The Club - Meeting 381 - Inevitability, Openness, Etc.

"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be." -- Lao Tzu

 

Hello all.  Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, Domestic Discipline relationships. I hope you all had a great week.

 

Mine was an odd combination.  Grueling. Exhausting. Life affirming. Centering.  A little more on that later.

 

That was a great conversation last week.  I like it when our group gets into a genuine conversation and takes things in a lot of different directions.  Indeed, it’s kind of what I hoped for when I decided to try to become a little less topic focused.  The conversation just seems to work better when it’s more like riffing on a theme, just kind of throwing out some thoughts and seeing where it goes.

 

On the public aspect of punishment, Caged Lion noted that people are uncomfortable with just about any level of public punishment or even rebuke.

 

It's the act of disciplining someone. I think it is uncomfortable for people to witness scolding. No matter what your personal beliefs, watching punishment isn't necessarily comfortable for spectators. 

 

 

ZM didn’t disagree but he noted some of the benefits of public punishment, or at least public knowledge a punishment was or would be delivered.  He related this to school punishments, noting: ZM

 

Public punishment wasn't uncommon for much of recorded history, and at times it was even a source of morbid entertainment. Going back to the school punishments, I think that the whole system benefited from the discomfort that everyone felt when someone was sent to the office; even those who were amused were a little jarred by it knowing that it might be them next.

 

[As an aside, ZM and I both seem to be quite attracted to school punishments, even though (and perhaps because) we were more bystanders than participants.  Interestingly, I did get sent to the principals office a few times assuming that I would get paddled, only to go back to the classroom with an unspanked bottom. I guess I was good at talking my way out of consequences even back then.]

 

I agree that the openness of punishment growing up did seem to create a kind of collective deterrent effect in which the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. And, I can’t help but wonder whether we all are now are reaping what we’ve sown with our aversion to discipline in general and certainly to any kind of public shaming.  Fights breaking out on airplanes and in airports at unprecedent levels. Parents and patrons at stores feeling free to rip masks off the faces of teachers and employees.  Really unprecedented levels of public rudeness. I really do wonder how much of this can be traced back to a couple of generations in which unfettered freedom is emphasized over discipline and public decorum and where there is seldom any serious public shaming for bad behavior.

 

 

While I share the group’s ambivalence about openness and public shaming, it seems to be pretty hard to deny that it might be darned effective at actually changing behavior.  ZM noted how embarrassing it would be for acquaintances to know about our punishments:

 

For me the thought of guys knowing, especially friends, is generally harder than the thought of women knowing, but I am not sure exactly why that is. Also, it is interesting that in general I think it would be easier to tell guys that I was grounded (though she has never done that), and it would be easier to tell women that I was spanked. I am not sure why this is, and in fact only realized it as I was sitting here writing.

 

I think for me personally, it would be hard for both male and female friends to know about both spanking and grounding.  I suspect that knowing that Anne would, or even might, tell others about a particular punishment would give me a very big added incentive to behave. And, it wouldn’t even have to be people we were very close to.  

 

  

Al talked a bit this week about being spanked by others, and Tomy has talked a bit about times when Aunt Kay sent him to another woman to be spanked or other women sent their husbands to Aunt Kay for a session.  I admit that something about those stories turn me on, but they also really do scare the hell out of me. I think I would react to being sent to someone else to be spanked exactly the way I reacted when sent to the principals office, i.e. with a sense of dread that far outweighed the actual likely physical pain from the spanking.

 

For me, I think it’s not just the public nature of a spanking by someone else, or witnessed by someone else, that makes it particularly gut wrenching.  It’s also about inevitability.  That has always been a really big part of the mystique of corporal punishment for me.  If Anne sent me to be spanked by another woman (or man), I would know on the trip there that it was actually going to happen, period.  Something about that kind of inevitability – knowing that I can’t and won’t be able to avoid it -- causes a really powerful reaction in me.  Somehow, making it public that a spanking or grounding will happen makes it seem more inevitable, and making a past or current punishment public makes it seem, somehow, more real and—maybe surprisingly—less erotically motivated.

 

 

The power of inevitability hit me this week, in a context that had absolutely nothing to do with DD but perhaps did have a bit to do with self-discipline.  I took on a physical/athletic challenge that I knew was going to be hard, but in the end I discovered I had totally underestimated just how hard it would actually be.  There came a point where pulling out really wasn’t an option and even if there had been some way to quit, there was going to be a huge amount of effort and discomfort involved in getting back to where I started.  It was an odd feeling – wanting something to end so badly, yet having no way to avoid not just the current discomfort but a lot of discomfort to come. There was a point where it was really, really miserable.  Yet, I felt really odd when it was over.  On the one hand, there was some satisfaction in having gotten through it and in gutting it out, yet I also recognized that there had come that point at which I really made it through because there had been no other choice.  It wasn’t really pride or satisfaction but, rather, just a certain weird peace of mind in knowing that I got through something that had at some point become inevitable.  There was a strange sense of peace or freedom in being in a situation in which I had little control, particularly control when it came to quitting.

