Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Hello all. I hope you're spending the weekend at home with family or running around doing last-minute Christmas shopping for them.  I had planned to do a post this weekend, but we are ending the year on a down note because of an unexpected issue with a close family member.  So, for his holiday season our focus will be on our own family, though I also wish the very best for yours.

This drawing has become a bit of a Christmas tradition for me.  It reflects a peacefulness I'm far from feeling right now but, in the end, for better and worse this too shall pass.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

I also like this one, which reflects its own weird kind of Christmas peace.

The Club - Meeting 502 - The Trade-offs of Spanking Frequency

“It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It's what we do consistently.” – Tony Robbins

  

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. 

 

Once again, before we get started, I would like to thank the female commenters who have recently joined us and to extend an invitation to all others who may be inclined to move from “lurker” to “commenter” status. We like having you around.

 

I hope you all had a great week.  It was a pretty momentous one here.  I’ve talked about Anne’s surgery and how it brought the Domestic Discipline aspects of our relationship to a screeching halt. It happened back in September. But, we had hit a spanking lull well before that. Looking back at some old journal entries, I think my last spanking may have been as far back as late May. So, a summer hiatus turned into half a year with an unspanked bottom.

 

Until this week.

 

It seems fitting that the reason wasn’t some huge drinking failure or big marital fight.  No, it was a “small” thing that has earned me more than one spanking in the past.

 

 

Namely, leaving the damn front door unlocked. I had gone to the gym while Anne was out somewhere.  I forgot to lock the door when I left. The above text arrived as I was wrapping up my workout.  It wasn’t followed by an explicit spanking order, so I thought maybe it was just a warning.  No such luck. It took a day for her to follow up, but she did.

 

As I said, the context seems fitting for breaking our months long hiatus.  It wasn’t for some huge bad act.  It wasn't for something I had asked for help with.  It wasn’t even for something we both agree should be a priority.  Instead, it was for something that she cares about and that I really don’t.  In the context of a DD relationship that we both want to take in at least a slightly more FLR direction, it feels right that my first spanking of this renewed phase was for something that she, and she alone, decided merited punishment and that was more of an everyday, domestic thing.

 

And the experience was . . . punishing. “Excruciating” is a fitting descriptor.

 

It’s not at all atypical for me to be surprised at how much more a real spanking hurts than I seem to remember between sessions. After twenty years, what is remarkable is that I underestimate how much it is going to hurt pretty much every single time.

 

But, this was truly different.  I was in pure agony from the first swat, and it was not just worse, but WAY worse than I had anticipated.  Mid-way through, she switched from the bath brush to the heavy wooden hairbrush, which hurt less but it was still much more painful than I recall spankings being six months ago.

 

I am confident this was more than the normal amnesia I get between sessions.  This truly felt an order of magnitude worse than most spankings.  It was a very painful reminder that there really is a trade-off between frequency and severity.

 

I doubt many of us truly want to get spanked more often.  It’s true that we often want more consistency, and indirectly that does usually entail getting spanked more often, but that’s not quite the same as saying we want to be spanked more often.

 

Yet, the experience this time reminded me that there really are paradoxical benefits to getting spanked more often and that, given just how badly this one hurt, I really would choose to be spanked more often if it meant that each spanking was closer in pain severity to what I was used to in the past. 

 

And, it’s not just about avoiding the extreme pain a too-infrequently spanked bottom can entail. Before our imposed pause, we had one session that involved something Anne had spanked me for multiple times before. While I was over her knee, she paused between swats to comment on the fact that I had been spanked for this before.  She asked me, “Do I just need to spank you way more often?”

 

It seemed like a rhetorical question at the time, but even as she asked it, I knew the real answer was “yes.” There are too many habits and attitudinal issues that have remained problems year after year.  Although I’m aware of how difficult it will me if it really happens, part of me wants to experience her ramping up the strictness and rigor to something that leaves me feeling much more concerned much more often about another spanking on an already sore butt.

