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.