 

Right about the time I got through this ordeal, I found this meme that really sums up my ambivalence about motivation and extreme performance. I hope you find it as ironically amusing as I do.

 

 

I hope you have a good week.

The Club - Meeting 380 - Discretion, Openness, etc. and continued

To be accountable means that we are willing to be responsible to another person for our behavior and it implies a level of submission to another's opinions and viewpoints." ― Wayde Goodall

 

Hello all.  Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, Domestic Discipline relationships. I hope you all had a great week.

 

Mine was OK, if a little frustrating.  We had something go wrong at the house.  It wasn’t a huge catastrophe, but it required getting services from a few different vendors, and it all had to be coordinated.  I was really surprised, and more than a little pleased with myself, that it all seemed to come together miraculously, and suspiciously, easily. Then, it all kind of fell apart, with two of the initially responsive vendors more or less ghosting me for several days, which is kind of a common issue in our community.  It wasn’t a huge problem, but annoying nonetheless and frustrating to schedule around.  I guess I should have kept my expectations a little more reasonable.  

 

It also was a frustrating week on the health and fitness front. I talked last week about the behavioral fail that earned me a good, hard spanking (more on that in a bit).   

 

After that fail, I kind of got my shit together and had a really good week in terms of diet, working out and, at first, on weight loss.  I put in hard workouts every day, with the exception of one planned recovery day, and I stuck to my dietary plan pretty strictly.  I also added some additional cardio, even though I fucking hate cardio with a passion.  At first, it all seemed to be working. I got within striking distance of a soft weight loss goal I’ve had in mind for a while, and I was pretty excited about that. Then, all the progress just kind of stopped.  No matter how hard I worked out or how strict I was on the diet, I just couldn’t get the damn scale to move.  In fact, by the end of the week I was one pound heavier than the week before!  My reaction probably says something unflattering about my psychological makeup.  Instead of doubling down on the diet and exercise, I got pissed off and decided I was going to eat anything I fucking well pleased all weekend.  Not looking forward to getting on the scale tomorrow.

 

Speaking of that spanking after last week’s fail, it was one I was feeling for a good long time.  That surprised me a little, since it was an OTK spanking with a brush, even if it was a bath brush. I’m not exaggerating when I say I was still feeling very tender four days later, and I could still feel some of the deeper soreness after a full week.   

 

 

Glen asked how I rate the effectiveness of Anne’s brushes. There’s not a simple answer.  If used very vigorously, I think the hairbrush hurts at least as much as the bath brush in the moment, probably because the business end is smaller, so the impact is more concentrated.  But, the bath brush unquestionably resulted in longer lasting, deeper soreness.  By the end of the spanking, the bath brush was causing some numbing, but in fairness it was a longer spanking than she has given me with the hairbrush.  Finally, Anne has also mentioned how much she likes a very nasty, short leather DWC “paddle” with holes.  I hate the thing. It is far more wicked than it looks, and its end has a way of finding the inside of the crack between my cheeks resulting in a really unique and excruciating sting. While she hasn’t done so, it is short enough that I’m sure she could use it OTK.

 

Thanks for last week’s discussion on disrespect, fairness and openness.  One theme emerged that I’d like to follow up on a bit. 

 

On the issue of fairness, Spanked Cowboy noted:

 

“At the onset, during agreement drafting time, it was agreed that she would have uncontested control over discipline. When she determines discipline is warranted there is no debate.”

 

It sounds like many of us have more or less the same agreement or understanding, i.e. that the wives have the discretion to spank for anything they think merits it, yet it also seems to be the case that many of them struggle to use that discretion.  They do fine with concrete things like spanking for missed chores (see Caged Lion’s comment) or when there is something like a checklist involved (see ZM’s comments about their bootcamp check-ins with clearly defined targets.  But, they seem to struggle more on judgment calls like whether a particular instance of disrespect or attitude crosses a line.  

 

 

For the wives, I’m curious, do you agree that being a disciplinarian is easier if there is less discretion involved and the spankable offenses aren’t subject to your interpretation or judgment? Or, are you more comfortable with discretion and calling it like you see it?  

