The Club - Meeting 475 - Maternal Vibes and Bringing Out the Boy

Strong women intimidate boys and excite men. – unknown

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 our female readers to move from “lurker” to “commenter” status. We miss having you around.

 

Ours was pretty uneventful, which was nice after a busy few weeks.

 

We had a good discussion last week.  Something interesting about DD and consistency is it seems to be almost universal that those who don’t have consistency want it and those who have it seem to like it that way. Many of us are subjected to very painful spankings that we genuinely do not want at the time they are happening.  Yet, we all seem to aspire to a level of consistency that ensures we seldom get away with anything.  Further, in ten years of blogging on this stuff, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a husband express any angst about having a wife who was too consistent or strict.

 

 

Consistent strictness is something I associate with maternal discipline, which is interesting because consistency is the antithesis of my real-life experience with maternal discipline.  In fact, I strongly suspect that the erratic approach to rules and discipline that I experienced is one reason I crave a much firmer hand today and it probably was at the root of my incredibly strong attraction to the Disciplinary Wives Club when I first discovered it.

 

Although I didn’t recognize it for a long time, there definitely is some kind of psychological entanglement between my current DD needs and my teenage years when there was an unmet need for discipline and structure. 

 

Oddly, for a long time I didn’t focus on the extent to which the DWC website and Aunt Kay’s pamphlets were replete with references to both the maternal nature of the discipline the group advocated and the ability of a hard spanking to reduce a husband to the mindset of a boy.  Here are just a few examples:

 

“Just as a mother corrects her young child, the DWC woman guides and mentors her man in loving strictness. Firm, fair, unrelenting and demanding should be words that describe the DWC woman. Repentant, tearful, humbled and calm should describe the man.”

 

“Always remember that when you are in your disciplinary mode, he is in his spoiled brat mode. Remember when you were a child, was discipline or punishment fun? No. So you must think of punishment as something which will have the effect of making him think quite a while before challenging you again.  And keep in mind that he is not, in fact, a small child. He is a grown man and needs an extensive spanking.”

 

You will have to learn to obey her and to do so cheerfully. I recommend to the wives that they avoid “play sessions” at first, until you have come to realize what her punishment sessions really mean.  First, you have to learn that she can spank you until you are a “sorry little boy,” who wishes those spankings would be over a whole lot sooner.  

You asked your wife to please take over your discipline.  You have empowered her to assume the maternal role and have agreed to take the child role with respect to discipline.  You want, more than anything else, for her to be powerful, assertive and in control. 

 

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 cannot simply 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. 

 

For whatever reason, these maternal references went right over my head until someone pointed them out to me a couple of years ago.

 

I also shied away from talking openly about this issue, even though it is plainly a part of some couples’ DD dynamics and even though I came to recognize it as a key part of my own DD motivation. 

 

And, not just with respect to discussing it on the blog.  I also avoided talking about it with Anne.  At least not directly and forthrightly. It wasn’t so much that I was embarrassed about it, but I wasn’t sure how she would react.  It raises all sorts of controversial psychological and social issues.  Oedipal theories.  Manliness and sexuality. 

 

That started to change a few years ago. We had talked from time to time about particular disciplinary archetypes.  Things like strict teachers and principals.  But, we never really talked about the obvious one – strict mothers. 

 

Then, one night she said something about liking how her giving me orders reduces me to a little boy who has to do what he is told.  I think she was tip-toeing around the issue in the same way I was.  The nurturing but strict mother archetype resonates with her in ways that other DD images do not.  

 

As I started to be a bit more open about it, she started doing things like talking in positive terms about using DD to reduce me to a "teen-age boy who needs a spanking from his mom."  She also has compared me to a teenager who mischievously pushes buttons just to do it, then is surprised when she actually does something about it. 

 

The emphasis in our new reporting system on her assigning tasks and being more assertive about addressing things like “pet peeves” also has a decisively maternal quality.

 

 

The maternal element that I gravitate to isn’t all about spanking and discipline either.  It’s about having someone else’s will imposed on me, preferably with an authoritative tone. Several years ago, a commenter described how his wife took control of him at parties:

 

“When she comes up to me at a party and takes a drink out of my hand and says "You are done, dear," with a smile and tone that will not be bucked, it touches something deep inside me. She calls it the ‘eternal mother’. I don't know exactly what that means, but I know that it feels like her authority is from something more than ourselves.  I even think that those around me feel it. None of my friends has called her a B or teased me about it. They respect her for having the knowledge and the guts to cut me off. One friend said to me, ‘Wow, your wife knows how to use tough love.’ And I agree: It's the same authority she uses to swing the paddle, just exhibited verbally and publicly. In those moments, I would do anything she told me to do. I feel her mother power.”

 

Part of me craves Anne taking me in hand with that kind of confidence and strictness, no matter how much I know I will hate it as it is happening. I also have a powerful attraction to being lectured/scolded in a way that has a strong maternal vibe, especially when it comes to ordering or threatening a spanking. 

 

 

And, while it hasn’t happened so far, I wonder sometimes whether thinking of Anne in an openly maternal role during a spanking might move the perceived power dynamic in a way that might make me more open to crying.  Crying in front of non-maternal figure is embarrassing, but doing so while over the knee of a mother--or someone who has expressly adopted a maternal role--is almost expected, right?

 

Yet, while I am increasingly open about being attracted to Anne assuming a much more openly maternal role, I don’t really experience spankings as “bringing out the boy” or reducing me to feeling like a boy. It’s more like the maternal authority is being extended into a very adult context.  I'm not looking to regress to boyhood; it's more like being subject to the same kind of discipline a misbehaving teenager would but as a grown man.

J. said something along those lines in a comment a couple of weeks ago:

 

“To my mind, the best thing is for DD to "refine masculinity", rather than taking it away, a bit like the boys' boarding schools of yesteryear. There were heavy punishments for infractions, but they encouraged masculinity, not always in a good way (e.g. hazing), but they did. Even the now-King Charles III was reported to be afraid of his governesses. To my mind, DD done best is DD that also enhances masculinity, but maintains the accountability into adulthood. A grown man should be able to take even more pain than a schoolboy and I think the best DD is focused on pain (which builds men up), rather than humiliation (which knocks them down).

 

I don’t have a well-defined topic related to this, but I welcome comments about anything in the post that catches your interest.

 

Have a great week.