Attitude When DD Isn't Happening, and Keeping a List (Club Meeting - 560)

If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm. - Vince Lombardi

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

 

I hope you all had a good week.  Mine was okay.  I’m still in the “little victories” stage of convalescence.  I can finally drive again, which is a big deal, even if I’m doing only short, local trips.  It’s meant I can take myself to Chipotle, which was a near-weekly thing before this accident, though I probably should moderate those trips, given that in my present condition I can't even pretend to be able to burn off those calorie bombs.  I’ve also been able to resume my morning trips to the dog park, though I mostly hang out by the fence to avoid getting taken down while my dogs run around renewing their doggie friendships. 

 

In any event, it feels like life is slowly, slowly getting back to normal.

 

Unfortunately—or, perhaps very fortunately, from my butt’s perspective—that hasn’t included a return to Domestic Discipline.  While my leg is healed enough to handle the positioning and tensing of muscles, it hasn’t been clear that my tailbone is there yet.  Ten weeks, and it’s still pretty sore.

 

And, it’s not like DD hasn’t been on my mind.  In fact, I’m in one of those phases in which I’m thinking about it all the time.  I don’t exactly “want” it, especially knowing that, given how long the break has been, the first new one undoubtedly will hurt unbelievably badly.

 

It’s more like a “need” than a “want”, in two related senses.  

 

First, I feel an emotional need to be in our dynamic again. 

 

Second, I “need” it in the sense that I increasingly have issues and attitudes that “need” fixing.

 

It’s a hard thing to admit, but in the absence of having someone impose boundaries, I start feeling like, for lack of a better word, a dick.

 

It’s not that I necessarily let dickish thoughts or attitudes rip but, internally, I feel annoyed more often, more prone to saying snotty things, or at least thinking snotty thoughts, and I generally feel more negative and judgmental. 

 

Looking back, it’s how I felt when I first discovered the Disciplinary Wives Club and DD and, to a large extent I brought the idea of the DWC to Anne because I knew there were too many times when my attitude made me hard to live with. It was only later that I realized that, left to my own devices, my attitude was often just plain bad, but that someone taking me to task for specific bad behavior also adjusted my attitude for the better.  I just plain felt better with boundaries.

 

Being spanked for attitude wasn't a part of my teen or early adult experience.  Now that I've had this epiphany about the role that our DD relationship plays in keeping my attitude in a good place, I really wonder how life might have been had my parents, or a significant other, put me over their knee not for some specific act or omission but just for being a jerk or copping an attitude. I'm sure I would have hated it, but when I think back to what a stress case I was, and how hard-wired I was to be cynical and caustic, I might have felt a sense of relief.

 

 

Like I said, I don’t feel like I’ve been letting my attitude take the reins that often, but I feel this internal tension that I don't feel when Anne is being more consistently strict with me.

 

 It’s even impacting my dreams, which several times lately have featured Anne and I fighting, even though we haven’t had a real fight in quite a while.

 

So, I need a spanking and, moreover, I need the resumption of our DD dynamic, with an increasingly strict wife setting expectations and enforcing boundaries. 

 

It’s an interesting thing, feeling this need not just to be held accountable for specific behavior, but a deep desire to be “taken in hand” and kept under tighter control. 

 

That’s not always been the case.  It's really about not always noticing what you have.  When we're living the DD dynamic on a semi-regular basis, I tend to perceive my spanking needs in functional terms: I do something that we've agreed is spankable, or I do something careless or stupid, and I know I need a spanking to reinforce that there are consequences for bad or thoughtless behavior.

 

But, that’s kind of different from feeling the need for the dynamic itself. What I’m perceiving now is how much, before this accident, I was beginning to feel Anne’s authority as a force underlying our whole relationship. Now, I notice it by virtue of its absence. 

 

Also, it hasn't been that common for Anne to use DD to address general "attitude", as opposed to specific behavior, but it's clear to me based on how things have been going lately that it should be a key area of focus going forward.