 

 

And, it’s not just the spanking.  Part of the desire is to more often be in that emotional place where I feel I’m not the one in control.  One of our intermittent commenters, “DD”, left a comment a few months ago that got my attention at the time.  Here is a shortened version:

 

“The first time I cried it wasn't from the intensity of a particular spanking itself but from a culmination of spankings a few weeks after my wife first took me in hand. I had been spanked and disciplined a lot in those first few weeks, and I think I felt a loss of control.

 

Leading into this particular spanking, I was balking and trying to get out of it. I had a sense of panic at the point she brought me into the room.  I had just been spanked the day before for something else, and this was the second time I was being disciplined for the same issue in a week. I felt frustrated with the frequency of my misbehavior. I think deep down I was realizing I wasn’t the mature, responsible adult I thought of myself as. Getting disciplined really highlighted that.

 

I don’t know why, but that spanking was the first I really tried to talk my way out of. My wife continued to tell me to bend over and take my punishment and that we would talk after. Eventually, she told me I was now going to be spanked for disobedience, in addition to the original reason for the spanking. That got me lowering my pants and bending over.

 

After the spanking was over, she sat me down and said I was permitted to tell her what was so important before the spanking. I tried to rationalize not getting spanked so much, but this conversation is what turned into us formalizing our FLR relationship. My wife doubled down on the fact that things were going to continue where they were heading if I wanted to be in the relationship. She said the only way I was going to get out of getting disciplined like a bad child was to fix my bad behaviors and attitude and always respect her as the authority in the house.”

 

MW had a somewhat similar comment a few months ago regarding the near-panic he felt when being spanked much more frequently for a certain behavior he knew he should be able to fix but, for whatever reason, hadn’t:

 

“I found that when I was spanked frequently (daily or nearly daily) for the same problem, the memory of the pain, the soreness, and the little twinge in the butt would remind me to do the right thing. For one persistent problem, I would actually feel desperate and a little fearful and work harder at it. It was a wonderful feeling after years of making no progress on it.”

 

Although I’m sure it would bring out a level of resentment and resistance way beyond what I’ve experienced before, I find something about the very challenge of that kind of a loss of one’s sense of being in control morbidly alluring.

 

 

One might think that being spanked frequently might actually remove some of the emotional edge and make it feel too “normal”, but that hasn’t really been my experience.  Instead, I sometimes felt like I was “walking on egg shells,” with a more constant awareness of the need to adjust my behavior. It was definitely a form of fear, but what I would call a “healthy fear” of consequences, knowing that I had some control over the outcome.   

 

Yet, while I might have had some ability to avoid particular spankings, it still felt like my control was being curtailed because my ability to avoid the spanking was dependent on actually fixing the behavior, instead of resulting from delaying or talking my way out of one. If I’m getting spanked more frequently, and it’s not the result of something like maintenance spankings, it’s almost inevitable that I’m going to feel less in control, because it means any efforts on my part to delay or get out of it aren’t working.

 

 

Al has commented several times on the value of weekly maintenance spankings, on the premise that they help maintain the spanking practice, which eliminates any awkwardness about imposing one when one has been earned.  I didn’t see that as a real problem for us until this long hiatus, but now I appreciate more fully what he meant.  There definitely was an awkwardness with us the last few weeks, with multiple times that she really should have spanked me, and she probably was sufficiently recovered to have done so.  It just seemed very difficult to actually take the next step and make it happen.  I suspect that the lack of regularity has contributed a lot to our lack of consistency over the years, as Anne seemingly has never been fully conditioned to take the “spank first and ask questions later” approach.

 

I don’t think I’m quite ready to embrace maintenance spankings, because I still think I need the element of accountability for the spanking to feel “real”. But, I think we might get most of the same benefit by recommitting to our weekly “check-ins.”

 

 

I suspect that spanking more frequently would also be easier on her in some ways.  If she did adopt more of a “spank first and ask questions later” approach, it would almost certainly reduce some of the mental energy and self-doubt involved in analyzing each instance of bad behavior for whether it was bad enough to “really” merit a spanking.  Consistent with Al’s point about maintaining the whole spanking dynamic, increasing spanking frequency would harness the power of habit.  One reason habits are so powerful is they don’t require as much mental energy as does consciously weighing whether to do or not do a particular action.

