"To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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.
I hope you all had a good week. Mine was pretty sedate, which is good because I needed to recover some energy for a family trip we have coming up next week.
Relatedly, just a heads-up that I will not be posting next week, as we’ll be on the road. I hope to be back in in posting mood two weekends from now, but it could be delayed by a day or two.
We’ve been so busy preparing for the trip that I haven’t had much time to come up with a topic, and there wasn’t a super obvious topic among last week’s comments. But, I will highlight a few here that caught my attention.
First, I had noted that Anne was always reluctant to be more open about our DD relationship at home was her fear that the kids might lose respect for me. This illustration from our Glenmore maybe unintentionally illustrates her point:
I replied with a military analogy: “In our scheme, Anne would be the general, which outranks me as a colonel, but I way outrank the kids who start out as privates and might graduate college as lieutenants at best.” In other words, Anne may outrank me, but I always outranked the kids by a lot.
Carl H. replied with this:
Dan, love your 'military rank' analogy which I frequently use. I like to say that marriage is the perfect democracy - because the vote is almost always tied - LOL. DD in an FLR is the ultimate 'tie-breaker'' While I can make a strong case for DD in a Male Dom relationship, I also believe that two aspects of DD are particularly suited to Fem Dom:
1) Males perform well in a hierarchy such as the military;
2) Males respond well to physical stimuli such as food, sex and yes, corporal punishment.
IMO, he’s right on all counts.
Ward had a couple of great comments on negative attitudes:
My problem has never been alcohol or drugs. I can very quickly become negative and when she sees it, I know that one or more spankings are coming my way until she sees a change in attitude. I was recently spanked three days in a row. I can be very stubborn about letting go of a negative attitude given challenging circumstances. Three nights of going to bed so sore that it was difficult to sleep. I finally gave up the negative attitude. She has been very happy this week with my change even though she knows it will most likely be short-lived. She can become very strict when she sees the attitude. The truth is I want her to blister me good for it because it is my nemesis that I can't control much like alcohol for some it is something that I can't stop.
I understand hanging onto a bad attitude. We do sometimes have a tendency to nurse our grievances and tempers, don’t we? His comment about getting spanked three days in a row, until the attitude finally disappeared resonated with me, as Anne and I have been talking a lot recently about the need to be resolute and firm and being willing to mete out punishment until I finally change the behavior at issue.
Ward also had this to say about how his bad attitudes contrast with his wife’s more balanced temperament:
“My wife is always right until she's not, but her ego is so much less in the way than mine, so empowering her to spank me even if I might be right keeps my ego from bullying her into things, and she will always figure it out eventually. I guess in some ways being spanked even when you are convinced that you are right empowers her more, because I'm trusting her with everything, knowing that she will get us to the correct answer every time even though it may not be instantly. She doesn't let her ego get in the way when she realizes she may have been wrong. She won't apologize for spanking me because she is the boss, but she will admit her error and correct her thinking that's what makes her so perfect for me.”
That too resonates strongly. I don’t think Anne is any smarter than I am, and I don’t think she necessarily has better judgment. In fact, I tend to be more analytical and linear in my thinking than she is. But, where she vastly exceeds me in a way that matters for who should be in control is temperament. She’s simply more balanced and less prone to excesses.
ZM had this to say about openness and the prospect of others, including family members, knowing about a husband and wife’s DD hierarchy:
“For us, there is no question that the thing that kept us from going forward to check-ins was never having the house to ourselves. And on the very rare times that we were alone, who wanted to spend it on punishing me?
I think that is one reason that at some level, I wish that DD could just be totally open and matter-of-fact with no element of privacy. So then it wouldn't matter if others were around or not. Of course, I am not saying I would really like that, and certainly part of the big attraction to FLR/DD things is the hidden/kinky secret side of it. But still, in practical terms, the need for privacy has been the biggest impediment to actually implementing it and maintaining it consistently.”
I told him I understood that tension well and that it reminded me of comments made on this blog several years ago by a Disciplinary Wife who went by the name Holly. She had grown up in a home where mom was in charge and it was an open secret—or no secret at all—that dad was spanked along with the kids.
A couple of years ago, I compiled some of the older comments into a searchable format, so in conjunction with replying to ZM I reviewed several of Holly’s comments. There was so much lived experience in them, I really do wish we could entice more female participation.
So, for this week, since I had no topic, I’m just going to post some of Holly’s comments and let people react to them and to anything above.
Regarding growing up in a DD household and knowing dad got spanked:
“Kids know or suspect if you are in a serious disciplinary relationship, even if no spanking is involved, and for sure if regular spanking occurs. Living in the same house you cannot not know a spanking is being administered or that one has been administered. Even if you don't hear it you know from the way everyone acts. (I will admit boys are a little dense about this, as I knew well before my brothers did.) My mother was probably more open than most women and probably spanked more often than most. But ALL spankings were in private and as far as I know she never talked about it until well after we were grown. Before my marriage in my case and after marriage in the cases of my brothers and their wives.”
