The Club - Meeting 464 - Healthy Fear

“Courage is the facing of a challenge with a healthy fear, not being fearless.” -Les Stroud

 

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/or 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. We miss having you around.

 

I also wanted to raise a couple of housekeeping issues.

 

First, for several months now (since Blogger started requring logins for all visitors), I’ve been double-posting this blog’s content, posting here on Blogger and then posting a duplicate on Wordpress at www.disciplinedhubbies.wordpress.com.  While I haven’t closed the Wordpress site to comments, at the beginning of each post I point back to the Blogger site as the place to engage. 

 

In terms of effort, doing it twice honestly isn’t that big a deal.  In fact, I kind of like having two content repositories, in case one or the other gets taken down by the powers-that-be.  But, I do think the time has come to make a choice about which should be the primary place to comment. 

 

I don’t see strong pros or cons either way.  The Blogger site seems to get slightly better coverage in Google’s search engine. Blogger is also somehwat easier for me. I’ve gotten more familiar with WordPress over time, but the available features vary a lot from template to template, and I still can’t figure out how to do things like having a list of links to other blogs that will update when there are new posts.

 

On the other hand, Google hasn’t done jack to update or improve Blogger in years. The spam filter algorithm is a chronic mess.  Visitors still have to sign in with a Google account to see the blog (I think that's still the case – please correct me if I’m wrong). And, every two or three years Google changes its rules on blogs with adult content and threatens to get rid of them entirely.

 

I don’t have strong feelings about it one way or another, so please take a look at the WordPress version and let me know which platform you prefer.  Also, if you visit, would you please verify whether it requires a login to leave comments?

 

Second, at least a couple of you know this already, but I’ve been experimenting with an entirely new venue, Medium, which is an open platform for writers in any genre. I’ve posted some original DD content there, though most of my posts so far have been adapted versions of my blog posts. I’ve done it under another pseudonym, with some open leveraging of the DWC brand (with Tomy/Jerry’s express permission). 

 

I didn’t bring it up here before now, because I wanted to test whether there was some pool of people interested in F/m DD who weren’t already participating in the blog. I also thought that it might be an interesting way to get around to writing a DD-themed book, with each Medium article becoming a book chapter.  

 

Has it been a success?  It depends a lot on how you define that.  Medium articles tend to get good coverage by search engines, and some of the articles have been read close to 10,000 times, with several getting at least 2,000 to 3,000 views.  So, clearly there are some folks out there who are interested. On the other hand, while Medium does have a comments feature, as a tool for real interaction it’s been a total flop. I think the issue is that Medium allows only a limited number of free articles per month, so most of the readers are paid subscribers using a profile that includes their real name.  Because they aren’t using a pseudonym and can’t comment without a profile, they don’t comment at all. (Just fyi, while authors can make money on Medium, I haven't joined the program that allows for that. The payment algorithm is a mystery, but I know it depends in part on reader engagement, i.e. "likes" and comments and, as I said, as an engagement tool for this particular niche, it's been a failure.)

 

Based on the identified profiles that “follow” my articles, however, I can get a feel for the reader demographics. Like here, the vast majority are men. But, there are several female followers.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, almost all of them are erotic writers using Medium as one of their platforms.  But, every once in a while I get someone whose profile is totally vanilla.  I always find myself wondering what their story is. . . .

 

I haven't been using the Medium posts to direct readers here, as I wanted to see how much interest my posts would generate on that platform totally independent of this blog. But, I may do that in the near future.

 

Anyway, on to an actual topic.

 

This week’s topic came to me indirectly following an exchange with ZM on the “outing” post from a couple of weeks ago. He said:

 

The topic of “outing” hits pretty close to my fascination with witnesses so is pretty compelling to me. I still don’t quite know why I want others to know. Perhaps some part of it is what Alan said: “But one's sexuality is so central to who we are that hiding it at best misses an important opportunity to self-actualize.” Another reason may be that, having experienced adult spankings, they lack the emotional impact that childhood spankings had (or at least that I thought they had), and I have realized that much of what is different is the absence of the embarrassment of others knowing. Or probably a myriad of other reasons.

