“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.
