Delayed Post

Hi all.  For those of you in the U.S., I hope your long Labor Day weekend is off to a good start. I do plan to post over the weekend, but I'm off taking care of some other things this morning.  I plan to post later today, or tomorrow morning.

Club Meeting 309 - Confessing & Snitching

Between lovers a little confession is a dangerous thing. - Helen Rowland

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly on-line gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline relationship. 

I hope you had a great week.  Mine was up and down. We are slow at work again, but I also had a lot of work-related travel and socializing.  Bad combination.  I don’t do well when I’m not busy with concrete tasks and projects.  The week was also book-ended by work related socializing that left me depleted energetically.  But, at least there is the weekend . . .

We had a good discussion last week about our experiences with parental discipline.  Over the years of blogging and polling about “origins” and how we come to this lifestyle, the surprising pattern is the lack of any common pattern.  Some experienced lots of spankings as kids.  Some none at all.  Some of us grew up with consistent discipline and enforced boundaries. Some were left to basically raise ourselves.  After years of discussion this, I really don’t see any pattern at all, and I’m at a loss to explain what triggered my own attraction to being disciplined and to having power taken away from me.  I have this sneaky suspicion that if there is a common pattern, it has more to do with the parenting style of the fathers than mothers, though thanks to Freud we tend to see this stuff through an Oedipal lens.  

We also explored again the maternal aspects of discipline, with Danielle observing: “I guess my FLR is more maternal than many of the DD relationships people here have for a couple of reasons. First, my authority is not limited by some sort of agreement about “spanking infractions.” I decide when discipline is needed and what form it will take. Second, I don’t limit consequences to spanking, but add the kinds of consequences I used to discipline my sons when they were teens.”  I think that touches on some of my own needs for discipline with a maternal vibe.  ZM said he would like to explore the maternal issue in more depth, and I heartily agree but can’t quite figure out an appropriate topic formulation.  All thoughts and suggestions on that are welcome.

As for this week’s topic, I’m feeling kind of lazy, so I will once again take advantage of a topic suggestion from “A husband who knows.” He suggested:

“Possible topic: the Confession Challenge. Dan, above you reveal three work behaviors your disciplinarian does not know about. And you did so knowing that your wife reads your blog. Repeat that confession and challenge the rest of us to confess behaviors our disciplinarian does not know about for which we likely would be punished. Challenge Part 2: Challenge each of us to read our confession to our disciplinarian! Then report back here what happens!”

Tomy responded: “"Confessional Sessions" were the most popular of activities in Aunt Kay's Gathering events (group events). In those cases men submitted a written confession to Aunt Kay and she studied them and assigned them to one of the other wives who then took appropriate action. It was super-cool.”  Tomy, as an aside, I would love to hear more about this.  Your allusions to ways in which the DWC really was a live "club" always intrigue me.

The “confession” AHWK was referring to was this comment from me identifying behaviors at work that either hold me back or that I just feel like I should correct because it is the right thing to do:

(1) Temper and lack of patience with others, whether directed up or down. I try really, really hard not to "punch down," but it wasn't quite true when I said above that it "never" happens. It's rare, but it can happen, especially if I'm dealing with someone who is being kind of mindless rule follower and getting in the way of getting something done. But, if it someone a lot lower than me in the pecking order, losing my temper or being rude to someone in those circumstances is something I really wish someone would rat me out for.

(2) Failure to keep up on some required paperwork and reporting. There is one task that is fundamental to how we get paid, but that I just absolutely hate. I'm always behind and, while it doesn't impact the organization much, it means I spend a lot of evenings and weekends playing catch up. It would be great if someone told my wife, "BTW, he's a week behind again in turning in X report . . ."

(3) Getting snotty with bureaucracy from "on high." This is a variant of (1), but I really do have a problem dealing with entrenched foolishness and, while it's fine to bring it up, I tend to do it snarky, sarcastic ways.

As I told AHWK, my wife does know about these behaviors because I’ve talked to her about them before, but she doesn’t have any way to find out about specific instances of those behaviors unless I report it myself.  Which I often don’t.  Why not? Well, it’s not really about fear of punishment.  It’s more that I really am embarrassed that I engaged in the behavior, and I don’t want to tell her about it because I don’t want to look bad.  

