we both wanted to see, and initially the approach was very rules-based before settling into something at least a bit more generalized, like the “charter” TB describes.  Where we may differ is in the extent to which it’s about a “reset.”   

 

Anne still tends to spank mostly for specific offenses.  There isn’t a lot of focus on using disciplinary spankings to more generally reset the power dynamic. This ties into something else TB said about the benefits of DD in his relationship:

 

The key benefit for her is a rebalance in our relationship - as she will often say, she now has the power to stop me, to re-center me, to reset me any time needed. She says (and I agree) that we are much closer now and puts a lot of it down to the 'need' that I have exposed to her, the openness in my journal and hew ability to draw any dispute to a close if necessary.

 

For me I now have the clear guidelines (or guardrails as Dan calls them) and some clear consequences when I overstep. As a very goal driven personality having this clear 'target' behavior', measures & consequences is very appealing. Tension builds in most relationships for a variety of reasons - there is nothing quite like a session with the strap to 'clear the air'!

 

Anne really doesn’t always seem to be aware of—or at least she doesn’t focus enough on—her general authority to “stop me, to re-center me, to reset me any time needed.” I feel like she’s missing an opportunity, including to “clear the air.”  When we got back from our recent trip, we clearly were getting on each other’s nerves after too many days in close quarters, to the point that she observed that we “needed some space.” At that point, I probably was too irritated to respond well to a DD-oriented “reset.”  But, a few days later, once we’d both cooled off a little, I think it probably would have been beneficial for both of us.

 

It makes me curious, how specific are the wives when it comes to reasons to spank? Setting something pre-scheduled like “maintenance” aside, is it almost always for some specific offense? Or, is it sometimes more generalized like TB’s “reset” or “re-centering”?

 

 

Link that to our recent development where I now explicitly 'own up' to failings and request that she addresses them via a spanking has moved her sense of power and control (she says) to a new level. If I miss anything she will point it out during the pre-spanking 'talk'.

 

I followed up on this, because although I know in my heart I should confess bad behavior and even request spankings as deserved, I generally don’t. And, while most of it is because I suddenly don’t really want a spanking when I know one is coming, I also do sometimes feel like requesting a spanking leaves me too much in control. Yet, TB’s wife says him doing so gives her a new sense of power and control. He explained further:

 

The only behaviors that she is interested in punishing me for are disrespect, moodiness, etc - so behaviors that impact her directly. She is therefore aware of anything that I 'own up' to already (and would usually take action to address either as a specific or as a general 'reset'). She does see that my recognizing & admitting to the behavior before she takes action is another level of submission & self-awareness. In fact, although we have only been using this approach for a number of weeks, if I don't 'own up' to some failing that was obvious to both of us, she will take extra spanking time to highlight that particular issue. A virtuous circle of sorts in that I am encouraged to document my own failings even though I am aware of the consequences, because if I don't there is a very good chance that the next spanking session will be increased to cover the omission.

 

She is a big fan of the new approach and she enjoys matching my journal view of my behavior with her own recollections. She also feels that it takes some of the pressure off her in deciding if/when a spanking is due. It helps me in that I dislike the delay & uncertainty between offense & punishment - if punishment is due then I am always keen to get it over and done with. My behavior has definitely been better for the past few weeks, mainly because I now feel that if I misbehave I have to submit a 'confession'.

 

As I said, in theory tattling on myself does leave me in control. Yet, what TB says resonates with me.  The plain fact is, one reason I don’t ask for a spanking even when I know I deserve or “need” one is because doing so ramps up the feeling of vulnerability. At the time, it certainly doesn't leave me feeling like I'm in control. And, I can see his wife’s point about how it takes some of the pressure off her to decide whether a spanking is due.

 

How do the wives feel about this?  Is the husband’s confession and/or asking for a deserved spanking empowering to you?  In your mind, does it show an increased level of acceptance of your authority over him? Does it take away some of the decision-making pressure? Or, does it leave him with too much control over the whole process?

 

That’s all I have for this week.  Have a fun and safe Halloween!