“Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.” - Barbara W. Tuchman
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.
I hope you all had a good week. Mine was pretty sedate. Although it’s still August, I’m detecting a whiff of autumn in the air. There are even a few trees in the early stages of turning yellow.
Although I’m a little sad to see motorcycle
season winding down with several contemplated trips left untaken, I’m kind of
in the mood for a seasonal change. It’s likely
to be an unadventurous fall, as I’ve been putting off some surgery to repair an
injury from last summer, and it feels like it’s time to get it done, even though the recuperation process is kind of going to suck.
Although my week was easygoing as a whole, it got started with a bang. After a summer that passed with surprisingly little disciplinary action, on Monday I got a somewhat surprising, and surprisingly hard, spanking.
The surprise was really about the timing. I reported on this to this group, including this text making her intention clear, in my August 11, 2025 post.
A full week had gone by with no further mention of it. In typical Disciplined Husband fashion, I felt relieved but also disappointed at what seemed to be developing into another instance of inconsistent enforcement and “punishment delayed is punishment denied.” So, I was a little bit surprised when, on Monday, she announced that it was time for my bottom to pay the price for something that had truly pissed her off.
Part of me was glad for the follow-through. That feeling lasted until the first few swats with her bath brush. It was really, truly excruciating.
It’s yet another reason why delayed punishment is a problem. I do want consistency for its own sake. I think we both embody this whole lifestyle more deeply and effectively when punishment naturally and predictably follows bad behavior, particularly if she’s actually told me that I will be punished. But, it’s also in my butt’s interest that punishment happens fairly regularly if it is going to happen at all, because the spankings that come after a substantial period in which discipline slips simply hurt way, way more!
So, that’s one topic for this week: Have you experienced the phenomenon in which spankings hurt way worse if there is a long time between them? If so, is that additional pain enough to make you prefer being spanked more regularly?
Another topic raised by this incident is spankings we don’t agree with. In previous posts raising the issue, I’ve labeled these “undeserved” spankings, but that label could be a bit misleading in some situations. Including, perhaps the spanking I received this week.
As I related in the post a couple of weeks ago, the incident that got me spanked involved throwing away some boxes for some electronic gadgets Anne had bought. She had left the empty boxes in a dresser, in a room that doesn’t have enough available storage. I wanted to put some clothes in that drawer, so I threw the boxes out. As luck would have it, a few weeks later one of the units seemed to be failing. Anne had left a charger that came with the gadgets in one of the boxes, and I apparently threw it away, not noticing that it was in the box. So, when Anne went to recharge and reset the gadget, there was no charger and no instructions.
As the text above demonstrates, she was livid. Why? Well, her stated reason was the missing charger and instructions.
The real reason is almost certainly that this is an ongoing battle between us, with Anne having a reluctance to throw things out that approaches (in my opinion) a hoarding disorder, while she thinks it’s presumptuous, arrogant, and (in this case) careless of me to throw away “her” stuff without asking.
So, did I “deserve” the spanking I got? It’s debatable on one level, though maybe not on another.
In terms of the substance,
was I careless in not noticing I was throwing out a charger with the boxes? Perhaps,
though it was kind of “no harm, no foul”, as it’s not like we don’t have a
plethora of USB-C charging cords laying around, and instructions are easy to
find on-line. And, the plain fact is
that asking Anne to throw things out is often futile, so if I want clutter out
of the house, I have to toss it myself, often banking on the fact she won’t notice. While I see that as a justification, she sees it as part and parcel of the problem.
In many cases where we’ve had a disagreement and she’s spanked me, I somehow “saw the light” by the end of the spanking, literally coming around to her perspective on whatever it was that got me in trouble. Did that happen in this case? Not really.
I still believe that the
boxes should have been thrown out, and I think it is fair to observe that I
didn’t ask permission precisely because when I do ask, she almost always
comes up with some reason why something has to be kept or, better yet,
"donated", which really means it moves from one part of our house to
a staging area for taking it to a donation center, then it stays there for
weeks or months. Basically, me throwing things out without asking is in direct reaction
to her undermining efforts to throw them out at all. Again, I see that as justification; she sees it as the problem.
So, in one respect, we disagree on whether the spanking was "deserved".
Yet, in another sense, we don't. If you treat disobedience itself as spankable, independent of the objective rightness or wrongness of the underlying conduct, then I clearly did deserve one, because I do know how she feels about me throwing things out, and chose to ignore it. I ran the risk of doing something I know she gets angry about, I got caught, and my ass paid the price.
Honestly, it speaks well of Anne’s judgment that, over the course of twenty-plus years of Domestic Discipline, I can't think of a circumstance where I have been punished for something I really didn't do or something that I didn't know in advance was a problem for her.
There have been a few other cases in which I didn’t fully agree with the premise underlying her decision to spank. And, there have been a few times when a spanking was harder than I expected, given the nature of the offense. Admittedly, those times left me feeling at best unsettled and, at worst, somewhat resentful, as I pulled by pants up over my very sore bottom.