It’s really that simple.  But, since the AHWK dropped the gauntlet, and since there is no mechanism in place for anyone at work to snitch on me, I will man up and confess to three specific examples of bad behavior, all of which are loosely work related:

(1) I did “punch down” a bit recently, expressing some dissatisfaction to someone in our IT department about a policy that has been driving me crazy.  I wasn’t mean exactly, but he doesn’t really have any power to change the thing that was making me mad, so it was more about me venting my spleen than about accomplishing anything. 

(2) Last week, I got frustrated for about the thousandth time with some communications coming from the “C-Suite” that I see as a distraction and an example of focusing on small things to the exclusion of more important issues.  I made that view very clear in an email that went to a dozen more people, some peers and some up the chain.  Again, it wasn’t that I was saying anything that was wrong, but saying it yet again in way that was a very direct challenge to the thinking and priorities of those at the top just didn’t really serve any purpose, so why do it.

(3) I had a fairly significant instance of losing my temper last week, when a fairly new colleague started criticizing some things the organization was doing, without having any real understanding of what he was talking about.  I took it for a while, then rebuked him pretty directly, in a large meeting, for mouthing off before he had sufficient background to really understand an issue.  I alluded to this incident in last week’s blog post.  There is not a question in my mind that he was out of line. But, the way I reacted is not how a leader should act.  And, ironically, I am sure that some of the leaders I directed the communication to in (2), above, feel like I was behaving exactly like the guy I went off on in my meeting.  

Also, since this topic originated with some comments relating to enlisting co-workers and others to “rat out” a DD husband for bad behavior at work, I would like to expand the topic a bit by asking have you ever gotten spanked for something because someone “told on you”?  Perhaps a work colleague let something slip at a party?  Maybe a friend referred to some shared adventure you hadn’t shared with your wife? For all the wives, do you have any kind of “intelligence network” in place that will tip you off to bad behavior?  Have you ever been shocked to find out through a third-party that your husband did something and failed to report it?  How did you deal with it? 

Content Note:  I'm adding this note, because several comments indicate an issue that is becoming a problem and that I want to nip in the bud.  I do not mind when regular commenters drift off into other territory sometimes after addressing a topic. But, the last couple of weeks have seen several people--mainly various iterations of "Anonymous" and a couple of new commenters--attempt to use this as a convenient place to strike up a discussion about their Femdom fantasies, BDSM scening, etc.  Enough.  The masthead at the top of the blog says what it is about -- and what it is not.  I'm going to just start deleting comments that don't have anything to do with the topic or that kind of pretend to for a sentence or two before launching off into whatever Femdom or BDSM fantasy the commenter feels like talking about at random.

Have a great week.

Club Meeting 308 - Parental Discipline

“If soldiers are punished before they have grown attached to you, they will not prove submissive; and, unless submissive, then will be practically useless. If, when the soldiers have become attached to you, punishments are not enforced, they will still be useless.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Hello all.  Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couples Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline relationships, mainly of the Female/male variety.  I hope you had a good week.

Mine was one in which everything at work seemed to go from bad to work, and some of it because of very undisciplined behavior.  And, for once, not just mine.  I had a new colleague pushing buttons in some major ways, and he finally pushed the wrong one and I went off.  I reported last year about an incident in which I went off on someone and Anne made me apologize to them, and how humbling that was.  This time the situation is different, in that last time I really did feel like I jumped to a conclusion that was wrong even if it was perfectly consistent with the kind of dick-ish behavior this person displayed on a regular basis. Even if it was humbling to do, I felt like my behavior really called for it precisely because my reaction to him was factually wrong.  This time, there really isn’t any doubt this guy was crossing lines and pushing buttons.  The only real issue is whether my reaction was consistent with what I expect from myself and, hence, whether some humbling is called for even if I wasn’t actually in the wrong this time.  I guess another way of putting it is you can react in a way that is perfectly consistent with reality and that the recipient 100% deserves, yet it still may not be consistent with the kind of behavior you want to embody.  I need to think about this more, because right now I’m still pretty pissed off at this guy and enjoying wallowing in my righteous indignation and feeling kind of good about taking him down a peg.  But, for now, on to other things.

