No Post

Happy weekend to all of you.   As predicted last week, I'm tied up with a family obligation.  So, no post today.

The Club - Meeting 321 - Holidays

"Come, woo me, woo me, for now I am in a holiday humor, and like enough to consent."  - William Shakespeare

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 all had a great Thanksgiving holiday, for those in the U.S. 

I realize I am getting this post out later in the week, but it also may stay up as the current post for a while, as we some family events this upcoming weekend that may make posting a challenge.

My holiday was good.  Relaxing, with lots of time with family and also quite a bit of solitary time, which for me as a pretty strong introvert is a necessity for any genuine recharging.  From a behavior perspective, it was a mixed bag with real progress in some areas but some real problems in others.  The positive surprise was on over-indulging.  Despite being off for a week and in an environment where drinks were flowing very freely, I tapered my own consumption down to almost zero.  Some of that was conscious, as I’m seeing a pretty direct correlation between alcohol consumption and some of the nagging physical problems I’ve been attributing to aging.  But, I’ve also found that when I take real time off from work, my binge behavior drops precipitously.  So, a lot of the bad behavior during the usual press of job and career looks a hell of a lot like self-medicating.

On the not so great front, I was having some real problems with temper both before and during the vacation.  I had a major, long-term, fairly contentious work project come to a close right around the time we left for vacation. Bringing it to a close involved a lot of travel, many very long days, and some pretty tense conversations.  It left me pretty frazzled and without a lot of patience for some of the everyday frustrations I encounter in an organization of our size.  I found myself getting far more snippy with people than I normally do and crossed some lines I generally set for myself about trying not to “punch down.” 

Worse yet, I got frustrated with Anne a couple of times over things where she was just trying to check on some planning I was doing and arrangements I was making to make sure I got them right.  Which I hadn’t. She definitely owes me a very substantial spanking for these “temper” issues, particularly the attitude directed her way.  Unfortunately, it probably has to wait a full week, as I had to go back on the work road the day after we returned from vacation.  Although I absolutely agree I have a hard spanking coming, I think when it comes to temper spankings are more about penance and accountability than about behavioral change.  

At least for me, when frustration boils over it happens so quickly that the damage is done before I can do much to check myself.  Though, is that maybe a rationalization or excuse?  Quite possibly, and the only way to really test that is for her to crank up the punishment and consistency on temper and attitude issues and see what happens.

  

So, as we enter this holiday season I’ve made some progress in some areas, but it’s a mixed bag.  Though, a “mixed bag” is better than an abject failure.  The holidays are just a hard time to really keep behavior in check.  So many temptations.   

Office parties.  Family gatherings.  Many, many opportunities for bad behavior, whether over-indulging on booze, diets and health falling by the wayside, or getting into political arguments with relatives over Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners.  

 

My behavior almost always deteriorates this time of year. How about you?  Does your behavior get worse this time of year?  In what ways?  Have you and your wife found any creative ways to deal with that?  We’ve talked before about “preventative” spankings, i.e. spankings that take place before an event as a reminder to behave.  Have you tried them before things like an office holiday party?  Have they been effective? 

Do you have another special measures you’ve implemented to keep behavior in check during the holidays, or are there any special rules that apply this time of year?

Have a great week, and behave yourself!

No Post

Hi all.  We're still out adventuring.  So, no post this morning.  There is some limited chance I'll do one later today or later in the week, but no promises,  Enjoy the rest of your Thanksgiving weekend!

Happy Thanksgiving - No Post This week

Anne and I will taking some time off beginning tomorrow, so I will not be posting this week.  I hope all of you in the U.S. have a great Thanksgiving!


Dan

The Club Meeting 320 - Switching

I can no longer obey.  I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up.  - Napoleon Bonaparte

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 all had a great week.

