“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:
- 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.
Like you, our DD also seems to have been in something of a lull recently. The problem that I have really wanted to address is not alcohol but mood / attitude/ unreasonable snappishness. I haven’t been doing a particularly good job of suppressing this and have really felt that I needed a strong incentive to help me. A couple of weeks ago I had a pretty bad episode of this and when my mood finally came back down, I was expecting a prompt and severe punishment. After waiting for about ten days, I initiated a conversation. Long story short, I received one of the hardest paddlings I’ve ever had, followed immediately by a pretty harsh caning - exactly what I needed, and hopefully a session severe enough that I’ll remember next time I feel this mood rising. Unlike you, we haven’t instituted reports, any formality, regular check-ins or anything like that, She has made the point that whether to punish is solely her decision, but I’ve asked for a no-exceptions, no-excuses response to this mood in the future. Obviously, getting away with it in the future will make it worse, and a consistent and severe response will help me control it. Hopefully we’ve broken this lull - but we’ll see over time. TG
ReplyDeleteDid you find that you a paddling after ten days still gave you what you were looking for? If find that when I've done something that makes me really crave a tightening of the boundaries, that feeling doesn't last more than maybe a week, and often less. After that, I move on from the offense emotionally and, at that point, being spanked for it seems kind of gratuitous or superfluous.
DeleteYes. I was still feeling it, which I guess is why I started the conversation. I certainly felt the release of the guilt feelings from it. TG
DeleteThat's great.
DeleteMy wife doesn't use it but I have seen a few hairbrush spankings where he really reacts physically and verbally when she spanks fast so it must be effective.
ReplyDeleteShe lectures and talks to me quite a bit when I'm over her lap so I don't really have a chance to think about anything else other than getting through it.
"Getting through it" is probably the best summary of what I'm thinking about, too.
DeleteI don't "pretend to enjoy it", I absolutely do. Now I know that cuts against some of the core principles around all this but that is just the way I'm wired. It isn't a pain thing or even a submissive tendency, I just mentally get off on this across the board. Whether my fortnightly maintenance sessions off Mrs GoodLife or my visits to professional disciplinarians, the enjoyment is massive. Cheers GLM.
ReplyDeleteDan,
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn’t be Halloween without you posting a sexy witch or two.
One option to successive day spankings is multiple spankings in the same session. For me, over two relationships, this was used, both to address multiple issues the same day and to increase the severity of a single spanking for a single reason. ( more the latter than the former)
For us each spanking gets separated by 20, minutes or so of corner/reflection time. But the time could be more but needs to be long enough to really separate the spankings. These do work mentally to motivate some deep reflection while the punishment is still happening. But they can be used to address completely separate issues in the same discipline session
Alan
I've thought about doing a Halloween post that's nothing but drawings and Halloween pics. My collection keeps growing, and it's impossible to work even just the best of them.
DeleteI think we probably need to explore something like your suggestion of multiple spankings in a single session separated by 20 minutes or more. Or, even multiple sessions in the same day, separated by hours. But, separating them out by days as we did this time truly did not work for me.
I agree. Maybe something along the lines of strategies of spanking instead of techniques. The two categories can overlap, but discussed separately the strategies she uses ( like multiple seasons the same day or emphasis on scolding vs spanking or almost any ritual used are all interesting topics. Spanking has been called a "verbal" kink, and that proposition alone might be interesting to discuss. The psychological aspects of adult spanking underlie its expression and is all fascinating
DeleteAlan
I'm always way more interested in talking about psychological aspects than techniques, and I suspect you are too. But, we may be outliers. For as long as the blog has existed, the posts that focus on things like tools and positions seem to get more responses than the more psychological/philosophical posts. Though, especially given the declining participation, I've been trying to focus more attention on just writing about whatever interests me in the moment, without worrying about whether anyone else responds to it. I think a lot of blogs in this space get taken down because the authors get tired of feeling like they are talking into the void. But, the reality is, I like expressing myself in writing, and I seem to have a compulsion to do it, whether it's in the form of blog or a journal. So, I don't know why I sometimes let myself get hung up on whether what I'm writing gets an express response from others.