In one of the final comments on last week’s topic, “A husband who knows” suggested the following:  “Possible topic: Compare the discipline you got from your parents with the discipline you get from your wife (or give to your husband). How are they alike and different? Which has been more effective? Which do you prefer?” This touches a bit on a post I did back in February about the maternal element in discipline, and while I generally try to avoid doing the same topic twice in one year, this one is broader and gives people more room to roam.  Also, I’ve honestly been wanting to explore the issues around maternal and parental discipline more, because I’ve been getting more comfortable with admitting to myself that, while many here seem to have come to adult discipline via an early and probably innate fascination with spanking, my own needs in this area seem more closely tied to discipline or lack thereof as a teenager that now compels me to want discipline with a particularly “parental” element.

But, before we get to that, a hopefully interesting aside.  In looking for quotes to put at the top of this post, I thought that a good place to start for quotes related to parental discipline might be to run a Google search for quotes related to the biblical injunction of “spare the rod and spoil the child.”  What I found was kind of fascinating given the context of this blog and today's topic because, as it turns out that quote actually is not from the Bible at all and, in fact, is about adult spanking!  For the whole back story, check out this article: http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2010/11/spare-rod-and-spoil-child-is-not-in.html.  Note: The quote I ended up using has nothing to do with parental discipline, but I found it while doing the search for quotes for today's topic and it seemed to me to be a very insightful statement on the interplay between love and authority.

Now, after that little diversion, I’ll throw out my own answer to “A husband who knows” topic, hopefully without retreading too much on February’s post. 

For someone who now spends hours a week writing or reading about adult discipline, being disciplined plays a very minor role in my memories of my childhood and teen-age years.  Paradoxically, I’ve come to believe that is why it became such an obsession for me after I discovered Domestic Discipline via The Disciplinary Wives Club website.  In terms of spankings, I honestly don’t have a clear memory of a single one I received from my mother, though I assume she must have given me a few because it was such a commonplace thing where I was growing up that it would have been astonishing for any kid to not get spanked by both parents fairly regularly. 

I think the reasons I don’t recall any by my mother is because they simply weren’t that eventful and probably happened when I was young enough that I just don’t remember them.   

Interestingly, I do remember at least one spanking she gave one of my sisters.  In fact, it had some corollaries to the drawing the left, except what I recall is my sister being draped over the end of the bed, not on all fours on top of it.  What I don't recall is exactly how I came to have this memory. The most likely explanation is that I opened the bedroom door a crack and looked in as it was happening.  Probably should have earned one myself for that behavior.

I'm also pretty certain that was not the only time my sister got spanked.  She was kind of a bully as a teen and got in lots of trouble at school and, like a lot of families at that time and in that place, the rule was "get spanked at school, get a second and harder one at home that night."

I do recall some threatened and at least one actual spanking from my father.  I recall the threatened spanking situation fairly vividly, and it involved one of those very direct instructions that if I kept doing something I was going to get spanked.  What I don’t recall is whether I actually did keep doing what I was doing and did actually get spanked.  I even more vividly recall one actual spanking, because it would have been pretty hard to forget as it was a very sound spanking with a belt.

But, I think it is not so much spanking in particular as discipline in general where my parent’s approach was both atypical for the time and place but also very distinct from what I need now and what my wife are increasingly experimenting with her trying to provide.  My mother was very strong-willed in some ways, but it was expressed very erratically.  She could go from June Cleaver to Mommy Dearest in a heartbeat.  She seldom made or enforced rules but, at the same time, could be very pushy and aggressive.  But, it was totally inconsistent and never really connected to setting a rule precluding any particular bad behavior and then imposing a consequence for that behavior. 

My father’s approach to bad behavior was even more forgiving.  He had been a wild man in his youth and, frankly, well past the age where most men start growing up.  If I had to compare him to a literary character, the closest I can come is probably Hud in the Larry McMurtry novel “Horseman Pass By,” which was made into a movie starring Paul Newman as the erratic western anti-hero Hud. He was sort of a force of nature, but it wasn’t just by temperament; it was his overarching philosophy and encompasses his philosophy on parenting.  He told me more than once in high school, “I’m not going to lay down a bunch of rules unless and until you screw up in some way that shows me you need them.”  Now, that may sound like a teenage boy’s wet dream, but the problem was I did, in fact, screw up a lot at least by normal standards.  I was just smart and lucky enough to get myself out of it most of the time.  So, there was almost nothing like accountability-based or rule-driven discipline for me growing up:

I wasn’t really aware of how stressful that was at the time, but I think by the time I got out of college I felt like I had the world on my shoulders, because when there are no boundaries being imposed on you, everything you do and all the associated consequences are fully on you, too.  By the time I got out of grad school, I felt an incredible amount of stress and anxiety, even if I didn’t really show it.  So, I think I was primed and ready when I stumbled on the Disciplinary Wives Club in my late 30s.  The descriptions of men having boundaries imposed upon them by strong-willed wives just really got to me deep down inside.  But, I don’t think I consciously associated it with anything maternal.  I really needed someone to set rules and enforce them consistently, but anyone would do if they had sufficient presence and authority to make me feel like I am not the one in command and that punishment is inevitable and resistance futile.  While the "strict mom" archetype serves that role, so could an aunt, teacher, school principal, or any other authoritarian whose power or position was sufficient to make me submit.

So, to answer “A husband who knows” first question, the differences between the discipline received from my parents and the discipline from my wife are like night and day.  My parents very seldom spanked and, at least once I got old enough to remember such things, arguably never really disciplined, at least if we associate discipline with, to use Anton’s word, “training.”  “Effectiveness” follows that same answer – my parents didn’t discipline at all, so anything my wife does is likely to be more effective.

I think the more interesting part of the topic for me is the interplay between what I didn’t get back then and what I think I need now. For a long time, I didn’t bring this up at all with Anne, or even really to myself, though I think I suspected on some level that my need for adult discipline is rooted in a need for what I will call, for lack of a better word, “re-parenting.” 

Anne has talked in positive terms about using DD to reduce me to a "teen-age boy who needs a spanking from his mom."  She also has compared me to a teenager who mischievously pushes buttons just to do it, then is surprised when she actually does something about it.  It's that roller-coaster ride that is my DD obsession—wanting boundaries when I don’t perceive them and then getting resentful when she suddenly imposes one.  What I am starting to appreciate is it may very well have been my own mother's erratic approach to parenting, and my father’s totally passive approach, that put me on that roller-coaster, wanting discipline when it is absent but resenting it once it is imposed. And, what I seem to both crave and resist the most is consistent, no nonsense rule setting and direction.  In fact, at the risk of saying anything negative, I think the one "deficiency" in our DD lifestyle has always been lack of consistency, and I think I crave it (and resist it) precisely because my mother was so inconsistent in her moods and parenting approach.

As discussed last year, I've also noticed that part of the attraction I have to spanking drawings that include a maternal vibe is the "getting down to business" demeanor and the sense of inevitability it conveys, and the domestic setting definitely adds to the ambiance.   

Yet, I have shied away from expressing a lot of this on the blog, because I do want it to be a positive resource that encourages newbies to try Domestic Discipline, but I also realize that the “I’m his wife, not his mother” attitude may be pretty prevalent with wives who are unexpectedly confronted with a husband’s need for discipline. 

So, thanks to a “Husband who knows” for this week’s topic.  I look forward to all your input on this.

By the way, I came across this demotivational poster a few weeks ago and about fell out of my chair laughing.  When it comes to my anti-authoritarian streak -- this is me.  Right here.

Club Meeting 307 - Scolding

“Power is not a means; it is an end.  - George Orwell

Hello all.  Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couples Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline relationships, mainly of the Female/male variety.  I hope you had a good week.

Sorry for the late posting.  I had a few other things going on today.  Typical summer Saturday. 

Thanks for carrying on without me.  I did check in to see what was going on from time to time, but I was consciously trying to check out a bit.  I succeeded to some extent, though I ended up getting sick a few days into it.  I guess the upside is, I’ve been hoping to lose 10 or 15 pounds – just didn’t anticipate it happening quite so abruptly and violently.  I know -- Too Much Information, right?

I can’t say I came back super inspired with new topics.  But, it was nice of some of you to help me out with some ideas based on comments from a week ago.  During our discussion of rituals, Danielle and Alan had an exchange about scolding and its place in an FLR and DD relationship.  Based on some past polls, despite—or perhaps because of—its humbling aspects, many men seem to crave a firm “talking to.”  Here are the results of one we ran a couple of years ago:

"I am in a DD relationship, and if I could change things, I wish . . ."  