 

I responded:

 

I know what you mean about the difference between the fantasy and the reality when it comes to emotional impact. For me, I don't think the gap is so much about others knowing. In fact, I think that being wholly out might actually lessen some of the emotional impact. For me, the difference in emotion is all about the power dynamic and the extent to which a punishment feels like it is being imposed whether I like it or not. That's why, for me, the emotional power of being out probably depends a lot on who is doing the outing -- me or her.

 

There was something I should have added:  The emotional impact of childhood spankings was, for me, intimately tied up with a genuine fear of parental discipline and paddlings from other authority figures, including principals and teachers.

 

While I didn’t get spanked often by my parents, I definitely had a healthy fear of it happening. In that area of the country, belts seemed to the primary instrument and both my parents knew how to swing one with force.

I don’t think I was ever paddled in school, but I was sent to the principal’s office at least twice, having been led to believe (by the teachers who sent me there) that I would be getting one. Honestly? I was scared shitless both times.  I had a very healthy fear of a principal’s paddle, particularly because most families in our community followed the rule that punishment at school automatically meant a follow-up session at home.

 

Looking back, I don’t think it was so much the anticipated physical pain of a session with my dad’s belt or a principal’s paddle that induced such fear. Rather, it was the knowledge that a session could be imposed for any reason they deemed deserving and, once they decided to do it, there was nothing whatsoever I could do to stop it.  As ZM notes, at school there was the added element of other students knowing that you were going to be, or had just been, paddled.

 

In the earliest days of our DD relationship, my fears about losing control were central to the anxiety I felt, and in two slightly different senses.  First, the knowledge that going forward she would have more control and I would have less was both tantalizing and terrifying.  Second, I was afraid of losing control in the literal sense of emotions, and tears, flooding out during a spanking and the extreme embarrassment I would feel in that moment.

 

 

I learned over time that while tears may or may not come, for me the change in the relationship dynamic--with me losing autonomy in a very real way--is an ongoing source of healthy fear.  Yet, it's a fear that I really do wish was a bigger constant day in and day out, for the reasons ZM alludes to, i.e. the emotional intensity I felt back in the day at the prospect of being punished under circumstances I could not control. 

In one of the DWC publications, Aunt Kay voices a wish for the aspiring disciplined husband that alludes to the interplay of severity and inevitability and their impact on attitude:

 

“My goal is for you, the man in the relationship, to one day ask yourself, “Oh, NO! What did I get myself into?” as you await an upcoming spanking session that you desperately want to avoid. Yes, that’s right. I want you to be genuinely anxious and dreading an upcoming discipline session. Why would I say such a thing? Because it means your wife has taken the role of disciplinarian seriously, has made a decision that you are going to get a good sound licking, and you have nothing to say about it.”

 

I learned very early on that fear and eroticism are not mutually exclusive.  My strongest memory of the few days that passed between me finding the DWC website and our first try at it is the combination of extreme anxiety coupled, paradoxically, with extreme sexual excitement.  Our initial conversation about the lifestyle culminated in Anne sending me to buy a high-quality brush.  I recall vividly walking around our local mall, in a state of sustained high-anxiety, while sporting a sustained erection.

 

I can’t emphasize enough that I was genuinely fearful about not only the upcoming first spanking but also the transformation of our relationship that might be coming. The sexual turn-on existed apart from that fear, and maybe because of it.

 

I know that talking about having a “healthy fear” of your wife makes some skittish.  However, to me it seems almost inherent in the whole concept of punishment as discipline.

 

 

If you don’t fear the consequences your wife may impose, then what’s the likelihood you’re going to change your behavior?

 

I probably could make the “healthy fear” concept more palatable by saying it’s about fearing consequences versus fearing the wife delivering those consequences, but that’s splitting hairs.

 

Part of coming to terms with the nature of the relationship I proposed to my wife all those years ago is accepting that, for this lifestyle to work as I intended, I need to have a healthy fear of not playing by her rules. I should be genuinely afraid of the consequences of disobedience and misbehavior.

 

And, similar to those expected spankings from a school principal, it’s not just about the fear of the pain involved with a really hard paddling.  Rather, it’s about loss of control and, more specifically, having that control taken away. 

 

 

I still vividly recall one of the first times I experienced Anne not just imposing discipline as we had agreed but really taking charge. A few years ago, I had a string of incidents in which I forgot to clean out a rice cooker. The third time it happened, she texted an angry emoji along with a picture of the cooker with the rice still in it. I apologized. She did not reply. 

