The Club - Meeting 487 - Whether, When, and How Much Should They Know About Your Domestic Discipline Relationship?

“The more a daughter knows the details of her mother's life [...] the stronger the daughter.” - Anita Diamant, The Red Tent.

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.

 

I hope you all had a good week.  Mine was pretty good, with the exception of one monumentally stupid act of carelessness while out on a motorcycle ride.  It’s unclear whether I will be spanked for it, but I definitely should be even though everything turned out okay in the end.  Perhaps more on that in a later post . . .

 

 

I’ve begun several recent posts with a general invitation to our female readers to join in on our conversation.  Recently, a few have taken me up on it.  I hope they and a few more will join in on this post specifically, as I think it is one on which they might have a particularly valuable perspective.

 

We’ve had a few posts in the past about when (if ever) and how much kids—including but not limited to our now-adult progeny—should know about our DD lifestyle.

 

I got to thinking about it again, and thought perhaps some of our Disciplinary Wives might have a particular interest, after this comment a few weeks ago from “DD”:

 

I haven't checked the blog in a while, lots of good stuff in the recent posts. I had to comment that, while I don’t see the disciplinary relationship with my wife as maternal, a few months ago there was an incident that definitely had that feeling. I was playing video games with my son one night and my wife came in and told us to shut it down as it was a school/work night and bedtime for all of us. Being in the zone, we imprudently ignored her orders and played for another hour, time getting away from us. Well the next morning my wife knew what time we went to bed and was not happy. She scolded us both thoroughly in the kitchen for disobeying her. She had my son sit at the kitchen table and write lines, she then turned to me and told me I was not getting out of it either and that I would be getting punished. She walked me down the hall and for a good 10 minutes gave me a severe belting over the bed and an additional scolding on disobeying her and not enforcing her orders in front of our son. She then had me take our son to school and clarify what should have happened.”

 

I asked whether his son knew he had gotten a spanking. He responded:

 

"We do not explicitly tell our kids I get spanked, but they are very aware my wife is the authority in the household and that she is the disciplinarian. He knew that "mom" was upset and was taking me to our room to "deal with me". I am not sure what he could hear from the kitchen, but I think there have been some times they may have overheard my wife scolding or spanking me behind closed doors. There have also been other times they knew she was upset with me and took me to the room to deal with it. The dynamic has actually kept arguing and fighting in front of the kids to a minimum. They see enough to know I misbehaved and that it is going to get addressed but no arguing or fighting in front of them, and anything they might overhear is clearly not arguing or fighting either but a one-sided lecture/scolding and me getting disciplined with a well-deserved spanking."

 

Now, I know many of the commenters here—maybe most—would object to kids in the household knowing that dad gets spanked.  There could be any number of reasons for that.

 

Perhaps they see spanking as inherently sexual and, hence, something that should be kept away from kids by all means necessary.  Of course, after kids hit a certain age, they do know their parents have sex, right?  So, I assume something more than inherent sexuality may be at play for those who want to keep the DD part of their parental relationship strictly secret.

 

Some may also think that the hierarchy involved in a DD, and especially an FLR, relationship might be confusion for the kids and diminishing for the husband/father.

 

I know this has been Anne’s thinking, or part of it anyway. She has told me that when the kids were growing up, she was concerned that knowing about our DD/FLR relationship might lead the kids to think less of me.

 

 

I suppose that could happen, but she was much more concerned about it than I ever was.  My view was that I worked my ass off and sacrificed some of my own lifestyle desires over a lot of years to give my kids a stable home, great educations, etc.  If after all that they were to learn about the DD aspects of our relationship and lose respect for me . . . well . . . fuck ‘em.

 

But, I don’t think that is how it would turn out.

 

And, I do think they have figured out at least that our relationship isn’t quite typical.  A few years back, one of them commented to me wife that she seemed to make a lot of the decisions and basically “wore the pants.”  Making something up on the fly, my wife noted that I had a large scale, very demanding career that involved directing a lot of people and making a lot of big decisions. She said that it was stressful and that, when at home, I preferred to leave a lot of the decision-making to someone else.

 

It was a pretty benign explanation, but I think the fact that the question was asked at all says a lot about what they may have intuited.

 

Or, maybe it was more than intuition. Kids can be snoopy.  Who knows whether one of them came upon a journal or a spanking instrument that was inadvertently left out.

 

And, of course, a couple of years ago once they were both out of the house and on with their own adult lives, Anne started leaving her bath brush and ebony hairbrush on display on the counter in our master bath. Again, our kids aren’t dumb or imperceptive.

 

Still, while we probably weren’t quite as secretive as some, we did take reasonable precautions to keep the DD aspects of the relationship private and, hopefully, unknown to the kids.

 

Yet, I’ve always been intrigued by those like “DD” and his wife who, if not totally out in the open, didn’t exactly try to hide it either.