Mine was, and is, frustrating.  As reported recently, I’ve been in this very sexualized mood lately.  The problem is, between my travel, my wife’s travel, and some social obligations, we’ve barely even seen each other, let alone had time to put any of the nasty thoughts running through my head into practice.  Unfortunately, there’s no end in sight for at least another week.  I guess I will treat it as an extended experiment in maintaining a high level of erotic energy through some involuntary chastity.

I can always tell when a topic doesn’t do much for me personally, even if it may appeal to others in our little community.  The sure sign is how often I’ve made it a weekly topic over this blog's roughly six year history.  When a topic really intrigues me, I tend not to just do it, but overdo it.  Hence, lots of topics on tears (ZM, friendly reminder, you still owe us the in-depth tale of your first disciplinary crying experience!), how people got started in Domestic Discipline, boundaries, reporting, and strictness.  Then there are topics like corner time, which don’t do much for me and that I’ve devoted full topics to only a couple of times. 

This week’s topic is one I have really given short shrift to over the years.  In fact, I’ve made it a full topic only once, over four years ago, and the entire post was only about two paragraphs long.  That topic is “switching,” i.e. the spanker and spankee exchanging those roles.  Presumably, it also could apply to a broader power exchange as well, with a couple swapping dominant roles from time to time.

This has come up in a couple of contexts recently. First, my wife and I are not big porn watchers, but a few weeks ago I did some searching for movies that included F/m domestic discipline or FLR themes.  There was basically nothing.  Even M/f domestic discipline themes were more or less non-existent.  I did finally find a fairly well-reviewed series that billed itself as Fifty Shades but with better sex and real BDSM. I bought the series, thinking that even if the theme is M/f spanking and BDSM, maybe it would still give my wife some ideas on how to extend or deepen her dominance. 

So, while the movies were not about switching, they kind of related to switching issues in my relationship with Anne and our dominance explorations. (Unfortunately, much like the real Fifty Shades, there was very little real spanking or discipline/punishment and a lot of bondage and more or less vanilla sex, though the production quality was good by porn standards.)

Then, it came up more directly last week in an exchange between Julie and me, in which I noted that I have an aversion to exercising power over other people (even though I am in that role a lot at work), so I have no desire at all to be the “dominant” party in any relationship.  In fact, taking on any kind of dominant role kind of flies in the face of the entire reason I got into DD in the first place.  I recognized several years ago that I have a very unbalanced personality, in that I am very Type-A and have big issues with giving up control.  For me, domestic discipline and, increasingly over the last couple of years, FLR are means for balancing out a very unbalanced orientation.  Adding some yin to way too much yang.  Doing the opposite by taking on a dominant role, even sporadically, might screw up my efforts to balance things out.

My aversion to exercising power over other people includes my orientation toward spanking.  I am a receiver, not a giver. 

The initial exchange with Julie led to this reply from Alan:

“I hear what you are saying and that's pretty much how I feel NOW. But back in the bad old days (before I received my first real disciplinary spanking), being with a woman you care for who passionately wants a spanking (and who is also very desirable) makes it all seem different. I don't think I could ever return to that mind-set. But, in the day, it seemed very much the thing to do. I might add I believe quite a few people (both males and females) have gone through these transformations --as the wonderful Julie demonstrates on her equally wonderful blog.”

I hear Alan's point, but I’m really not sure I could ever get there.  Even if my wife really wanted it, which as far as I know she still doesn’t.  If the spanking were purely erotic and not very hard – maybe.  But, I’m pretty confident I could never give her a real disciplinary spanking. 

Also, I would be leery about exploring switching when it comes to our ongoing experiments with real power exchange.  I want my wife to explore her dominance and to get more and more comfortable in that role. When I think about switching things up and dominating her even in a purely erotic scenario, I get concerned about the possibility that she might like it and might want more of it, when my goal is for her to be increasingly in that Top role and me on the bottom.  It is that dynamic I want to explore, and I want to deepen it, not dilute it by switching back and forth between dominant and bottom roles.