 

That night, I was sitting at the kitchen table doing some work on my laptop, when she walked in from her office.

 

“One of the chores I gave for this weekend was to sweep the floors, right?”

 

Lost in whatever I was working on, I replied without looking up from my laptop. “Yes. I did that already.”

 

Pointing to some dog hair on the hardwood floors that I had missed, she demanded, “Does this look “swept” to you?”

 

“I’m sorry. I must have missed that bit,” I responded, still not paying much attention.

 

“You also left the closet door open again this morning. You know the cat goes in there and tears things up when you leave the door open.”

 

“Did I? Sorry.”

 

“So, you did a half-ass job on the floors, you left the closet door open repeatedly after I told you not to, and then there is the damn rice cooker. Shut down your computer and go to the basement. You are going to get spanked.”

 

What was happening hadn’t quite registered yet. I just looked at her.

 

“What are you waiting for?” she demanded. “Get down to the basement, get out the tools, and get your pants off. You are getting spanked, and I mean now!”

 

And, that’s what she did. I hoped, given the nature of the offenses, that it might be a fairly light spanking. No such luck. She thoroughly blistered my ass with a combination of the strap, paddle, and bath brush.

 

 

As I collected myself after it was over, part of me resented getting such a hard spanking for “small” things. And, it had happened without any kind of warning or chance to correct the things she was pissed about.

 

However, I also felt a deeper level of respect, along with the first glimmerings of that “healthy fear.” The resentment and the respect were inextricably intertwined.  She had decided that something merited a hard spanking and she had delivered one, not caring in the slightest how I felt about it.

I was no longer in control. She was.

 

ZM’s comments about the additional emotional component that may be involved in being “outed” contributes to that sense of “healthy fear” that I actually want to feel for my wife. KOJ’s description of the semi-public spanking his wife delivered during a party has stuck with me since the first time he told us about it.  As Alan has observed about it:

 

It’s all well and good to talk about “anytime, anywhere, for any reason,” but it’s kind of a meaningless grant of authority until she uses it in a way that truly pushes the envelope. By spanking him in a semi-public scenario, it undoubtedly left him feeling a sense of “healthy fear.”

 

KOJ confirmed that was the case.

 

I totally agree that escalating the punishment to semi-public had a profound effect on me and our relationship. It planted a healthy fear in my heart and made it clear how much authority she really wielded!”

 

Anne hasn’t taken things in that direction. But, I know she could and that it's not a given that she won't. I recall that KOJ said he didn't believe his wife would really do it even as she was leading him up the stairs.  He didn't think she would -- until she did.

 

I’ve related here before an incident that happened a few months ago after a dinner with another couple. The wife is the only vanilla friend who knows about the disciplinary aspect of our relationship. As we were driving home, my wife let me know that she thought I had been too loud and domineering over dinner and that she would be spanking me the next day.

 

Then, for good measure, she let me know that when the husband and I had left the table to get a drink at the bar, she told our friend that I was going to get a spanking.

 

I felt very embarrassed the next time I saw them. I don’t know whether she’s told her husband that I get “for real” spankings, but spouses talk, right? Every time I looked at them I couldn’t help wondering whether they were picturing my naked, blistered butt under my wife’s brush.

 

While not nearly as big an escalation as KOJ experienced, it’s just not that big a jump from telling a friend in private, to telling her in front of me, to telling the husband and wife in front of me, to asking if she can borrow a room at a party.

 

How big a role, if any, does “healthy fear” play in your DD relationship?  Do you have a healthy fear of your wife?  Are you willing to share some moments when your fear/anxiety level ran particularly high?  What is it that produces that anxiety? The physical pain?  The loss of control? The embarrassment?  Something else?

 

 

For the wives, are you comfortable with “healthy fear” being part of your husband’s reaction to your authority?  Is producing that kind of anxiety/fear in him one of your goals?  Are there things you do to ramp up his anxiety level?

 

I hope you have a great week.

 

The Club - Meeting 463 - Rooms for Spanking

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.” - Ernest Hemingway.

 

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/or 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. We miss having you around.

