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.