DeleteThe subjects you discuss and topics you propose are almost always interesting. But sometimes a given week seems more like a series of monologues (sometimes on topic, sometimes not), rather than a dialogue. I suspect that recently, a large majority of comments elicit a single response, and that is from you-which comprises my point about monologues versus dialogues.
DeleteAlan
It does seem like people aren't responding to each other's comments as much as they used to. Though, it's also true that a lot of that was due to three or four commenters, and you're about the only one who still does. Al does too, though his participation is been once a month or so.
DeleteAs I have said before , I am always more interested in the psychological aspects of F/M adult spanking and DD than the methods or techniques. Dan, I am happy you are not too concerned with how much response you get, and that you derive pleasure from writing. I always enjoy reading what you have to say, even it is something I may not agree with. Hope you keep it up for a long time.
DeleteDuring the spanking, I count silently until it ends. It is usually something like ten sets of 12, 15 or 20 or a mixture of these. E
ReplyDeleteI do count, but I almost always lose track at some point.
DeleteYour comments have helped me focus my thoughts on this. The ideal pace likely varies from person to person and also is closely related to the level of pain imparted by each swat (which in turn is closely related to the implement being used and the force used by the spanker). The idea is that these short pauses, whether 5 seconds, 10, 15, etc., enable the person being spanked to not only think about the reason for being spanked, to feel remorse, guilt, etc., but -- just as important -- to really dread the next swat and at some point to begin to feel fear and panic. As I mentioned in earlier posts, if the pace is too fast I can't think of any of those things while the spanking is going on. The pain fully occupies my mind, leaving no room for anything else. "Hang on for dear life" is the central thought. At the other end, if the pace is too slow, and each swat, although painful, can be tolerated to some degree and absorbed, you can't expect to absolutely dread the next swat or to be driven to feel fear or panic. Ditto if the pace is right but the implement is just too wimpy (think a light plastic hairbrush). Regarding swats hitting too high: if the implement is wood, that can injure the coccycx. But how about straps? Do you have the same concern there?
DeleteYeah, straps do still concern me re: hitting too high. You're right that wood presents a lot more risk of injury to the coccyx, but anything across the waist and the very upper part of the butt is excruciating in a way that feels like an injury, not discipline or even punishment. Perhaps because my lower back tends to be very super tight.
DeleteFYI, I did once break or sprain my coccyx. Unfuckingbelievably painful, and it lasted for months and months. You quickly learn that every muscle in your body seems to hook into the tailbone. Even sneezes and coughs were mind-blowingly painful.
Dan,
DeleteMy wife missed one time with a paddle and I felt it for quite sometime. We tend to use leather more often than not. We use a heavy flogger and leather strap. A hairbrush and switch is used as well. This eliminates the worry about a heavy object such as a paddle missing its intended target. If you miss high with a strap, it won’t damage like a paddle, believe me. Last thing I want to do is damage my coccyx at this age lol.
As for this weeks topic, my wife needed help with a computer issue that she was having. I explained to her how she should handle the issue. She became frustrated and took her frustration out on me. This of course, rose my blood pressure and I snapped at my wife. This is exactly why I brought DD to her attention originally. My lack of self control. Now I must admit, my wife was clearly 100% wrong. When the issue was corrected, her attitude changed and she apologized profusely for taking her frustration out on me. I accepted her apology. The next day went by and I was at working contemplating my actions. I should have been much more patient and when I arrived home, I apologized. She replied that she was wrong. My response to my wife, although I appreciate you apologizing to me, I should not have snapped at you and need to be punished. She actually did not agree with me and felt horrible about how she spoke to me. I reiterated how that doesn’t matter, I need to learn how to be patient. My wife then gave a me a strapping. The strapping was enough to make a point, but not as long as normal. I don’t think she wanted to punish me at that point. I did need the punishment for the way I addressed her.
DeleteT
Leather definitely wins over wood when it comes to safety.
DeleteT., while it hasn't happened often, there have been a few times where I saw my own actions in a far worse light than my wife did, and I thought I deserved one while she really didn't. I have no doubt that it's much harder for a wife to spank when she doesn't really agree that one is deserved. But, for those wired like you and me, there are times that we hold ourselves to a higher standard, and we know we've asked for extra motivation to overcome things that we self-identify as problems. The fact that our wives may share some responsibility for a fight doesn't, in our minds, absolve us of our own role. And, it's really not as one-sided as it may seem. If I compare the number of times I get snippy with my wife versus how often she does with me, it probably used to be like 9:1. Now it's probably more like 6:4 or 7:3, but I'm still the one who needs the most work on attitude, temper, etc.