 

I hope you all had a great week.  Ours was pretty uneventful, which is mostly good though I also feel like we are in a big rut where DD—or more accurately, the absence of DD—is concerned.  We got busy around the holidays and, even though I probably deserved multiple ones from Thanksgiving on, it didn’t happen.  So, now it’s going on two months, and while I’m not exactly missing getting spanked, I do miss feeling more firmly under her control.

 

Of course, it’s not like there isn’t a real reason or two to get one, though it would probably involve expressly asking for one.  In fact, somewhat ironically, the most obvious reason why I should get one is procrastinating on asking her to agree to a plan for dealing with . . . procrastination. 

 

In my first post of the new year, I talked about how I felt like I stalled last year when it came to forward progress on big life goals. I spent some time between Christmas and New Years working through my thoughts about which post-retirement life goals I felt like I really wanted/needed to at least try for and came up with some ideas around concrete action items to move the ball forward.  Now, here we are 20 days into January, and I’ve done little or nothing on any of them, including presenting anything about them to Anne to stimulate a discussion about whether she’s willing to supply some motivation.

 

While I didn’t get much accomplished this week and there was no disciplinary activity at home, it still was an interesting week for me where spanking and DD-FLR references were concerned.

 

First, as I talked about in a comment last week, I’ve been bingeing the series Fargo on Hulu.  Season 4 is by far my least favorite of the five seasons, but it starts out with a bang. In the opening scene of the first episode, we are introduced to the narrator and major character, a brilliant and precocious black teenager in Kansas City in the 50s.  We know she’s precocious because she says so in narrating a series of scenes in which she is either waiting in the principal’s office for a paddling or is being escorted back to class after a paddling. In one scene, she’s standing by her desk post-spanking and her teacher tells her to sit down.  She declines after multiple attempts, making it clear she got the kind of paddling that makes sitting a very painful experience. 

 

Even though the series is pretty new, it doesn’t exactly present these school paddlings as abuse with all the pathos and condemnation we might expect, though it is clear that 1950s racial dynamics are at the heart of why we see black teenagers being paddled by a white principal.  In any event, while I have seen other school paddlings in movies and TV, this is perhaps the most explicit I’ve seen since Dead Poets Society. 

 

Second, I overheard a conversation that had nothing to do with disciplinary spanking, but for someone with my proclivities, it might as well have.  I had just finished a workout at the gym and decided to put in a few minutes in the sauna before showering.  There were four guys in the sauna when I sat down, and they were having a very animated conversation. One of the participants was an older gentleman with a very heavy accent from somewhere in Africa.  I’ve overheard some of his other locker room conversations, including one in which he said he is a professor at the local college. I have no idea how the conversation started, but as I settled in the professor was talking about how a friend of his advised that we all need to find a woman who is basically a controlling nag. The gist was something along the lines of, "My friend makes a good case that you don't want a passive woman.  You want one who is constantly nagging and pestering you. One who is always asking what you are doing and why.  One that is always questioning your judgment." 

 

One of the younger guys looked flummoxed and asked, "Why the hell would I want something like that?"

 

The professor replied, "Because that is the way the world works. It nags you and pesters you and constantly shows how your judgment was wrong.  You won't make as many mistakes and will start making better decisions if your wife questions you constantly.  She will keep you in line and keep you from making as many mistakes."

 

I swear the younger guy then replied with, "Yeah, I can see that. Kind of like she’s holding me accountable."

 

I smiled broadly and nodded along.

 

Third, a few weeks ago a commenter here said (I presume tongue-in-cheek) “Do you have any idea how many warmed bottoms you have been responsible for?”  I replied that if he meant men who had decided to try DD because of this blog, I thought the number was probably very low.  My experience has been that most of the men who have found this blog did so after they were already in a DD or FLR relationship.  Well, this week a guy reached out to me by email and said he had read some of my stuff and was planning to ask his wife to give him real disciplinary spankings.  He kept me up to date as the discussions were going along, and his wife was receptive to the idea.  I have to admit, it was gratifying. 

 

Despite all those DD-related cues, this is another week that I struggled a bit to come up with a topic.  But, one of Alan’s comments from a week ago gave me an idea.  In discussing leaving instruments on display, he said:

 

We have a different approach to the display of her disciplinary tools. It is something we used early at my suggestion and something she has returned to many times. She had an old-style armless straight-backed chair when we met. It became her go-to, along with the couch, when she spanked me OTK. She kept it in a guest bedroom, where she often took me for punishment.