I don’t know whether she’s right that kids always will know or suspect. When ours were younger, we waited until they were in bed. As they grew older, we generally did it only if they weren’t in the house at all. We generally kept tools locked away, but was there never a slip up? I also have kept hardcopy journals for years. Could they have snooped and discovered one with spanking references? In the end, you just never know.
But, I do know that over the years our kids have figured out that Anne has assumed some preeminent role around some decision-making and that she does things like handing out chores. They also have picked up on the fact that she sometimes uses language that sounds more like a command than a request.
All that fits with this Holly comment:
“As you have described your wife, she actively uses her authority, gives you orders, expects to be obeyed, and more and more acts in charge. A woman is not a disciplinarian only when she is holding a strap. Your kids are aware of that relationship between you even if they are not aware that you are punished with spanking. She is in charge. I grew up knowing that and believe I chose a husband who allowed me to behave much as my mother. (Actually, he chose me, but his knowing my mother spanked made a big impression on him.) Your wife may be correct that the kids don't know about the spanking. But the physical discipline is only part of "passing it on." It’s the presence or absence of real DD in the relationship. My three brothers also chose women who controlled them. Two of them are spanked by their wives, while I am not sure about the third. But they are all happy (so are their wives)."
Here's more from Holly on growing up in a family where spanking was the norm and how that probably made her more comfortable with it later:
“I have read that being spanked makes you a better disciplinarian but that wasn't my experience. Although my mother often took the strap to my father, I never saw it. But I did see my brothers punished many times and it left me convinced that males were easily controlled with a strap.
When we were first married, I never expected to discipline him using corporal punishment, although I was in charge from our first date. Only after seeing my husband display many of the behaviors that got my father punished (particularly temper tantrums), did I decide to introduce him to the strap. Even then it was my mother’s encouragement, after she heard him call me a “bitch,” something he had done before but that I had let go. The really funny thing about it is that I was completely oriented to using the strap and my mother even gave me one when I started. But it turns out my husband has a fetish for being spanked that way, so these days I deal with him with my sorority paddle or a cane which definitely do not turn him on.”
Again, Holly’s stories had a ring of truth to me because she often did things consciously to avoid playing to her husband’s fantasies, like figuring out he had a fetish about a particular instrument and deciding to use something other than that instrument.
Here is this regarding how her husband’s brattiness was the equivalent of asking for the DD relationship:
“Calling me a bitch was what led to my husband’s first appointment with the strap. He had done it before, but my mom heard it for the first time and told me I was a fool for allowing it. There were other things going on at the time, including his general brattiness and increasing temper tantrums when he was frustrated. It was a big change for me because I had been determined to manage my own marriage different than my mom had done. But over a period of time, about three years, I saw the same behavior in my husband that had got dad in trouble with mom. When I told him what was going to happen, he gave me almost no resistance. That makes me think he wanted me to take charge and his brattiness and tantrums were his way of asking for it. He knew how mom had run things and I think that made him want the same thing from me. The strap transformed him into a sweet loving husband. I don't think that would have ever happened if I had not acted (or, to be honest, if mom had not pushed it.)
Something that always gave Holly’s comments the ring of truth for me is that while moms passing along spanking tips to their daughters often is spanking fantasy fodder, she was initially very resistant to her mother’s prodding. It was only after her husband finally crossed a line that she decided to pick up the strap.
Once she did so, however, she came to accept that being the disciplinarian wasn’t just about controlling her husband. Rather, she came to affirmatively enjoy and get off on that power and control as this comment, in response to my topic about whether discipline ever involves an element of “payback”, illustrates:
“This is a good topic. I want to answer that deterrence of his childish and unacceptable behavior is my reason for spanking him. It was my original reason, encouraged by my mother (appropriately), and I had reason to believe it was something he wanted too, but he was unable to admit he felt he needed boundaries (now he readily admits it). But the desire to punish him is also part of it and was probably there from the beginning. I am getting stricter with him, which means his appointments with Ms. Strap happen once or twice a month. Controlling his behavior is still what motivates me to consistency and follow-through. But payback from a sound spanking is part of what I get out of it too. I guess what I am saying, and a little shocked at saying it, is that even if I got no behavior rewards from spanking him I still would do it for punishment. Maybe I am turning into a bitch, but men just do better with boundaries and consequences.”
More on “bitchiness” and embracing her assertive side:
“I think we are all "bitches" to our husbands when the rubber hits the road (so to speak). I reconciled myself to this long ago. The amusing thing is that, growing up, I thought my mother was a bitch for spanking too often and severely. Now, I find that although I probably do not spank as often as she did, I certainly spank harder. If a wife wants results, she does need to be a bitch sometimes. As Tina Fey said, "Bitches get stuff done." I am not saying that being a bitch is necessary to be a good disciplinarian. But sometimes being a bitch is just what is needed, and don't be intimidated by the fact that someone (like your husband) might think you are a bitch once in a while.
Great stuff. Hopefully, there’s enough above to drive a good conversation until we get back from our trip.
