More on Obedience, Fairness, and Maternal-Style Disciplinary Spankings (Club Meeting -529)

“You’re like a teenager who pokes, and pokes, and pokes at his mother, then acts all shocked when she tells him he's going to get spanked for it.” – Anne, my Disciplinary Wife

 

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 great week.  Mine was . . . surprisingly painful. Twice over. 

 

First, I got spanked for one of those “small” careless things Anne and I agreed she would be stricter about. This time it was leaving the garage door open (again).  Then I had a dental procedure that left me equally sore in one of my other cheeks.

 

So, I hope your week was more pleasant and pain-free than mine.

 

I thought we had a great discussion last week. I’m probably going to experiment more with posts that are more stream-of-consciousness and/or tied to things I’ve recently gone through or thought about as a DD husband, as opposed to our very well-worn topical format. But, I need to think through what that might look like.

 

In any event, I do have a topic in mind for this week, and I apologize in advance to TG, as I know it’s one he doesn’t like. But, maybe there will be something that stimulates some thoughts from him even if he doesn’t personally gravitate toward this particular DD model.

 

It results from new commenter Mrs.Terrapin/Mrs.Turpin (not sure which of those she intends to adopt) addressing some of my discussion points about Anne second-guessing herself when it comes to spanking for seemingly “small” things. 

 

As I said in that post, Anne has told me in the past that when she’s angry, she often just doesn’t think about spanking as the best option to address whatever I did to piss her off. However, a recent discussion revealed that it’s more nuanced.  With smaller things that make her angry or annoyed, but not livid, it turns out she sometimes does think about spanking me, but she often starts over-rotating on “fairness” concerns, or focus on whether I’ve been warned sufficiently and recently, and she ends up talking herself out of it.

 

Mrs.Turpin (I’ll go with that one until she picks) explained how her thought-process around disciplining her husband for similarly small issues became much simpler when she had an epiphany that most of his behavioral issues were, in one way or another, a form of disobedience or disrespect. When she spanked him for not using a coaster, it wasn’t really about not using the coaster but about him not obeying her instructions to use one.

 

 

She also addressed what I think is probably another reason some Disciplinary Wives hesitate in spanking for small things; they question whether they are being hypocritical, given that they too probably have been similarly careless or sloppy from time-to-time.  She said that eliminated that concern by re-framing the issue as a question of disobedience. The part that relates to today’s topic was an extension of that dynamic:

 

This ties into something else he’s asked for (even if he’s not always thrilled about it when the paddle comes out!): a dynamic that mirrors realistic maternal discipline. And here’s the fun part—another epiphany I had is that real-life maternal discipline isn’t about fairness. A mom can spank her son for staying out past curfew without batting an eye, even if she stayed out late herself the week before. It’s not a relationship of equals, and that’s the point!

 

I've had several occasions over the past few years where my husband has tried to get out of punishment by arguing that it wasn't fair that he was getting spanked for something that perhaps I had also done myself in the past. I always enjoy the look on his face when I cheerfully reminded him, “You asked for maternal discipline, and you will receive maternal discipline. Life’s not fair, darling, and I’m the one in charge!” It is a moment that sets the tone: naughty boys are not peers with their maternal disciplinarians.

 

 

My enthusiastic response to her reference to the unequal hierarchy at play in a genuine maternal model led her to expand:

At first, I understood "maternal" almost exclusively in terms of aesthetics -what I am wearing, what implements are used, how I lecture and what words I use, and so forth. The aesthetics are an important part of it ... but there is so much more than that - for example, saying "because I said so" instead of explaining every rule or consequence. I don't know why this took me so long, but one day it occurred to me that when I was doing "motherhood for real" raising my kids, I didn't feel the need to explain everything - "because I said so" was adequate for them, and so now it's something that my husband hears often.

 

Another example of where thinking "maternally" was a game changer was when it came to how hard I was spanking. In a maternal spanking, a boy is being spanked by a woman who is larger than him and stronger than him. For my husband to experience that same thing, given that he is twice my size and way stronger than me, that means that what I was considering a severe spanking was probably too weak even for a warm-up. This has changed my technique, instruments, and positions; but now to my husband’s surprise I am able to get him to the feeling of genuinely being overwhelmed by the spanking. (Ladies, I know that we often are afraid to spank too hard, but once you really think through proportionally how much larger your husband is compared to a boy, you might realize that you can and should spank much, much, much harder and not feel bad about it at all.)

