“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:
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.
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.
I’ve been interested in spanking all my life. Dev has been the best. 37 yrs now. Some of her disciplinary spankings are legendary. The last hard paddling was a few days ago. JR
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a long-standing DD relationship.
Delete
ReplyDeleteMy interest in spanking started in my teens although my imaginings were equally likely to be as spanker or spankee. I think this was probably in isolation initially but by my twenties it was an element of sexual interest, although I never had any opportunity to explore it in life until my forties when I split up from my first wife. After that, I did manage to explore spanking a little, meeting people through some early websites. I met my - now - wife in my late forties through an early spanking website and shortly after that she discovered the DWC. There was an argument that resulted in us both agreeing that DD was the right way forward. So I was in my late forties when I discovered DD. However, if I had known about it earlier, it’s possible that I might have been ready for it before then. I’m now early seventies and my wife is fourteen years younger. TG
"My interest in spanking started in my teens although my imaginings were equally likely to be as spanker or spankee."
DeleteI wonder how many are that flexible in their interests? It seems like most here begin with an interest in F/m spanking and being spanked, and then the interest narrows at some point to F/m DD spankings. But, I could be wrong about that.
Personally, I discovered an interest in spanking pretty late (late 30s), and it was very soon after that I discovered DD via the DWC, and my focus instantly narrowed to F/m DD. But, there was never a point that I had an interest in being a spanking and, in fact, I was repelled by the thought of ever giving a woman a disciplinary spanking. I think that's changing a bit. I've always had an interest in coaching/mentoring, and sometimes I entertain fantasies of a post-retirement career as a success coach, using spanking as a motivator. But, that fantasy is pretty utilitarian; there isn't much of a turn-on associated with the idea of spanking others.
My interest in spanking began already in early childhood, and during adolescence it only intensified. By young adulthood, it had become an obsession, and I realized that it was my fetish. At the same time, there were no real opportunities to practice it. I had my first real experiences when I was around 25–26 years old, though not within a romantic relationship, but through a woman about 15 years older than me whom I met through the local BDSM community. At that point, my fetish was strictly connected to receiving spanking from a woman, but not to a DD relationship. That seemed unrealistic to me.
ReplyDeleteIn my late twenties, I got married, we had children, and I spent the next 12 years living in a normal vanilla relationship while fantasizing about something else and, on a few rare occasions, also practicing it outside the relationship.
At one point, our marriage reached a crisis where we had to decide whether to continue together or separately. During that crisis, we reached each other’s true vulnerability, and I confessed my fetish to my wife. She did not judge me the way I had feared my entire life — quite the opposite, she said, “Let’s try.”
After that, I also found this blog, and since then we have built our DD relationship together, which by now has lasted for more than three years, with spanking being a regular part of it. We are currently both in our mid-forties.
Thanks, P.P. for that background. It's great that you confessed your longstanding desire to your wife and she agreed to give it a try. Our relationship was also vanilla for the first 10+ years, but the difference was I didn't have any interest in spanking or DD during that time. I do wish I had known about, and had an interest in, DD earlier though. I think it would have strengthened our relationship earlier on and we might have avoided a lot of friction. Though, who knows how it would have turned out. It's not clear to me that either of us would have been mature enough for it much earlier than when it actually happened.
DeleteI'm glad the blog has played some role in helping you and your wife strengthen the relationship. I love hearing those kinds of stories.
PP, I find this very interesting, since it sounds as if DD had a lot to do with saving your marriage. I can’t exactly say the same since we met through a spanking website and morphed into DD very early on in our relationship, but we certainly felt that it was a significant contributor to what has always been, and still is, a fantastic marriage. Particularly in the early years, when my behavior was less good than now, it dealt with my feelings of guilt and her anger, cleared the air and ensured that there was never an awkward atmosphere hanging around for hours or days. I won’t say our marriage wouldn’t have survived without it, as I think it would, but it wouldn’t have worked as well as it has. We’ve also observed other marriages of couples we’ve known over the years and have sometimes commented between ourselves that so-and-so couple would really benefit by introducing it. TG
DeleteTG, thank you for sharing this. I can relate a lot to what you describe about clearing the air and preventing resentment or tension from lingering for days. In our case, DD definitely became much more than just a spanking dynamic — it created a structure for honesty, accountability, emotional release, and reconnection.
DeleteI also think that before DD, both of us carried emotions for too long without really resolving them. Especially for me, guilt, anxiety, and emotional distance tended to build up. DD somehow interrupts that cycle before it escalates too far.
Like you, I can’t say for certain whether our marriage would have survived without it, but I honestly believe our relationship today is much deeper and more emotionally open because of it.
My interest was prevalent in me as early 7 to 10 yrs of age maybe younger...but by then for sure. I am a bit older as I fall in the 70plus age group and had the realization that I was not alone when I wandered into an adult bookstore at age 15 and saw spanking on one of the paperbacks. I still have a couple of those books from 1967 and 1969.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how much access to spanking and other kinky material has changed during my adult lifetime. When I was in college and in the early years thereafter, the only close access to kinky reading material was in a small, closed-off section of a local book and news store.