 

 

But, while spanking hasn't been realistically for almost three months, I know it’s coming, and maybe not that far off.  A couple of nights ago, Anne and I were in bed, and I told her how much I was missing our dynamic and wanted to get it back on track. She clearly has some qualms about even trying with the shape my body has been in. But, she made a point of telling me that she’s been keeping a list, and intends to address the things on it as soon as that’s a realistic possibility.

 

I had a powerful reaction to that, in part because, thanks to this extended hiatus, I don’t know how many items are on the list or exactly what they are.  I did have one incident of drinking too much, hanging out with a friend after I was finally in good enough physical shape to sit in a restaurant/bar for a few hours.  It was one of those days when lunch turned into a long afternoon, though I didn’t really misbehave or anything at home.  She even said she understood that I needed to let off some steam after the forced seclusion. And, given my lack of mobility, it's not I've had a lot of opportunities to do much of anything, let alone anything bad.

 

So, I have to assume that most of the things on her list are the attitude issues I’ve felt a lot but caught myself expressing only a few times. But, I really don’t know. And, therein lies the source of my powerful reaction to it.

 

Although we’ve tried several times, we’ve never done a lot with lists or reports. And, when we have, it’s tended to involve me coming up with a form and giving it to her. Or, me journaling about something.  There has never been a time I can think of that she was keeping her own written list of issues she intends to deal with.

 

So, it seems like a big step in our DD relationship that she’s documenting things. It also seems like a big deal that she’s apparently been doing it for several weeks.  And, it seems like a very big deal that I don’t know exactly what is on the list or how long it is.

 

Both her proactive commitment to not letting things wholly slide during this period, her stated intent to address these things once that’s practicable, and not knowing how many sessions that might add up to, is both titillating and terrifying. 

 

Kind of like when I first discovered the DWC and decided to bring it to her.

 

Now, some might be thinking, “Don’t you pretty much know what is on the list?” Honestly, no. This entire period of enforced downtime has been so removed from our usual dynamic that it feels almost like a kind of amnesia has set in.  It also seems like, because discipline wasn’t a possibility anytime soon and I knew it, my mind stopped focusing on behavior and attitude problems in the way I would have when I knew such things might result in a real spanking in the near future.

 

I’m also not sure what she might have in mind regarding the logistics for moving things off the list.  I did a topic here a few weeks ago about whether there are time limits on offenses, and I said that I felt there had to be if I were to feel like I was being held accountable for something real.  

 

Yet, I also have been thinking more often about some of the points Al and others have made regarding the importance of regular, frequent spankings, i.e. maintenance, to keep up the dynamic.   

 

Particularly given how long this hiatus has been, maybe there is an advantage to her taking multiple sessions to check items off the list, not really for accountability purposes but as a combination of (a) payback for any instances of attitude I’ve given her; and (b) simply re-establishing her control and getting our dynamic back on track.  It also seems like her keeping her own list could be another huge step forward in terms of her internalizing our whole dynamic and making it her own.

 

 

This post is more of a general update and some introspection regarding where things stand with us, rather than a concrete topic. So, address anything that seems meaningful to you.  However, I would be interested in hearing whether any of the rest of you have experienced anything like a wife keeping a list but you not knowing what was on it.  Have there been times you knew she intended to address things with a very hard spanking, but you legitimately weren’t sure what those things were? 

 

Also, have you experienced a long hiatus of the kind I’ve described and noticed your attitude deteriorating or your mind going back to old, bad thought patterns?

 

By the way, one unfortunate byproduct of posting later in the week than usual is the topic may not run its course before I’ve moved onto the next one.  I would be interested in hearing from more commenters about the spanking story scenarios and specific stories they recommend. So, please respond to last week’s topic if you have something to say, and feel free to move those comments forward to this week’s topic so everyone will see them.

 

I hope you have a good week.