 

 I could go on and on, because once I had this epiphany about what maternal really means, I have discovered dozens and dozens of small things over the years that have helped me better deliver the "maternal" that he was craving and needs, and it's been surprising that it's not all aesthetics (although that is important).

 

One note for the wives out there - your husband might be able to articulate, generally, what "maternal" means, but it wasn't until I got very intentional about thinking about all of these little details (and often springing them on him rather than giving him a ton of input) that we really seemed to achieve the maternal dynamic that he wanted - and that, truth be told, makes DD easier, less stressful, and more satisfying for me too.

 

I certainly fall into the camp of knowing I gravitate toward a DD relationship with a maternal vibe, yet I struggle to articulate exactly what that entails.   

 

So, this post is in large part an invitation for Mrs.Turpin to expand on her epiphany about maternal-style discipline and the insights she came to when drilling down into the concept.

 

My inability to articulate exactly what I think a “maternal”-orientation entails is reflected in the spanking Anne gave me this week.

 

I often think what I want is a very “stern mother” demeanor, yet the spanking this week felt very maternal even though she wasn’t all that stern. The best word I can come up with is “business-like”. That demeanor was reflected even in the timing of her announcement that I was going to be spanked imminently. The garage door incident had happened a few days before, and I thought she probably would spank for it, but I didn't know exactly when. On the night it actually happened,  there was something else we had planned for the evening. When I asked whether that was still the plan, she said very casually and matter-of-factly, "Yes, but we need to take care of your spanking first."

The casual but confident attitude was also on display during her usual pre-spanking lecture. This time, it was short and to the point. Anne sometimes (not always) starts a discipline session by asking me why I’m about to get spanked. Generally, I don’t really like that. She’s the one in control, so I feel it’s more effective when she tells me why she’s about to spank me.

 

This time, she began with the simple pronouncement, “You’re getting spanked for leaving the garage door open.”  She did then ask why leaving it open is a problem, but she wasn't looking for a big speech or show of contrition. I responded with a short statement about recent thefts in our neighborhood.

 

She responded, “Right. And, since we have talked about this before, your are going to get a hard spanking for it.”

 

That was really it.  Her tone was “matter of fact”. Her facial expression was neutral and business-like.

 

  

Then, she put me over her knee and gave me a hard spanking with the bath brush.  It wasn’t among her hardest or longest spankings, but it was something I might once have seen as “disproportionate” to the relatively minor offense that led to it.

 

Something about her demeanor, and our recent discussions in which I’ve said I want her to be more strict, caused me to react differently than I usually do. I wasn’t just trying to “gut it out” or “man up and get through it.”  I was, instead, trying to focus on, even as she was giving me one hard swat after another, that I was being spanked because this has, in fact, been an ongoing problem. I’d had ample warnings and even been spanked for it before. So, a hard spanking was appropriate and perfectly in line with what I’ve said should happen. In short, I was trying harder than I usually do to fully accept that I was being spanked because I deserved it and that it should be a hard spanking.

 

All that added up to a spanking that somehow felt more maternal.

 

My reaction also may have been different because I’ve been increasingly open with myself, and with Anne, about the extent to which the maternal element is something I want, even if I don’t understand exactly why I want it or even what exactly it is that I want. 

 

It also may not be a coincidence that I had recently visited the town where I attended high school and that those were the years in which I was probably the most in need of strong discipline.

 

Anne knows that I feel like I didn't experience enough real discipline at that stage and that I want, or think I want, more of it now. And, based on the conversations we've had, I think she genuinely likes taking on more of that maternal role. 

 

And, not just because it's good for me.  There's a heavy element of, yes, it probably is good for me in the sense that I feel like I need it, but it's also good for me in the sense that I've had it coming for a very long time, it's good for me regardless of whether I want it, and she is very happy to give me exactly what I need and deserve.

Although I’ve been thinking more about this need for “maternal-style” discipline for a couple of years now, it’s surprising that it was not something I keyed in on when I first discovered domestic discipline via The Disciplinary Wives  Club website; surprising because it was featured prominently on the homepage, which stated:

 

The Disciplinary Wives Club (DWC) is an organization whose purpose is to encourage the application of "Good Old Fashioned" spanking and other very traditional methods of discipline by wives and committed partners. It is our experience that the vast majority of relationships that have a maternal discipline orientation are truly happy, healthy and long lasting.

 

There were blurbs in the DWC pamphlets that were much more explicit as to the dynamic the DWC advocated, among them:

 

 “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.

