Spanking Pace (continued), plus What Aare You Thinking While Being Spanked? (Club meeting - 531)

“To say that we mutually agree to coercion is not to say that we are required to enjoy it, or even to pretend we enjoy it.” - Garrett Hardin

 Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline relationship.  I hope you all had a great week.

 

I’ve said many times how much I love the fall season, and this year is no exception.  We passed peak leaf season a week or two ago and have entered the part of the season where things get quite a bit cooler and quite a bit more gray.  But, there’s been enough nice weather that people could do their pumpkin gathering.

 

 

And, the weather was nice enough yesterday that I was able to get most of our outside Halloween decorations up.  We live in a very suburban neighborhood, so nothing even PG-13 for ours.

 

 

As you know, I took this past week off from posting.  There was no specific precipitating event, but I just started feeling very frustrated by the amount of time I was putting into on-line activities. Honestly, I'm still kind of feeling that way, but I had this post mostly written anyway, and while not posting one week is no big deal, twice in a row starts feeling like a trend.

 

Anyway, two weeks ago there were some interesting happenings in our household on the DD front and in ways that relate to some recent, or relatively recent, topics.

 

We’ve had some stumbling starts and stops on this, but Anne and I are trying to get back into weekly check-ins.  It’s a conscious effort to both increase her sense of control over my behavior and the disciplinary aspects of the relationship and also to generally improve our communications and organize our calendars and to-dos so we’re better coordinated on things like planning future travel or joint activities.

 

 

We both see a value in the meetings, but that hasn’t seemed to translate into doing them with any regularity. We’re trying to change that by adding some formality, like actually putting them on our respective calendars, requiring me to submit a report and a journal entry to her before the meeting, etc.

 

I’ve posted various drafts of the report template here a few times before. Here’s the latest version:

 

The latest updates are designed to do a few things:

 

• Making the bigger offenses a simple, binary check-off. Did it happen or didn’t it, without an attempt to quantify the seriousness.
•  Noting expressly whether she’s already threatened or ordered a spanking for something, which serves two purposes: remind her that she’s not supposed to be letting things go like that, and make a “catch up” spanking to take care of such matters a foregone conclusion after the check-in.
•  Requiring me to state what I think should happen as a result of the behavior.  In effect, if I objectively deserve to be spanked, I need to say so. It also may be that, in some cases, she may not see something as a big deal, but I’m feeling the need to be held accountable for it.  In effect, if I think I deserve or need a spanking, the form forces me to face up to it.

 

It seemed to work pretty well in our recent session, and the discipline it dictated leads me to recap some things from previous topics.

 

First, although I hadn’t had any very big behavioral fails, there had been at least one incident that she cared about enough to comment on it unfavorably, and there was another incident that I saw as an issue.

 

The first involved some comments I made over a dinner with some one of our kids’ in-laws.  The drinks were flowing pretty freely and, while I didn’t drink any more than anyone else, I made a couple of comments that Anne thought were a little too off-color, describing it as “regressing to frat-boy humor.”  I don’t fully agree with her assessment, but that’s not the standard.

 

 

The other issue involved a neighborhood potluck.  I had wine on an empty stomach. There actually were no behavior problems associated with it, and even commented that she was surprised I saw it as an issue since I’d behaved myself throughout the gathering. But, I felt like I’d consumed too much and had been irresponsible in not eating more.  Basically, I felt like I needed her to impose a bit tighter boundaries around alcohol, not because it’s been a big problem lately but, to the contrary, because it had improved quite a bit and I didn’t want to see that progress reverse.

 

Because I had identified two different and independent incidents, when answering the “What should happen” question, I was honest and said there should be two separate spankings.  She agreed.

 

 

That gives me an opportunity address the recent topics of (a) the pace of spankings; and (b) multiple spankings.

 

Regarding pace, the first spanking began as a pretty typical OTK spanking with the bath brush.  But, I think she must have read last week’s blog post with the discussion of the pros and cons of a rapid-fire pace.  In addition to lots of swats at her normal pace, she gave several super-fast volleys, delivered at what had to be close to the fastest pace she could do swinging the bath brush.

 

The second spanking came three days later, and it was in a position we seldom use – laying flat on the bed with her swinging from above.  

 

She used a combination of instruments, including the London Tanner’s DD Strap, a wooden paddle, and a short leather paddle with holes, which I got from Aunt Kay’s husband. Her pace was slower and more deliberate, and overall the spanking lasted longer.