Spankings were more severe                                   76

Spankings were less severe                                       5

Spankings were more frequent                               91

Spankings were less frequent                                   3

My partner would be more verbally strict       76

My partner would be less verbally strict            0

My partner would be more openly dominant        67

My partner would be less openly dominant            1

While “more openly dominant,” came close, “more verbally strict” was the only answer that was 100% unanimous.  So, apparently many of us fantasize about their wives “using their words” to put us in our place.  Danielle talked about it thusly:

“Spankings are always preceded by a scolding. I’ve become adept at scolding and I like doing it. In pre-FLR days, Wayne and I used to have some pretty intense arguments about things like the division of housework. Now that we have a FLR I find it wonderfully empowering to be able to tear a strip off my husband in a one-sided way because I remember how he used to argue with me. I think it is as humbling for him as it is empowering for me. Sometimes a chastisement will begin and end with a good scolding.”

Alan responded:

“In our house a serious scolding usually is a segue to spanking but sometimes I am smart enough to back down early enough I get warnings, her favorite being “you’re close”. Discipline is a delicate dance and I unconsciously gauge how far I can go. That leash has gotten shorter and shorter over the years. But at the same time I think her warnings have become more and more effective because I know the point of no return is close. It’s part of the paradox every spankee confronts -loving to fantasize a spanking will be administered but hating the actual spanking itself.”

As Danielle and Alan point out, scolding can be a prelude to discipline, an independent form of discipline, or something that helps reinforce her authority and control.  I suppose it also could be used after a spanking to reinforce the message.

So, scolding it this week’s topic.  What role, if any, does it play in your DD or FLR relationship?  Are you one of those men who crave it?  Are those needs satisfied?  And, importantly, what impact does her scolding have on you? 

Tell us all how that works, with as much detail as possible since I think we all—husbands and wives—benefit from concrete examples. For the wives, are you comfortable scolding, lecturing, and verbally chastising your man?  If so, was it always that way?  If not, how did you get comfortable with it?  How does he react to it?

To kick it off, I am one of those men who want—or think I want—verbal strictness and scolding.  This is one area in which my desire for authority with a “maternal” vibe really comes shining through.  I would like her to explore being much more verbally strict – telling me what to do, chastising me with some real force and fury when I screw up, etc.  Our reality is a little different.  Most of the scolding that happens is, in fact, a prelude to spankings, and she doesn’t tend to “rip me a new one” outside that context.

I’m sure some women worry about being seen as “bitchy” if they are verbally strong, but I think for men wired like many of us here, it works the opposite.  Weak verbalizing comes off as “nagging,” while a strong and confident woman saying what she expects and enforcing her rules with her voice as much as with her paddle is incredibly sexy and alluring.

So, tell us about your experiences and views on scolding and verbal strictness.

I hope you have a great week.

On Vacation

Happy Friday all.  We are winding down the summer with an impromptu vacation. I hope you all have a great weekend and upcoming week.

Dan

Club Meeting 306 - Rituals

“Purification and redemption are such recurrent themes in ritual because there is a clear and ubiquitous need for them: we all do regrettable things as a result of our own circumstances, and new rituals are frequently invented in response to new circumstances.” ― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

Hello all.  Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couples Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline relationships, mainly of the Female/male variety.  I hope you had a good week.

Last week’s conversation went in some interesting directions.  I was particularly intrigued by “A husband who knows” description of the level of control his wife assumed in order to bring out the result she wanted, i.e. substantial weight loss.  That level of control and “laying down the law” seems so attractive on the surface, yet a few weeks ago I reacted badly to even less intrusive efforts by my wife.  She and I have talked about it since then, including a lot of talk about Alan’s observation that whenever his wife would start turning the screws, he would experience a period of rebellion before surrendering to her control.  We are kind of inching back into her turning the screws more, not focusing quite as much on a particular habit or offense, but just generally her taking on more of a clearly dominant, Head of Household, “strict mom” kind of role and me being more demonstratively under her.