After marriage, I suggested she keep it in our bedroom in a corner with a hairbrush on it to remind me of her authority. She did so, and it really worked.

 

His reference to being spanked in two different bedrooms made me curious about which rooms in the house others are spanked in.  I realize this is a narrow, pedestrian topic—right up there with “what’s your least favorite instrument”—yet it is something I genuinely am curious about.   

 

Also, since Alan's comment centered on a piece of furniture, let's also talk about which items of furniture you have incorporated into your spanking sessions. 

 

This an area where we are not very adventurous.  Since the kids grew up and moved out, 99% of our spankings have been in our bedroom.

 

Since rediscovering OTK a couple of years ago, the vast majority of spankings have been with her sitting on a large leather ottoman at the foot of our bed.  

 

There also have been a few with her sitting on the bed.  On the rare occasion (these days) that she’s using a strap or large paddle, it tends to be with me bending over the side of the bed.  

 

 

In earlier days, it was very common for her to strap me while I was laying on the bed, draped over several large pillows.  

A couple of months ago, she decided to spank me in one of the guest bedrooms. The change of scene definitely added a little something to the experience, as did the fact that we live in one of those depressing suburban neighborhoods with small lots, with houses absurdly close together.  The way that room is configured, the bed is very close to a window that faces dead-on one of the windows in my neighbor’s house, with only a few yards separating the two.  While Anne did decide to close the window shades, there still was a non-trivial risk that a spanking could be overheard.

 

In the old days, when we had little kids in the house, spankings almost always took place in the basement, usually with me draped over the arm of a couch or a small stool.  

 

 That’s really about it.  Like I said, we haven’t been very adventurous. 

 

How about you?  Which rooms in your house or apartment have you been spanked in? 

 

Bedrooms?

 

Home office/library?

 

 

Kitchen?

 

Living room/family room?

 

Bathroom?

Let’s also add other “rooms” on the property, like garages, barns, and the iconic woodshed.

 

 

I hope you have a great week.

The Club - Meeting 462 - Outing and Being Outed

Nail up some indecency in plain sight over your door; from that time forward you will be rid of all respectable people, the most insupportable folk God has created. -- Paul Guaguin

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/or 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. We miss having you around. 

 

I hope you all had a great week.  Like much of the rest of the country, we are huddling inside trying to stay warm.  As much as I appreciate the inspirational humor in this meme, I wouldn’t think about it where we live, as something would likely freeze and fall off.

Although we had a good discussion last week, I feel like some of our regulars are still enjoying the holidays.  Truth be told, a half-month into the new year I too don’t really feel like 2024 has gotten started.  There’s the weather that I mentioned, keeping us in what feels like I state of suspended animation. We also had some family and household obligations during the first two weeks of this new year that ending up taking up more time and emotional commitment than we really saw coming.  The result has been that 2023 ended with more of a whimper than a roar where all things DD were concerned, and that hasn’t changed much in 2024.  The result is, I still haven’t presented Anne with my thoughts on some personal goals I would like help with and, in fact, I haven’t even finalized my own thoughts on the specifics of that ask.  So, I guess you could say that 2024 is starting out like most other years – irrational optimism fizzling quickly upon encountering real life.

 

The discussion of leaving instruments on display covered some good ground, though it seems like most of us who responded were, in fact, fairly comfortable leaving instruments of some sort on display, even if in doing so we were depending on any visitors not actually discerning that the items on display are, in fact, associated with spanking. 

 

Something we also probably should have talked about more is the possibility of someone inadvertently coming across a spanking implement, and what our reaction was (or likely would be).

 

 

Some, like Spanked Cowboy and Norton, seem to be pretty comfortable with more or less open displays. Norton even saw it as a possible conversation starter:

 

“Leaving spanking implements out is an appealing idea, as it is an open invitation for guests to inquire about it. We sometimes have a paddle hanging on the wall, but it is hidden if any guests are around. I did forget to hide it once, but she didn't ask about it. My cleaning lady discovered a paddle under the bed, and she put it on the bedside table, but she never asked about it. In general, it's a great idea, and it could lead to sharing your DD with others. If they aren't comfortable inquiring about it, then they won't say anything.”

 

My own inclinations are probably closer to Alan’s, which I might describe as “less is more.” 

