Identity and How it Impacts Accepting a Role as Disciplinary Wife or Spanked Husband (Club Meeting - 543)

“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 on-line gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline relationship.

 

I hope you had a great week. Mine continued my streak of boring, uneventful rehabilitation, though I’m able to be a bit more active in the gym now.  Although it has, in fact, been a boring several weeks, this also has to be the furthest I’ve ever made it into a January with most of my resolutions intact and without any big, spank-worthy behavioral failure.

 

That is, of course, a mixed bag.  It does get harder to sustain the dynamic the longer we go without a real spanking.  And, of course, when it inevitably does happen, it will hurt like hell.

 

Anyway . . . thanks to those of you who chimed in on last week’s topic.  There seems to be a lot of variability in the forms of satisfaction our wives get out of our DD relationships, the timeline for feeling that satisfaction, and the extent to which they admit to taking satisfaction in giving spankings, ordering spankings, or having that power and authority.  Among the several great comments, I really liked this one from E.:

 

My wife has only been doing this for a year. She was reluctant at first but agreed because it helped me quit drinking. It started out weekly, basically like maintenance. She admittedly did not like administering it. After 30 plus consecutive weeks she did see a marked improvement in our marriage, plus I maintained my sobriety. I introduced the idea of corrective spankings for my attitude in addition to maintenance for drinking, as well as preemptive spankings when she was intuitively expecting misbehavior on my part. She was reluctant initially but agreed to try it. This was partly because she liked the change in my behavior that she had already seen. Since November, she has spanked me on average one additional time each week, but she doesn't verbally admit to enjoying doing it. She also has started casually joking about spanking me. This happens several times each week now, as she has become more comfortable or habituated to it. I know she connects the spankings to the peace in our household, but I believe she also feels validated when I submit to her authority. She is a quiet type but has a history of being bossy in one-on-one situations. I think she secretly likes the feeling of authority over me. I think she likes me in the prone position and naked. That is why I think she will continue to develop into a disciplinary wife. I am always careful to uphold her judgement no matter what. I don't argue or rationalize. I simply submit so that this continues to progress and our marriage continues to improve. Although she doesn't like administering the spanking, she loves providing aftercare, and she likes the complete process and results. That is where she is on the spectrum, but she is still evolving so I don't know where it will lead.

 

I thought it laid out a nice progression from reluctance, to getting more comfortable with it as the benefits become apparent, to openly joking about it and otherwise becoming more comfortable and habituated to the point that she probably likes the feeling of authority if only “secretly”.

During the week, I got this topic suggestion from Mike:

 

“One of my wife’s difficulties in becoming a DWC wife seems to be around identity. For her, the idea of a “dominant wife” clashes with her self-image. In her mind, a woman who punishes her husband simply does not align with how she sees herself as a person. This raises an interesting question: To what extent does personal identity play a role for a DWC wife, and how can a woman find or develop an identity that feels authentic rather than forced or role-played?

 

This seems to be a particularly difficult topic due to the lack of direct female input within the community, yet it may be central to why many wives struggle at the beginning.”

 

 I replied:

 

“That is a good topic idea.  You're right that it's a bit challenging because of the lack of female participation, but I do think many of the men have some perspective on how their wives would likely relate to it.  I do suspect that the identity issue as you describe it is an inhibitor. And, there is the flipside, of course, i.e. men who may be interested in this kind of lifestyle but struggle with not wanting to be seen as "submissive".

 

Mike responded:

 

“You raised an interesting point that I hadn’t really considered before. But yes, for a long time it was also difficult for me to admit that, at least in certain aspects of my life — my home life — I am submissive. Even now, it still lingers in my mind to what extent my wife might see me as less of a “real man” because of our DD dynamic.

 

It would be interesting to hear to what extent others struggle with this as well, and what the process was like for them to reconcile their identity and self-image with the need for this kind of discipline.

 

I thought his topic suggestion was very interesting, so let’s do it. I’m not sure whether this is a brand new one, but I can’t remember any other time that we’ve addressed directly the issue of a wife’s perceived personal identity and how it might be an impediment to embracing the Disciplinary Wife role.  

