The Club - Meeting 473 - Catch up After Hiatus, Wives' Concerns About "More" and Fairness, and Tears

"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. 

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.

Wow. What a couple of weeks. We were traveling and taking part in a family event that had been in the planning stages for a looooong time.  It was a great event, but we both came back exhausted.  One of those, “I need a vacation to recover from my vacation” trips for sure.

That’s probably why I’m doing a different post than I thought I would be doing this week.  I’ve been teasing a post about some changes that Anne and I have been talking through that would involve her taking more control, being more strict, etc.  Sort of an extension of the “performance improvement” system we started playing with a month or so ago.  We both agree that the system is something we want to explore.  In fact, we quickly started talking about how to extend it into a more formal system of “check-ins” but also, more generally, about finally implementing a stricter kind of DD, with her really taking the reins in a way we’ve talked about before, and maybe even assumed would take place naturally after retirement, but never seems to fully gel.

We got oh-so-close to some real momentum, but then all the family event planning took over our lives.  We both agreed, however, that we would get back on that horse as soon as things settled down.  Near the tail-end of our travel, we agreed we would have “the” discussion about it the day after we got back.  But, we’ve both been in recovery mode all weekend, and I’m not 100% sure when it will happen.  But, as soon as it does, I’ll provide the details.

In the meantime, there were a lot of great discussions going on while my participation was largely on hiatus.  I tried to check in daily, but mainly to ensure no comments were caught in the spam filter, and I still haven’t had a chance to absorb everything. But, it’s safe to say there are probably at least four or five themes worth exploring further.  I was tempted to jump into all of them this week, but I’ve learned that inspiration is a fleeting and undependable resource, so I’ll keep several of the obvious topics in reserve and just hit a couple of them today.

To kick that off, I’d like to thank Miss E. for dropping in.  She’s the first new Disciplinary Wife we’ve had come around in a while.  I’m glad she was able to jump right into the conversation and that you all made her feel welcome.  Her questions and the resulting discussions covered a lot of ground, and I’ll refer back to some of those discussions in the coming weeks.  For the first part of this week’s post, I’d like to discuss more about this part of her comments:

“Speaking of embracing being a “bitch,” I sometimes worry that because I was the one who initiated it, maybe he doesn’t in fact ‘need/want’ this like I do and is only tolerating it for the sake of our relationship. Granted, we have had many, many discussions about these fears and his wants, so this fear is not exactly valid, but I still worry.

I only say this because when I fully embrace and lean into my dominant side, I am fair, but am also a ‘bitch.’

It makes me feel alive in a very powerful way. 

I feel like in the case of many of your relationships, you have an advantage in that the man was the one who initiated this dynamic, so your wife need not worry whether or not it is actually good for you.”

I love that line about how taking control makes her "feel alive in a very powerful way."

Yet, those very feelings cause her concern, leading her to wonder if she gets more out of it than her husband and whether that is "fair."

That leadership is hard is not a new thought for me, whether in the “real world” or concerning the DD aspects of our relationships.  It's not often that I use the same introductory quote two posts in a row, but the above from Friedrich Nietzsche seems very apropos of Miss E.'s concerns. It's hard to will yourself to do great things and even harder to will someone else to greater performance.

In fact, although it seems like the vast majority of us are in very healthy relationships, the few times we’ve had commenters whose relationship did not sound so healthy, it was often the case that the wife seemed arbitrary or flighty in her approach to her role. In Femdom relationships, maybe it’s all about her, but here in the real world these relationships rise and fall with both parties taking the emotional impact on the other spouse seriously.

So, it seems to me to be very natural that Miss E. worries about whether her husband is actively engaged and getting as much as she is out of the relationship. What I hadn’t thought about very much was how much that might be magnified in those rare cases in which the wife was the one who initiated the relationship.

It's something I should have thought about more, because I’ve talked to a female blogger in a F/m dynamic about her concerns around whether she was being too commanding, too strict, too decisive, and whether taking on the role in a full-blooded way might harm her husband emotionally.

Anne has displayed some of that concern, though it manifests in different ways. As discussed last week in a comment, she's told me that had a hard time embracing her role for a long time, because she couldn't understand why I would want my role, and that made her think that if she took more and more control, at some point I would balk and pull the rug out from under her.

Yet, part of her clearly feels empowered and alive in that more controlling role.  Moreover, she likes it in the context of FLR precisely because she knows I struggle against it, and she likes to see that struggle.

The great irony in all this is, of course, that most of us here seem to wish history could be slightly altered such that it was, in fact, our wives who initiated the relationship. In fact, we wish she imposed it on us. The closer we could get to consensual non-consent, the better.

And, while Miss E. and my friend struggle with concerns about being too commanding, too strict, too verbally dominant, when I’ve conducted polls here in the past, a HUGE percentage of our group say they want exactly that: more strictness, more sternness, more consistent consequences, more verbal dominance, scolding, etc.

Maybe Miss E. can take some assurance from our majority’s expressed preference for more rigor and sternness, given that her husband is assuring her verbally that he too wants their lifestyle. But, I’m sure that’s a little too pat for many of the Disciplinary Wives, as I suspect any thinking, feeling, non-sociopathic “dominant” would have lingering concerns about the impact of their actions on their partner.

So, let’s take it on more directly with our current group.  If you could change your dynamic in any respect, would you want more severity or less?  More strictness or less?  A sterner demeanor or less so?  More control and direction or less?

How about the wives? (Since Miss E. is our only female contributor currently, men feel free to contribute how you think your wife feels.)  Do you have concerns that, when you take control or become more consistent, that maybe it’s too much? Do you worry about being too strict? Too demanding?  Punishing too often or for “small” things?  Is your own enjoyment of your role limited by guilt or feelings that you shouldn’t enjoy it?