Some of this coincidentally relates to the tangents we got off onto regarding Alcoholics Anonymous and the whole theme of surrender.  I’m still kind of working through all this and can’t articulate it very well yet (I often need to let ideas percolate for a while before something “clicks” and I get a flash of insight I didn’t have before), but I think that at bottom my (a) mini-“rebellion” a few weeks ago; (b) deeply entrenched anti-authoritarian tendencies; (c) paradoxical attraction and repulsion to the prospect of crying and being under truly imposed and involuntary boundaries; and (d) oddly, my interest in Eastern religious philosophy are all bound up in this overarching concept of “surrender.”  This by the artist Jack Vettriano kind of exemplifies the mood.  I love the way his closed eyes seem to indicate an inner struggle to accept the kneeling, subservient position.  Isn't any real surrender like that? Perhaps more on this later.

In the meantime, “A husband who knows” also once again provided this week’s topic.  He proposed, “Maybe you have done this topic, but one possibility is the rituals that happen before, during, and after punishment.”  I was pretty sure we have done this one a few times, but when I searched for it I found that we’ve only done it once, that was over five years ago, and the blog was so new it got a whopping 8 comments.  So, let’s do it again. Do your spankings entail a pattern or ritual?

 

I don’t know whether our practices are “rituals” or just “routines,” i.e. habits that have developed over time.  It feels more like the latter.  Ours really begin with her ordering the spanking, which sometimes but not always occurs in two parts.  Often, she lets me know (sometimes but not always by text) that I will be getting spanked for some offense.  That evening, she generally lets me know a few minutes beforehand that I need to get ready.  In general, that entails putting away whatever I am doing, going upstairs, getting out her “tools” and placing them on the bed, and pulling the ottoman she usually spanks me over away from the bed and placing some pillows on top of it.  I then get naked as she putters around in the bathroom.  When she is ready, she comes out, gives me a short lecgture about why I am getting spanked, then tells me to get into position.  I drape myself over the ottoman, and from that point forward she is all business.  We really don’t have a post-spanking routine.  She tells me when the spanking is over, I put her tools away, and probably 9 times out of 10 when the spanking happens at night, we have sex. 

What about you? Is there a ritual to how she kicks things off?  Do you get yourself ready and wait for her?

Or does she get ready and summon you when it is time?

Is there a pre-spanking lecture or scolding?

 Is there any ritual she follows during the spanking?  And, what about after?  Are you left to get yourself together?

 

Or perhaps there is some comforting or intimacy? 

Whatever your rituals are, tell us all about them.

I hope you all have a great week.

DCC Meeting 305 - Repeat Offenses

“Most people don't have that willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses and they talk like victims.” - Carlos Santana

Hello all.  Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couples Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline relationships, mainly of the Female/male variety.  I hope you had a good week.

Last week’s conversation was interesting and may or may not have been revealing as to what really drives our group.   I had thought that a wide-open topic like what you are or might be willing to be subjected to, or what she might be willing to impose, in order to get enough behavioral leverage to overcome a repeated problem might elicit a wide diversity of responses.  Didn’t really turn out that way. This time, multiple spankings seems to have the most support, and coincidentally my wife sent me a text instructing me that I am in for spankings spanning several days.  Of course, it likely isn’t really coincidental, because she has been reading this blog and is probably absorbing all sorts of potentially painful ideas from you folks.

Almost all the responses reduce in some way to making spankings more fearful, and not with non-spanking methods of bringing about behavioral change. When we talked about repeat offenses two years ago, one wife (Marisa) was getting frustrated enough to consider taking things in another direction:

"I am weary of punishing him repeatedly for the same behavior. I know especially if I spank him in front of another male or couple ( no couple now is available but a male is), Jay would do anything in his power to avoid a repeat. I am not suggesting anyone else try this and it is risky which is probably why I have not already used it. But sooner or later a wife gets tired of revisiting the same issues ( I hear some of this echoed in Anna's remarks above). I am not going to divorce him while spanking still works but I am going to find a way to beat his ass that lasts a long long time."

This week’s topic is a fairly logical extension of last week’s.  I had originally planned to post tomorrow, thinking I didn’t have enough time to come up with something while juggling everything else I had to get done today.  Then, in reviewing comments from yesterday, I noted that “a husband who knows” was kind enough to help me out with an idea that is pretty direct and doesn’t require a lot of work on my end.  He suggested: “What behavior have you been punished for most in the last year or so?  Why are you repeating the behavior? What has your wife done about it? What should she do about it to help you change?  Do you really want to change the behavior?  How upsetting is it to your wife?”