 

“We have a different approach to the display of her disciplinary tools. It is something we used early at my suggestion and something she has returned to many times. She had an old-style armless straight-backed chair when we met. It became her go-to, along with the couch, when she spanked me OTK. She kept it in a guest bedroom, where she often took me for punishment.

After marriage, I suggested she keep it in our bedroom in a corner with a hairbrush on it to remind me of her authority. She did so, and it really worked.

 

She has spanked me in that chair, but that is not the reason it works. I know I am, in fact, unlikely to be spanked in our bedroom. It works because it is a regular reminder to me of her authority and what can happen if I forget that.

Just seeing it over and over has deepened my commitment to obedience to her. And she has told me that it makes her feel powerful when she really looks at it. No one except her mother and one sister is ever in our bedroom, so we can leave it there except when they are expected, or we are traveling or on vacation.

 

I also get a sexual tingle from it sometimes, and I suspect she does, too. The chair with a hairbrush on top makes a statement that is very powerful emotionally and sexually. But it's very different from leaving disciplinary tools around where they may be seen. It's very private and personal. Her sister has seen me spanked, and her mother knows she spanks me. But neither of them has ever seen the chair.

 

I’ve talked about how Anne and I leave her ebony hairbrush and bath brush on open display in the master bath.  While a visitor to our bathroom might draw certain conclusions, for me the display functions more as private reminder. Though, as I’ll talk about more below, at this point I don’t have any big concerns about someone drawing their own conclusions.

 

The topic of leaving spanking instruments on open displays segues nicely into Alan’s suggested topic, which we'll take up this week, i.e. being “out”:

 

Dan, this probably deserves its own topic someday, offering folks a chance to think through and express their feeling about being "out". Like most I am in conflict over it and conflict as usual produces paralysis when left unresolved. But one's sexuality is so central to who we are that hiding it at best misses an important opportunity to self-actualize. The example of the LGBTQ+ community is so instructive re: what happens when hidden sexual minorities assert their rights. People in DD relationships, male and female, no matter what side of the paddle you are on, deserve the right to remain private but also the right to be open if they choose. And anyone who chooses to demean us on any grounds is as much of an empty-headed bigot as the racist or gay- basher down the street.

 

I get the conflict Alan feels around openness and being “out.”  Hell, my approach to this blog probably epitomizes it.  I obviously feel some deep need to talk about this lifestyle, since I’ve been doing so here on a weekly basis for almost a decade.   

 

Yet, it’s also true that I use a pseudonym and don’t share many identifying details. There is only one vanilla person in my life who (for sure) knows about our DD activities, and there are only four or five others who I’ve met through this blog and have formed a relationship with that includes some personal contact and knowledge of the other’s real identity. 

 Do I wish for a greater degree of “outing”?  Yes and no.  On the one hand, most of the time I don’t feel any compelling need to share more than I already do. But, I do think that my overly paranoid concerns about confidentiality have cost me some opportunities for connections that I wish I had not missed out on.

 

The best example is Aunt Kay of the Disciplinary Wives Club. I learned about the DWC when it was still functioning like an actual club of sorts, with participants having real contact with each other and particularly with Aunt Kay and her husband “Jerry.”  Within a couple of years, it had started its decline, with website functions vanishing one by one.  I did exchange a few emails with Kay before she passed away, and she was familiar with this blog and told her husband she hoped I would keep the DWC spirit moving forward, and I’ve since formed a real relationship with him. Yet, I regret that my concerns about “coming out” and disclosing my identity kept me from initiating more real contact with Aunt Kay and others in the DWC before it was too late.

 

Also, I’m sure that being so closeted about this has cost us in terms of the consistency we both think would help with behavior correction through deterrence.  It’s not as big an issue now that we are empty-nesters, but not being more “out” certainly set a pattern that we’ve never really escaped from despite having the house to ourselves most of the time.

 

So, although many of us think about what it might cost us if we were “out,” it’s wrong to assume that there are no costs associated with not being out, if only the cost of lost opportunities for community and connection.

 

Therefore, knowing there is a cost to not outing myself, why have I not come fully out of the DD closet?  Honestly, most of it is just inertia and also a feeling that it probably wouldn’t change much in the way I live my day-to-day life.  I can truthfully say that since retiring, most of the time I have neither a great fear of being outed or a great desire to open that part of myself up to the world.

