Getting the DD Spanking Relationship Started After a Long Break, and Consistency Success Stories (Club Meeting - 569)

"The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing." — Walt Disney

 

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 wasn’t too bad.  We’re in that part of the transition to autumn in which it’s 50 degrees one day, 80 the next, and at our place in the mountains it feels downright wintery in the mornings.  We spent some time putting up Halloween decorations, which put us ahead of most in our neighborhood. I get the sense that hot weather has stuck around so long this year that people haven’t made the mental jump to the new season yet.

 

Which, of course, didn’t mean that Home Depot hadn’t already replaced all their Halloween decorations with Christmas stuff.  Seriously??

 

The one thing I’m feeling a little unsatisfied with is getting the Domestic Discipline aspects of our relationship started again after our lengthy injury-related hiatus.  I talked a couple of weeks ago about introducing it back in, with a short experimental session with some short canes bundled up like the switches used for a birching. It was a start, but it didn’t really go anywhere after that.

 

Part of the problem is a good one, in that I haven’t done a lot that was obviously punishment-worthy.  At least, nothing very serious. Although that’s a good thing for the most part, I feel like it is, in fact, a problem, because both of us really do want to get our dynamic going again, yet it seems harder to get started when there’s not some big, dramatic behavior or attitude failure to be addressed.  

 

 And, it's not like there haven't been issues around carelessness and attitude, though those are the kind of things that require self-reporting, which seems harder than it should be at a time when I really do want to get things started again. Given that it’s been almost six months since we were in anything like a real DD routine, it feels almost like starting over from scratch, with all the hesitation and embarrassment that asking for DD entailed the first time, but this time with full knowledge of what a real disciplinary spanking entails.  

 

So, my first question for the group this week is, have you experienced a long pause in your DD relationship and, if so, how did you get things started again?  Was it simply a matter of asking for it, or did it take something more than that?

 

I’ve been thinking about this issue of getting started again in the context of what we’ve both said we want going forward.  We’ve talked about it several times, and in some ways it’s pretty simple: We both want her to be more in charge, more in control, more strict, more assertive, such that DD and FLR feel more like our day-to-day reality, instead of like dynamics whose presence wax and wane.

 

And, while it’s more about the structure of the relationship as a whole and not simply about being spanked more, I do feel like if the power shift is real it is going to express itself, at least in part, in spankings that are both more certain and more frequent.  How frequent?  I’m not really sure.  Two or three times a week seems unrealistic. But, perhaps weekly?

 

The easy way to get there would be by committing to a maintenance spanking routine, but neither of us seems interested in that.  For us, setting the bar lower than it has been in the past seems like the better approach. 

 

Former commenter KOJ went through a process that seemed closer to what I envision for us. Here are some snippets from a few of his comments:

 

“Did spankings decline as she "trained" me? Yes, but not as much as one might imagine, because she kept setting the bar for my behavior higher and higher. Plus, she both needed to and enjoyed asserting her female authority, and nothing did so as directly and dramatically as ordering me to take down my pants. 

 

“We didn't do maintenance, but there were times when I noticed her getting antsy and I knew she would soon be finding a (good enough) reason to put me over her knee. Sort of a gender reversal from the more typical situation of the disciplined husband needing a reset. It was her demonstrating that "I'm in charge here, and don't you forget it!

 

“We definitely had a set of rules, all of which she established and enforced with spanking. But she also was very much into spanking for "disrespect" and ungentlemanly conduct," and that could take almost any form. Occasionally I would be surprised by her reasoning, but usually she was spot on.

 

“My wife also quickly morphed from misbehaviors in her presence to any misbehavior. She would question me about my driving, my drinking, my attitude to customer service people, my respect level for female co-workers, etc., and punish me accordingly.”

 

For me the goal isn’t about being spanked more often, but it is about being more subject to her control and her discipline, which almost certainly would be expressed through more frequent spankings.

 

When we’ve talked about it, Anne seems genuinely in favor of the idea.  Maybe back when we were in the busiest phases of married life, managing kids and careers, stepping up to be the real power in the household might have felt burdensome.  But, now that we’re in a much more relaxed phase, I get the sense that she’s genuinely into the idea of being more consistently and more openly in control.

 

Another of our former commenters, Marisa, talked about both consistency and openness and the relationship between the two:

 

“It is definitely easier to be consistent in applying discipline, much like it is easier to form a habit and stick with it. I really believe discipline has to be a priority, or why do it?   One way to make it a priority is to make it a habit.