As I discussed last time I had a topic on this, the one attraction I have to female spanking scenarios is the artwork.  So much better and more nuanced than most of the F/m stuff, and the female form is just so nice to look at!

 

 How about you?  If you are now the discipline recipient in a DD marriage, or the “bottom” in a Dominance/submission relationship, was there was a time when you were the paddle swinger or in the Dominant role?  Do you switch between the two, or is the more submissive or “bottom” role now more or less permanent?  Was there any particular event that helped you realize which role was right for you?

For the ladies, have you ever been the spanked party or a “bottom” or “submissive”?  (For whatever reason, I gravitate toward the term “bottom” more than “submissive,” though the converse is not true – I don’t like the term “Top,” though I don’t know why.  Probably too many on-line encounters with too many dick-ish self-identified Tops.)  If not, is it something you want to experience?  Why or why not?  If you have been the spankee, were the spankings for real discipline, or more purely erotic or sexual?  Were you spanked growing up? 

For those of you have switched, was it just the spanking role that you switched up, or did the switching extend to more fundamental power exchange elements, like decision making power and authority, making rules for the other party, etc.?

Have a great week.

Club Meeting 319 - Spillovers

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Club Meeting 318 - How Long?

“I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, 'There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

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 all had a great week.

It was an interesting one, on multiple levels.  Belle’s question about why an “alpha” male would want to be the recipient in a Domestic Relationship ended up covering a lot of ground: young men and their ability to grow up, or lack thereof; spanking fetishes versus balancing power and giving up control; female empowerment and its possible impact on that female’s desire; Domestic Discipline’s ability to “fix” problematic relationships or lack thereof; preserving  male “swagger” while punishing arrogance; parenting philosophies as applied to 30 year-old daughters; and, of course, the need for a better label than “Alpha” to identify men who with dominant or aggressive personality traits.

Lost in all that was an uptick in our number of female commenters, in addition to Belle. Liz, thanks for dropping by again. Lola and Drew, welcome.

Coincidentally, as our efforts to answer Belle’s questions about female empowerment in the context of bad experiences with an immature spouse were playing out here on the blog, a political situation with some parallels was playing out in the press.  Katie Hill, a Democratic congresswoman from California and the first openly bisexual member of Congress resigned after someone, probably her jealous ex-spouse, leaked naked pictures of Ms. Hill participating in a threesome.   

From the reports in the press, it sounds like Ms. Hill’s high school boyfriend/spouse was upset that she outgrew him, went on to bigger and better things, and became a very empowered young woman. While he was living with mom and griping that his estranged wife wouldn’t pay him spousal support, Ms. Hill was embracing her power, sleeping with staffers and casting votes to impeach the most powerful man in the world.  So, estranged husband apparently got some revenge. Some of the same right-wing press that forgave non-consensual grabbing of women by their pussies got very moralistic about consensual relationships between a congressional candidate and her same-sex staffer.  In the era of #MeToo, that was enough to sink her career.  In her parting speech, she bemoaned the “double standard” applied to women in power.  While I sympathize with her and really hope the person who leaked the photos is prosecuted for “revenge porn,” I don’t think the “double standard” label fits the facts.  Senator Al Franken was driven from office for conduct that was arguably way less problematic than sex with a subordinate, so the Democratic leadership actually couldn’t support Ms. Hill without engaging in the kind of double standard she is now condemning.  Their previous treatment of men in power kind of put them in a box.  So, to me the issue isn’t about “double standards.” Rather it’s about how far we take a movement that has done good things but when applied blindly risks denying the reality that human relationships always have, and probably always will, revolve around sex and power.

Fortunately, here at the Disciplinary Couples Club, we openly celebrate the complex blending of power relationships and sexual attraction!  If that puts me at odds with our current puritanical bent and faux egalitarianism in all aspects of our complicated lives, so be it.  Also, I'm struggling with one of the most obvious lessons of Ms. Hill’s plight, namely: “Don’t let anyone photograph you naked.” Yet, at around the same time Ms. Hill was resigning from Congress, I was posting on KD’s blog about how much I like pictures of women “flashing” in public and how I wish I could entice my wife to join in.