 

 

How did they compare, and was CalSpankee right in his proposition that
“slower and longer” is more effective?

 

Honestly, it wasn’t really a fair test of his proposition.  Her pace during the second spanking was slower but not what I would call truly slow.  Also, the position was, for me, not very effective.  For whatever reason, laying flat on a bed has never worked well for me.  The strikes always seem to hit the two glutes very unevenly.  I also tend to get anxiety about swats hitting too high.  I’m also always breathing into the mattress or turning my head to the side uncomfortably.

 

So, in this case, no, the slower pace was not more effective. But, as I said, it also didn’t seem like a fair comparison. For me, a real head-to-head competition would probably involve a standing or bent-over position, with a single instrument—probably a heavy wooden paddle—with the 15 to 20 second pauses between swats that CalSpankee recommended.  If done long enough, I still think that could be more effective.

 

 

I think there is one more factor, however, that would have to be apples-to-apples, and that would be that each would have to be a single spanking for a single offense, with one offense happening after the other and the first spanking intervening between the two.

 

This relates back to some concerns Alan has raised about multiple spankings for the same offense.  Alan’s concern (he’ll correct me I get this wrong) is that spanking more than once for the same offense delays the typical “cleaning of the slate” that is one of the major benefits of DD.  His advice is, if there is a desire for a more serious spanking to reflect an especially serious offense or series of offenses, consider a post-orgasm spanking instead of multiple spankings.

 

Now, my situation this week was not exactly “two spankings for one offense”. There were multiple offenses, and my request for two spankings reflected that each should be punished.  But, spanking on two different days created (for me) a problem somewhat, though not exactly, like Alan’s concern about delayed cleaning of the slate.

 

See, after the first spanking, my need for accountability seemed fully satisfied. There was no feeling of needing to wipe the slate clean. Instead, the second spanking felt totally superfluous. 

 

That’s the second reason that the fast-paced first spanking versus the slow-paced second spanking isn’t an entirely fair comparison – I wasn’t in a similar mental/emotional state. 

 

CalSpankee favors the slow-paced session because the gap between swats gives lots of time to think about why you’re being spanked, what you could have done differently, exploring feelings of guilt, etc.  The problem was most of the feelings that lead to those kind of thoughts had been expiated with the first spanking.

 

 

I’m not sure this means that making sure that each offense gets its own punishment is wrong. But, it might mean that the multiple sessions need to come very close to each other in time, like a single, long session broken into two parts, with some downtime in-between.

 

I also have a few observations about the two respective spankings.

 

Regarding the first spanking, which included super-fast volleys, they were surprisingly effective in one respect: They seemed to have the ability to cut through some numbing and/or through the somewhat diminished response that seems to happen when I’ve been spanked for a significant amount of time. I was surprised at (a) how much more the faster volleys hurt; (b) that the pain-level stayed consistently high from the beginning to the end of each volley; and (c) how, even after numbness had started to set in, a fast volley would cut right through it.

 

Regarding the second spanking, my primary observation is that counter-intuitively, it didn’t really hurt any more than usual, even though it took place just three days after a hard one.  Was I surprised by that? Not entirely. 

 

Although intuitively it seems like a spanking so soon after another serious one should hurt substantially more, on the rare occasion when I’ve gotten two in one week, and even on the even more rare occasions when I’ve gotten two in successive days, the second did not hurt more than the first.  I’ll be curious to hear from you whether my experience is atypical.

 

For this week, feel free to address any thoughts that arise from the above observations.

 

Plus, and relatedly, CalSpankee suggested this:

 

“As a spankee, what things are you thinking about when you are getting spanked?"; and,

 

"What type of spanking does or does not get you thinking about those things, and why?"

 

For me, that’s a hard one.  Honestly, I’m not thinking that coherently while I’m getting spanked.  I often start out counting the swats as they land, though it’s not an intentional thing; I just kind of start counting.  But, I also almost never keep counting throughout it.  If it’s been a while since I’ve been spanked, I’m sometimes shocked by just how much it hurts, and I may even think about begging her to stop, though I almost never do. Sometimes, if the spanking is especially hard or has gone on a long time, I may feel some resentment that she isn’t bringing it to an end, but then I’ll almost always mentally acknowledge that I got myself into it.

