The Club - Meeting 326 - Chores

An exhaustive study of police records shows that no woman has ever shot her husband while he was doing the dishes. - Earl Wilson (1907-1987) US newspaper columnist

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.

The first full week of 2020 got off to a slow start for me in some ways, though it already yielded some big changes in other areas.  I may be proven dead wrong, but it just feels like 2020 is going to be a big deal kind of year, hopefully in a good way.  One good sign is that twelve days into the new year, I haven’t had any significant failure on the exercise, diet or personal behavior fronts.  My weight is inching down slowly but steadily, and my biggest challenge around exercise is I’ve had a couple of days where I was very tired, achy and my strength was down, indicating the real possibility there was some overtraining at work.  But, if twelve days into the new year my biggest problem is overtraining, I’ll take it.

Of course, the more things change the more they stay the same.  Last week ended with another little exchange with “Jack,” my most reliable yet least welcome regular commenter.  As I was preparing for this week’s post, I looked for past blog posts on the same topic.  The last one was back in 2017, and as I was re-reading it I found this that I had written about feeling qualms about introducing a topic the week before about fantasies:

  

“I had a lot of second thoughts about going down the ‘tell me your fantasies’ road, particularly at a time in which one of my biggest blogging frustrations is the little pest who keeps farting at my blog with his repetitive "She spanked my bottom, and then she said something pithy about a wife spanking her husband, and then she made me face the wall, and then some of her friends dropped by and I was embarrassed and my bottom hurt." Over and over and over.  And, he's now leaving the same inane drivel on Kathy's Femdom 101 blog and KD's blog and Hermione's, using two or three different names, both male and female.  It's enough to make me want to remove all the links to other blogs, since the trolls seem to start here, then when I take down their content they follow the trail of links to pollute all the other blogs I like and respect.”

Big sigh.  It would be nice to have a troll-free 2020, but no way that is ever going to happen, especially if the posting is tolerated or encouraged elsewhere.  To me, that’s kind of like feeding seagulls at the beach – fine as long as you’re OK being mobbed by more squawking seagulls. But, it's ultimately each blogger's choice as to how much distraction and aesthetic distraction to allow on their blog. Jack was irked at me because I made a comment about one of his silly repetitive comments on Red's Consensual Spanking blog, but it was because I know Red has tried, repeatedly, to get Jack to stop posting there too. 

So, what is the topic I was looking for when I stumbled on the exchange about Jack from three years ago? I decided to go with “chores.”  I’m not sure why that topic was on my mind this week, but I suspect it is because I’ve been pretty well-behaved in my bigger ticket areas like drinking too much, temper, etc. When those issues aren’t drowning out everything else, my mind turns to more everyday, pedestrian areas for improvement.

I also think it has something to do with my renewed interest in exploring the FLR and dominance aspects of our relationship. While our approach to Domestic Discipline has focused from the beginning on punishing for significant behavioral lapses that we both agree are substantial problems, that approach is almost entirely reactive.  It’s all about punishing something after it has happened.  The same is somewhat true for chores, but I feel like punishing for those gives her more opportunities to flex her “Head of Household” muscles by setting expectations, monitoring and evaluating performance, and setting appropriate levels of punishment or consequences.

 

 There also an undeniably “parental” or “maternal” aspect to her having the authority to assign chores and enforce compliance.

I also do believe that encouraging a level of submission to authority and holding me accountable for small things has ripple effects, at least if done consistently.  When it comes to developing good habits, what you do every day is more impactful than what you do every once in a while even if the latter is bigger, weightier or harder.  When I'm undisciplined and sloppy in small, everyday areas, that can't help but spill over into bigger things. It's kind of like the "broken windows" approach to policing, in which crime prevention focuses on things like petty vandalism and graffiti, because those petty crimes degrade the neighborhood and give people less of a sense that the rules matter.

We have talked about incorporating a more rigorous approach to chores and punishment for not doing them, though we never seem to get into much of a groove.  That’s unfortunate, because I think it could be a game changer.  I've talked about this before, but one incident that has stuck in my mind for a very long time involved one of the occasions when I was punished, somewhat unexpectedly, for not doing chores.  Most of the time, we split household tasks pretty evenly, though we cover different things based largely on respective competence and interest.  For example, she manages the bank accounts and pays the bills. I handle investments and retirement accounts.  Where meals are concerned, she shops and cooks, while I clean up and do the dishes.  Most of the time. But, I also have a tendency to get distracted and to leave aspects of the job uncompleted.  I’ll load the dishwasher but leave a few items in the sink.  Or, I’ll do all the dishes but fail to wipe down the counters and clean the stove.