 

I don’t have a well-defined topic here, other than inviting comments about frequency.  We’ve addressed that topic before, but the last time it was a full topic was over a year ago. 

 

How frequently do you get/give real disciplinary spankings?  Do you think it should be more frequent?  Less frequent?  Does anything change for you mentally or emotionally when you are getting spanked much more frequently?

 

 

For the women, do you find spanking frequently to be a burden? Or, does it actually make things easier in some ways, whether because it results in better behavior on his part or because it becomes more of a habit that requires less mental energy?

 

I’m also curious, have others experienced what I did this week, i.e. a long hiatus from spanking that caused the first one after the break to feel off-the-charts painful?

 

I hope you all have a great week.  Be safe and well-behaved at those holiday parties.  Are we all good and sick of Christmas music yet?

 

 

Delayed Post

 Hi all.  I just wanted to let you know,  we have some family commitments going on this weekend. I do intend to post but probably not until tomorrow or Monday.  In the meantime, enjoy that Christmas shopping!

UPDATE:  I ended up having some alone time, so I put together a post, which is now up.  But, the below is just too damn beautiful to take down after such a short time.

The Club - Meeting 501 - Epiphanies, i.e. That Moment You Knew You Needed a Spanking Relationship

The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable. - James A. Garfield

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 thank the female commenters who have recently joined us and to extend an invitation to all others who may be inclined to move from “lurker” to “commenter” status. We like having you around.

 

 

Well, now with the most boring large-scale holiday of the year (Thanksgiving) out of the way, I can finally start posting Christmas pictures!  

 

 

There is such a dichotomy between those two holidays in terms of the amount of kinky, sexy, and DD-oriented artwork out there.  My biggest challenge at Christmas time is choosing among an extensive and growing collection of artworks.  Yet, some are so perfectly suited to the season, I find myself coming back to them over and over. 

 

 

This year, I’m particularly fascinated by Krampus-themed stories and art. Before last Christmas season, I don’t think I’d ever even heard of Krampus.  Now, I’m seeing more and more cultural references with Krampus themes.  I’m not sure whether it’s a good or bad thing that people seem to be exploring some darker stuff these days, but I personally love it. Maybe it’s because I’m such a Halloween fan, and Krampus feels like a bit of Halloween’s naughty darkness imported into my other favorite Holiday.

 

 

 

We did manage to get a jump on holiday decorating.  My attitude has been better than usual (I love Christmas, yet putting up lights isn’t a favorite), though I did get a bit snippy when trying to do part of the job that Anne usually handles but can’t this year due to her ongoing medical recovery.  It was fairly minor, but we’re getting to a point where I almost feel like something—whether large or small, serious or trivial—needs to register as a convenient excuse to get us back on track. 

 

Anyway, thanks for participating in last week’s topic, which leveraged a comment from Aunt Kay’s husband about the DWC’s “confessional” group sessions.  I knew it wouldn’t be some folks’ cup of tea, but we did still manage to generate some thoughtful discussion.  I do still wonder how the Disciplinary Wives Club manage to generate a fairly substantial amount of club-like personal interaction, yet even among those here who are somewhat open to it, it seems like confidentiality concerns—and also a fair degree of aversion to anything regarding participation by others—outweigh whatever level of desire there is for more “community.”

 

I suspect some of the difference is attributable to the respective generations involved.  Aunt Kay’s husband is now over 80, and I assume his age is reflective of that of many of the other original DWC participants.  So, I assume most of them came of age in the late 60s and early 70s, which to my lasting chagrin turned out to be the high point of sexual and transgressive cultural experimentation.  I was born a decade too late . . .

