No Post This Week

Hi all.  I've been wondering whether having all this spare time on my hands while recuperating would lead to big flashes of inspiration for writing and create lots of mental space to read new books, try new streaming series, etc.

Turns out, the answer is a resounding no.  I have zero inspiration for blogging, I've "did not finished" several books, and instead of watching anything new, I've worked my way through entire series that I've seen multiple times before.

Given the lack of anything resembling inspiration, I probably won't be posting this week.  Feel free to suggest possible future topics.

Have a great three-day weekend, for those of you who live in the U.S. and have the time off.

Age and F/m Disciplinary Spankings (Club Meeting - 554)

“Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.” - Tom Stoppard

 

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Wives Club - Tribute.  Our weekly on-line gathering of women and men who are int, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline relationship of the type advocated in the now defunct Disciplinary Wives Club (archived copy in the Links I Like list below right).

 

I hope you all had a good week. Mine was . . . the same as the week before . . . painful and mostly immobile.  I’m trying to keep an “it is what it is” attitude, but it’s not always easy.  The big challenge is the mobility.  When I’ve had major ortho surgeries in the past, I was always able to find ways to drive within days of the surgery.  This time, it’s likely to be a full six weeks before that’s even theoretically possible.  The only time I’ve been confined to one space for a significant amount of time was when I got quarantined in a foreign country during Covid.  This has a similar feel, but at 5x the duration. Sigh. 

 

Given both the nature of the injury and my current immobility, my ability to get myself in trouble is pretty limited.  Yet, I may be racking up a list to be dealt with later.  There was a problem with an errand Anne ran for me yesterday, and it arguably was a result of some minor carelessness on my part. Her response, though a bit tongue in check, shows our dynamic remains top of her mind, which is generally good.

 

 

Given that DD isn’t a practical possibility for us right now, my motivation for writing about DD topics is pretty low.  But, I did come across something recently that might generate a few thoughtful comments.

 

Many of us accept, based on our own experiences and our anecdotal knowledge of others in the lifestyle, that there is something about real Domestic Discipline that causes its participants to tilt toward the middle to far end of the age spectrum. 

 

Way back in 2014, early in this blog’s history and back when Blogger had a “polling” tool, I did a survey on the age of the blog’s participants, with these results:

 

21 – 30                 7%

30 -40                   4%

40 – 5                   16%

50+                       71%

 

So, at that time, almost 3/4 of our little community were 50 or older, though I personally was not at that time.  Those results were consistent with information from The Disciplinary Wives Club.  In response to a question regarding the age of those taking a DWC survey in 2007 and 2008, the results were:

 

Unfortunately, they didn’t ask (unless I overlooked it), how old the survey takers were when they had their first DWC relationship. They did, however, ask the men what age they were when they first realized they had need/desire for discipline:

 

Although it does confirm what many here would verify about themselves—that their DD interest started early in life while an actual DD relationship may have come later—I’m not wild about this survey question, because it’s worded in terms of when the participant first realized they had a need or desire for “discipline”, which may or may not have been equated in the survey taker’s mind with a need/desire for “spanking”.  Many here have expressed that they experienced a desire for, or fascination with, spanking at a very early age (puberty or earlier), but that equating that with a desire for discipline came later.

 

And, interestingly, the survey didn’t ask at all about when the women participants first realized they had an interest in spanking or discipline!

 

Yet, for all the limitations in these surveys, it has seemed reasonable to conclude that for many (me not included), a generalized spanking interest may arise early but real DD relationships tend to happen much later in life. 

 

In fact, it's ironic and unfortunate that we seem to not be capable of finding the kind of relationship we need during those younger periods when we probably most need it, while we seek it out after we've likely settled down a bit.

 

So, it was with some surprise that I came upon this much more recent survey in a different venue.  Reddit has a couple of groups focusing on Domestic Discipline. The most popular says it gets about 3.5k visits per week, which is about half of the traffic this blog got in the last week.  While Reddit doesn’t provide any sort of gender breakdown, based on the posts and comments, it seems to be overwhelmingly comprised of those in F/m dynamics, and most of the posters and commenters seem to be women, though a few male “tops” post and comment.