For me, I do feel I want more consistency, more sternness, more verbal control.  In short, I have expressed that I want her to be more in control, set higher standards, enforce her will more quickly and consistently, etc.  Now, whether I really want those things may be proven out once our new system/approach gets fully implemented. I have no doubt that if she carries through on what she has hinted at, I will struggle emotionally with it.  But, that is kind of the point for me.  I want to have the boundaries pushed a bit in that way.  I’ve already warned her that she may need to stick to her guns, and I hope the attitude she adopts—one that threads the needle between Miss E.’s concerns and our desire for more strictness—is to expect some resistance but to stay business-like and resolute.

That would probably be enough for one week, but we did cover some of this ground already.  Plus, I also personally wanted to follow up on Alan’s comment about crying from a spanking and Miss E.’s question about how the rest of us feel about crying, surrendering emotionally in that way, etc.  Alan said:

“Miss E wrote about re-experiencing crying from spanking: “[I]f this is something that you want to achieve with your wife, what would be the best way for her to lead you in this?”

This question has been raised often enough to suppose it comes up in many F/m relationships. Crying seems very idiosyncratic; some cry readily under punishment, while others never cry. Realistically, I think at least some may never cry during a spanking. It can be challenging for a man in our culture to reach that point of vulnerability, no matter how much he consciously may want to do so.

But for the man who will cry when spanked, there seem to be three conditions that must exist beyond his prior willingness or desire to reach that point of surrender:

1. He must feel some real guilt or shame for the behavior that earned the spanking. It must be real, and in my case, at least that has meant a severe scolding in a situation where she has at least partially begun the punishment (brisk hand spanking, pants pulled down, put in the corner, etc.) That scolding, together with real shame or embarrassment, puts me in a frame of mind to accept the spanking, and it is necessary to let go and cry during it.

2. The disciplinarian should clarify that she expects tears, wants to see them, and considers them evidence that the spanking worked. This early communication in our relationship was crucial. I don’t think I would have ever cried if she had not emphasized her expectation that tears should happen. This is very tied up with the standard “tough masculinity” image most males carry into adulthood. It sounds as crazy as it is, but instead of crying when we are afraid, we are scared to cry. A little guilt, a lot of scolding, and strong permission/encouragement to cry help overcome that.

3. Finally, he must come to feel on some level that the spanking will never end, which can lead him to let go and probably cry. A man who doesn’t cry during a serious spanking is probably “holding on” but if faced with the belief (an illusion but very real at the time) that the spanking is going to go on forever, he may be able to let go and cry—something he both wants and needs. The spanking that will produce this is not necessarily the hardest spanking you ever gave him. In fact, Hard and fast spanking can be practical behavioral tools, but they probably make a man hold on more. Instead of bringing on tears, extend the spanking for 20 minutes or even longer. Build up the severity slowly. Continue scolding throughout the spanking, and use short breaks or corner items to help create a setting in which he believes it won’t stop until he actually surrenders to you.

Others on this blog have recounted their route to tears and maybe they will add to what I have written.”

As I’ve said many times, I am one of those who was near-obsessed with tears and crying after I discovered the Disciplinary Wives Club.  Yet, twenty years later, it still hasn’t happened.

Perhaps one simple reason is I’ve never really been subjected to Alan’s three conditions.  First, last year, Anne did start scolding much more harshly, but it hasn’t been part of any kind of “preliminary” spanking, like being swatted by hand or physically controlled while it is happening. I could see how that could go a long way toward breaking down those ego barriers.

Second, Anne has never let me know that she expects tears and, better yet, wants them to be shed.  Early on, it felt kind of the opposite. This relates back to Miss E.’s concerns, as I think Anne worried a lot about whether what she was doing was “too much,” whether in terms of lecturing/scolding or spanking.  Although I think those concerns are much diminished, I think she may still have a few qualms about how she would react to tears.

Third, and this is one I’d like to hear more about in particular from those who have cried, Anne hasn’t delivered a spanking that just went on, and on, and on.  For me, given my tendency to go numb, I suspect that would take multiple sessions spread out over an hour or more.  I’ve come very close to this point as described in the DWC story Big Boys DO Cry, but never been pushed quite over the limit:

And that is when we approach my limit. There comes a point, as all well-spanked husbands should know, when it all becomes too much. The fire in my backside rages out of control, and I know I can't take much more. My pleading and promising becomes garbled and desperate, tears start flowing and I beg her to stop. At that point I will do anything, absolutely *anything* to bring the punishment to an end. I cannot possibly take even one more lick from that strap.

An interesting recent development is we’ve had a couple of recent spankings in which I hadn’t been spanked in several weeks, and from the very beginning, it was just excruciating. Both times, I felt like my emotions surged and I was very close to letting go completely and crying. But, that sensation lasted for maybe a minute, then I sort of “settled into” the spanking and, as it went on, I got further and further away from that initial “shock and awe” that seemed to almost bring me to the verge.

Are there any further comments on Alan’s prescription? Also, for those of you willing to go into it, how do you feel after a spanking that ends in real tears? 

Is the emotional experience dramatically different from a spanking that was similarly hard but didn't cause you to cry?  Is there any extra element of "humbling" or embarrassment when tears happen?  I am very sure that one reason I have been so focused on tears since the very beginning is that I feel like if it ever does happen, I will be extremely embarrassed, at least the first time. But, perhaps I'm wrong about that.

I’m also interested to hear more from him about how his wife and girlfriend reacted to his first real tears. Same for the rest of you who have cried from an adult spanking. What was your wife’s attitude? Was it something she had wanted to bring about?  Did your full-blown crying lead to any concerns about it being “too much,” or was she fine with it from the outset?

I hope you all have a great week.