 

A couple of weeks ago, Alan posted an inquiry that is similar to, maybe a slightly different angle on, some our discussions about origins and how we each came to be in this lifestyle:

 

“Wondering …and a question.  Miss E alluded to the Thanksgiving spanking her husband received. I will call it his “epiphany” spanking, using epiphany to mean the experience of a sudden intuitive grasp of the essence of something. This seems to be the moment he marks as seminal in his journey toward DD and spanking.

 

Much of the prevailing thinking about the roots of a spanking fetish and the lifelong impact of spanking points to this happening to most spankos. That is, something—a book, a person, an experience, or? “trigger” a pre-existing (predisposition) to spanking or being spanked.

 

What precisely produces the pre-disposition is unknown. It is probably some combination of genetics, hormones, gender, and environment. The predisposition itself probably exists in far more people than there are actual spankos, the difference being the “trigger” experience. Dan has mentioned his trigger experience, discovering the DWC. As I recollect, one or two other posters have also described such. But most seem to relate spanking interest to an early time that is not well recalled.

 

So, my question to anyone who can answer is: What do you remember about your evolving interest in spanking, and most particularly, what triggered the need to be spanked? Does anyone have an experience like Miss E’s husband or a late experience like Dan's? What was your epiphany?

 

It seems clear that Alan is right that, for most of our commenters, the spanking interest came very early and may not be tightly linked to a particular event.

 

I seem to be a very rare exception in terms of that early interest. I really don’t recall ever having any interest at all in spanking until I was well into my 30s.

 

However, while it was very compressed, there was a bit of evolution before I found the DWC.   

 

A few months earlier, I had seen an episode of an HBO series called Real Sex, which included a segment on adult erotic spanking.  

 

I don’t really think of it as an “epiphany” in and of itself. It did catch my interest, but that was a fairly horny period for me, and coming from a fairly inexperienced and vanilla background, lots of things caught my attention in that period. 

 

It did interest me enough, however, that we experimented with F/m erotic spanking for a very short period.  I think for both of us it was one of those things that was fun to try, but we both lost interest after a few few times. Moreover, Anne was concerned that in play-acting fake punishments for some real offenses, she was reinforcing behavior that was genuinely pissing her off.

 

But, the real purpose it served was fostering an interest in spanking that was at least sufficient to lead me to search out  on-line material regarding it, in addition to other kinks.  In the course of that looking, I came across the DWC, though I still don’t remember exactly how.   

 

That definitely was an epiphany, though it’s honestly taken me 10+ years to process the “why” of it all, and I’m sure I still haven’t fully appreciated why it hit me so hard given my lack of experience with adult spanking in general and complete lack of interest at any earlier stage.

 

 

I suspect the DWC epiphany hit me so hard in part because it was so unexpected.  As I said, at that stage I wasn’t very experienced kink-wise (not that I am today either) but I was interested in (reading about, viewing, etc.) all sorts of unconventional kinks. But, nothing had been remotely close to the reaction I had to the DWC. 

 

Today, I think the reason the DWC hit me so hard while other spanking-related kink exposure did not is that the DWC prominently featured  ingredients that were missing in whatever else I’d seen to that point: harsh, reality-based disciplinary consequences, delivered in a close, loving personal relationship, by someone with authority.  

 

 

I also now appreciate how much a “maternal” vibe plays into my attraction, but I’m not sure whether that was a part of the initial reaction or something that evolved over time.

 

If you’ve had the kind of “epiphany” experience Alan talks about, please tell us all about it. 

 

Also, let’s expand it a bit to cover not just the “need to be spanked” but, to get the wives involved, any epiphanies related to a desire to give spankings or take FLR-like control.   

 

 

Was there a moment where you realized that your husband’s desire to be spanked had morphed into a strong desire on your part to do the spanking?  Or, did you have an interested that pre-existed or arose independently of any desire your husband had?

 

 

Enjoy the season.

The Club - Meeting 500 - Community-Based Spanking Discipline and a Real DWC Club

Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.” ― John Updike

 

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 thank the female commenters who have recently joined us and to extend an invitation to all others who may be inclined to move from “lurker” to “commenter” status. We like having you around.