I’m happy to go first, though my answers won’t surprise many long-term readers.

What have I been punished for most in the last year.  I have been punished the most for over-consumption of alcohol, i.e., binge drinking.  Hands down, it is definitely my most challenging behavioral fault. 

Why am I repeating the behavior?  Probably a combination of long-established habit, social acceptance (indeed, encouragement) among our social and work friends, job responsibilities that include lots of socializing over drinks and dinner, and probably some genetic component that involves lacking the kind of “off switch” that more moderate drinkers have that leaves them fully satisfied after a drink or two.

What has my wife done about it? Lots and lots of spankings over the years, though with only a few exceptions single spankings for each offense.  So, not a lot of being put through a second or third spanking on an already sore bottom.

What should she do about it to help you change. This is a challenging one.  As I related a few weeks ago, she did start cracking down a few weeks ago, not in terms of increasing spankings or punishment but in setting more rules and trying to stop the over-consumption before it happened.  It caused a lot of resentment on my end, and when I expressed that, she felt (justifiably) undermined. Since then, I have thought about a comment Alan made to the effect that every time his wife or girlfriend has tightened the screws he has initially felt resentment, but then would adjust.  I think maybe I need to just accept the resentment as part of the process with any “real” discipline.  What kid spanked for bad behavior or told to go to be early doesn’t resent his parents for some period of time after the discipline is applied?  So, I think I probably need to talk to her about it again, and maybe this time we come up with some more concrete agreement on what she will and won’t do right away, and kind of crank thinks up a bit more gradually.  With respect to punishment, there was a lot of support last week for multiple days of spankings for a single offense, and I think we probably need to explore that on a more systematic basis.  And, for many couples consistency seems to be the key to real change.

 As for leverage beyond that, I'm one of last week's offenders who struggles to come up with something realistic beyond things we have already done like spanking and grounding.

Do you really want to change the behavior? Again, this question is not as simple as it appears.  When I have a bad night and do something stupid, I very much regret it and wish to be held accountable for it.  And, I do wish that I could moderate more easily on my own.  But, the plain fact is, I’ve been doing this for my entire adult life, and there are a ridiculous number of temptations in my current job.  So, I feel about this sort of the same way I feel about dieting and cardio exercising.  I hate dieting and I detest cardio workouts, yet when I get on the scale and feel disgusted at the ever-larger number I know that while I may not like displaying discipline in what I eat and in doing that run regardless of how boring, it is good for me.  So, I would say the rational part of me does want to change while the part of me that is all id kind of likes how things are.

How upsetting is it to her?  I’m not sure how to quantify it, and I think it depends on the specific context.  I think her attitude varies between disappointment and concern I will do something stupid sometime and hurt myself or someone else.  But, I’ve also been honest with her that I think her own attitude toward alcohol is not entirely consistent, because while she definitely has a problem with my bingeing, almost all her own close friends are also big drinkers.  In fact, her two closest friends and their spouses drink a lot more than I do!  So, she obviously finds something attractive about people who have this aspect to their personalities, even if it concerns her where my behavior is concerned.  Though, I guess you could say that her attitude isn’t all that different from how I feel about it myself – attracted on a visceral level but cognizant of the downsides of excess.

The Club - Meeting 304 - Leverage

“Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.” ― G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World

Hello all.  Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couples Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline relationships, mainly of the Female/male variety.  I hope you had a good week.

Sorry for the delayed posting.  I had one of those Saturdays in which you spend the whole day catching up on all those little “to do list” items that have stayed on your list for months and finally built to critical mass, including catching up on some family connections.  So, it was one of those days where I needed to put the blog in its place.  Between yesterday and a busy Friday, I also got a little behind responding to comments on last week’s topic.  Though, in all candor the comments were starting to drift anyway into some fairly BDSM-y and Femdom territory, which I don’t plan to reply to in any event. 

As for those comments last week that were on point, while it was subtle I thought that our discussions about others knowing and participating in our Domestic Discipline lifestyles may have evidenced a slight or not so slight evolution among the group over the last two or three years.  When I’ve raised these topics in the past, there tended to be a very small number of people who had brought others into their lifestyle and were “out” to one degree or another, and a whole bunch of others who categorically rejected the notion of bringing anyone else into this thing we do in any way, shape or form.   

