The Club - Meeting 470 - Interrogation, Probing, and Monitoring

“He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer.” ― Elie Wiesel, Night

 

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 good week.  Mine was pretty good, though we experienced one of those spring storms that kept us mostly holed up inside our house for a couple of days. Unfortunately, that led to a little too much time on social media and interacting on-line with some folks I’m involved with on a local political issue.  Maybe it’s a result of thirty years in a profession that was all about persuasive communication, but I really hate people whose go-to moves are chest-beating and name-calling. Perhaps, down the road, I’ll ask Anne to help me deal with losing my temper on-line, but not yet . . .

 

 

That was a great discussion last week, on what I thought would be a pretty mundane topic. Right out of the gate, Antonio took my “DD and health” topic in a direction I hadn’t been thinking about when I wrote the topic, namely DD and mental health.  Here’s how he described the effects of his wife’s use of DD to address his depressive tendencies:

 

“Now the amazing thing is that when she has finished disciplining me, my depression has completely lifted, and my unpleasant attitude has been replaced with a burning desire to please her. I don't know what a therapist would say, but I don't care because it works for us. She usually follows this with lighter preventative DD for the next few days just to "keep my mind right."

 

I can't explain it or why it works but it has made a major difference in our life. It has allowed me to stop taking antidepressants and instead of going into a two-week slide down the vortex of depression and then having to climb out, it is over in 10 minutes.

 

I cannot overstate what a difference this has made in our life. She has said a number of times that she wished she had known about this 30 years ago.”

 

As for what a therapist might say about it, my retort is: “Whatever works.”

 

Near the end of the week’s discussion, Alan had this to say regarding a comment by Ward regarding confession:

 

“Ward said: “I will confess if she asks…. Believe me, I know better than to fail to tell her the truth.”

 

This may be a separate topic, but I wonder how common it is for wives or girlfriends to ask regularly, during scolding, or while having a “discussion,” etc., about behavior she may not have witnessed. Both women who have disciplined me have used versions of it and it is a game changer for me when used to work on a particular behavior.

 

Like Ward, I confess if she directly asks about behavior that I would never self-report. Lying of any kind is not an option when she asks. Part of it is just the insanity of being untruthful when I have asked for discipline, and part of it is just the utter power she assumes in asking: “Have you been obedient?”

 

But the greatest impact on me comes from the message that she cares about the behavior and will use her authority to control or stop it. Caring about the behavior is why I respond so positively to being asked. If a woman wants to modify male behavior-- making her expectations clear and then asking regularly if he has been obedient—is a sure path to success ( at least if the culprit is me).”

 

Alan’s observations were well-timed, because I had actually been planning to do a topic about “interrogation,” i.e. about a wife actively probing to discover bad behavior that may have gone unwitnessed and unreported.

 

It was on my mind because of the check-in process Anne and I have been working on. (I’ve been planning to blog about it, but its implementation was paused for a bit because of my illness issues.  We also have some big family events and travel coming up, which are likely to get in the way of some momentum building. But, more to come.)  As originally conceived, our check-ins were focused on helping me get “unstuck” regarding some life goals. But, we’ve been talking about broadening them to include a more general check-in on my behavior, including her asking me something like: “Is there anything you think you should be spanked for?”

 

 

This would be a new thing for us. We’ve talked (and talked, and talked) about having some kind of check-in process, but it’s never really taken hold.  Similarly, Anne has never been big on actively probing for misbehavior or rule-breaking that she doesn’t personally witness, though immediately before a spanking she does sometimes ask me to recount why it is about to happen.

 

 

In preparing this topic, I looked through the old Disciplinary Wives Club website materials, because I thought there was something on there encouraging wives to very aggressively monitor and probe for bad behavior.  Maybe I imagined it, because if it’s on there I couldn’t find it. But, I did find these snippets of advice to the wives in one of the DWC publications:

 

“Discipline should have a positive effect.  It is a waste of your time to continually address the same situation, and it also undermines your authority.  The best way to make sure you are succeeding in bringing a change about is by being very specific about what you expect to see and closely monitoring for the results.

 

Just like you would closely supervise a child to make sure that they were practicing the correct habits you sought to instill in them, you must do this with your husband as well.  This is especially true until he has earned your trust by showing you that he does keep his promises.”

 

And this:

 

“Your success begins with the cultivation of your skills of observation. The more you are aware of what your husband is doing, the less likely it is that you will find yourself losing control. As a DWC wife you are absolutely entitled to ask your husband about anything you want to know and to expect an honest answer.

 

Sure you may get resistance, just like from any bad boy who doesn’t want to tell. But, he has asked for a DWC relationship, he really wants one, and deep down inside he does want to tell you everything.

 

If you have had the responsibility for supervising or raising children at any time, you will recall that it took extra alertness to always be aware of where they were and what they were doing. If you haven’t had that kind of experience don’t worry about it.  Just go along with me now and you will get the idea anyway.”

 

She offered the men some closely-related guidance on accepting authority:

 

You will have to put up with closer supervision than you are used to and she will demand answers and evidence of your performance.  This is perfectly normal and how it is supposed to be.  If you feel resentful about this, or don’t want that kind of accountability, remember how maternal discipline occurs in a “child -parent” situation. The child simply cannot wiggle out of his Mother’s watchful eye. If you are honest with yourself, you will admit that when you get your spankings, it is that bratty little boy part of you who is getting it.

 

As I said, monitoring, probing, and interrogation have never been a big part of our DD lifestyle, though we seem to be moving more in that direction.  And, I know myself well enough to predict that if we do, I probably will resent it as it is happening, just as Aunt Kay warned. But, it also will probably prove to be a very important part of both reinforcing the hierarchy and emphasizing the “maternal” element that we are both increasingly comfortable admitting is a thing for both of us.

 

Regarding staying aware of what I’m doing, journaling is a part of it, though it’s more about giving her better visibility into what I’m thinking and feeling.  But, there is one way in which does do some active monitoring:  She made me enable my “Find My iPhone” app settings so she can see where my phone is at all times and, hence, monitor where I am.  Though, back when I was working I quickly figured out that, while the app does a great job of tracking horizontal movement from one location to another, it can’t do vertical.  Hence, it couldn’t tell her when I’d gone to happy hour with the team, as long as we went to the bar that was 15 floors below our office in the same building!

 

Of course, as Alan points out, actively probing for misbehavior works only if the husband replies honestly.  I admit, I don’t have a perfect track record. On occasion, she’s asked me how many drinks I had after going out with a friend.  I would almost always turn it into a joke and claim to have had one.  Now, technically, I wasn’t telling the truth. But, does it count as a lie when she knows it’s one and you know she knows?

 

 

I have to imagine the biggest impediment to a wife following Aunt Kay’s advice is a lack of confidence.  When we first began our DD lifestyle twenty years ago, I’m not sure Anne had the confidence to actively push my buttons by probing for information in the way Kay suggests.  But, with twenty years of both DD and life experience, I think she is much more comfortable going into “strict teacher” mode to ferret out the information she wants.

 

How about you?  How actively does your wife probe for information regarding your behavior or interrogate you to assess how well you have obeyed her rules? Is there any additional or different consequence for not owning up when asked?

If any wives would like to weigh in, I would love to hear what your approach has been and, to the extent you actively probe for misbehavior or disobedience, is that something you had to grow into over time?

 

Have a great week.  An advance warning that we are going to be traveling this week, so I may be less engaged with the comments than normal.