 

If you spank him sometimes but not others, both of you will be frustrated, and your influence on your husband’s behavior will be reduced. This isn’t easy, but much in life isn’t, and if you believe in what you are doing and want real change, there has to be a commitment to it.

 

But there is also the real world I live in. I know absolutely that a spanking administered as soon as possible is much more efficient than waiting. But sometimes I have to wait. We don’t have children, but family and friends are often around and, so far, we have kept private the spanking part of our life (although nobody around doubts who wears the pants in the family).

 

So, sometimes he goes a day or longer before paying the piper. Is that inconsistent? I don’t think so. I always deliver eventually, and he knows that. In some ideal future, I hope to open up more with close friends and I will be able to discipline on the spot when he misbehaves. Some of us will live to see the day when a wife doing that doesn’t bring gasps of horror from friends. Meanwhile, I do practice consistency best as I can and try to make it a habit.”

 

KOJ had a similar take on the value of openness, though in his case, it was an openness that was more or less imposed whether he liked it or not:

 

“It was shockingly abrupt with my wife, with no explanation. She must have been thinking about it for a long time. She had been hiding her authority over me due to concern about both of our careers. I had no idea that she wanted to display her authority, or at least not hide it. But suddenly she was making the same demands and comments in public that she did in private. I was taken aback. Eventually we talked about it. She was her matter-of-fact self. "You'll just have to accept it like you do your spankings," she said.  I came to realize that power is more powerful the more people know about it!”

 

There is something that I find incredibly powerful about that "You'll just have to accept it like you do your spankings," line. 

 

 

I’m confident it would seem more challenging than titillating as it was happening, yet I can’t help wanting to be taken in a direction in which she decides on her own that there are certain challenging things I “just have to accept” like I do my spankings.

 

And, the underlying reality is that consistency and openness are both within the scope of authority I have consensually handed over to her. I've asked her to hold me accountable.  I've asked her to be diligent in doing that.  I've told her that part of me wants her to be more open about her authority.

 

Although being the spanker in a DD relationship undoubtedly involves real commitment in terms of time and energy, I do feel like once established, being firmly in charge must be easier than always feeling like you’re negotiating the boundaries of that part of the relationship.  The decision fatigue that comes with inconsistency seems so much harder than applying a simple “earn one – get one” approach.  

 

And, while I genuinely don’t look forward to my bottom paying the prices for such consistency, the benefit it has for the spanker is another issue KOJ addressed:

 

“My wife was a very consistent spanker. For instance, I was expected home at 6 pm unless I had called ahead. I got one swat for every minute late without calling -- and she let nothing go; even if it was 6:01 I got the one swat, pants down and bent over the kitchen island, bare bottom with the bread board (and even one swat could sting!). That may seem harsh and micromanaging, but to her it was all training. For me, I appreciated the consistent enforcement of rules. There was no room for error, nor should there be. If I didn't want paddled, all I had to do was call ahead!” 

That element of certainty seems to me to be the most important element of consistency, and there is, in fact, something oddly comforting about knowing that, while you’ve given up significant control to your wife, in the end if you don’t want a hard spanking, that’s mostly within your control via improving your conduct or meeting agreed-upon expectations.

 

 

Over the years I’ve had this blog, lack of consistency is unquestionably the number one complaint I’ve heard from disciplined husbands. I don’t want to make this post an exercise in airing that problem, though there probably will be a fair amount of that. What I’d really like instead though is to hear the advice of those who have achieved some level of consistency that they are satisfied, or close to satisfied with.

 

For those folks, what does consistency look like in terms of frequency?  Is it something you judge in relation to some limited set of agreed-upon rules?

 

Or is it more about her exercising more fully a broader grant of “any time, for any reason” authority?  If her authority is that unbounded, what does consistency mean for you in that context?

 

Where you and your wife have achieved consistency, was it about systems and specific communication tactics, like periodic check-ins, journaling, etc.?

 

Or, was it more about the wife adopting or developing a certain attitude, perhaps displaying the kind of enthusiasm for wielding and displaying power that KOJ’s wife got to?  Did getting to that level of commitment and enthusiasm entail the kind of openness to others knowing about or intuiting the nature of the relationship that KOJ’s wife told him he would just have to accept and that Marisa aspired to?

 

I hope you have a great week.