 

I’m also not sure where Anne is these days on the whole “openness” thing. I’ve talked about how over the last year she started spanking me with the window shades open, which creates at least the theoretical chance that a neighbor could get an eyeful.  Yet, it also may be telling that, for the handful of people who know about our DD and know my real identity, the reason they know is because I told them. As far as I know, in twenty years of this thing we do, Anne has not told anyone herself, though she is open about it with the one vanilla friend I told.

 

I feel like I’m not the norm in that respect and that, among those who are partially “out” it has more typically been the wife who has decided to do that outing, whether it is telling a sister or girlfriend and/or inviting someone to witness or overhear a spanking. In fact, in going through my collection of spanking art for this post, I could not find a single meme or piece of spanking art depicting a scenario in which the husband did the outing and, in most instances, the scenarios implicitly or expressly involved a wife deciding to "out" the DD relationship to others over her husband's objections or at least without his affirmative consent.

And, for those who are closeted, it’s an interesting thought experience to test the extent to which real power has been ceded to the wife to ask what if she told you she wants to be more openly in charge?  What if she told you that she wants it be clear that she wears the pants?  What if that included her disclosing to anyone she chooses that she spanks you? 

 

And, which would you find more embarrassing for others to know – that she spanks you, that those spankings are for real punishment and discipline, or that she has some degree of unequal authority in your relationship?  Your answer might shed some light on a question that may be implicit in the connection Alan drew between being “out” about DD and “out” about sexual orientation, i.e. what is your assessment of where society is in terms of both gender equality and openness to kink? Is there a consensus that society is becoming more accepting of spanking if it is a kink but not if it is a tool used to reinforce a man taking second place to his wife in the decision-making hierarchy?

 

I also very recently came across this piece of spanking art, which to me raises all sorts of interesting feelings about the prospect of total strangers knowing.  Why do we care so much about the judgment of strangers?

 

 

If any of the wives would like to join in, I would personally be very curious what you think about openness and “outing.”  To what extent are you currently “out” about your disciplinary or FLR lifestyle?  Would you feel embarrassed if others knew about it? If so, why, given that you aren’t the one being spanked or bossed around?  Do you have concerns about “outing” your husband, or would you see that as part of the process of reinforcing your role or, perhaps, humbling him?

The Club - Meeting 461 - Tools on Display

“But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.” - George Eliot

 

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/or 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.

 

I hope you all had a great holiday season. If responses to my New Years post was any indication, most of you were occupied with better things. That post usually draws a lukewarm response, at best, but this year may represent a new low. 

 

In any event . . . onward into 2024.

 

Well, one last thing regarding aspirations for the new year.  After the New Years post, I saw this, which of the captions and artwork in my “New Years resolutions” collection, probably best represents my views about what the new year should hold for our domestic discipline arrangement. 

 

 

No big new rules. Rather, a stricter application of the existing rules coupled with less tolerance for my efforts to get out of what I have richly earned.  I also liked the reference to how having rules makes me feel like my life is more under conrol . . . even if it is really all about someone else’s control.

 

Now, let’s get right to the first topic of 2024.  I find myself not much more inspired than I was at the end of 2023, so I must again rely on one of your suggestions, specifically this one from GH:

“I also have a suggestion for a possible future topic arising from last week’s discussion. There was some discussion of the possibility of house guests spotting spanking implements like large hairbrushes with no hair in the bristles and possibly drawing conclusions. Spanked Cowboy said that in his case the person would not have to draw conclusions because his wife keeps an actual spanking paddle hanging on the wall, and a smaller one in her purse, and there would be no doubt about their purpose. I wanted to ask Spanked Cowboy whether that open display of a spanking paddle means that their family and friends all know his wife spanks him, but I was late getting to it. That suggested to me a possible “what if” topic for everyone. What if guests, whether family or friends, came to your house and spotted a spanking paddle, either displayed on purpose or left out accidentally. What conclusions do you suppose they would draw based on their familiarity with you and your wife? Would they conclude it was just a kinky toy, or would they surmise it was for serious DD? Also, if they guessed that it was for real DD, would they know whether you or your wife was the one who gets spanked, based on public aspects of your relationship? Just an idea.”