Now, on to this week’s topic, which I will try to keep a little tighter than last week’s meandering, as interesting as some of it was.  Near the end of last week’s discussion, Belle, Alan and I got into some exchanges about the mechanics of delivering a real disciplinary spanking, including the tools she should use, what a hard adult spanking entails, etc.  In the course of that conversation, Alan observed:

“I don't know of your guy has had a real spanking as an adult. If not, he is going to be shocked at how much it hurts and how bad he wants it to stop. Be prepared for that and making sure he has that experience and understand it is definitely part of DD. You will see a pretty radical transformation just from that –and if he doesn’t submit to it, you will know early that it’s not going to work. Tough love maybe but very important.”

At around that same time, I had an email exchange with Caged Lion, who suggested the following topic (here in abbreviated form):

“I have an idea you may want to use for a topic. It may not be quite whatyou like because it does tend to attract the BDSM crowd, but it's an issue that's been bothering both of us. My wife keeps expressing concern about how long and how hard a spanking should be. I don't have any suggestion for her because I have no idea how other people in disciplinary relationships manage this. Do spankings always produce bruises? How long do they typically last?  Like almost every other guy in a DD relationship, you and I asked our wives to punish us. On your site any mention of a spanking might include whether or not it ended in tears but doesn't talk about how it was administered and for how long. I know would be helpful to us if we could find out how other couples handle this.”

I actually disagree about whether we’ve addressed “how long and how hard” on this blog.  I’ve posted some variation on that question multiple times.  But, it never really seems to draw much in the way of helpful, concrete responses.  And, it often isn’t participation by the BDSM crew that cuts off the discussion but, rather, those who weigh in strongly against any kind of formula or slogan, including any along the lines of this one:

In order to avoid that sideshow this time, and recognizing that we do all have differing pain thresholds and different abilities for absorbing well-earned lessons, let’s focus on the more concrete question of how long your own spankings typically take, whether measured in time or number of swats or some other metric.

I don’t have a lot of guidance to give on this one, because when I am being spanked I typically am looking at the floor and not at a clock. And, time spent in that position is, well, a bit relative.  When I am bent over the chair or ottoman and taking a very hard paddling or strapping, it seems to take forever.  But, in reality I am sure the whole thing takes well under 10 minutes.  Probably more like six or seven minutes.  For the most part, I haven't timed them. We did inject a time element into a few spankings earlier this year, however.  Following up on a suggestion from Helen or Elizabeth (I forget which), I suggested that my wife ensure that each offense is dealt with separately.  My thinking was that by separating each spanking into a separate mini-session, I would always have an incentive to behave better even if I had already earned a spanking that week.  So, the plan we came up with is that each offense would get at least 5 minutes of actual spanking time, as measured with an hourglass, with intervening sessions of corner time to let my butt recover and to get rid of most of the numbness. We only used that approach two or three times, with the longest resulting in about 15 minutes of actual spanking time.

When we were first getting into Domestic Discipline, we implemented a system that focused more on the number of swats than the temporal duration of the spanking.  Under our system, each agreed-upon offense was assigned a certain minimum number of swats. I don’t recall the details at this point, but it went something like this:  We had agreed the binge drinking was a problem that needed to be addressed.  We set a limit on the total number of drinks I was allowed to have (two or three, as I recall).  Exceeding that limit resulted in a baseline of 10 swats with a heavy “school”-style paddle plus five swats for each drink over the agreed-upon limit.  So, even one drink over the limit resulted in 15 hard swats. There were other offenses too, most with presumptive swats in the range of 5 to 10.  I still  recall vividly a session during our first few months of DD in which I had been particularly bad. When I tallied up the number of swats, it came to 65. Now, today, that is a fairly small fraction of the number of swats she gives me during a robust session, but at the time it was far more than I had ever taken.  I told her that I wasn’t sure I should take that many.  Without skipping a beat, she told me, “Then, I guess you should have behaved better.  You’re getting 65.”  Thus, a true Disciplinary Wife was born.