However, in virtually all
those cases, there was an offsetting increase in the respect I felt for her and
her disciplinary authority. I have a similar reaction to her spanking for something because it was an act of disobedience, regardless of my attempts to justify it.
Spanking for disobedience—independent of any agreement on the rules—probably moves us a little further over whatever the line is that separates DD from FLR. It’s hard to deny she is increasingly in charge of the relationship if the standard for whether something is spankable comes down to, “Because I said so.”
I'm OK with that. When I first discovered The Disciplinary Wives Club and became instantly obsessed, I recognized from the beginning that I had an attraction to the idea of being held accountable for bad behavior.
I also think that I had some awareness that I was most fascinated by stories where the discipline--and sometimes the entire disciplinary relationship--were imposed regardless of the husband's views on the matter.
What I don't think I appreciated much at all at that time was that DD was attractive to me not just because of the accountability aspect but, independently, because of the raw exercise of power and authority, i.e. by the the wives' insistence on obedience. I knew I desired discipline; I've come to learn I also desire to be made to obey.
There's another reason I'm OK with her spanking for disobedience regardless of whether I think the underlying conduct makes it objectively "fair": Her being overly concerned about “fairness” is one of the sources of the inconsistency that so many of us complain about.
When I addressed the topic of “undeserved”
spankings a few years ago, Alan had this comment:
My wife is an experienced disciplinarian who had experienced both sides of the brush, but the woman who introduced me to adult spanking was not so experienced. Early on in our relationship she was somewhat "hung up" on the idea of fairness, until it sometimes paralyzed her, preventing her from administering discipline that was badly needed. The notion of fairness was very important to her at the same time inhibiting her from doing what she knew was needed.
I see that in my wife, too. Too often, instead of ordering a spanking when she thinks it is deserved, she’ll ask something like, “Do you need a spanking for that?” or she’ll make a statement that’s really a question about her own authority, like: “Maybe you should get spanked for that next time.” It’s like she’s opening a negotiation regarding the scope of her authority, even though we’ve agreed many, many times that making ALL decisions regarding what should be punished is within her authority.
How does this work in your DD relationship? Is disobedience spankable in and of itself? Do the wives worry about “fairness”? Do they maybe worry about it too much? How much does your agreement about the underlying premise for the spanking affect whether it happens?
I hope you have a great week. FYI, I have an out-of-town event this upcoming weekend, so I may post later in the week.
I would spank J. consistently when he was around, but given his job in the armed forces, there were times when he was away and therefore the routine was disrupted. I definitely recall him finding the first spanking after a return more painful!
ReplyDeleteI also recall he didn't challenge me much on whether or not the spankings were just or not, because we agreed he would allow me to spank him without question.
L.
I find it an emotional shock, more like the sudden realization that "this is really happening". And I'm even surprised by how painful it is; seems like we forget after a while.
DeleteAnd is disobedience punishable in itself? I don't often get direct orders. It's more a matter of my knowing what the rules are and disregarding them.
DeleteAnonymous, I had a free rein to spank J. for what I wanted and I would spank him for reasons including those.
DeleteTom, that seems to describe what J. was like regarding spankings received after a long gap. I remember fondly times like that!
L.
To take your first question first, I’ve always seen it as a drop in my tolerance after an extended gap, rather than an increase in pain, but I guess it really amounts to the same thing - she doesn’t have to work as hard to get the desired effect. The second part is a bit more complex, I particularly picked up your point about DD heading towards the line separating it from FLR. I’ve always had some difficulty understanding that line and I think your discussion of simple disobedience clarifies it nicely. When we do or say some that is hurtful or damaging in some way, we get spanked for it. However, if there can be simple disobedience, that implies she has authority to make decisions across the board, which I guess is FLR. I think this defines us pretty clearly as not being FLR. She doesn’t make rules that I have to follow, instead we have more of a partnership where decisions are made together rather than unilaterally. I think the reason that I’ve always had a problem with this definition is that there are certain areas where she definitely leads (as well as some where I tend to lead.) Finance is an obvious example. That’s her field and she is much better at it than I am, but even then she’ll run every decision past me first and we’ll discuss it, even though in almost all cases I will agree that the end result is whatever she decided to start with. So I guess where I end up is that the “L” in FLR implies her making decisions alone, without necessarily having consultation and agreement, in which case disagreeing with those decisions can be regarded as disobedience, and therefore punishable. But with the style of relationship we have, that’s pretty much a null concept. She still has authority to spank whenever SHE thinks it’s justified; and to stay with the financial, we have long agreed that - for example - late paying a credit card and thereby incurring unnecessary interest charges, is spankable, but I’d see this as doing something (or failing to do something) against a mutually agreed rule and not as disobedience. I suppose I’d say that for us, “because I say so” isn’t in the lexicon. TG
ReplyDelete