 

Alan and Spanked Cowboy were the only ones who gave substantive responses, and others may not have seen them over the holidays. 

 

SC: I too am late responding to you. Some of our friends know of our lifestyle and have accepted it, others do not know. None of my family knows for sure, but I think one brother has an idea. All her family knows, some have witnessed and her late sister-in-law actually spanked me herself. We do not broadcast our FLR but if anyone, family or friends, should 'discover' it, I do my best to explain the benefits of an FLR and DD living. I am a spanked male submissive and not ashamed of it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all.

 

Alan: “GH wrote: "Also, if they guessed that it was for real DD, would they know whether you or your wife was the one who gets spanked"

 

Almost certainly they would guess it was her, despite the fact that she is very assertive, confident and has a very successful career managing large numbers of people.

 

And that they would, points to the huge reality gap between what women actually do or can do --and what our patriarchy obsessed culture expects. This cultural " fairy tale" probably also contributes to the relatively low percentage of males who actually seek female led DD, as opposed to the apparently enormous numbers who fantasize about female led DD.

 

Here are my own answers.

 

“Would they conclude it was just a kinky toy, or would they surmise it was for serious DD?” 

 

Although there is no way to know, my best guess is they would assume it was a kinky toy, not because of anything they know about our particular relationship but, rather, simply because I’m not sure how many people out there even realize that “serious DD” is a thing.  Until I stumbled on the Disciplinary Wives Club, I’d never heard of “real” adult corporal punishment, and I doubt that many others are aware of it today. 

In fact, when I was growing up, I'm sure if someone saw a paddle left out or hanging on a wall, no one would have assumed it was used on either parent but, rather, by them on misbehaving juvenile bottoms.

“If they guessed that it was for real DD, would they know whether you or your wife was the one who gets spanked, based on public aspects of your relationship?”

 

This one depends a lot on the identity of the guest.  I suspect that many of our friends might have a hard time envisioning me on the receiving end, because the same brashness that gets me into trouble with Anne probably would lead them to assume that if there were a dominant partner in the relationship it would be me.  I’m not as sure as Alan is about whether patriarchal societal views would come into play to such an extent that guests who didn’t know our personalities that well would simply assume the husband was the spanker.  If they did, it might simply be because so many of the spanking scenarios depicted in popular culture and porn are, in fact, Male/female.

 

 

With close family members, particularly our adult kids, it’s much more likely they might see Anne as the disciplinarian.  Our kids have, on at least one occasion, expressed some curiosity about the fact that she seems to make more of the decisions. I was working at the time, and she told them that I carried so much responsibility at work that I didn’t like having to make a lot of decisions at home.  So, they clearly have noticed that, from time to time, our relationship seems to be a little untraditionally tilted in her favor.

 

GH’s topic suggestion was well-timed, as a more subtle version of his scenario did, in fact, play out for us over the holidays.  I’ve talked before about how, beginning a year or two ago, Anne started leaving her bath brush and heavy ebony hairbrush out on the counter in our master bath.  It’s always been unlikely that social guests might see them but not entirely likely that one of our adult kids might go into that bathroom. 

 

Well, sure enough, while they were visiting us over the holidays I went into the master bedroom and found Anne and one of the kids chatting in the master bathroom.  Ordinarily, the counter can be more than little cluttered with daily use, but Anne had tidied it and the rest of the house up in preparation for the kids visit.  So, the two brushes where literally the only things on the counter, other than box of tissues. They were truly on “display” in every sense of the word. 

 

Were they noticed?  Quite possibly, but I suspect that when it comes to brushes, as opposed to GH’s scenario involving an actual paddle, we spankos and DD practitioners see things others likely do not. Were they noticed?  Quite possibly, but I suspect that when it comes to brushes, as opposed to GH’s scenario involving an actual paddle, we spankos and DD practitioners see things others likely do not.   

 

Speaking of which, back during the pandemic, I took this screenshot of an interview on CNN.   

 

 

Note what’s hanging to the left of the bookcase in the background? Fraternity paddle?  Maybe, though I don’t see any Greek letters.  Unfortunately, when I zoom in, I still can’t read the stenciling. The fact that I noticed it at all probably says a lot about my own sensitization to all things even potentially spanking-related.

 

I hope you all had a great 2024 kick-off week. Best wishes for the rest of the year.