DeleteMy lower back was also super tight from decades of running and hiking and no stretching of any kind. My main symptoms were (1) I couldn't stand for more than around 10 minutes without my back aching so much I had to sit down, and (2) ditto as to lying on my back. The cure: five stretches. (1) sit crosslegged on the floor for around 2 to 5 minutes; (2) bend over and touch toes -- bend over and hang until your fingers gradually move lower, don't bounce whatever you do; (3) squat and hold a squatting position at first for 30 seconds and then gradually working up to 2 to 3 minutes. Your heels should be flat on the ground -- and you'll probably need to work up to that (as I did -- took about two months); (5) do the Cobra stretch, lie on your front, go up on your elbows (half cobra), then put your hands on the floor and push up (full cobra). Of all these, (5) is the most important and most effective. It's probably a counter to us sitting a lot. I hope this helps you as much as it helped me. If anything hurts when you are doing any of this, stop immediately and get your advice from a doctor or physical therapist. This has nothing to do with spanking, and it's okay to delete it after you read it.
DeleteCalSpankee, thank you!
DeleteI've been working at doing more "back (and neck) stretching" as both have become much tighter the past few years. The "cobra" sounds like something that would help with one of my vertebrae in particular.
One question: You mentioned five (5) stretches as most helpful, but only listed four (4). What the the fourth?
One that has helped me a lot is the "pigeon" stretch. It's hard to describe, but look it up. It's a yoga pose. Hurts like a son of a bitch, but it really stretches the upper glute and lower back hard.
DeleteDonn, you're right! I forgot to list the fourth. The fourth is actually two stretches, the first being just lying on your back on a firm mattress, the second lying on your front on a firm mattress. When lying on the front, switch off between moving your head to the left and holding it for a minute or two, then moving your head to the right and holding it for a minute or two.
DeleteDan you said "It does seem like people aren't responding to each other's comments as much as they used to." What inhibits me sometimes is that I open up this blog and read posts and I'm not really sure what the topic is. I suppose because posters seem to change the subject a lot. I could figure it out I guess but have many distractions.
DeleteI don't know whether I can help much with that one. The body of the posts do, almost always, identify not only a specific topic but specific questions people might want to address related to the main topic. Moreover, when commenters address the topic but extend it or go off on tangents, that often leads to real conversations, and it very often helps me with ideas for future topics.
DeleteComment about participation, and a suggestion to "Tom."
DeleteSorry I've been kind of AWOL this past few months. I've been busy with both a personal health issue, and (YES!) I'm still working on re-coding the DWC website.
DWC website is making good (if slow) progress. I hope to have a full example running on a private IP-address (no public URL), for review and comments (Dan, Tommy/Jerry, blog members) in around 45-60 days.
For "Tom," I find that when I'm particularly busy, I usually read just the last 3-4 paragraphs of Dan's post, where he kind of condenses his previous discussion into a series of succinct questions and suggestions for that week's topic. Hope this helps.
Dan,
DeleteI’m right with you on the temper and attitude. It’s amazing how very few things seem to bother my wife. I get way more amped up over small things. I do admit that DD has helped reduce this tremendously. As I get older, I just don’t care about certain crap anymore. I’m sure you feel the same way. Life is too short.
T
Well, I'll comment on a couple of things. Pace - my wife doesn't vary the pace very much from one spanking to another. She proceeds steadily. perhaps one smack every two or three seconds. perhaps a little faster as she is about to change implements. As for wood versus leather, she uses both, but has never even come close to hitting too high, near the spine. That would be more likely to happen if she spanked too quickly. And the final implement is always her hand.
DeleteT, it's funny, but I had lunch today with a friend and we talked about how as we've gotten older, we care less and less about certain things that used to rile us up. We both agreed that it does have a potential downside, in that it can mean you've gotten kind of jaded and just have a "Who gives a shit?" attitude. But, we also both agreed that, on balance, it is better than getting stirred up all the time like we used to about things that often just didn't matter that much.
DeleteDonn, I hope the health issue is OK or at least getting better.
