The Club - Meeting 505 - Owning Up to Bad Behavior, Knowing You'll Probably be Spanked for It

“Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.” - Ludwig van Beethoven

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly on-line gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline relationship.

 

Once again, before we get started, I would like to thank the female commenters who have recently joined us and to extend an invitation to all others who may be inclined to move from “lurker” to “commenter” status. We like having you around.

 

I would especially like to thank L. and Miss E. for their candor in discussing the excitement and strong emotions they’ve experienced in giving disciplinary spankings.  In our oh-so-very egalitarian society, I suspect it is very hard to admit getting turned on by punishing and exercising control over a partner.  So, I applaud them for sharing their feelings so honestly with all of us.

 

I’m sorry for posting a day late.  I had some other things going on yesterday, beginning with shoveling snow in bone-chilling temperatures.  I guarantee no one where we live is dressed like this in the great outdoors today.

 

I’m also sorry that so many are having issues with accessing the blog.  Google’s penchant for launching ill-conceived new approaches to access controls for adult materials gets really old.  I’ve been reluctant to change platforms, as none of them (particularly free options) are going to be free from technical problems, and some of the popular options also have a mixed record when it comes to censoring adult materials. But, I’ve just about had it with Google at this point.  I spent part of last week playing around with the functionality of the WordPress site I’ve been double-posting to for a few months.  May I please ask some of you to check it out and leave a comment?  I’d like to get feedback, especially from our regular commenters, on the functionality and the look and feel. 

 

This week’s topic is one that I know we’ve addressed fairly recently, but I was having a hard time coming up with anything truly new this week, and there were some developments on this front in my own DD relationship.

 

A couple of weeks ago, TB posted about his DD plans for the new year:

 

“In our discussions, she expressed discomfort with disciplining while angry or emotional, preferring to address issues when calm and rational. I explained that delay often meant it didn't happen. She also highlighted that whilst DD is an excellent tool for her, it is more 'ingrained' in me and she often feels the responsibility is uneven, as she processes emotions before deciding on discipline whereas I felt the 'need' soon after any misbehaviour. We agreed to incorporate a new element: me "owning up" to behavior I feel guilty about, discussing it face-to-face rather than through journaling. I (foolishly) suggested this as I explained that I was sometimes left to carry around the 'guilt' created by my behaviour for more time than was comfortable. She asked for some examples, which I relayed from the holiday period and an incident two days previously just to help the discussion. The examples led to a memorable strapping, which, while unexpected, effectively reset our dynamic.

 

We’ve now agreed that if I fail to confess, she will remind me and increase the punishment. I’m unsure if I’ve been outmaneuvered or if this is a step toward a more mature integration of DD in our relationship. Either way, I’m nervous about this new approach, really not looking forward to my first 'confession' but unsurprisingly I’m committed to maintaining exemplary behavior for now.”

 

  

ZM said he and his wife have also re-instituted a weekly check-in, which likely will result in more spankings.

 

Norton and I also had a short exchange about the story “Military Duty Calls” in the DWC’s “Real People” section. It involves a military wife who asks her mother to act as a surrogate disciplinarian for her husband, while she is away on a military deployment, over the husband’s strenuous objections.  The process included the husband keeping a diary of any rule violations and behavioral failures, which the mother-in-law would review.  A small dispute develops over whether a couple of things should have been reported, but finally the husband misbehaves in a way that uncontestably should have gone into the diary, but he failed to do it.  The wife describes what happened next:

 

“As it happens I heard about it first from Mom and right away I knew that it was something he had tried to hide deliberately, having been caught out with the same thing by me quite a while before. I immediately authorized him to be punished, telling her that I would get Charles to call her after I had spoken with him and she could then make the arrangements to deal with him the following evening.

 

When I spoke to Charles, I could tell right away that he was 'on edge' and after we got through the usual normal things we spoke about, I asked him if he had anything else to tell me and he confessed. I listened to what he had to say and then told him that he had let both himself and me down badly and for that he would be spanked. I then told him to call Mother right away and to tell her that he was phoning on my instructions to ask her to punish him.

 

To cut a long story short, she arranged to deal with him the next evening and duly did so leaving one very contrite, well-spanked son-in-law to pull himself together again. I am told that the session was a lot more 'impressive' than even her 'demonstration' before I left!”

 

I’ve always reacted strongly to comments and stories that involve “owning up” to one’s own bad behavior in a context that will almost certainly result in a hard spanking.  The fact that I find such practices morbidly fascinating may explain why I’ve always been so bad at adhering to any reporting regime.   

