The Club - Meeting 486 - Grounding and Other Non-Spanking Punishments

The ability to have a choice in what you do is a privilege.” - Anton Yelchin

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.

 

I hope you all had a good week.  I feel like mine sort of passed in the blink of an eye.  I spent some time adding farkles to a new motorcycle, which I purchased before figuring out that most of my late spring and early fall were about to go “poof” in the face of medical interferences.  I finally got some imaging back on mine, confirming what I suspected. But, there’s some chance several weeks of physical therapy and limited activity might let me avoid another surgery.  Unfortunately, that’s definitely not in the cards for Anne, who will not exemplify this meme for quite some time:

 

I’m still trying to get my head around this unpleasant reality.  I’ve been practicing various forms of meditation and Zen for a lot of years, and I’ve always found that the hardest thing to break our attachments to is our own plans. And, most of us generally suck at predicting whether the things we want to do will actually turn out to be good for us, and often times it is the stuff that makes us the most uncomfortable and is the most disruptive that is the most constructive.  So, I’m trying to keep an open mind about how the next few months will play out in terms of positive and negative impacts on our lives. 

 

 Maybe it’s because I’m acutely aware of the frustration of best laid plans being disrupted that this topic suggestion from Anonymous, from several weeks ago, jumped out at me this week:

 

"Grounding as a method of punishment. It's a topic that doesn't get nearly enough discussion as opposed to spanking and really needs to." 

In addition to being intimately related to frustrated plans, grounding and other non-spanking punishments may have to come into play while Anne is incapacitated.  So, the topic is timely (for me) for multiple reasons.

 

We have experimented with grounding from time-to-time, though I think I use the term more broadly than some others do.  I apply it to any order that restricts my freedom of action, while I think others see it more narrowly as being confined to staying at home instead of hanging with friends or going to social activities. In this post, I'll use it in the broader sense.

 

We didn't use it often, but when we did “grounding” usually consisted of an order not to drink alcohol, and perhaps to be home from work at a particular time.  Although we did dabble in it, and I felt it had the potential to be very effective, it never really took root.  

It was an inherently difficult punishment to enforce back when I was working, because I was constantly traveling for business, and even when working out of my usual office, there was a lot of team and client-oriented socializing.  That stuff really was important to career development and associated earning capacity, so Anne would have been cutting off her nose to spite her face had she regularly imposed strict limits on my ability to socialize with others.

 

Yet, even if spanking has been our primary form of punishment since we began our DWC relationship, grounding has always intrigued me, perhaps because it was always out there as a possibility. It's never been something I've seen as a replacement for spanking, but it's certainly something that could supplement one.

 

So, given that I do have an interest in it, why haven’t I devoted topics to it more often?  Mainly because when I’ve done so in the past, the array of negative responses have tended to illustrate only how central spanking is to many men’s disciplinary interest, to the exclusion of all other means of discipline and punishment.

Yet, the longer I’m in this lifestyle, the more I’m open to the proposition that the more I dislike a particular punishment or aspect of our disciplinary relationship, the more it probably is real punishment or discipline.

I think Aunt Kay probably felt the same way.  Although the Disciplinary Wives Club and its website were devoted primarily to adult spanking, Aunt Kay clearly saw a DWC-style relationship as encompassing the full range of maternal discipline. In that vein, I found this in one of the DWC publications:

 

“The DWC is all about reality, special relationships, love and trust. The sort of trust that would enable a strong man to weep in his wife's arms after a licking, and then gently being led to the corner while drying his eyes. The sort of trust that would enable a woman to administer a strong dose of woodshed medicine to a man she loves and likes. The sort of trust that would allow a man to accept scolding, groundings, time-outs and penance tasks, just because his disciplinarian has determined he needs it.”

 

It's also clear that Aunt Kay’s references to groundings applied in her own relationship. In preparing this post, I found this comment from Aunt Kay’s husband (who went by “Tomy” when commenting here) on one of the prior posts on this topic:

 

“I have been mulling over the topic of "alternative punishments" since you started it last week. Like most of the other respondents, spanking is by far the usual consequence around here. But on rare occasions she imposes an "alternative punishment." What I have come to realize, thanks to your topic question, is that they are, in many ways, worse.

 

For some reason, being sent to bed, forbidden television, and things like that are SO frustrating that it's almost unendurable. It actually makes me feel even more helpless than submitting to a spanking. When it happens, I feel really angry inside; deeply frustrated. But expressing that is not an option. So, I have to do what I am told.

 

Technically speaking, around here "alternative" is not usually the right word. For us the more accurate word would be "additional.”” 

So, to me, grounding isn't a replacement for a spanking, but it is another tool in her arsenal.  One that her husband might find particularly adversive -- even more so than a spanking.  

As I think has been on display here fairly frequently in recent weeks, some men like spanking a little too much and its unclear just how disciplinary their spankings really are. I've always believed that a wife who wants to impose real discipline must adjust her methods to account for what her husband finds truly punishing and what he doesn't.  

As kids, we might have done anything to avoid a spanking, including taking a week of grounding. As adults, I suspect it often would be the opposite.