DeleteOne of the benefits of being a Londoner in the seventies and eighties. The Soho area was full of sex and kink of all types and I remember at least one store that was all spanking-related. TG
DeleteTG that shop was called Janus on Old Compton Street.
DeleteThat’s the one !
DeleteThe realization that I needed direction and correction was in my late 40's. My vanilla marriage was in the beginnings of decay and I began to look elsewhere. I recalled my final childhood spankings and investigated the world of adult spankings. Early to mid-50's I found and frequented discipline houses in NYC and that began my foray into a new world. After the marriage finally failed I dove into the DD world and have been there ever since. My second marriage was to a NYC Domme and my current relationship took off where that left off. Now in my second 24/7 FLR with DD household, I could not imagine live without DD and a lifestyle led by a dominant female.
ReplyDelete"The realization that I needed direction and correction was in my late 40's." While my epiphany came a decade earlier, at the time it did feel like it was a need for direction and direction that was manifesting, more than a need for spanking per se. Although I had come upon some interest in F/m spanking, it was a pretty minor kink, but it happened to coincide with a time when I was feeling frustrated with myself, including a perceived loss of direction. Or, maybe it's more accurate to say that though I had some direction, I had a hard time maintaining travel in that direction and needed external guardrails to stay on course.
DeleteMy interest in spanking started when I was about 15, then M/F predominately. I became interested in F/M in my early 50's. I was spanked in my late 20's but that was in a relationship where I spanked her 99% of the time. In terms of DD and FLR my interest has grown a lot in the last decade. I get spanked at home by Mrs GL mildly, with disciplinarians I get a harder and more of a range of chastisments and I also occasionally (through frustration when not regularly spanked) do self-self-spanking. I am now fully believing in a direct relationship between Parentification suffered as a child and my need for boundaries and accountability in my 60's. I see a Psychosexual Therapist on and off and I'm trying self-self-parenting as a tool for healing and growth. All in all the older I become the more I crave what I needed 50-55 years ago. Cheers GLM.
ReplyDeleteI've tried self-spanking a few times, and it doesn't trigger any feelings for me at all. My DD interest definitely requires another person.
DeleteI think as a very young teenager I became interested in spanking when I found an article about a teenager boy being spanked by his babysitter, with allusions to more than just being spanked.
ReplyDeleteI thought I wanted to be the spanker, but was happy to be the spankee also. I have since my teenage years purchased magazines that had an article or two about spanking. I always imagined that I was the spankee.
We played with spanking when first married, but my wife was really not interested. We were maybe 23.
Only after the children were grown and left home did I become much more obsessed with spanking. We experimented more, and I purchased materials and literature from the Disciplinary wives club.
i am spanked regularly now, and disciplinary spankings have become much more frequent. My first disciplinary spanking was probably about ten years ago. Currently, my wife spanks for real , and very effectively, She has learned that it takes a lot of hard spanks to be effective, and she is happy to fulfill that need whenever she merits a disciplinary spanking is needed. Even normal spankings for little things are disciplinary.
We are in our late 70s, and our love is amazing, and our love making exceptioinal.
Spanking reduces my stress and anxiety, and gives my wife an effective outlet to change my behavior when needed.
Red
Based on some of the answers here, it seems to be pretty common for men to start out interested in being the spanker, or not having a clear preference, then at some point the focus switches or narrows. I never really went through that. I was always very one-way in my interest.
DeleteI don’t remember a time when spanking wasn’t a t’thing’ for me.. the interest has never really felt ‘odd’ to me, as it is a part of me. That said, I knew instinctively that I not everyone felt the same way and so I never discussed it.
ReplyDeleteI tried with a girlfriend when I was in my late twenties but she showed no interest, no positive or negative reaction
I was married 25 years before I ‘revealed’ to my wife and we tried a play spanking after which I explained that i needed ‘real’ discipline. We then worked towards a DD arrangement free m about age 50.
We are just coming out of our first hiatus of any length - we had built a strong habit of a disciplinary strapping about every 10 days but for various reason we’ve had a break for about 3 months. The next spanking has has been declared ‘due’ by her and I am curious how it will feel after such a long break.
I have taken the opportunity to be very explicit with her about what ‘works’ and the benefits for her as she is ‘vanilla’ and has often says that she does it for me rather than to me. TB
If it feels like mine do after any longer hiatus, it will hurt like hell!
DeleteI've had an interest in spanking from an early age and recall looking eagerly for those western movies and other spankings of naughty ladies on television.
ReplyDeleteUntil my 30's came along my interest was confined to M/F and when we were a married couple in our 20's it was always my wife on the receiving end of spankings.
I used to buy variations magazines which often featured some hot spanking material snd one article was on FM spanking which I had never seen much of before and I was strangely intrigued by it.