 

I honestly don’t know when I first started consciously exploring how much my own desire for DD was based in a desire for maternal-style discipline. My first post that involved much personal reflection about it was in 2019, after I’d been blogging about DD for over six years, and Anne and I had been practicing DD for much longer than that.

 

It is only in the last few years that either of us consciously took things in that direction. But, I think we both may have been dancing around it for a while.  Surprisingly, until recently in my mind I was the one who started taking things in that direction, but when I look back on some older blog posts, I realize that Anne actually may have been inching toward it before me.

 

A few years back, when we were briefly experimenting with more of what I would call “service” domination, she said something to the effect of she liked that giving me orders reduced me to a little boy who has no choice but to do what he is told. 

 

 

Sometime after that, she compared me to a teenager who mischievously pushes buttons just to do it, then is surprised when mom finally does something about it.  And, she said it knowing that getting my butt blistered for sassing my mother wasn't a part of my actual teenage experience.

 

 

Those kinds of statements kicked off more open discussions about it, though it's never been as explicit as the arrangement it sounds like Mrs.Turpin and her husband have, so I look forward to hearing more about their dynamic.

 

I would add one caveat about my sense of my own needs in this area:  For me, I think what I crave is structure and authority, but it’s not wholly confined to “female” authority. Although I’ve been very resistant to male authority in work settings, that wasn’t the case in school, and I also think that in more domestic settings I might respond as strongly to male discipline as to female. Perhaps even more so, because I think the feeling that the discipline was being imposed on me whether I liked it or not might be even stronger.  

 

 

But, that’s another thing that may be changing. I feel like what I need and want now does have a more distinctly maternal vibe that it did back in 2019, when my post on this subject said that I felt I needed “an” authority figure and not necessarily a “maternal” authority figure.  And, although I think I might have given into any authority outside of work, I do think pretty much any older woman would have had a good chance of making me submit to a spanking had that been on offer.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this. 

 

And, lest we take all this talk of mothers too seriously, I've been wanting to use this one for a while, and this seems like as good a time as any:

 

 

A Disciplinary Spanker Second-Guesses Herself. Why is "I Should Just Spank Him" So Hard? (Club Meeting - 528)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Spanking Style/Technique and Effectiveness (Club Meeting - 527)

“If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.” -Tallulah Bankhead

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.

 

Happy Labor Day to those in the U.S.  I hope you’re getting some time off to enjoy it.

 

I hope you all had a good week.  Mine was pretty punishing, in a non-DD sense.  I attended a big gathering of old friends. It was fun, though I got this sense that we hadn’t changed as much this time as the last time we got together, which was almost a decade ago.  It was a little depressing recognizing that we’ve all gotten old enough that the major life changes are starting to be mostly in the rearview mirror.  I did get the sense that I’m digging in my heels a bit more than others when it comes to settling into middle-age.

 

 

But, a good time was had by all.  Perhaps a little too good, if my bedtime after the events was any indication. I definitely don’t rally the next morning after a long night as easily as I did back then.

 

Thanks to those who joined in on the discussion last week.  I didn’t have many takeaways from it, other than I’d note that few, if any, people expressed any big concerns about “undeserved” punishments or being subjected to discipline we don’t really agree with.  I think we all recognized that there might be times when she thinks something should be punished and we don’t fully agree, but no one seemed to see it as a significant problem.  That should be reassuring to any of the wives who are sometimes held back by concerns about fairness.

 

I’m not sure we got anywhere with the discussion of whether disobedience is something separate and distinct from being punished for specific misbehavior.  It seemed to get side-tracked onto the question of what is and is not an FLR, which we’ve kind of beaten to death over the years and are unlikely to ever resolve.  As I said in a response to Alan, I think the vast majority here are more or less on the same page with what a DD relationship is, but there is clearly no consensus around what distinguishes it from an FLR, and it seems clear to me that the connotations we draw from (or impose on) the term differ dramatically from one individual to another, perhaps especially with respect to whether and to what extent “led” has some dictatorial connotation. 

 

Anyway, it’s probably something where we’re never going to come to much of a consensus, and that’s fine.

 

I did find Al’s comments about the Disciplinary Wives Club and the extent of authority exercised by the wives to illustrate the problem we seem to have in defining what an FLR might be.  He stated:

The focus of discussion was always on "maternal style" F/M DD - in essence "to keep the husband well behaved". There was not really any significant discussion on the wife's leading the marriage in general or with absolute authority.

 

So, on other hand, there wasn’t much discussion about the wife leading or having absolute authority, yet the archetype they were always focused on was the “maternal”. To me, one of the defining characteristics of the maternal archetype is the mother is charge and child is not. It seems to be a very hierarchical relationship, with one having a lot of power and the other having very little.   