 

A few weeks ago, one of the participants polled the group for the participants’ ages, with these results: 

 

So, in this poll, the youngsters dominate, with the 25 to 30 age group seemingly making up the largest cohort, and with the 25 to 45 cohort comprising almost 55% of the total.  In contrast, the 45 to 65 cohorts make up only about 12% of the total. [Note: The graph has some anomalies. The age groups aren’t uniform, with some covering 10 years, one covering 5, and one covering 15.  And, the numbers reported don’t seem to correspond to the size of their respective bars. And, I don’t know what it means that the results are for “core contributors”.]

 

Now, I think one pretty simple explanation for why this Reddit survey shows greater DD participation/interest among younger Redditors than we experience on this blog and that the DWC seemingly attracted is that Redditors as a whole are relatively young.  Google reports that 18 to 29 year-olds make up perhaps 45% of the audience, while those over 50 account for only 10 to 15%. 

 

It would give me some hope that the lifestyle is proliferating among the younger age groups and not dying out as the original DWC participants move into their 60s but, as I said, the group dynamic seems to be overwhelming M/f. 

 

In any case, the Reddit results notwithstanding, do you think it is true that Domestic Discipline usually doesn’t kick off for most couples until they are in their forties or later?   

 

Why is the demographic of those interested in the topics addressed by this blog--primarily F/m domestic discipline--so heavily tilted toward those 50 and older?   

 

More disposable time that they use to surf the internet?   

 

More secure in themselves and more open to alternative lifestyles?   

 

Or, maybe you have to reach a certain age to fully feel the stress and strains that lead some hard-charging career men to seek out DD as an outlet? 

 

Or, is it more about the age of the spanker than the spankee?  

 

Could it be not so much that men reach a certain age and find they want DD but, rather, that our partners generally must reach a certain age before we feel comfortable telling them about our proclivities?  

 

 

Maybe they have to reach a certain age before either (a) they are comfortable with doing it; or (b) we are comfortable with asking them?

 

If it’s been true that those in DD lifestyles trended older, do you think it’s changing? 

 

I will note that the two women I’ve gotten to know through blogging about this stuff (one a “top” and one a “bottom”) seem to have been in their early 30s when they got started.  

 

 If people’s interest and/or discipline starts early but DD relationships don’t start until much later, why do you think that is?  Is it a matter of not having the courage or sense of security to ask for it until we hit middle-age? It certainly seems that even among those men who realize their spanking interest in high school or college (or earlier) very few manage to get themselves into real disciplinary relationships until much later. 

Or, is it more about self-awareness, i.e. most don’t realize until later in life that their spanking interest is more about a desire for real discipline and/or for female authority?  

 

Let’s also update those DWC survey results a bit with some personal anecdotal information, including:

 

·      How old were you when you first became interested in spanking in general?

·      How old were you when you first realized your spanking interest was about wanting real disciplinary spankings or was about wanting spanking as a part of being subject to female authority?

·      How old were you when you received your first adult spanking?

·      How old were you when you received your first adult disciplinary spanking?

·      How old were you when your first real disciplinary relationship began or when your vanilla relationship first turned disciplinary?

·      How old are you now? How old is your spouse?

 

For our female participants, just take the above and change up the answers to reflect your own spanking/disciplinary spanking interest and experience.

 

Have a great week.

 

Domestic Discipline and Risk-Taking (Club Meeting - 553)

“Death frames the high wire. But I don't see myself as taking risks. I do all of the preparations that a non-death seeker would do.” - Philippe Petit

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Wives Club - Tribute.  Our weekly on-line gathering of women and men who are in, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline relationship.

 

I hope you all had a good week.  Mine?  Pretty much sucked.  My mobility is pretty low right now, while my pain level is pretty high.  Not a great combination.  I probably need another week before things make a substantial turn for the better.

 

In the meantime, I hadn’t planned on doing a post this week, but I had plenty of time on my hands . . . so, here’s a short one.