Over the last few years, I have become convinced that my lack of tears will never be solved by increasing severity, in terms of the kind of implement or the strength of the swat.  If anything, it works the opposite.  If the tool is just “too much” (thick rubber straps and some paddles qualify), I cannot prevent myself from going into “resistance mode” in which I can’t avoid just trying to gut it out.  But, I’m not as sure that the same thing holds with respect to duration. I have always wondered whether a longer spanking would result in me finally breaking down, if it just kept going on and on with no relief in sight.  I’m hoping ZM will weigh in on this one in particular, as he did reach a point of real tears last year and I recall him saying it was because his wife basically decided it would keep going until he did.  I would love to hear more details about what that actually looked like.

So, for the group, how long do your spankings usually take?  Have you ever timed one?  Is there a goal for it to last a certain amount of time? Does that vary depending on the offense? Or, Ladies, are you looking for some particular indication (tears, begging, etc.) 

By the way, regarding Caged Lion's specific question about bruising, I used to bruise regularly and fairly easily.  After the first couple of tries after we discovered DD and after she laid down the hairbrush in favor of an actual paddle, I bruised pretty much every time.  Now it is the reverse; regardless of the severity of the spanking, I very seldom bruise.  One exception was a few months ago when she experimented with some synthetic cane.  One of them wrapped around my butt and left very nasty bruises on my hips.  Honestly, I do miss bruising.  It was concrete evidence for her of a spanking well-given, and the need to cover up in the gym made the whole thing seem a bit more edgy.

Happy Halloween!

Hopefully not at the risk of cutting off discussion on the current topic early, but it just wouldn't be Halloween without some naughty pictures and artwork.  For whatever reason, I'm in an overtly sexual groove right now, so here are a few of the more pornographic and fun Halloween-themed bits from my growing collection.  Be safe! And . . .

Have fun.  Maybe with a bit of this . . .

But, not too much fun!

But, drinking can be very fun, in moderation.

I wonder what he did to get in trouble?  Looks like his Halloween isn't turning out fun at all.

Do you think Linus' Great Pumpkin looked anything like this?  Nah, probably not.

What would a Halloween post be without a sexy witch?

And a naughty female devil.

 Not sure what she's supposed to be, but who cares!

Have a super sexy Halloween!

The Club Meeting 317 - Why Does He Want This?

I hid all the things I was feeling-- and indeed I did not know what they were, except that all the peace of that autumnal journey was gone.” ― C.S. Lewis

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 all had a great week.

Before we begin, can I say how much I love Halloween season? How do you not like a holiday that's all about naughtiness and misbehavior?  No other holiday seems to lend itself so easily to adult themes.

   

The discussion last week really didn’t seem to take off, did it?  Some topics are like that, and I admit “determination” might have been a little nebulous.  To the point that I jumped on one comment as “not on topic,” when in retrospect it basically was.  I should have read it more closely, so bad on me.  We did get into some interesting discussions about workplace etiquette, putting up with workplace douchebags, and whether our wives should spank us for showing too little patience for said douchebags or too much.  While I didn’t think about the latter much at the time, it is kind of an interesting question, isn’t it?  I’ve always thought about punishment for workplace attitude issues from the perspective of someone who displays too much attitude. But, what if the husband lets himself get walked over and stepped on at work? Could a Disciplinary Wife spank some backbone into him?  Perhaps a topic for another time.

But, while it didn’t seem to spark a lot of interest, it did generate this question from “Belle”?