 

 

It doesn’t seem to be very common.  In the 10+ years I’ve been doing this blog, there have been only a handful of commenters who have said that they knew growing up that their father was subject to domestic discipline, and those seemed to involve a more or less passive understanding of the situation. There was no open discussion about it. Rather, it was just kind of in the background. 

 

One of the rare examples of a Disciplinary Wife who grew up in a household where her own mom was openly in charge was a commenter from a few years back named “Holly.” She recounted how her mom’s status was just always there in the background, though never discussed.

 

"There wasn’t any time I wasn’t aware of domestic discipline. Mom spanked our dad, never in front of us, but when she took him into the bedroom there was no doubt what was going on and anyone in the house could hear it. I didn’t think much of it except that mom was definitely in charge, which everyone knew anyway."

 

Later, after her young and immature husband started acting up, her mother openly advocated that she should take up the paddle or strap. 

 

 

She resisted at first because she thought her mother had been too ready to spank for every offense, but she came around as her husband’s behavior worsened. 

 

While she was one of the seemingly rare examples in which the wife instigated the DD relationship, she had reason to believe her husband would accept it and might even want it and, of course, she had seen how her mother had kept her father in-line.

 

“I knew it was real from the first spanking I administered because I knew men can be managed with a strap if a woman is determined. I had also suspected for a while my husband wanted this. Our dating relationship really became serious when he found out my father was punished. He never directly asked me to take control, but I was certain he would accept it, and I was right since I received no resistance when I told him what was coming. Also, the way he stripped and presented his ass to me on command convinced me I was right.”

 

So, Holly was the rare woman who observed (or overheard) her mother spanking her father, whose mother discussed it with her at an appropriate time in life, who went on to tell her future husband about it, and who later went on to impose (sort of) a Domestic Discipline relationship herself.

 

From time to time, I get questions from parents with young kids about how to achieve any kind of DD consistency with kids in the house.

 

One answer is, of course, to do what Holly’s mother did – don’t worry about keeping it secret.

 

I understand why most couples will reject that as a solution, though I still wonder how things might have developed had Anne gone there.  I feel like she’s made more progrees in the last couple of years than in the previous twenty.  What might have happened if she’d been as open back then as she is today, when even today she’s not exactly “out” but, rather, just not that concerned anymore about what others think? 

 

Moreover, what about once the kids are grown, or at least young adults?  Is the DD or FLR side of your relationship something that should be kept from them once they are off on their own?  Or, was Holly’s mom right to be relatively open about being in charge and disciplining the father, culminating in the mother openly advocating that Holly take up the paddle?

 

 

Why is it the case that even once our kids become adults and move on to their own relationships we still seem to be intent on keeping the DD aspect of our relationship secret from them?

 

Aren’t we supposed to try to give our kids--or perhaps their spouses--the benefit of our parental wisdom?  If you think DD is something that has helped your own marriage, or if you think it helps your own performance or your mental/emotional wellbeing, shouldn’t you share that with your adult kids for their own potential benefit?

 

Those benefits could take a lot of forms.  Perhaps, like Holly’s mother, you have a daughter who needs to take charge of her own ill-behaved husband. 

 

 (I like the scenario this meme proposes, but is it really that hard to proofread three or four sentences ??)

 

Or, maybe your darling son (or daughter) is having a hard time growing up and could profit from being on the receiving end of the marital paddle or strap. 

 

Honestly, I don't know how open we will be in the years to come. As some of our commenter KOJ’s stories reveal, things like retirement can cause people to be way more open than they might have once thought possible

 

Although I’ve probably never been as concerned about keeping things from our kids as Anne has been, at this point I've pretty much decided that I would be okay with them knowing everything at a general level, whether about the disciplinary spankings or about our blooming FLR, or both.

 

Though I don't care if they know, I don’t have any desire to talk to them about it myself.  And, given the gender dynamics, if it were to be openly revealed, that probably should come from Anne.  I don’t think she’s there yet, and in my view that’s maybe an opportunity missed, as I think it would be empowering for her. And, while they are adults and capable of making their own choices, it still might be a great thing for them to see the example of a strong woman, fully and openly in charge at home. 

 

Feel free to discuss any aspect of this post that resonates with you, but here are a few specific questions to get you started:

 

Were either of your own parents disciplined by the other parent when you were growing up? 

 

Are your kids aware of you disciplinary relationship? 

 

For those of you who are in an FLR, are your kids aware that the wife is the leader in the marriage? 

 

Have you ever spanked or been spanked by your spouse while the kids were in the house or might overhear? 

 

If your kids are not aware of your DD or FLR relationship, might you tell them or let them find out about it in the future?At what age might it be appropriate?

 

Does the kid's gender effect your view in any way?  

 

 If your daughter married a man with maturity or performance problems, would you pass along some helpful hints that maybe she should educate herself about DD?   

 

What if you had an immature or misbehaving son? Would you ever suggest to him (or to his frustrated daughter-in-law) that maybe disciplinary spankings could give him the structure and boundaries he seems to need?

 

Have a great week.

 

And, speaking of kids, one last pic combining kids and my current obsessive hobby.