 

I hope you all (in the U.S.) had a great Thanksgiving and are getting a good start on a long holiday weekend. It’s never been one of my favorite holidays, but ours was good; a short trip, some time with extended family, and a short trip home.

 

We might kick off a bit of a milestone - 500 posts!  I'd make a bigger deal out of it, except that we really passed that milestone a long time ago, when you consider how many "no post this week" posts ended up with lots of comments and great discussions. But, in any event, thanks again to all of you who have stuck around for so long, regardless of how many it's actually been.

 

I expect this could a pretty quiet weekend here on the forum.  So, I decided to post a little early, given that some may be traveling over the weekend, and because I may be tied up tomorrow.  But, even if many are out and about, some trying not to get spanked, and some thinking about the ones they already earned, let's try to get a conversation going.

On that preliminary note, we are heading into the season where both preventative and deserved punishment spankings tend to spike.  If that was part of your Thanksgiving experience, please help out the more voyeuristic among us.  Give us some details!

 

Second, this may be less a well-defined topic than conveying my own recent reaction to an old comment and satisfying my curiosity as to others’ reactions.

 

As part of my recent review and culling of some old blog comments, I came across this one from Aunt Kay’s husband, known as Tomy here and as Jerry within the DWC.  In a comment from a years back, he reflected on this memory from the DWC:

 

"When Aunt Kay held her occasional Couples Gathering, the high point was the Confessional sessions. The men would bring a written description of something they craved punishment for and release from. They were completely confidential.

 

She studied them and then assigned each man to a different wife who would discuss the confession and administer the spanking. Believe me. The women took their responsibilities seriously.

 

The therapeutic result for the men who took the whole exercise to heart was beyond belief. A couple of guys reported getting rid of guilt from decades past."

 

Something about that scenario really got my attention, which is somewhat odd, because usually the whole group dynamic leaves me kind of cold.  In fact, while I have always been very into all things DWC, my one reservation was the some of the group activities always seemed a little too “play-like” for someone like me for whom DD is, at its core, about real accountability for real offenses.  

 

 

I think this scenario struck something within me, despite my “group play” reservations, because the stated therapeutic goal  included—and, indeed, hinged on—the husband being honest about some failing that might be deeply embarrassing that he wanted to pay a price for.  That injected a “real disciplinary” element that fell well outside typical “funishment” or “role-play” group scenarios. The scenario checked several disciplinary boxes:

 

• the humbling inherent in basically asking for an immediate spanking for a specifically identified bad act;
•  an outsider knowing about the bad act and the spanking to come, and either delivering that spanking, or facilitating it happening;
•  the “all business” nature of the exercise, exemplified by the seriousness with which the women apparently took it; and
• the further humbling in taking a spanking that, unlike in most group settings, reflects a real offense that everyone, including you, know you deserve and fully support you getting;
• while she may not deliver the spanking to her own husband, the wife is still in control of the situation by virtue of participating in it herself
  

 

I don’t recall seeing anything like this on the DWC website or any of the DWC materials, but it must have been a known “thing” among people who knew about the DWC, because during my comment review I found this one in a different post from the one Tomy was commenting on:

 

"While I have been spanked by wives in our DWC circle of friends many times, only once has DeeDee had another wife give me a true disciplinary spanking. It was during a get together where we kind of "mocked" Aunt Kay's confessional idea.

 

It was very powerful. The other wife spanked me, while lecturing me on some things she saw in my life where I was over-extending myself to the point where, by "helping" others, I was hurting myself. It was something blatantly obvious to her, yet swallowed up as part of our "normal" life by DeeDee and I.

 

Mostly however, discipline spankings are a very private and intimate time that are shared only between DeeDee and I.” – Anthony Payne

 

The logistics aren’t quite clear in either scenario, but it says something about the extent to which I internalized Tomy’s description of Aunt Kay’s session that, in my mind, the husband was taken to another room and spanked in private.  I was actually surprised when, upon a closer reading, I found that element wasn’t actually part of the description, and the spankings may have happened in front of a group.  I don't know but intend to ask Jerry.