 

That’s about it. As I said, I’m not thinking all that coherently when being spanked.

 

I hope you all have a great week.

 

 

No Post

Hi all.  I've been out and about enjoying the crisp fall weather.  I'd been working on a post and was planning to post yesterday or early today. 

But, I've been feeling kind of uncharacteristically overwhelmed with electronic communications and social media and decided I just don't want to focus on blogging this week.  Maybe I'll post some Halloween pics or something as the week goes along.  In the meantime, feel free to carry last week's discussion over into this post.

Spanking Pace and Refusing/Resisting/Avoiding a Spanking

NOTE: I published a version of this post earlier, but Blogger took it down for some unidentified "content violation". I'm not sure what the issue was, but it may be because it included two external links. The one and only other time I've had a post taken down, that post also had an external link. So, I've removed that portion of the post.  I've reentered the few comments that had been left at the time of the take down.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

“You can't talk your way out of a problem you behaved your way into!” - Stephen R. Covey

 

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline relationship.  I hope you all had a great week.

 

We were traveling and, for once, we got along reasonably well.  I say “for once”, because we typically don’t travel that well together.  Part of it is her tendency to backseat drive, but admittedly my moodiness when traveling is also usually an issue.  For whatever reason, things to go more smoothly this time, so there was none of this on this trip and, if she has anything she wants to spank me for, I don’t think it would be related specifically to our trip. Though, it's worth noting that, as we were getting ready to leave, she made a point of showing me that she had packed her bath brush.

Well, it sure was quiet here during my short absence. I hope it’s a reflection of people being busy transitioning into Autumn and not just plain old lack of interest. I personally did want to hear more from “Mrs. Terrapin”. Even apart from the maternal angle, I found some of her thoughts regarding inherent inequality of real DD relationships to be worth following up on.  But, best laid plans and all that . . .

 

Because there were so few comments last week, I don’t have a lot to work with in terms of leveraging comments into topics. But, TB and Norton raised some issues that might generate some discussion.  Taking them in reverse order, Norton said (I’m combining parts of two comments):

 

While I have never refused a spanking, we did go through something similar a few days ago.  She was very annoyed with me and gave me a brief, very hard, very fast, spanking. It was probably 2 spanks every second, which is pretty overwhelming and gives me no time to process much at all. It also led to a good discussion about how she could alter it, by spanking just as hard, but in a more deliberate, slower, manner. I have encouraged her in the past to push me to my limit, so she was understandably confused by me saying that it was too much.

 

Others have described long, hard, spankings that were overwhelming in that they didn't know how long it was going to last. When coupled with genuine remorse, such a spanking has sometimes led others to tears. I would like to allow myself to be vulnerable enough to experience that, but have never been able to get there.

 

A few weeks ago, we talked about spanking style, which didn’t seem to generate much interest.  But, Norton’s comment focuses more narrowly on the pacing of swats/strikes.  It also touches on something I’ve wondered about, i.e. whether longer spankings are more effective and specifically whether they are more likely to lead to tears.  

 

Although that does seem to be the conventional wisdom, I’ve had some recent spankings that left me wondering.  

 

Several weeks ago, I talked about getting spanked after a long break.  It was excruciating from the first swat, to such an extent that I had some of those “I don’t know whether I can take this” thoughts and had to fight hard internally not to resist.  In the past, if a spanking was super intense from the very beginning, I tended to “man up” and just try to get through it without really giving in to it, which is how I interpret Norton’s reference to not having time to process it.  But, for some reason, recently I feel closer to crying at the beginning of a spanking, especially if I’m shocked by how much it hurts.  Do others experience that, where it is just so overwhelming that it almost overcomes your resistance and leaves you fighting back tears?

 

The other problem for me with longer spankings is I almost always go numb after about 5 or 6 minutes. Or, at least I do with wooden instruments, which are about all we use these days.  So, if the goal was tears, as it seems to be for both Norton and me, an especially long spanking wouldn’t seem to get me there. Or, the only way I can see it happening would be if “a” spanking were broken up into several discreet sections, with long breaks in-between.   But, it seems like those long breaks would also defeat that feeling that it was going on and on and on in the way that some say has brought them to tears.