 

 

So, again, there doesn’t seem to be a clean way to characterize the extent of the wife’s authority.  Oh well . . . it’s not like the semantics really matter very much.

 

Near the end of last week’s discussion, Norton proposed a future topic:

 

We have recently gone through a change in how she spanks, as requested by me. She used to start and stop, lecturing me when she stopped. It never occurred to me, but that kind of spanking allowed me to be able to handle it better, and not loose control. Then recently, she spanked me without stopping for about 3 or 4 minutes. Within the first minute, I was quite overwhelmed, and had obviously lost control, kicking and making noise. It seemed to me that a much more effective way to spank, as I don't really want to feel in control. It does make a spanking much harder to take, but it also makes even a maintenance spanking an event I will not feel too blasé about, as I have in the past. Possible future topic?

 

 

(Glenmore, is that one yours?  The version I have isn't signed, so I wasn't sure.)

 

Alan concurred on making it a topic:

 

This might make a future topic. We have talked about various spanking styles or techniques, but never or not recently about their relative effectiveness. I suspect one style of spanking becomes habitual in mature relationships. But it could be eye opening to discuss which style, if any, works best in any given situation - and what style is most common or rarest. There are a lot of moving parts implied, such as the spanking tool(s) used, purpose of the spanking, the wife's preferred style, the history and experience of a couple, etc.

 

We can make that this week’s topic, though I may need others to carry a lot of the conversation because, as I’ve said many times here, Anne’s spankings tend to be very binary, without much variation in style or technique.  Oh, it’s true that the positions and instruments have varied over time, but overall style or technique hasn’t varied much. It’s always been hard, relatively long (usually between 200 and 300 swats), with no warmup.

 

She doesn't really do "quick" spankings?  They all seem to fall into a range of about 150 swats on the low end and around 300 on the high end.

 

Although I do feel that, in general, a real punishment spanking has to pass some threshold of severity and duration to get the point across, I can see how a very quick spanking could work for minor offenses.  Moreover, I can see how it might have a role in fostering consistency, since a spanking could be over and done in a minute or two, instead of always constituting a big "event" that takes a lot of time and effort on her part.

One thing that has changed a bit recently is some stopping between volleys to lecture. For most of our DD relationship, that didn’t happen very much.  Instead, she generally spanked at a steady, relentless pace, with few breaks and seldom any discussion. Over the last year or so, she’s started pausing a few times during the session to make her main points verbally.

 

It's hard for me to say much about how style might influence effectiveness as, like I said, ours are pretty binary, so I don’t have much to compare to.  And, the comparisons I can make aren’t that helpful when it comes to effectiveness.

 

One area where Anne’s approach may vary from others is around warm-ups.  The Disciplinary Wives Club website advocated easing into the spanking:

 

“Once he is across your knee, give him a few moments to get used to the fact that he is about to be spanked. Begin by giving a couple of hard smacks, then stop. The initial sting will be quite a shock to his system. If you were to keep on, he would struggle so much out of reflex action it would be difficult, if not impossible, to hold him in place. This pause after the first few whacks will give him a chance to mentally gear himself for the ordeal to come. Give him a few more hard smacks and pause again. He will have started to squirm, but the smacks will have been given before any serious movement takes place. His body will be very tense as he awaits the next round of spanks. Wait for him to relax, and tell him to do so. Then resume the spanking.”

 

For some reason, Anne has never been into the idea of warm-ups. Her swats begin hard and stay that way.  In terms of effectiveness, I often think that Aunt Kay’s advice was sound, as starting hard from the outset can cause me to very quickly “man up”.  From that point forward, it’s all about resisting the pain and trying to get through it, as opposed to really processing what is happening to me and trying to absorb a helpful lesson from it.

 

On the other hand, starting hard from the beginning can make for a very, very painful spanking, and one could argue that’s the whole point, right?

 

In terms of pace, Anne is pretty steady, giving a swat, usually with the bath brush, about every second or two.  What she hasn’t done often that I see depicted fairly often in spanking videos is a super-fast, concentrated volley of swats.  I can see how that could be overwhelming in the way Norton describes, though I would also anticipate that it might make me go numb even faster.

 

As I said, I don’t have a lot to talk about on this one, so hopefully many of you will give us your thoughts on style/technique, and effectiveness.  Does there tend to be one prevalent technique used, or do they very from spanking to spanking? If they vary, is there one technique or style you find particularly effective?

 

I hope you have a great week.