 

Maybe it’s just how my own imagination depicts it. Or, perhaps I subconsciously intermixed the described scenario with some of Tomy’s other stories involving men being sent to Aunt Kay for punishment spankings.  He was always instructed to take himself elsewhere in the house when those happened.  So, while he sometimes overheard them, he seldom actually witnessed them.

 

That relates a bit to an exchange between Miss C and Alan.  Miss C related a story regarding her own husband being spanked by Aunt K. and how watching him spanked by another woman left her feeling confused.  It led Alan to observe:

 

“I do get this. I have been spanked with her sister present several times. But neither her sister nor any other woman has spanked me in my wife's presence. If it did happen, as it apparently did for you –i.e., another woman in effect demonstrating her technique for your benefit- neither my wife nor I would be comfortable with that as your husband was not.

 

However, if my wife told me she was sending me to another woman for discipline (there could be several reasons for doing that), then the spanking would feel like an extension of her authority: she is delegating her authority to someone else. Then, the spanking from another woman would be an extension (an embarrassing one) of my wife’s authority. So, in the example you cite -if you had asked Aunt Kay to discipline him on your behalf, that would have been an entirely different situation.

 

In the real world, do disciplinary wives delegate their authority like that? I don’t know, but plenty of instances of it are recounted on various websites. If my wife decided to do it, her motive would probably be to help someone else with their relationship. But the point is, if she ordered it, I would obey her. But if we were at a spanking party or another social setting, I would have no interest in being spanked by another woman.”

 

The element I subconsciously read into the scenario—of the husband being taken to another room by the assigned disciplinary wife and the spanking taking place in private—would seem to address the concerns Miss C and Alan’s concerns about a spanking being delivered by another woman in front of the wife, and it would involve Alan’s scenario of the spanking being conducted as an extension of the wife’s authority.

 

 

It’s interesting how our minds may read elements into stories and pictures that may or may not be what the author/artist intended.  For example, this drawing, which I’ve posted many times, came up when I was searching for art for today’s post.  In the past, I’ve assumed the woman leading the man upstairs was his wife.  But, when I viewed it with today’s topic in mind, it occurred to me that the woman on the far left, looking slightly nervous or concerned (or, that's how she looks to me), might be the wife, watching her husband being taken off to be spanked by an Aunt Kay-like disciplinary surrogate, wondering how much he's in for.   

 

My search also pulled up this other picture by the same artist, which seems to suggest either his wife, or another Aunt Kay-like woman, sending a reluctant husband off for a private session, while the other women look on knowingly.

 

 

I think one reason the whole scenario got my attention is my attitudes toward witnesses and others knowing seem to be changing subtly.  Though, I think the change is not so much about witnesses or groups per se, as about the whole “community” aspect that the DWC seems to have pulled off in real life; an aspect this blog, as stable as it has been, has never managed to extend into or replicate.   

 

It’s ironic, as we found the DWC near the time it was starting to come apart, but long enough before that actually happened that, had we been more open at that time, we probably could have participated in something like the sessions that I know find myself oddly attracted to but have no present outlet for exploring.  This isn’t the first time over the last year or two that I’ve found myself much more interested in an in-person community-based experience, though that ebbs and flows.

 

Another reason I find it increasingly appealing has little or nothing to do with any prospect of me getting spanked in such a situation. Rather, it’s about the imagined prospect of Anne participating by being the surrogate for some other wife. In real life, I think her jealousy, which she acknowledges is firmly-rooted, might preclude any scenario involving me getting spanked by anyone else (at least by any woman).  However, I don’t seem to be similarly wired for jealousy when it comes to DWC-oriented spanking, as I don’t think I would have any problem at all with her spanking another man.  Although I think it is very unlikely to ever happen, I think I’ve crossed some threshold where it’s all about Anne’s reluctance to engage in anything more “community” oriented, and not really my own.

 

 

And, of course, things can change.  KOJ has related how his own wife’s transformation from purely private disciplinarian to having little problem “outing” her problem by spanking him at a party, where others didn’t see it might have overheard, and how it happened astonishingly quickly after she retired.