 

 

Norton’s reference to never having refused a spanking was in response to this from TB:

 

As there are so few comments on this topic I'm going to pitch in with a related topic. For some reason my wife was really bad tempered a couple of weeks ago. This is very, very unusual and even more unusual is that I was being as placatory as possible when she suddenly said she was going to spank me. I instinctively and for the first time ever, refused. Not in a confrontational way but in a 'no, I do not think that is a good idea' kind of way.

 

The domestic atmosphere was not good for a couple of days as I guess you can imagine. I did journal very clearly that I felt that our DD relationship had responsibilities on both sides and that I felt that the context and her frame of mind were not suited to a discipline session. I admit that I did feel very nervous about where this refusal was going to take us. Surprisingly, it has led to a very constructive series of conversations about mutual responsibility, timings of discipline and most importantly a joint commitment to a more '24 x 7' DD relationship rather than a marriage that has DD as an option.

 

We have talked about the role of warnings, lectures, scoldings and eventually the necessity of spanking as a kind of tiered approach to discipline. She has really taken this to heart during the past couple of weeks, I have been warned and lectured for minor breaches. She seems to more clearly recognise the joint nature of and need for discipline, how she cannot effectively just decide on an inconsistent basis to use spanking to subdue (rather than correct) me and how spanking in my mind (and our relationship) is part of a stepped approach to correcting my misbehaviour.

 

It feels like we have crossed some sort of milestone of mutual understanding but as usual time will tell.

 

TB’s comment is, for me, a great illustration of why it’s probably counter-productive to insist on hard “rules” where communications in real DD relationships are concerned. Many of us would probably caution against ever flat-out refusing a spanking, since it risks undermining her confidence and, with that, the whole dynamic. And, I do think it’s not a trivial risk. Yet, in TB’s case, it led to a deeper conversation and, as he said, a “sort of milestone of mutual understanding”.

 

 

So, keeping in mind that it probably is best to err on the side of not refusing, have you ever done so?  If so, what was the reason? How did it turn out?

 

I can think of really only one time that Anne seemed intent on spanking, and I basically refused.  The situation was a little more subtle than that, but it did qualify as a refusal. The reason was we had been out socially, and she was tipsy.  Although I’ve said that our relationship is basically “anytime for any reason”, for me alcohol is the one exception, for two reasons. First, probably because I had a parent who had issues around alcohol, I react very negatively to assertions of authority by people who have been drinking.  Second, it’s a safety thing.  Friends have commented that I tend to get more controlled as I drink, including where things like physical balance are concerned. Anne is the opposite. She’s kind of a lightweight, and it shows.  Hard paddles and vulnerable body parts don’t seem like a good mix with alcohol.

 

But, that’s really it where flat-out refusals are concerned.

 

I don’t even really argue very much.  That’s probably because it’s pretty rare that I actually disagree with her about the reason for a spanking.  And, on the rare occasions when I don’t see a situation the same way she does, there often are multiple recent issues she could be spanking me for, so even if we don’t agree on what specifically she is spanking me for, it’s rare that we don’t both agree that I deserve to be spanked for something.

 

 What I do often do is try to delay.  It sometimes probably does rise to the level of arguing, but it’s often a “how about not right now” and not so much pleading my case for not deserving it at all.  The problem is, successful delay often seems to result in it not happening at all, and even if I genuinely want to avoid that spanking at the time it is in play, I almost always have some regret when it becomes clear that delay has turned into avoidance.

 

I do know it is self-defeating.  I say I want her to be more strict and stern, yet in the moment I can’t seem to help but undermine her efforts.  I truly get that it’s unfair to her, because she tries to be more assertive like I say I want, but then I don’t exactly cooperate with that process.

Yet, part of that resistance seems almost inevitable, precisely because things are starting to seem more “real.”  When she gets more assertive and more aggressive in ordering spankings, I try harder to get out of them.

 

It’s unfair and counterproductive, but isn’t it also precisely what you would expect when discipline starts to feel truly imposed? I’ve said I want it to feel non-consensual, and if I genuinely don’t want to be spanked and kind of actively undermine it, yet it happens nonetheless, that feels like a spanking that has, in fact, been imposed on me whether I like it or not. 

 

Therefore, while successfully avoiding a spanking is counter-productive, when I am unsuccessful in undermining her resolve, it actually increases her authority and confidence and makes me feel like the dynamic is increasingly real.

 

Trying to get out of it but failing to do so confirms her status as the real “boss.” 

 

I hope you all have a great week.