An ongoing problem was a string of incidents in which I forgot to clean a rice cooker. I just totally spaced it, and a few times she would find leftover rice in the cooker several days later.  The third time it happened, she texted a picture of the uncleaned cooker with rice still in it, expressing her dissatisfaction in no uncertain terms.  That night, I was sitting at the kitchen table doing some work, and she walked in from her office and started pointing out other chores that had been done in a half-assed ways or lapses in attention that created problems.  Sweeping the floors but leaving tufts of dog hair in several places. Leaving the door to our bedroom closet open, which allowed a misbehaving pet to go in and pee on things. And then there was the chronic failure to really clean the kitchen after dinner without leaving things, like the rice cooker, undone or at best half-done.  She was having none of it.  "You did a half-ass job on the floors, you left the closet door open repeatedly after I told you not to, and then there is the damn rice cooker.  Shut down your computer and go to the basement.  You are going to get spanked."

And, that’s what happened.  I thought since these were fairly small matters, it might be a light spanking.  Nope.  She thoroughly blistered my ass with a combination of the strap, the paddle and the bath brush.  It was kind of like the story on the Disciplinary Wives Club website written by our Al, in which a husband asks to try a “real” disciplinary spanking, he and his wife agree that leaving the toilet seat up will be something that earns a spanking, he immediately leaves it up then tries to talk his way out of getting his first spanking. His wife carries through with a very harsh spanking, which on the surface might have seemed like more than such a small offense merited, but it got the message across and helped him understand what it was he was asking for.

In my case, as I collected myself after it was over, there was a small part that resented getting such a hard spanking for such "small" things, which really boiled down to simple forgetfulness and not paying attention, but I also felt a new respect for her and the first glimmerings of that "healthy fear" I had told her I wanted.   

The resentment and the respect were intertwined, because it was the fact that she had spanked for things that were important to her but not necessarily to me that led to the twinge of resentment, but it also was what made the exercise of authority real. More than just about any spanking she had given me for "bigger" issues, where we both agreed they merited not only spankings but very hard ones, getting spanked so hard for a poorly done chore was a powerful experience that showed her really stepping into her role.

Do chores play a role in your Domestic Discipline relationship?  Who assigns them?  What chores is the disciplined husband required to perform?  What are the consequences for not doing them or doing them poorly?

Ladies, do you assign chores to your husband?  If not, would you like to?  If you do, is there any protocol or standard you apply to inspecting his work and deciding whether it is sufficient?  If he doesn’t do a chore or does it poorly, how consistent are you in dealing with that?  What are the consequences?  A lecture?  A spanking?  Some other form of punishment?

I hope you have a great week.  Get those chores done! 

Delayed Post

Happy Saturday to everyone. I have some things going on today that may, and likely will, keep me from posting.  If not late this evening, I will post tomorrow.

The Club - Meeting 325 - I Have, I would, I Might . . .

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The Club - Meeting 324 - Happy New Years, Resolutions & Ask Me Anything

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right. - Oprah Winfrey

Hello all.  Welcome back to the last meeting of the Disciplinary Couples Club for 2018. 

As all of you long-term readers know, I am a chronic maker of lists, and that includes lengthy, detailed lists of goals, expectations, hopes and resolutions.  I am not a person who is afraid of change in general and nowhere near arrogant enough to think I couldn't use some, including in my personal habits and performance.

Consistent with my recent bout of laziness, which has led me to recycle some older posts recently (though, to be fair, I did update them at least little), I decided to start this early New Years post by first looking back at the posts from 2018 and 2017.  It was an odd mix of forward progress, modest change, and some plain old intertia.  Surprisingly and a little depressingly, here is a verbatim quote from 2017, summarizing my approach to setting goals for 2018:

“I kind of feel like leaving things a little open to whatever happens.  As it inevitably will and instead of resisting it, I hope to allow for the possibility of being pleasantly surprised. In fact, one reason I'm not spending a lot of time coming up with specific career and work goals for 2018 is I wouldn't mind being in something very different by year-end and so, while I want to continue to out-perform in my current role as long as it lasts, I don't want to be so focused on goals related to that role that I don't stay mentally and emotionally open to letting something entirely new take me in an entirely different direction.  I do hope 2018 brings a deepening of the Domestic Discipline aspects of my relationship with my wife and a stepping up in her confidence level and willingness to take control.  Being the goal-setter and list-maker I am at heart, I probably will spend some time in the next few days coming up with specific things I would like to see us do to help bring those goals about, but right now, I just don't feel like it.  So . . .  Goodbye 2017.”