Clearly my wife was too and one day she called me out kn something I did that I had spanked her for.
She told me , "If I can get spanked so can you!"
Her timing was planned as I was in my underwear preparing to go out and she gave me one solid whacking with a leather bedroo slipper.
After that the tables turned and it was always me getting spanked and for good reason.
These days she is exclusively the spanker although I do take her over my lap occasionally ,but mostly for fun.
In reality I was the one who earned and needed spankings the most but it took a whole gor me to realize this.
I believe the change happened as FM spanking became more visible as it was virtually non existent before that.
I read an article once that said there were some FM spankings in old movies which were cut because the public would not have reacted well to it in those days.
I was a Variations fan for several years, but I don't specifically recall any F/m spanking stories. So, apparently they didn't trigger any real spanking interest for me. It's another part of the mystery of why I didn't have any interest until my late 30s and then only after watching a particular segment on an HBO series that depicted erotic spanking, including both men and women being spanked.
DeleteEvent today, it's hard for me to think of TV shows or movies depicting F/m spankings. While recovering I've been watching season 1 of Desperate Housewives. It does include a man asking his wife to be dominated, but the scenes are BDSM/Femdom, not spanking. There is, however, a scene where that wife spanks one of the neighbor kids. I don't recall reacting to it when I watched the show the first time. On this watch, however, I couldn't help but think of some of the stories shared here about an aunt or family friend triggering a life-long spanking interest by taking a young man over her knee.
I have been fascinated by spanking since getting caught in a destructive prank at age 10 by the woman next door who gave me a real bare bottom spanking with a hair brush. Any mention of spanking got my attention. A few years later I called a teacher a cow which got me paddled and my mouth washed ,. I am in my late 70s and in the 1950s corporal punishment in schools in the midwest was prevalent. I married young and into a family where spanking was an expected outcome if one violated rules. I have posted before about the cathartic experience of being spanked by my wife’s mom. I found spanking magazines at a local newsstand, Janus a British publication.i had a hard time understanding why i agreed to be punished by this authority figure. Now well over 50 years later Miss C still
ReplyDeleteCan adjust my perspective with het strap .
I was around 40 when my interest started. And that started, as I have shared a long time ago, when my wife grabbed me by my balls and said things are going to be different. So, yes it was a female authority interest. It was around that time that I received my first spanking. However it was about 5-6 years ago that the spankings got really real.
ReplyDeleteUnfortantely, that dynamic is not happening at this time but I long for her to take me over her lap and give me the spankings I deserve. I don't think just a spanking would do it foe me, it needs to be punishment not funishment.
How old was I when I became interested in spanking? Maybe 6 or 7. It was in a fundamentalist
ReplyDeleteChristian school, and a female teacher put me over her lap, which started my obsession with spanking. I had lots of lovers, and spanked many women, hoping they would turn the tables on me, but that never happened. I was completely unaware of F/M spanking or DD, and thought I was the only one. Discovering the DWC changed all that, and I knew that was what I wanted.
First adult disciplinary spanking? Probably my early 70s, with my first, and only, disciplinary relationship started when I was 70. My spouse and I are both almost 80, still going strong. DD is a very important part of our relationship, and helps us keep sexual intimacy alive.
Dan, at the bottom of this week's post, there is an option to click on "Newer Post". However, when you click on it, the same post comes up.
ReplyDeleteDan,
ReplyDeleteHope you are feeling better and sorry to hear about your accident. We just returned from a five week vacation overseas. I haven’t had time to read the blog. I have a good friend who moved south and had too many close calls. He sold his motorcycle immediately. As you are aware, I’ve had a lifelong obsession with spanking. I was spanked as a kid. I received my first adult spanking at 16, from a girlfriend who grew up in the church. I then received multiple spankings in my twenties. At 25, I visited my first disciplinarian who was extraordinary. She knew how to put push your buttons. I married my ex who had zero desire to spank. We split and the. I married my current wife. I approached her about DD. She was paddled by her Mother growing up and still resents it. She is aware of my past and had no problem blistering my bottom. As a matter of fact, we brought a leather belt with us. She used it four times while we were away for my misbehavior. I’m in my late forties with my wife older than I am. I stopped taking risks years ago, it’s not worth the pain as you get older.
T
A leather belt is the obvious choice for packing a spanking instrument for a long trip. I have something called a "gun belt" that is super thick and rigid.
DeleteYeah, at some point during this rehabilitation, I'm going to have to do some structured thinking about my approach to risk. But, I'm finding that being confined to mostly to bed for weeks doesn't aid deep thinking in the way you might think. Instead, I'm just bored AF all day and actually craving risk just because it's the opposite of how I'm living now. The reality is, it's hard to know what will lay you up. Yeah, I was riding a motorcycle when this happened, but there was nothing inherently risky about how and where I was riding at the time it happened. And, I've known very fit people who did things like popping an achilles tendon walking up the stairs and being laid up for months. I can't even say that it's about "balance", because sometimes bad shit just happens.