You can include me among those who really hates the thought of being grounded.  But, it probably shouldn’t be surprising that I’m intrigued by grounding as a punishment, given that I’ve come to realize and accept just how much my interest in Domestic Discipline is grounded in the “maternal” archetype that the DWC alluded to fairly often. One of our frequent commenters from a few years back, Danielle, really picked up on the connection between maternal discipline and alternative punishments in a lengthy comment really challenging me on how far I was interested in taking it:

“So, WHAT IF Anne pushed the adult/minor dynamic to its logical conclusion? She has already taken a step in that direction by assigning you chores and warning you not to forget to lock the doors under threat of being spanked. But if she really wants to exercise her authority in a “maternal” way, I think she should consider deploying the full range of disciplinary tools that adults employ with minors. In other words, in addition to spankings, she could consider consequences like grounding, loss of privileges, early bedtimes, etc. She could also consider limiting your personal discretionary spending by putting you on an allowance which could be suspended for disciplinary purposes as she deems appropriate. She could impose curfews and require you to get her permission if you wanted to go out for drinks after work. From what you have said previously, I believe you would find those auxiliary measures more truly humbling and embarrassing than simply having your bottom paddled.

 

Let’s push the parent/minor analogy a step farther. If you were really a minor, there would be no reason for Anne to hide her authoritarian status from other people. So, if I was Anne, I would probably let some select group of people (maybe certain friends or family members) in on the secret that she wields real authority over you and expects you to obey her. Speaking to you in an authoritative way in the presence of certain people would certainly humble you, wouldn’t it? Then, if the people were curious, that could lead to her revealing to them that she disciplines you, and maybe even to spanking you in front of a willing witness, as others have suggested.

 

 I vividly remember that, at the time, I found Danielle's comment to be both incredibly stimulating and incredibly disturbing. Very much like the first time I discovered the DWC. In fact, I think her comment may be part of what led me start really exploring and accepting how big a part the maternal archetype played in the roots of my DD interest. 

 

In another comment, Danielle noted that grounding can be even more humbling and role-enforcing than spankings, particularly when seen by other family members or other adults we know well:

 

“If children see that their mother has the authority to “ground” their father or to send him to bed early or to take away television privileges or to make him return something he bought without her "permission" to the store, those are clearer demonstrations of a real power imbalance than a spanking would be.

 

[Some see] adult/adult spanking [as] more clearly sexual in nature. Personally, I would argue that those other kinds of punishments are just as sexual as spanking because they are manifestations of a dominant/submissive relationship, but they would be less likely to appear sexual to an outside observer.  I think that non-spanking consequences are even more humiliating for Wayne than spankings because whereas spankings can be construed as nothing more than a sexual act between two adults, the removal of privileges shows clearly that I am not treating him as an adult.” 

 

That’s another thing that seems so powerful to me about grounding. 

It almost inherently involves others knowing, since it usually involves restricting the recipient from going out or spending time with others.   

 

That would be hard enough, but what if it were to be combined with an instruction that the husband must be honest when bowing out of said activities, relaying that the reason he can’t go out is because his wife has said he can’t go? 

 

Or, heaven forbid, an instruction to tell that friend that you are sitting on a well-spanked bottom and have been grounded for a week?

Now, that would be embarrassing!   

 

Interestingly, when I searched for spanking memes and pictures that at least suggested someone having to tell phone a friend to say they couldn't come out to play and were sitting on a freshly spanked bottom, I found three with women but not a single example with a male subject.  Similarly, I have several spanking drawings depicting women telling other women that they just spanked, or are in the process of spanking, their husbands.  I cannot find a single example of a man on the phone telling anyone--male or female--about a spanking or other exercise of disciplinary authority.  So, this clearly seems to be an area that men find more threatening that titillating.

 

While others may say that this is exactly why they aren’t interested in something like that, I would argue that’s exactly why it would be so effective as discipline.  The fact that you might much rather take a spanking may demonstrate why spanking might not be the pinnacle of effective possible punishments for your wfe to employ.

 

 

Anne has never made me tell anyone about a punishment, including grounding.  The closest she has come is when she made me verbally apologize to a work associate I had gone off on about something and had been mistaken about the basic facts.

 

In the past, I’m not sure if I could have handled it if she made me tell someone I was grounded, let alone that I had been spanked and grounded. Though, in truth, from the moment we started DD, I’ve been pretty good about complying with orders from Anne even when I found it very hard to do.  (That apology thing was excruciating because, even though I was wrong in that particular incident, the guy was a jerk and I knew he would take the apology as him being one up on me.)

So, I think I probably would have complied, though I undoubtedly would have found it mortifying. And, I now have one friend--probably the one I am the most likely to get in trouble with--who has so many times said things that indicates his wife wields all the real control in the family, I could see doing it now and possibly getting non-snickering response.

 

Grounding certainly is a powerful form of control.  To this day, I remember incidents in which one of my friends would be grounded by his mom. Although I don't think she believed in spanking, she was extremely rigorous about her groundings. I remember one day several of us came over to his house to pick him up for an outing, thinking that his grounding was over. But, when we got there, she pointed out that his week-long grounding still had 20 minutes to go from the exactday/time she imposed it. So, we had to sit there for 20 minutes as my friend quietly fumed.  I kind of had a thing for his mother before then, and I don’t doubt that incident reinforced that thing, even if at the time I thought only that she was a hot, older woman. 

It also seems so complementary to spanking as a punishment, it's easy for me to view any meme involving a strong maternal vibe and imagine the wife adding, "And, by the way, after I blister your butt, you are grounded for a week."

 

 

 How about you? Is grounding a part of your disciplinary relationship?  If not, would you want it to be?  For the wives, does grounding or imposing other forms of “childish” discipline on your husband have any attraction? Why or why not? If it's because he doesn't want it, should that even matter if the purpose is real punishment?

 

Please feel free to draw from any of the other examples Danielle used or similar forms of “parent like” control or punishment a wife could dole out if she chooses.

 

Have a good week.