That dynamic among our group seems to have changed a bit, with more people saying they have not done it in the past but might be open to it under the right circumstances.  There also seem to be a larger sub-set who are into extending anonymous discussions on blogs and websites like this into some more open and interactive form of communication, whether live meetings or something less than that but still less anonymous.  We’ll have to see how that develops over time.

Something that didn’t arise from last week’s comments was a clear idea for a new topic.  So, given my own lack of inspiration today, I’m stuck rehashing one from about a year ago.  About this time last year, I brought up an article I read in the New York Times about an “empowerment” coaching movement with a salacious angle.  It began with publicity that a Smallville actress who was arrested for allegedly acting as a recruiter for a sex cult.  I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the initial coverage, but then the New York Times posted a long investigative piece about it entitled The Sex Cult That Preached Empowerment:  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/magazine/sex-cult-empowerment-nxivm-keith-raniere.html.  I found it a fascinating read, even though, its title notwithstanding, there was very little discussion of sex.  Admittedly, a lot of it sounded like a pretty typical Amway business model and possibly a pyramid scheme, in which current members were incented to bring in members under them all for the benefit of those on top.  But, as a whole it sounded like more cultish Tony Robbins-like “personal power” guru founding a group comprised of a bunch of "life coaches" and their students, finding new and interesting ways to encourage self-improvement via  personalized consequences and—here is the key—those consequences were designed to be strict enough, hard enough, embarrassing enough to motivate an actual positive behavioral change.  These consequences were often described as pledging “collateral” or otherwise coming up with agreed-upon “leverage” to encourage the member to actually live up to their commitments or achieve their performance goals.

 

 The leverage they created included things like pledging "collateral" in one form or another, such as giving the leaders of the group a letter admitting to some embarrassing or illegal act (it isn’t clear whether these were acts they had actually committed).  If the performance goals were met or the commitment fulfilled, the “collateral” would not be sacrificed and the person would not suffer any detriment.  They also used group consequences for individual failures. For example, if John set a goal of running every day and he failed to do it on Monday, then on Tuesday all the men in John's assigned support group might have to give up their morning coffee.  Knowing that others might pay a price for his failure would presumably give John a greater incentive to do what he pledged to do.  Many of the "motivators" seem to be about raising the consequences of failing to such a high degree that the person was left highly, highly motivated not to fail.

Now, as the trial progressed, it became clear that at the top of the organization, there was a substantial sexual overlay and not a few Dominance/submission attributes, including "Master" and "slave" titles.  And, some of the “collateral” may have been used to enforce submission and service (sexual and otherwise) to the group’s leader, who was convicted after a half-day of jury deliberation.  So, to be clear, I am not condoning any non-consensual activity, let alone anything criminal.  While definitely more extreme that what most of us are doing, however, he parallels to wives using unconventional and sometimes "hard" means to coach and mentor us was intriguing.  Because for those of us who are using DD to try to improve ourselves and accomplish more or break bad habits, that is what DD is about, right  -- gaining sufficient leverage to get over those impediments that get in the way of meeting your goals?

This week’s topic is a little broad but, in a nutshell it is, for those who are using Domestic Discipline to improve their performance, meet goals, eliminate bad habits or foster good ones, what lengths have you gone to—or would you be prepared to go to—to bring about actual change?  Spanking is obviously the “go to” performance motivator for most of our participants, but what if a single or maybe even multiple spankings are not doing the trick?  

What is the solution for making the improvement happen, whether he likes it or not? Or, is his “liking” a condition on the entire arrangement that prevents her from taking it to a level that he might not like but actually would be effective?  What amount of authority do you wives have to crank things up to a level that actually results in real behavioral change?  This additional “leverage” or “collateral” could take a lot of forms.  We talked last week about bringing others into the relationship or telling others that he is a Disciplined Husband. Or, perhaps just a public consequence for a public offense. For those husbands who actually fear such embarrassment, is that an option she can or should explore?   

 Or, maybe there are additional “let the punishment fit the crime” kind of punishments she might impose above and beyond spanking?  Or, is really changing habits or meeting goals within a DD relationship merely a matter of consistency and severity?

As I said, this is a little nebulous and open-ended, but that’s what happens on a lazy Sunday when I’m lacking both motivation and inspiration!

Have a great week.