 

 

Anyway, as I said, I don’t have a fully-articulated topic in mind.  Instead, I’ll leave it more open-ended and invite you to talk about your reaction to the scenarios depicted above.  Do they have any appeal, whether as something you would want to explore in real life, or as just a private little “what if” scenario?  If so, what elements do you find most appealing. 

 

This topic very much invites responses from the wives as well.  Does anything about the scenario Tomy/Jerry depicted, with wives taking on the assignment of spanking another man for something real that he has confessed a need to have dealt with, seem appealing?  Why or why not?  If doing the spanking isn’t appealing, do you find anything appealing about your husband being told to participate in anything like that scenario, perhaps for its humbling aspects?

 

And, generally, how do people feel about the kind of real life “community” the DWC built, for at least several couples who were open to it?

 

Have a great week.

Happy Thanksgiving

 

Hello all.  I hope you're having a good weekend. I'm getting some other things done around the house this weekend.  The conversation has been a little light this week, and next week is Thanksgiving for those in the U.S.  So, I'm going to skip posting this week.  

I hope you have a fun and relaxing time with friends and family.  If you're traveling, be safe.

The Club - Meeting 499 - The Power of Asking for What You Have Coming, and Anger's Role in Spanking Timing

“Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.” - Edward Abbey

 

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 thank the female commenters who have recently joined us and to extend an invitation to all others who may be inclined to move from “lurker” to “commenter” status. We like having you around.

 

Before we kick off this week’s discussion, I wanted to highlight a fun development.  I’ve mentioned a few times lately that I’m trying to compile a book using some of the best comments from over the years. It’s actually going relatively well, though it’s been a much more laborious process than I envisioned when I started plowing through every topic beginning with the very first.

 

In thinking through publishing logistics, I gave some passing thought to cover art.  I figured I would have to pay someone to create something original, since I have zero artistic ability. But, almost on a lark, I reached out to the artist who distributes his spanking art under the name RedRump and asked whether he might consider letting me use one of his pieces.  I have been a huge fan for many years, but I had no real expectation of even receiving a reply, since he hasn’t been publishing new works recently. And, I thought if he did reply it would likely be a polite “no.”

 

Thus, I was shocked when, a couple of weeks later, I got a positive reply.  His only request was that I publish a couple of his newer works.  I was more than willing!  I love his stuff and am honored to publish anything he gives me. Here are the two works he passed along. One is brand new. The other is a new version of one that has circulated in colorized form for a while, the colorizing apparently not his doing.  So, enjoy!

 

I was intending to do a new topic this week, but something happened that made me decide to further explore some additional angles on some things we’ve talked about over the last couple of weeks.  I don’t do many personally revealing posts, but this one will get a little introspective.

 

As I’ve talked about, we’ve been stuck mostly at home for two months, dealing with Anne convalescing from a big surgery.  A couple of weeks ago, it became clear that the stress of the confinement and having our routines disrupted was showing, when we got into a big argument.  That doesn’t happen very often with us, and this one was harder to move past, because we both thought we were right.  That went on for several days.

 

Then, we were in bed one night, talking a bit during the pre-glow of our first sexual encounter in well over two months, when I steered the discussion toward getting the DD and FLR aspects of our relationship back on track.  At first, I didn’t detect a lot of enthusiasm.  Then, I said something about her spanking me for the recent fight, and she perked up very noticeably.  I told her, in that conversation and in a follow-up journal entry, that I didn’t think I was in the wrong in our argument, or maybe it was that we were both in the wrong, but I did recognize that the way I argued was wrong and should be punished regardless of who was right on the merits.  

 

The mere act of taking responsibility worked a major change in her mood, and she became downright enthusiastic about getting our DD back on track. Maybe even more so the FLR aspects, as I learned the next day when I got home from the gym and found a list of chores she wanted done that day. 

