Disciplinary Spankings as Incurring a Cost - The Necessity of Severity (Club Meeting - 566)

"He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else." ― Benjamin Franklin

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).

 

Hello all.  I hope you had a great week.  In many ways, my last week or so has been a big improvement over the 18+ weeks that came before.  It had been a tough month.  After progressing depressingly slowly but somewhat steadily in literally getting back on my feet, I had a major setback that lasted almost a full month.  It’s only been the last week or so that I’ve gotten back to where I was over a month ago.  But, once I got there, I pushed out of my comfort zone a bit.  I took some walks in the forest that weren’t super easy even when I was in good shape. And, on the five-month anniversary of my accident, I got back on a motorcycle for the first time. I was super tentative, but that probably was good, all things considered . . .

 

Anyway, it was nice feeling like there was progress made, even if I paid a bit for the over-exertion.  I was starting to feel pretty damn isolated and bound by a seemingly never changing routine.  Usually, it's great to have unstructured time on your hands, but I can testify that there is such a thing as too much time with too little you can do.

 

Which almost led me to skip posting, for the third week in a row, as Anne and I are about to head out on a little road trip.  But, I hate it when more than a couple of weeks go by without a substantive post.  So, I decided to see if there was more to be made of a suggestion TG put out there last week:

 

Dan, I know you’re always interested in possible contents for posts and discussions. This may be a little too vague and esoteric but I’ll put it out there any and you can use it or not, as you wish. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently, trying to understand better the motivations and emotions behind this DD lifestyle that we’re in. We’ve covered much of this stuff in the past. My view is that these punishments provide her with a way to work off any anger, assuage any feelings of guilt I may have, and overall, hugely benefit a marriage as problems don’t hang around poisoning the atmosphere for hours or days. I’ve been coming to the conclusion, however, that there’s more to it than that, related to cost - in the sense that to be real, a punishment must have some kind of real cost associated with it (I don’t mean monetary.) I guess I’ll elaborate if this turns into a discussion. The second area I’ve been pondering will only resonate with some of the participants here. I have had an interest in spanking since my teens (on either side of the paddle) but only discovered DD when I found the DWC website around 2000. Spanking was obviously sexual for me until then, but I’ve never been into the idea of gentle. Whether giving or receiving, I always expected it to be at least quite hard, with a good after-glow. So my question is, for those who have such an interest, and I guess people who use maintenance spankings as well, what distinguishes a real punishment spanking from any other kind? Is it just a matter of intensity or is there more to it?”

 

I wasn’t sure I fully got the first point he raised and asked for clarification. He replied with:

 

Hmmmm. I’ll try, I don’t promise it will be very coherent, but here goes….. One can apologize for something said, done, or not done. It’s only words, it’s easy and costs nothing. I’d suggest it may be a good start but it can be just a brush-off to make it go away with minimal effort. So I guess the next step is buying flowers or something like that. It’s something I do sometimes for no particular reason, but I’d never do that to say sorry. It’s always felt to me like a cop-out. Again, there’s no real cost to this - I don’t count a few dollars for the flowers. I suppose this feels like “I can do stuff that I know will upset her, whether deliberately or carelessly, and just make it better without it really inconveniencing me in any way.” I see a punishment spanking as something that, in terms of genuine physical pain, costs me something. It should be long and hard enough that I really want to avoid it. If I’ve screwed up in some way, it shouldn’t be too easy for me to repent, and saying sorry or buying flowers is too easy. It also clearly is related to behavior modification, which I think we’ve discussed before. The punishment should be severe enough to discourage a repeat of whatever the behavior was. (Which of course ties into my second question) So I guess “cost” to me is a genuine consequence that I really want to avoid. I’m not sure that that’s any clearer, but hopefully it will help.

 

As an aside, TG’s reference to flowers conjures up one of the very first spanking drawings that I recall getting my attention after I found the Disciplinary Wives Club and became near-obsessed with experiencing real discipline.  It was this one by Jay Em.

 

This one, and several other pieces of Jay Em’s work, tie in nicely with some of TG’s musings, as a recurring theme is a husband (and in a few instances a son or daughter) being held to account in circumstances where they seem to be surprised that they are unable to talk, or emotionally manipulate, their way out of it.  It also ties into one of TG’s points about the nature of a true “cost”: “If I’ve screwed up in some way, it shouldn’t be too easy for me to repent, and saying sorry or buying flowers is too easy.”

 

I think one reason I needed clarification about this point about “cost” is that, for me, the “penance” element—which I tend to think of more in terms of “accountability”—is so firmly at the core of DD for me that, without it, I wouldn’t consider a spanking to be “real” at all.  It’s so central to my DD interest that I don’t think of DD as existing without it.

 

It’s why, for me, DD has always required two elements: First, the spanking must be for some real offense, misbehavior, or significant carelessness.  Second, the spanking must be severe enough that it feels like authentic punishment. 

 

A third element that isn’t absolutely required but adds a critical additional element of realism is that the spanking is “imposed”, i.e., I’m going to get it whether I agree with it or not. In other words, I’m being punished because someone else thinks I need to pay a cost, to use TG’s description.