 

Because this does seem to be a new topic for us, I haven’t been able to find any relevant comments from the wives on prior posts.  I also did ask Anne if she’d weigh in on this one, along with last week’s topic regarding enjoying giving spankings and having the authority of a Disciplinary Wife.  She indicated she would get me something, but she seems to have gotten distracted with another project.

 

I also searched my extensive collection of memes and spanking art, and I couldn’t find much that felt relevant to this issue of the spanker's, or prospective spanker’s, sense of identity presenting an impediment to adopting or embracing a Domestic Discipline role.

 

And, as Mike pointed out, this topic seems almost uniquely difficult to address without major input from the wives.  So, hopefully some of those who lurk will weigh in, and I’d encourage all our male contributors to ask their wives for input.

 

Without input from Anne or the other wives, I’m kind of winging it, but here goes . . .

 

I definitely understand and sympathize with wives who have a view of their identity that seems to conflict with being a disciplinarian.  In fact, I kind of feel that way personally.  I get lucky that Anne has no interest in being on the receiving end of a disciplinary spanking, because I’m not sure I could ever give one.  It’s probably a reflection of being a witness to domestic violence growing up, but I have a very strong, very deep, visceral negative reaction to the thought of “hurting” a woman, even if it were totally consensual.  And, I have an even more negative reaction to the thought of exercising power and authority over a woman.

 

Now, I caveated the statement about not being able to give a disciplinary spanking with “I’m not sure . . .” because in the last year or two, I’ve started feeling a little less adamant in my view that I could never, ever give a woman a spanking. I’m not sure why, but I think for some reason I’m my gut feeling against it isn’t quite as strong, and I’m more understanding of the fact that many women want to be the “bottom” in these kind of relationships for many of the same reasons I do.  I’ve always known that intellectually, but I accept it a little more in my gut now than I used to.

 

So, all that is to explain that I do understand that some women not only will not be willing to take on the role of disciplinary spanker but might feel it would conflict with the way they see themselves in some very fundamental way.

 

I think for most, however, it’s a lot more subtle than that, and many of our personality attributes are less hard-wired, and our attitudes toward engaging in certain practices less strong.  And, isn't it true that some of us sometimes have various seemingly contradictory identities that each demand some expression?

 

Further, I don’t think we should always just accept our “natural” personalities and leave it at that.  I suspect that it took Anne a while to start really identifying with her disciplinary role, but I think she would readily admit that at the time I proposed that we try the kind of lifestyle depicted in The Disciplinary Wives Club, she lacked confidence and tended to passive-aggression whenever disputes inevitably arose. I’m very sure that she likes the more confident personality that came into play over time, even if it probably didn’t feel natural in the beginning.  Personalities, preferences, and interests can and do change over time, sometimes for the better.

 

 

That obviously applies to those of us who are on the receiving end of our wife’s discipline.  In fact, the whole reason I found the DWC so appealing was that it was such a huge departure from our then-current relationship dynamic, and it seemed like such a fundamental challenge to my identity; an identity that I wasn’t always happy with.  I knew that I needed boundaries placed around my personality’s excesses and needed some humbling.

 

I also think that one answer to Mike’s observation that wives may struggle with a conflict between their perceived identity and the role of disciplinary spanker is to not make that gap larger than it needs to be.  One reason I think the DWC appealed to many women was that it didn’t seem like a huge stretch from ordinary married life. It didn’t involve any of the “whips and chains” Femdom dynamic or the play-acting and scenes often associated with BDSM.  It could involve an expansive power shift but didn’t have to. No special dress or uniform required.  Just be yourself, but with a bit more power to get your way.

 

To me, one practical lesson from the DWC is that it is most likely to work when the husband is asking the wife to “stretch” her comfort zone a bit but not to suddenly become something totally different. The more we layer up the initial arrangement with fantasies that aren’t aligned with who our wives typically are, the more she’s likely to reject the whole thing. 