 

After I announced I’d be on hiatus for a week or more, Norton posted this comment:

 

Dan, sorry you had what seems to be a pretty serious accident. While you did say it was just a fluke, and not because of carelessness, it does remind me of earlier conversations we had about how much risk we were willing to take on, and when it was prudent to slow down. That is something that each individual must decide for themselves, but it also could involve a disciplinary wife, or partner, who might have her own ideas. Mine expressed her wishes clearly, and while she left it up to me, I listened to her concerns, and eventually, acted on them. Part of being male is that we tend to take more risk than females generally do, and probably have many more accidents because of that. We drink more, get in more fights, and often act impulsively than women do, which is why there so many more males in prison than females. A possible future topic could be "how much does DD influence the amount of risk you take on?" Another slightly different way of putting that could be "how much do you allow her to limit what she considers dangerous behavior?"

 

So, let’s go with that as a topic.  I don’t have a lot to offer on either formulation of Norton’s question, but here are a few thoughts.

 

Regarding how much DD influences the amount of risk I take on, the answer is not much.  And, to the extent it does, it’s pretty indirect and overlaps with carelessness.

 

As I’ve discussed a few times here, Anne has, over the last couple of years, started taking carelessness more seriously.  However, that’s really been at my request. There have been times, including a few other times involving motorcycles, when I’ve gotten very mad at myself over some act of carelessness.  In most cases, there weren’t serious consequences, but I recognized that was mostly luck.  In those circumstances, I felt discipline would be appropriate, and I’ve asked her to take carelessness more seriously.

 

The distinction between carelessness and risk taking seems to me to be not that distinct.  Maybe carelessness is largely unconscious, and the offense lies in not paying sufficient attention, while risk-taking is a more conscious decision to do something that has a higher-than-normal risk of injury or loss? 

 

My thought process in asking for discipline even for mere carelessness has been that the mere possibility of serious consequences might, in fact, make me pay more attention, thereby preventing some previously unconscious carelessness from leading to real loss.

 

 

Those past incidents involving motorcycles fall mainly in the mostly unconscious part of the spectrum, though one involved some peer pressure and was more about allowing myself to go along with a risky decision.

 

This time, however, there wasn’t any kind of conscious risk-taking, and it’s hard to put my finger on anything that rises to the level of even simple carelessness.  It was just bad luck. It wasn’t even a very dramatic event, even if the consequences were.

 

One could say, however, that there are certain activities that are inherently risky, such that engaging in them at all is at least careless?  This seems to relate more to the second formulation of Norton’s question, i.e., "How much do you allow her to limit what she considers dangerous behavior?"

 

Does motorcycling fall into the category of inherently risky?  I’m not sure there’s an objective answer to that, and my own answer would have to be something like, “Compared to what?”  Riskier than driving down the road in a car? Probably.  Yet, a few years ago, a couple of weeks after I struggled on a particular mountain pass but made it home safely, some people in a Jeep went over the edge on that same pass, with several resulting fatalities. 

 

What about other “risky” activities?  Is motorcycling riskier than skiing? I would probably put the two on about the same level, in that if done with skill, in good protective gear, you’re probably going to be injury-free most of the time, but sometimes you just get unlucky.  A couple of my doctors noted that my injury is almost identical to the one Lindsey Vonn suffered earlier this year.

 

 

All my family skis, and maybe that’s why none of them have pushed that motorcycling is just too risky. 

 

As for Anne, I think she gets that motorcycling is something I’ve been doing since I was 11 years-old. It comes pretty close to being a core part of what makes me me. I don’t think either of us would ever view DD or FLR as giving one of us that sort of control over another’s life choices.

And, it’s also a fact that since retiring, motorcycles have been the main reason I have not experienced the fall-off in friendships that so many men report at this stage of life.  To the contrary, my friends network has expanded since retiring, and most of it is people I have met through adventure motorcycling.

Now, that’s not to say that, at some point down the road, I’ll have my last ride.  And, hopefully when it happens, it will have been by choice.

 

 

How about you?  How much, if at all, does DD influence the amount of risk you take on? How much, if at all, does your wife impose limits on what she considers risky or dangerous behavior?"

 

I hope you have a great week.