Now, the reason that entry seems depressing is that I intended to open this week's post by noting that my resolutions frequently focus a lot on career and financial goals, but that it is hard to do that this year because I am giving serious consideration to trying to be in a very different and likely much less lucrative career by the end of 2020.  But, when I looked at the 2017 post I found this was exactly where I was at this same point that year! So, on the surface, not much has changed in two freaking years.

Though,in some ways, things did not stay the same and, in fact, 2019 was a mirror image of 2018.  Here are some excerpts from 2018:  

“I hope you all had a great Christmas.  Ours was good.  In some ways, it seemed like a 'smaller' holiday.  Less busyness.  Slightly less running around from party to party.  And, smaller but more personal gifts.  And, I like that. Looking back on 2018, it was a pretty good year, if I ignore the career front.  That aspect of 2018 was mediocre at best, with much more involuntary downtime than I’m usually comfortable with. While our progress stalled mid-year, on the DD and FLR front my wife really did step it up significantly in the first half of the year, and hopefully she will get back on track once kids clear out after the holidays. Our kids are all healthy and doing well on their chosen school/career paths.  From a health perspective, this time last year I was convalescing from an injury and in a chronic bad mood due to lack of sleep caused by ongoing pain from said injury.  Full recovery took way longer than I expected, but I’m finishing out 2018 stronger and healthier than I was in 2017, and slightly ahead of where I was in 2016. At my age, doing better than holding steady is itself a surprising accomplishment.  While it was not a smooth ride for everyone in our extended family, all of them are still with us as we head into 2019 and their momentary setbacks now look like blessings in disguise. We also have some aging furry friends that are more like family than pets. I was pretty sure more than one of them would not see the end of 2018, yet while things are getting harder for them, all are still with us.”

This year ended a lot like 2018 -- scaled down busyness and running around and a focus on family.  In fact, one reason I feel better than usual this year is, while I put away my share of Christmas cookies and other bad food, we bailed on pretty much ever holiday party that would normally be on our agenda. And, that felt good. But, the similarities break down as I look backward over the course of 2019 and compare it to what I said above about 2018.  In 2018, things stayed pretty stable on the work front, and any lack of activity was involuntary.  In contrast, in 2019 I made a fairly disastrous career decision early in the year that kept me insanely busy for the entire year, at least on the management side. For our kids, it was kind of a mixed bag, with some resounding successes but also some big disappointments and frustrated expectations. From a health perspective, 2018 ended in better shape than it began, while this year I’ve been dealing with a chronic and frustrating problem that may be a result of the frenzied job pace, and it’s made it even more challenging than usual to keep to any sort of workout routine, leaving me slightly heavier than I was last year.  Though, when I look at just how bad the year was in terms of diet and exercise, it could be a lot worse, and on a few metrics I actually am in slightly better shape than this time last year.  But, for much of the year the trend was not good at all, and that is something that absolutely must get fixed in 2020.  As for our extended family, 2018 was rough for some of them but most of them seem healthier this year than last, with one significant exception.  And, finally, our elderly furry friends held in there through 2018, but the same was not true of 2019.

Now, as for specific resolutions I made in 2016 and 2017, the picture is pretty damn depressing.  Here is how I did:

General Resolutions

Fewer Saturdays spent regretting my Friday work-related socializing: This got a little better as we approached year-end, but it mostly was a bad year on this front.  Almost all of the bad behavior related to work responsibilities or, at least, work-related activities and temptations.  One more reason to rethink what a successful career looks like for 2020.

Temper at work: This was OK through much of the year, and I actually made a good amount of progress. I even formed some genuinely good relationships with a couple of people at work who used to consistently set me off. I really tried to start living by the mantra "assume good intentions."   Then, in the last month or two of the year it got a lot worse.  Honestly, the accumulated impact of a year of too much travel and too little sleep finally just got the better of me.