 

TG’s comment raises the issues of apologies in relation to DD and suggests that the problem with them is they are simply too easy.  I largely agree, though I will say that I personally find apologizing for bad behavior very hard at times.  And, sometimes the verbal recognition of responsibility adds to the humbling process.

 

 

But, I still get his point.  Apologizing, with or without flowers, is sort of a “necessary but insufficient” element of getting to the other side of the bad behavior.

 

And, the fact that an apology isn’t always sufficient doesn’t mean it isn’t sincere. It very well may be. When searching for appropriate memes for this post, I found examples going both ways.  In a few, the wife expressed something to the effect of, “You say you’re sorry, but I want to make sure you really are.”

 

 

In others, the wife acknowledges the apology and its likely sincerity but decides that, for whatever reason, it still requires an additional “cost” in the form of a spanking.  The gist was usually that, although she didn’t doubt he was sorry for what he did or didn’t do, she wanted him to be sorrier than that.  There is an inherent recognition that while expressions of regret may be genuine, a spanking inherently increases that regret in a very tangible way.

 

 

It also seems generally true that even if the husband is truly sorry and feeling regret when he apologizes, a spanking ensures that he stays that way for a while.

Another thing about the cost of a spanking -- the wives and husbands' respective perspectives are likely very different as it is happening.   From the man's perspective, the cost imposed by a spanking seems very significant at the time it's happening or about to happen.  

Yet, from the wife's perspective, it's just part of making you the "sorry boy" she knows you sometimes need to be.  Perhaps not always, but she often likely comes at it from a much more casual perspective.  You've done something wrong, and she's going to make you pay up for it, but in the scheme of things, it's not that big a deal.

For her, right?  She's clearly right about the fact that, in the overall scheme of a DD relationship, each spanking is just one of those things.  It doesn't last all that long, and after she makes you pay the appropriate cost for your conduct, you both move on.  Yet, for us spanked husbands, it feels like so much more than that at the time.

 

Another angle on the role of paying a real cost in the form of a hard spanking is that it may increase the stakes in a way that leads to better decisions.  In my work life, I was pretty prone to thinking about authority and rules in terms of: “It’s better to say you’re sorry than to ask permission.” In many life situations, that may indeed be true.  However, the risk-reward calculus changes a little when an empowered Disciplinary Wife enters into the picture.

 

Regarding severity and TG’s observation that, for him, spankings must be hard for him to have any interest in them, I share that bent.  For me, it’s all part of a package – for a spanking scenario to do anything for me emotionally, it has to combine the elements of a real offense, that is punished with a real spanking, and the reality of the spanking hinges to a large extent on it being very hard to take.  

 

I think there is also a connection between the severity of the spankings and Anne's perception of her own power and the reality of the hierarchy we've agreed to.  She's always said that it's not the spanking itself that she enjoys (though I think that has changed over the years) but, rather, the feeling of power she gets when she tells me to get ready for my spanking and watches me comply.  She has said that part of that dynamic involves knowing how hard it must be for me to submit to her in that way, knowing how hard she is going to spank me.

 

Looking back, the lines on the DWC website that held the most morbid fascination for me when I first discovered it were those that emphasized the severity of a real disciplinary spanking and the cost one imposes on the husband:

 

“The training methods suggested do involve strict discipline, and strong doses of corporal punishment. . .. Some of the physical punishments described are meant to be painful. There is no question that welts will be raised and bottoms bruised . . .”

 

“A dose of corporal punishment should have a dual effect. It should be extremely painful while it is being applied, and the area it was applied to should remain very tender for a period of time afterwards.”

 

“If you give a spanking the way it should be given, the results should still show a week later. He should wince every time he tries to sit for days after.”

 

To those who don’t have this bent, it may sound not just harsh but overly so.  Yet, the DWC emphasized that the men who want a real DD relationship want and need the spankings to be that hard:

 

“If you feel the least bit sorry for him during all this, remember, a submissive man does not want a weak or lenient woman. He wants someone very strict and dominant. If he wanted anything different, he wouldn't be over your knees in the first place. This isn't a small child you are holding over your lap by force -- this is a grown man who needs and wants a hard spanking.”

 

As TG points out, his need to pay a significant cost is tied up with the issue of severity, which may or may not be present with non-punishment spankings, like maintenance.  We don’t do maintenance, so I will let others comment on his particular questions around that. I do recall that some who use maintenance regularly, like Al, have opined that although maintenance spankings are less severe than punishment spankings, for them they are still substantial. 

 

A final note on severity.  I saw this picture a while back, and it caught my attention for a couple of reasons. First, I have a thing for spanking pictures and art involving women ascending stairs, though it's usually the spanker climbing stairs with a paddle.  Second, the level of damage to her bottom is pretty true to how much I used to mark after a hard spanking of the type we've been discussing in this post, though I now don't exhibit anything close to this.  Anyway, something about this one attracted me so much, I've wanted to find a reason to post it. 

 

 

I hope you all have a great week.  Because we’ll be on the road, I may be less active in weighing in on this one.  It’s also why I posted a little earlier in the week than usual.