The Club - Meeting 471 - Disciplinary Spankings for Life Goals, Procrastination, Etc.

"He who cannot obey himself will be commanded." - 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.

 

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.  It’s been a weird couple of weeks here weatherwise. We got a major early spring storm at the end of last week. Yet, here we are just a few days later and it feels like motorcycle weather is just around the corner.   

 

This is probably the only artwork in my collection depicting a male getting spanked while draped over a motorcycle. It’s not something Anne has explored and, since she doesn’t ride, it probably would have to happen in our garage, which is unlikely given that the neighbors might overhear.  But, given her newfound openness around things like raising the bedroom shades during a session, who knows. . ..

 

And, I do, unfortunately, have one coming.  It was a difficult week from a behavioral perspective.  Lots of travel.  Lots of socializing. An ideal recipe for the kind of misbehavior I’m usually guilty of.  Anne has already told me that I’m in for one tonight. It’s been several weeks since the last one, so I know this one will almost certainly be very painful.

 

Some of the misbehavior illustrates the good and bad of my retirement social life.  Most of my friends over the last three decades have been work colleagues.  With me retired and most of them still working, many of those relationships drifted, and for the first two years of retirement, they weren’t replaced with anything.  That changed several months ago, when I started hanging out with a guy I met through some local political initiatives.  It’s been great making a new friend at this stage but, unfortunately for my butt, we share many of the same vices.

 

 

The odd thing is, while I’m sure nothing like the above picture would ever happen, both Anne and I have detected some FLR-like vibes when we’ve gotten together socially with them.  She’s a very successful career woman and clearly used to being in charge at work and at home.  Our friendship isn’t quite at the stage at which I would unilaterally spill secrets regarding our DD relationship, but I could see it happening in the future.  Stay tuned . . .

 

It was a little quiet here on the blog last week, at least with respect to the actual topic.  But, there were some interesting comments.  I especially liked this from MW regarding getting frequent spankings for a combination of different behaviors:

 

When we're spanked for missing a different habit or combination of habits each time, it feels consistent because our specific wrong choices or mismanagements come from one underlying mindset and attitude. We leave the spanking thinking about how to manage the whole day better, not just a small part of it.

 

I think that’s a great observation and, in my case at least, I do think that most of my punishments result from a small handful of attitude and temperament challenges, including from a “big picture” perspective things like self-indulgence and risk-taking, along with some basic carelessness. Anne doesn’t generally spank for “attitude” per se put, as MW’s comment illustrates, on some level, it’s all attitude. 

 

I would also encourage any of you who missed it to look at Alan’s comment from earlier today on the self-defeating nature or resisting a spanking even if you genuinely believe it is unfair.  I won’t repeat the whole comment, but here is the part about the value of giving in to “unfair” spankings:

 

But what about when she is threatening or punishing you for something you strongly feel is unfair -or is she just wrong about it? This is probably the most challenging moment in DD consent -taking a spanking (or other punishment) you “know” you don’t deserve.) I have accepted several of these in our marriage, and I consider them among the best investments in our relationship I have made.

 

Why? Firstly, while she allows me only limited appeals before a spanking, there is no limit on discussing my feelings after a spanking (and there have been some spankings that she apologized for). We have thrashed out many issues with the hairbrush being back in the drawer. This has served as a safety valve against resentment.

 

But beyond that, I accept spankings that may be unfair because the cost of fighting them is much higher than the cost of accepting them. I could compare it to hiring a lawyer for 1000 dollars to fight a 100-dollar ticket. Even if you win, you have already lost. The spanking will be over in ten minutes, absolute top-- but the cost of defying her over one can go on for weeks, months, or even forever.

 

I seem to have once again run out of ideas for new topics, so this week’s post is more of an update on some of the things Anne and I have been exploring. I’ve mentioned a few times now that we’ve been experimenting with using DD to help me drive forward on some bigger life goals.  I was going to wait until we’d been at it for a while before devoting a post to it, but thanks to some big family commitments we’re probably going to have to pause it for two or three weeks. So, I’ll describe it a bit here and then do an update once we’ve had an opportunity to really focus on it.

 

This all started with some very personal frustration I experienced last year.  My first year of retirement was devoted mainly to getting my health and energy back after burning the candle at both ends for too many years.  The second year included a lot of exploring new interests and activities. 

 

Then, last year, I hit a real flat spot.  For unknown reasons, I stagnated on multiple fronts.  Way too much time was spent reading bad books and watching too many streaming series. I had been doing quite a bit of writing the year before, but last year this blog was the only creative activity I maintained.  By the end of the year, I was very frustrated with myself but seemed to lack the will to overcome the inertia.