 

Now, that said, as I prepared for this post by going through some of the DWC materials, I was a little surprised at how little they addressed the issue of how a wife might make the leap if her identity wasn’t naturally that of a “take charge” disciplinarian.  In some of the materials, there did seem to be this implicit assumption that the lifestyle was so self-evidently empowering that women would just naturally jump into the role if they gave it a try.  It’s certainly true that none of the stories depict a wife who really struggles to reconcile who she thinks she is with what a DWC-style relationship might entail.

 

I wonder whether part of that presumption that women would find this kind of relationship natural was related to the way the DWC promoted the “maternal” aspect of Domestic Discipline.  Even if a wife didn’t naturally think of her identity as including taking charge of her husband, she might already be in charge of kids and much of the household dynamic.  Maybe it just didn’t seem like much of a stretch to expand the maternal identity to encompass providing much-needed discipline to a misbehaving husband?   

 

One of our commenters who I miss a lot, KOJ, described his wife’s attitude toward her role like this:

 

But the day-to-day operations of our home were totally her domain, and I just took my marching orders (or else). Eventually, that authority spread to my behavior in all situations. She believed that most men are little boys in big bodies and need to be reined in by loving female authority. ‘Loving’ included punishment, which could be severe.

 

When I asked Anne to consider a DWC-style relationship, I was asking her to expand her comfort zone, but I don’t think I was suggesting a sudden “major” change that would make her feel like she was violating some aspect of her identity.  Also, I think it helped that initially there was a set of agreed-upon rules, and I was to report weekly on whether I’d broken them, with the minimum spanking severity being a purely mathematical function.  Unless she wanted to add more than was required, stretching her comfort zone didn’t have to involve much more than swinging a paddle a prescribed number of times. The first time the tally added up to a shockingly high (in my view) number of swats, there was an aspect of, "This is what we both agreed to," that probably made it feel much more casual to her than it did to me in that moment.

 

And, today, after more than 20 years of this, she's increasingly comfortable in not just embodying the role but, to some extent, displaying it.

 

 

So, to the extent you know or have a reasonable belief, how has “identity” impacted your wife’s willingness or ability to embrace her DD role?  Was it ever an impediment to adopting that role?  If so, were the two of you able to find ways to help make your disciplinary practices compatible with her identity? Or, did her personality/identity grow or change over time to meet the role?

 

And, what about the point I raised with Mike regarding how “identity” impacts the husbands?  This is probably much less of an issue for those who see themselves as “submissive”, but Mike noted that he struggled with whether his wife would see him as less manly; manliness is certainly one aspect of personality that some of us identify strongly with or hope that others identify us with.  And, what about those of us who struggle to reconcile their DD desires with the fact that they do not see themselves a submissive?  Are there other ways in which your identity and your status as a DD husband might feel incompatible?  How did you/do you deal with that?

 

I don’t know why, but I don’t think I ever really struggled with a perceived incompatibility between my identity and my DD desires.  It may be that the DWC materials again were helpful, in that the men in the stories weren’t portrayed as “wimpy” or stereotypically submissive.  I also think it helped that I recognized that my personality was probably too manly at times. I didn’t see changing certain aspects of my identity as a bad thing; in fact, that was kind of the goal.

 

But, I can think of one specific area where DD probably did cause some tension.  A few years ago, there were a couple of incidents in which Anne scolded me very strongly, and gave a couple of very hard spankings, when she objected to how I had talked at a social event or engaged with others.  She saw it as overbearing, and she took offense—or thought others might take offense—at some specific comments I made. I just didn’t see it that way, but the problem wasn’t so much that we disagreed but that it felt like she was trying to manage my communications, and verbal communications had always been at the heart of my career and, in fact, my whole identity. Those were one of the few times that I felt real resentment after a spanking, and it didn’t go away quickly.

 

But, it did go away, or at least it seemed to become less of an issue over time.  Although it was hard at the time, I recognized that it was part and parcel of giving up control in a real way. I’d always said I wanted Anne to exercise more control and that she had the power to discipline me whenever she thought it was needed.  The identity-based issue of how I communicated with others was such an area, and for this to be real, I had to accept it even if I didn’t like it.

 

How about you?  Has your identity made it harder, or easier, to accept your role as a disciplined husband?  If it has been an issue, how did you deal with it?