Nurturing important relationships: This was a very mixed bag. Thanks to travel, I saw less of my wife. Though, perhaps in a twisted form of "absence makes the heart grow fonder,"  in some ways our relationship improved, including on the DD and FLR front.  Though, honestly, I think that had more to do with more personal growth on her side than on absence per se, though one could argue that the absence gave her both room and necessity to stretch and grow. I did end up with some new relationships at work, but those were offset by not doing a great job of maintaining some meaningful existing relationships. If anything, that problem was exacerbated over the last month of 2019, as we skipped out on holiday parties with existing friends and work connections, as we were just too exhausted.

Exiting 2019 in better shape than I entered it, as measured by pant-size, blood pressure, strength and endurance: This was, at best, very mixed.  On most of the important metrics, such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels, I lost ground.  On the other hand, my strength is about the same and maybe slightly up, while pant-size is about the same and actually slightly down.  But, on the whole, it was a year in which I lost some ground, because I'm not living with a chronic problem that is making working out more challenging and painful.  I'm going to have to explore this in a more systematic and dedicated way in 2020, and it may be that I have to accept that aging inevitably applies to me and not not just the rest of the human race.  Nah, let's not go there quite yet.  

Domestic Discipline Resolutions:

Self-report any infractions at least weekly: Big fail. If anything, all my work related overnight travel made it even easier to get away with bad behavior.

Empower my wife to grow in her disciplinary authority: I think I did OK on this, though her actual success at “taking the bull by the horns,” ebbed and flowed. But, in 2018 the flow was in the wrong direction – she started strong but then lost ground.  In 2019, it got off to a slow start, but in the last few months she started getting a lot more consistent with using spankings to address issues that make her mad and in punishing bad behavior.

During spankings, instead of "taking it like a man," try hard to let go all ego and control, surrendering totally to her authority:  Let loose and really cry during a spanking: Like every other year, this was a total fail. 

Do a two-day boot camp to focus on our DD and FLR relationship: Fail.

So, where to go in 2020?  I’m still in this post-Christmas zen place in which I don’t feel very ambitious.  On the non-DD front, I really, really need to work on getting into better physical shape and getting the daily stress under control.  I’m pretty hesitant to make any career goals for 2020, given that I did have a plan in place at the end of 2018 and then everything went totally sideways and pretty much off the rails for the entirety of 2019.  In fact, in the past I had this almost faith-like belief that there actually was a connection between my plan and list-making and the goals I hit each year.  It wasn't always linear, but there did seem to be a connection.  But, wow, did 2019 ever lead me to question that assumption. The year as it happened looked nothing like the year I planned as I wrapped up 2018.  Though, I don't think passivity and inertia is the right course either.  I do think that I need to face up to the fact that if I keep doing what I’m doing in terms of care, even if that turns out to be very lucrative financially and a least “not bad” with respect to fulfillment, just staying in that rut may keep me from doing something that actually would be better.  You can do that only so many years in a row before time runs out. 

On the DD/FLR/kink front, I guess my real wish is to take the progress of 2018 and 2019 and make it more consistent, pervasive and systematic. An area I think we did make progress in, both in 2018 and 2019, was increasing the overall sexual vibe in the relationship.  That was really positive, and I hope we can take that in new and exciting directions. 

She has definitely gotten more comfortable being bossy and exercising authority.  It now just needs to become more automatic.  I have to do my part in that, primarily through finally getting on the self-reporting thing once and for all.  I’d also like to stop being so paranoid about confidentiality and, instead, open myself to more real relationships within this little community we’ve built, if others are willing.

How about you? If you’re on the receiving end of the paddle, do you have any specific resolutions for 2020?  Any specific bad behaviors you’d like conquer?  Any specific ways in which you’d like to see your wife take more control or crack the whip harder, literally or figuratively?

Ladies, what about you?  Do you have any resolutions for what you’d like to accomplish in 2020?  Any areas in which you’d like to improve as a disciplinarian or leader? What about goals for him?  Are there any behaviors you are committed to stamping out once and for all? Have you made any concrete plans for how to accomplish that?

For both sexes, feel free to share any resolutions that are not related to DD or FLR.  It’s great to hear what others think is important and what they intend to do about it.

Finally, I am well aware that this “resolutions” post has flopped pretty much every time I have done it.  So, I’ll combine it with another post that I did a few times but also didn’t do so well.  Maybe in combination we’ll get a conversation going. I call this post, “Ask Me Anything,” and it’s pretty self-explanatory. 