Why would a successful, confident man want that kind of treatment? Please make that a topic! I am the estranged wife of an alpha male and we are considering reuniting. He has asked me for domestic discipline as you describe if we do get back together. He says he needs it but can't explain why. I am baffled and looking for answers, particularly from strong males like Dan and some others on this blog. I understand that dominatrixes say much of their clientele is powerful men looking for relief from always being "on." But this is far different, an alpha male who wants his wife to treat him like a naughty child. Please, someone, help me understand the psychology of this and what I would be getting myself into. I have been searching the internet and most males craving punishment are submissives. Here there are some who are not, and I hope to hear from them. A topic for next week?

A confused wife, "Belle"

I’m sure many—maybe most—Disciplinary Wives shared Belle’s confusion at one time.  Hell, they're probably still confused and curious after years of giving him what he says he wants but never quite understanding why he wants it.  As I’ve reported a couple of times before, my wife seems to have had a mini-epiphany a year or so ago, after way more than a decade in this lifestyle.  She read a book called The Hesitant Mistress—for the second time—and this time something clicked.  She doesn’t really know why.  She told me that even though I told her for years that I really wanted this, part of her had a hard time believing it, because why would anyone want something like that?? Somehow, the book helped her believe that, for whatever reason, I really do want it.  I don’t know if there was a particular line or paragraph that led to her epiphany, but here is one that seems “true” to me in its description of why some men who don’t see themselves as “submissives” still crave discipline (though, ironically it appears in a section characterizing the “submissive” male):

“He wants to be the best man he can be, and that means overcoming his faults. He hates that he cuts corners and procrastinates. He craves correction, even as he hates needing it. He doesn’t want to slack off when no one’s looking. He wants your high standards, your tough love. He wants you to accept nothing less than his best effort. The submissive man will accept guidance only if he knows it’s good for him. He is not a doormat, someone too helpless to protest as others walk all over him. He has the right to complain, to question, to call a halt to any situation he disagrees with. Submission is an escape from the ordinary, not a personality trait.”

So, why did this otherwise “Alpha” male come to be attracted to Domestic Discipline and, increasingly, Female Led Relationships?  Honestly, anything I say about it is, at best, a guess.  And, I also seem to be atypical.  So, Belle, you should take everything I say with a big grain of salt.   

When I say I am atypical, what I mean is I seem to be an outlier in that I didn’t have an early fascination with spanking, while the vast majority of men interested in Domestic Discipline seem to have come to it through an earlier interest in spanking.  Nope, no strict aunt or hot step-mom fantasies that I recall. 

I don’t know, but suspect, that for those men who did have an early interest in spanking that now expresses itself mainly in the Domestic Discipline context, there are two intertwined but distinct personality traits going on: (1) an early and fetish-like interest in spanking; and (2) a “Type-A” personality with somewhat abnormally high proclivities for taking responsibility, being driven to perform, etc.  Either of those tendencies can exist independently but, when you combine the two you get a man who starts off interested in spanking in general, then at some point it narrows to an interest in being spanked as part of being held accountable or driving higher performance.  

In the end, it's not either-or.  For me, and I suspect for some men for whom the need expresses itself as a need for discipline with spanking as the preferred tool but not an end in itself, the need for discipline and accountability is stronger than the sexual component that underlies much of the spanking interest. 

If you adjust that mix a bit, maybe you get someone whose interest expresses itself as a desire to experience more intense, and more sexualized Dominance/submission. Perhaps a Female Led Relationship represents something in between. We are complicated creatures with complex inputs and outputs. 

That’s the best I can really do, while acknowledging that I somehow leapfrogged over the pre-existing spanking interest and went right to an overwhelming desire to be held accountable after discovering the Disciplinary Wives Club website.  Now, I obviously had enough pre-existing interest in spanking to be searching for spanking-themed material on-line, but it really was just kind of a diversion.  After I discovered DD, however. it became an obsession.  So, while spanking and discipline/accountability are intertwined for me, it seems to be the latter that really drives my overall need.