 

So, things were going in a good direction. Then, I once again did something really stupid.  Without getting into too many details, I did something that was basically “roughhousing,” but without thinking about its possible impact on her surgical recovery.  It wasn’t malicious in anyway.  It was just incredibly, unthinkingly careless.  This time, I not only accepted that I was in the wrong, I felt terrible about it and apologized profusely. 

 

She seemed to accept that, though her demeanor was notably cool the next day.  I don’t blame her and, in fact, totally understand if she remains pissed off and lets me know it.

 

 

These two incidents highlight the intersection of anger and timing.  Last week, there was some discussion about “spanking in anger.”  Those discussions almost always involve the scenario in which the wife is angry, but in our case it’s often my post-argument anger that creates a timing issue. It’s very rare that we get into big arguments but, when it does happen, it can take several days for passions to cool, including mine. Until my own anger and resentment taper off enough that I can at least accept my own role in the argument, a spanking won't accomplish anything constructive beyond simply imposing punishment (though, I recognize that alone could serve her purpose.)  But, at some point, I almost always come around to accepting my role in causing or escalating the argument and am contrite about it and ready to take what I have coming to move us both past it.

 

In my journal entry, I suggested she might try doing something Alan I discussed here a couple of weeks ago.  I has posted:

 

“I've wondered whether it would add a distinct humbling element to our usual DD rituals if, instead of her telling me when to get ready for my spanking, she ordered that one would happen in the next day or two, but left it to me to come in and ask for it when I was ready.”

 

Alan replied:

“We have never done this but I am going to discuss it with my wife. It could be a powerful tool for her I want her to know about. As I think about it, it may be some cultures have used something similar as part of the punishment process.

It does check some boxes. It would almost guarantee that you spent time thinking about what happened and what is going to happen. The point when you go to her and say you are ready means you are taking responsibility for the behavior and ready to pay the price. My former girlfriend liked it when I came to her after she had decided to punish me. But not so much when I asked for a spanking or told her I needed one without her first deciding it was going to happen.”

 

I think this idea of coming to her when I’m ready to accept responsibility is powerful.  Although she could end an argument by ordering a spanking, it would probably work only during the course of fairly minor arguments.  When we’re both really angry and in the heat of battle, even if I complied I think I would be incapable of learning any real lesson from it.

 

But, in those situations where we’ve both cooled off but I’m not quite contrite yet, I think it would be very humbling for me and very empowering for her if she told me something like, “You are going to get spanked, not for the argument itself but for your attitude and lack of respect. It must happen in the next two days or you will get an additional spanking for each day you make me wait. But, you come to me and let me know when you are ready for it.”

 

 

I think something like that would accelerate my accepting responsibility, since I'm usually on the cusp of doing so anyway. And, it would be incredibly humbling to have to go to her and tell her directly, face to face, that I want her to spank me then and there.

 

It doesn’t, unfortunately, fit our current situation, where I was very contrite and genuinely sorry from the very beginning, but she may need to stay angry a while.   

 

Just like there is a sweet spot where I’ve gotten over my anger but haven’t totally moved on from the situation, there probably is a sweet spot for her where she’s still pissed off at me but has cooled enough to see spanking as a way to make sure I am not only sorry but as sorry as she wants me to be and in a place where a spanking may get her over the anger she’s justifiably carrying instead of possibly reinforcing as might happen if she spanked when she was still very mad.

 

Something that did surprise me a bit about both these incidents was how much better I felt just from accepting responsibility, even before any spanking has taken place.  Accepting responsibility really is hard.  A couple of weeks ago, I talked about a “moderate drinking” app I’ve been using and how weird it was that I found it difficult to be honest in “reporting” to a disembodied app with no power to hand out aversive consequences. I think it’s hard for the simple reason that admitting to ourselves when we’ve screwed up is almost as hard as admitting it to someone else.

 

Anyway, I don’t have a concise topic description to go along with this but welcome any more thoughts you may have about spanking in anger; being spanked while angry or when not yet accepting responsibility; and, reaching that point where you not only accept responsibility but take the next step and come to her humbly asking for what you have coming.

 

 

Have a great week.