If there’s anything your curious about regarding my DD and FLR lifestyle, here is your chance to ask.  I’ll also try to answer questions outside the DD and FLR context, as long as they aren’t too revealing in terms of my real identity, profession, etc.  (Well, so much for that resolution regarding being more open and less concerned about being outed.  It’s not even 2020 and I’ve already blown one resolution!)

  

I hope you had a great 2019 and that 2020 is even better.  Rest up.  Be safe.

The Club - Christmas 2019

Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection. - Winston Churchill

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. 

Thanks for joining me for this, the final post of 2019. For both good and ill, I feel like I could just do a mish-mash of 2017 and 2018 Christmas posts and it would accurately represent my 2019.  It’s been a chaotic two- or three-year run, and for the most part I can’t say I’m going to be sorry to see 2019 in the rearview mirror.  It was a year that could perhaps be summed up with that phrase about “the best laid plans of mice and men.”  I ended 2018 with a fairly detailed vision of what I wanted from 2019 from a career perspective, and by mid-January virtually the whole of that plan had fallen apart and things actually went in the opposite direction.  

It was a year that proved to me that while many hard things are growth experiences precisely because they were so hard, some are just mistakes. There were some career decisions I made very early in 2019 that made my whole year a roller-coaster with too much travel, too little sleep, and too much bad hotel and airport food and drink.  I have to call out my wife for not only putting up with it but supporting it by, if nothing else, just going along and keeping everything semi-normal.  Though, it has become a running joke with us that perhaps I should be concerned that she has taken it so well, maybe I need to come home early from a business trip to make sure there isn’t a new boyfriend I need to kick out of my bed.  But, in all seriousness, she has put up with a lot this year.

Still, as I said at the end of last year, I can give thanks for a few simple things.  All my immediate family made it through the year in one piece, as did most of our extended family.  Most of our family and the important people in our lives made it through the year in relatively good health.  None of our close friends or family suffered health or financial calamities, and one of my family members who was having a rough time on the financial and career front seemed to stabilize and improve her situation by the end of the year. And, while all the business travel truly sucked, it did lead to making some new friendships and deepening others. 

Deepening relationships also applied to my anonymous blogging life.  I’ve had more regular, though mostly still anonymous, contacts with people I’ve met through blogging world.  I’ve exchanged thoughts with Tomy about how amazing it must have been that during the days when he and his wife were actively running the Disciplinary Wives Club website it seemed to almost operate as a real club in which people actually got together and got to know each other on a personal level.  I really have only one relationship from the blog that is kind of like that, but that’s a start.

It also was a good year for increasing the female participation on the blog a little.  Danielle, Cecilia, Belle, Liz and others.  I hope we can ramp that up a little in 2020.

So, as I said last year, as we all run around buying those last-minute gifts, let's think a little about what a blessing it is to have people in our lives to buy those gifts for.  And, maybe do something nice for a stranger who may not be as lucky. I remember last year around this time I pulled up to the drive-through window at Starbucks and started to pay for my coffee, only to be told that the woman in the car ahead of me had already paid for it. I'm going to spend the next few days looking for opportunities to do little things like that.

 

I tend to try to keep these Christmas messages at an elevated level. But, I feel like I want to end 2019 with something more attuned to the spirit of this blog, which I like to think of as elevated but naughty. Plus, there is so much great Christmas-themed adult art out there, I just can’t resist.  So, let’s end with some visual inspiration. 

From the sublime . . .

To the explicit.

We haven't finished trimming our tree yet, though with kids around I doubt the event will be anything like this.

For whatever reason, I seem to be having a lot of conversations, with both blogging and "real life" friends about "hot wife," cuckolding and multiple partner scenarios.  It's not something we've done, but maybe if there were a case of mistaken identity . . .  I also really like the swinging pearls.  Nice touch.

We were so exhausted this year, we ended up skipping most office and neighborhood holiday parties.  Maybe if more of them were like this . . .

I do need to get some last-minute gifts, but if I can't find anything that seems appropriate . . .

Or, maybe a cute Santa's helper could make a delivery for me . . .

While our dynamic is exclusively F/m, here is a little something for those with other inclinations . . .

Similarly, while not exactly Christmas themed, I just love this cartoon and can never resist an excuse to post it.

Finally, this one, just because I'm in that kind of mood.

I hope you all have a great Christmas, happy holidays and a very happy and prosperous 2020!