 

When I get to the end of a calendar year, I usually come up with a list of goals for the following year. But, in the past they were heavily focused on career and financial goals. This year, I decided that instead of listing some obvious areas of improvement (lose weight, exercise more, etc.), I committed to trying to get unstuck.  I put together a spreadsheet, which I used to list activities, fantasies, dreams, etc. that I recall having as far back as when I was a little kid.  I then identified those that had stuck with me, in one form or another, through multiple big life phases.

 

I also identified, from among the hobbies and pursuits I’d tried over the years, those few that I’d stuck with for many years. 

 

I then ranked all those individual items in terms of (a) how much they still resonate with me today, and (b) for those that I’ve thought about and thought about but never actually committed to, how much I think I’ll regret it on my deathbed if I don’t at least give them some real attention and effort.  I narrowed the list down to about five key areas.  Then, in each of those areas, I identified specific, concrete action items that would help move things forward.

 

Anne and I have never really used it for that purpose, and although we have talked a lot about instituting a reporting or “check-in” system, we’ve never really done it.  Honestly, while I always knew I would benefit from accountability around meeting personal goals, I always assumed that Anne would find it too burdensome, since my issues around procrastination and laziness with respect to big life goals had little real impact on her.

 

But, around the time that I was putting my “goal ranking” system together, I did a blog post on using DD for self-improvement and goal-setting. Anne does read the blog fairly regularly but seldom comments on any particular post. We do, however, often talk about our DD relationship when in bed. Honestly, it’s sort of like a form of foreplay, but it’s often me doing most of the talking.

 

Well, it became clear that Anne had read that blog post, because she brought up the possibility of “helping me” achieve my goals and get over my procrastination problems.  

 

Since some of the things we talk about regarding DD when in bed don’t actually end up happening, I wasn’t sure how seriously to take it. So, I wrote her a journal entry, asking whether she was serious about exploring it and suggesting what a system might look like.

 

She confirmed that she was very serious about it.  I may have even detected a bit of "be careful what you ask for, I may give it to you" glee in her voice.

 

So, we had a face-to-face meeting in which I walked her through the spreadsheet and explained how I’d generated it. She didn’t want to try to hit all five of the big areas at once.  Instead, she pushed me to narrow down which was the most important to me.  She then immediately assigned four specific action items. 

 

My original conception was to do a check-in once a month, so it wouldn't be too burdensome on her.  With that in mind, I would assume I would have a month to work on each set of action items.  But, she decided that nothing she had assigned was all that ambitious, so she dictated that I had one week to complete all four. 

 

 

The bottom line is, I got them all done.  The entire week, that “to-do” list was on my mind.  Near the end of the week, I realized I hadn’t finished one of them, and I went into a bit of panic mode.  It felt both humbling, but also oddly reassuring, that I knew specifically what I needed to accomplish and what would happen if I didn’t do it.

 

The jury is still out on how this will work out over time. But, the big surprise so far is how it seemingly has been as much a focus for Anne as for me.  As in most of these relationships, it’s been me as the DD recipient who has been the most consumed by it.  I feel like now that dynamic is changing a little, with Anne showing increasingly consistent interest in being in charge and holding me accountable.

 

Also, my narrow focus on life goals seems to be getting extended into other areas, like Anne assigning chores.  A couple of weeks ago, we were having guests over, and she handed me a note card with four house clean-up assignments, and titled it “Dan’s [but using my real name] Task List.”  I got them done and left the checked-off list for her on the kitchen counter.  One of our kids noticed it when visiting a few days later and commented that it was remarkable that I got such a list and that I actually complied!  Last week, Anne wanted to clean up the house so it wasn’t a mess when the dog-sitter arrived, so she again gave me a task list.

 

We also agreed that, since we are planning to do check-in meetings on my goal list weekly, we will use those to address behavior issues more generally.  At the end of each meeting, she will ask me if there is anything I think I should be spanked for.  If I don’t report honestly, there is always the risk that she will order multiple spankings, one for the behavior and one for the lack of honesty.  

 

More positively, it’s also an opportunity for me to ask to be held accountable for something she may not have noticed or cared about but that has been nagging at me.  While it doesn’t happen often, there are times that I do feel like I need to pay a price for something I did or didn’t do, like being extremely careless about something that ends up costing me time or money.

 

 

So, that’s where we are with our new check-in process for life goals and behavioral issues.  As I said, we have some commitments coming up that are likely to interfere with implementing it consistently, so the big challenge is not letting it become one of those things we talked about but didn’t follow through.  Given Anne’s level of interest, however, I don’t think that’s how it will go this time.

 

I’ll keep you all posted.  In the meantime, have a good week.