DeleteTom, yes, I think pace probably does have a lot to do with accuracy and injury-risk.
DeleteDan:
DeleteThanks for your concerns. We should talk later by private email.
I'll try to catch up with you that way sometime in the next 3-4 weeks.
Your comment on the 'snippiness ratio' is interesting Dan.
ReplyDeleteI would say ours has had an even more dramatic swing since DD , like you from a 9-1 to now a 3-7.
I rarely call her on it and just suck it up while she will call me on it almost every time although it doesn't usually result in a spanking unless I do it in front of others.
Btw pigeon is really great and it cured my sciatica once I included it as part of my regular work out.
Yeah, that is kind of an issue for us at times. I think that the DD and FLR aspects of our relationship has created a "permission structure" that has sometimes allowed her to get more snippy. And, I do sometimes call her on it, though there is a risk that she decides that my snippiness in response to her snippiness merits a spanking. But, since being sarcastic is pretty core to my personality, I'm still probably the greater offender overall.
DeleteYes it's a slippery slope but the scales eventually tip in her favour as her confidence grows and our defiance shrinks.
DeleteI notice on your report card Anne has eye rolls , another act of defiance , at the top of her list....I never could pull off a convincing eye roll!
A small suggestion
ReplyDeleteReading the discussion about greater interaction, dialogue, etc., this occurred to me: often ( not always, to be sure), threads continue far beyond the original post. These can become lively exchanges. However, they can also make responding directly to a given post more difficult. One solution could be for folks to post with a new comment rather than a “reply” when appropriate. A “reply” of course works completely well if there is an original post that one is replying to. But if one is actually saying something separate, posting it as a new comment might help increase participation via dialogue.
Alan
That makes sense. I'm also always fine with people carrying a previous week's discussion over to the next week's post, as sometimes people still have more to say but it gets harder to go back and forth between posts. You'd also be surprised at the number of times someone replies to a comment on a post that is several weeks, or even months old, which no one but me is ever likely to see. And, the only reason I see it is because I have Blogger set to require approval on any comment over 14-days old.
Delete" ...fine with people carrying a previous week's discussion over to the next week's post, as sometimes people still have more to say but it gets harder to go back and forth between posts."
DeleteI agree. Probably many late comments are not seen, perhaps even by the person they were addressed to.
Alan
For each week's post I set a bookmark, that begins with the last date I visited, followed by the time of that day I last visited, followed by the "comment count."
DeleteThis allows me to easily use my browser search function to locate all posts after that date and time; I don't have to wade through every post to find newer posts.
I also go back periodically to older posts (using this method) to determine if any new comments have appeared. My experience is that most week's posts do accumulate an additional 2-5 comments in the 1-4 weeks after Dan has moved on to new subjects.
Just my crude method of saving myself time in finding new (and new-old) posts. Your own methods may get better mileage (results) than mine.
Most of the comments on this blog are usually interesting to me, as long as they pertain to DD or spanking in some way. What I write about is not always the stated topic, and will often connect to what others have commented about. Sometimes it takes me a while to get into the topic, which was the case this time. At first reading, I didn't connect with it much, but as time went by, it seemed more relevant to my situation. We still do check ins twice a week, but they seldom include spankings anymore, as there really hasn't been much of a reason for it. Dan's example of the husband's report card seemed a little over the top for me in the past, but lately, I have shared his feeling of wanting to be held accountable more often, which the report card pretty much guarentees will happen. Like Dan, it sometimes has not been clear to me when a perceived offense is spankable or not. Writing it down on the report card requires more honesty from us husbands about what we really think and need, which is a good thing. It also reminds our wives of their responsibility to not let things slide. As far as what I am thinking about when being spanked, I am usually in a pretty altered state, and not doing much rational thinking at all. Inevitably, I will feel better about everything after the spanking.
DeleteThere are obviously going to be times when a topic just doesn't resonate for some people. Honestly, there are many times that someone suggests a topic that doesn't resonate for me at all.
DeleteI've tried to use that report card several times, and it never seems to really catch on for us. It may be because it's over the top, but it also may be that it's something that would have worked well at the very beginning of our DD relationship, when we needed more structure to get the whole thing off the ground, but maybe now it's not really a necessary tool.