So, why do I have this need for discipline even though I don’t consider myself to be submissive and, in fact, am off the scale anti-authoritarian?  I think it is about both background and balance.  When I put myself on my own psychiatrist couch, I suspect (but don’t really know), that it has something to do with being wired very Type-A with all the need for achievement and performance that comes along with that, while growing up in an environment with no rules or boundaries. So, I had high energy and high achievement needs, but it had no direction and was just kind of energy popping all over the place. 
   

Also, since I had no rules to keep me in line, doing so was all on me.  Not that I did impose boundaries on myself. I tended to do a lot to get in trouble, but always managed to get myself out of it, often by the skin of my teeth. That is a lot of responsibility to have at a young age, and I think now part of me craves having someone with the authority to lay down boundaries because I never had them growing up.  So, why do I want those boundaries from my wife, yet I actively resist authority at work? Well, I grew up with a very, very Alpha dad who was even more anti-authoritarian than I am today and absorbed big parts of that personality.  Carrying that over to work, it's not that I don't want to give into authority.  In fact, part of me does have a twisted desire to have someone at work who is strong enough and powerful enough to put me in my place and keep me in line. It just isn't something I really can pull off, perhaps because I haven't really worked under someone strong enough to do it..

Also, I just think that extending discipline to other areas of my life--work, fitness, meditation and Zen-like spiritual discipline, etc.--will make me stronger and help me reach higher levels of performance, productivity and mental discipline. And, finally, letting go of control is a big thing for me, with both visceral and conceptual components.

That’s the best I can do, and it’s probably not all that enlightening.  Fortunately, we addressed a topic along these lines back in 2016, and ZM provided some more structured speculation around why he wants this.  His thinking may be more typical, since he did begin with an early interest in spanking:

"Why do I need or want this?  I'm really not sure... 

• Maybe I need more clear boundaries, so life feels orderly and not out of control?  
• I didn't have any boundaries while growing up. Could it be that? 
• Maybe I just need the reassurance and orderliness of actions having consequences for the world to make sense? Of course they do, but it is not always as clear as "if this, then that...? 
• Maybe I want or need to change faster to become who I want to be and do what I want to do? 
• I am good, but I have huge dreams so I need to become ever better to achieve my goals. 
• Sometimes consequences are too long-term to change behavior effectively. For example, I know that if I eat less, I will lose weight, look better, be healthier, and live longer. But because these are all long term effects, it can be very hard to stay on a diet since I don't see immediate results. 
• Maybe I lack sufficient self-control, or I live too much in the moment? But for me to achieve my long term goals, I need short-term consequences to effect long-term change. 
• Maybe I sometimes need the closure of having paid for my transgressions? 
• Even if others forgive me, sometimes it is hard to forgive myself, and guilt accumulate 
• There are few situations in life where wrongs are truly paid for (like speeding tickets) 
• Sometimes I just need to have a clean slate. 
• Maybe I get tired of being in charge, and need to be under someone else's control for a while
• It is lonely at the top, with everyone looking to me for answers all the time. 
• Maybe even though others look up to me, I know I am not quite as great as they think? 
• Or maybe I bully others sometimes, and need to feel what it is like to be bossed around? 
• Either way, making difficult decisions is tiring. It can be a relief to have all decisions out of my hands, even if only for a time.

It could be any, all, or none of these reasons.  I'm not sure, but it doesn't really matter, because I do know that I crave "real" discipline, punishment, and control, that which most people would rather avoid. This need for control and discipline is a perpetual enigma which forever lives in the never-never land between fantasy and reality. 

So, sorry Belle, that is about the best I can do.  How about the rest of you? For the men who do see themselves as Alphas, Type-As . . . whatever label seems to fit . . .why do you want to dominate in some contexts but not in others?  Why do you resist authority in some contexts but crave it in others? For the wives, have you been confused by your husband’s DD and FLR desires?  Do you have some insight on what makes him tick on that front? How have you accommodated your doubts and his desires?

Have a great week.

P.S.: Some spanking drawings for Belle to illustrate positions that might work with belt and bath brush.