 

Though, honestly, I don’t think it has that much to do with the prospect of the spanking in and of itself.  It’s more about the embarrassment I feel in both confessing to some personal failing and, in effect, asking for a spanking for it.  Both the confessing and the asking are independently embarrassing, and I have a strong aversion to embarrassment.  That’s why stories like “Military Duty Calls” strike such a chord with me.  It’s incredibly hard for me to give Anne a live confession, knowing that it will result in a spanking. It’s hard for me to even imagine the embarrassment of having to confess to some other person and then get myself ready for a spanking from her (or him).

(Another aspect of the story that resonates strongly with me is that the husband receives a follow-up spanking upon the wife’s return.  I’ve always had a thing for anything that involves a spanking in one setting being followed by another at home.  It’s undoubtedly a reaction rooted in the custom when I was growing up of the school sending a note home letting parents know that a spanking had been given, which inevitably resulted in another at home.)

 

Yet, Anne and I are making another attempt at weekly in-person behavior reviews or “check-ins.” We tried such a system last spring to help me get over a period in which I felt like I had let life get very stagnant and unproductive.  It was short-lived, thanks to some intervening travel that was followed almost immediately with the onset of the medical/injury issues that put our entire DD dynamic on hold for months, but it really did seem to help me get on top of some chronic procrastination problems.  Anne also enjoyed the power of being in charge of the sessions, evaluating my performance and giving me directions and commands for the week ahead.

 

Now that our lives are getting a little closer to normal, we’re giving the check-ins another try.  I suggested that, before each meeting, I would give her a written “report” of the previous week, using a form that I modified from a form that, if I remember correctly, Glenmore posted several years ago.  Here is my version.

 

 

Anne likes the concept, and I later came up with a twist on it.  She will fill out the same form each week, and during our check-in, we will compare the two.  If she notes misbehavior that I failed to “own up to,” that may result in an additional spanking, on top of whatever the behavior itself earned.  The other benefit I foresee is it will help her get into the mindset of not just noticing bad behavior but documenting it and acting on it.  If I’m “owning up” to lots of behavior that she’s not documenting, it probably means she’s being too forgiving and not strict enough.  So, my hope is that over time it will reinforce her authority and make her more quick and consistent in exercising it.

 

 

Another aspect of the system is that I will be printing my electronic “to-do” list each week and putting it on open display in our kitchen.  The vast majority of the items on the list aren’t things Anne cares about. But, the idea is to make sure that I’m regularly documenting things I need to get done and checking them off the list regularly. The check-in form has a line for documenting—again, from both our perspectives—how I’m doing. It’s another effort at nipping the chronic procrastination thing in the bud.  As I write this, I’ve been thinking about a couple of items I want to check off the to-do list today, because I’m aware I have a check-in coming up in a few days.  That itself is progress.

 

FYI, we decided to our check-ins on Wednesdays, instead of at the end or beginning of the calendar week.  My thought was that our weekends tend to be busy and sometimes one of us is tied up or away from the other on the weekends.  Also, it’s pretty clear that my biggest behavioral failures around over-indulging seem to happen near the end of the work week, because that tends to be when I get together with friends. The soreness from a spanking early in the week would have dissipated by the weekend, but I would almost certainly be sitting on a sore butt during a Thursday or Friday happy hour after a spanking on Wednesday. Hopefully, it will serve the same purpose as a “preventative” spanking.

 

 

How do the rest of you handle “owning up” to bad behavior?  Or, do you do so at all?  If so, do you find it as difficult as I do?  Is it because of the inherent embarrassment of openly confessing to some personal failure? Or is it that you are, in effect, asking for a spanking?

 

 

One aspect of the discussion with Anne on this was particularly interesting to me, as it shows how attitudes about aspects of DD can change over time. Anne said that she really likes observing the embarrassment and anxiety I experience in “owning up” to my bad behavior.  Yet, I distinctly recall that, early on in our DD experimentation, she said she didn’t like me directly asking to be spanked, because it felt like I was controlling the process instead of her.  She felt like it undermined her authority. Why the change? I suspect it’s because her authority is now much more firmly established in her own mind, so she no longer worries as much about me undermining it by asking for what we both know I have coming.

 

How about the other wives?  How do you feel about your husband owning up to his bad behavior?  Is it something you want or expect him to do? Is there any formal process for doing it, like a check-in or in-person report?  Does it empower you to have him confess his shortcomings, or do you see it as undermining your own authority to determine what does and does not merit a spanking or other punishment?

 

Have a great week.