 

 

On the issue of openness, by coincidence, I read an article this week on Medium about going to a kink party and how freeing it was for the author.  She talked about how society’s aversion to things like public displays of affection allows others to set the bar on our personal choices around sexual freedom, or at least when and how we express it.  In discussing where one draws the line, she drew a distinction that I thought was kind of interesting, contrasting to teenagers she saw making out on a train with a guy staring at her while masturbating.  In her mind, the distinction hinged on the extent to which she was being brought into a sexually explicit scenario without her consent.  As she put it, with respect to the guy masturbating, it made her feel “like a pawn in someone else’s exhibitionist fantasy. I don’t want to be part of someone else’s sexual experience without being asked if I’m okay with it first.” But, with respect to the teenagers making out, “I did not feel implicit in their experience — I was just a bystander. I did not feel I was part of the sexual act, being brought in against my will.”  https://medium.com/monogamish/we-went-to-our-first-kinky-party-and-it-felt-like-freedom-d066e22f58c4. 

 

I wonder whether an overheard spanking, or one seen through an open window shade, could be seen the same way?  If your neighbor just happens to overhear a spanking, they be uncomfortable, but you didn’t try to bring them into the act in any way or make them take part in something. Rather, you just weren’t particularly worried about their wounded sensibilities if they happened to overhear.  On the other hand, if you gave a spanking in the woods on a busy trail hoping that someone else would come along and witness your kink . . . . That does feel more manipulative, more intrusive somehow.

 

I also really liked ZM’s observations regarding the connection between openness and ego: 

 

I think that openness ties in perfectly for dealing with disrespect which comes from excessive ego. If too much ego is the problem, then the cure would not just be a bruised bottom, but also a bruised ego. I am not talking about being brutally humiliated, but rather being taken down a peg or two. And while this can happen in private, it would be much more effective if accompanied by the embarrassment of others knowing that it was happening, especially in those cases where the victims of the disrespect are the ones who hear about the consequences. It would be very impactful if others knew that my wife punishes me for things between us, but I can’t even imagine what it would feel like if I was being my usual loud, cocky self and suddenly my wife announced to the very people I was showing off to that I am going to be spanked.

 

While I know I would be mortified were Anne to actually do something like that, ZM is undoubtedly right that my disrespect issues do result from an abundance of ego, and the most effective solution probably would be aimed directly at that ego; at, as he put it, taking me down a peg or two.  It’s a possibility that I think my subconscious clearly gravitates to and is repulsed by. As I’ve discussed here before, I haven’t had spanking dreams very often, but when I have they have tended to involve things like being taken out of a social or work event, with everyone knowing I am to be spanked.  Or, my mother pulling over a car to the side of the road to spank me, where anyone driving by could see.  Whether anything like that will ever happen, I don’t know. But, it’s certainly food for Anne to think about.

 

As you may have noticed, I didn’t really assign a topic to any of the above.  I’ve obviously been struggling to come up with topics lately.  But, during those periods when I’m not feeling inspired by anything in particular, there often still are thing going on that I might feel like relating to others or mulling around collectively.  So, I may try free-forming it for a while and see where it leads. . .

 

Have a great week.

The Club - Meeting 379 - Disrespect, Unfair Punishments & Openness

“Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.” - Barbara W. Tuchman

 

Hello all.  Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, Domestic Discipline relationships. I hope you all had a great week.

 

As some of you may have intuited based on my relative lack of engagement with the blog, we’ve had a busy summer.  Unfortunately, for Anne the summer is more or less over, while I have far less structured demands on my time these days. I can’t say I’ve accomplished much with that additional free time, though that was kind of the point all along.  I’ve spent a fair amount of time puttering around playing on or with motorcycles, which remain my go-to distraction this summer, even if Sturgis is something I will have to table for yet another year.

 

 

I’ve also become fascinated with the idea of #van-life and customer camper vans.  I’ve spent hundreds of hours at this point researching vans, watching Youtube videos on vanlife, and generally fantasizing about owning such a $100k - $200k toy.  Thankfully for my bank account balance, the things are so damn popular right now, there is very little available inventory.  I’m finding all sorts of my more expensive toy fantasies are getting stymied these days by lack of supply.  I came back from a recent motorcycle event with a lengthy list of modifications I wanted to do on one of my motorcycles, only to find that virtually every part and piece of gear I wanted to buy was out of stock.  While inflation theoretically may be surging, I wonder how much impact it’s having on most families’ finances, given that while lots of things may be more expensive, they’re also mostly unavailable, so who cares what they cost? 

 

Given the state of things out there in the wider world, I’m glad I’ve had individualized distractions like motorcycles and road trips that have kept me away from the news to some extent.  So far, 2021 is giving 2020 a run for its money.

 

While I was distracted, you guys managed to keep a good conversation while I was out playing, particularly on the subject of openness.  As often seems to be the case, ZM did a good job of reflecting my own views and drives:

I have such torn feelings on the whole openness thing. On the one hand, I wish that spanking could just be a little more matter of fact, kind of like it was in the home and back in school, rather than having to be hidden. I guess I somewhat feel morbidly fascinated with the accompanying embarrassment that came with the very open discipline that was prevalent during my childhood.

 

I share some of that same morbid fascination. One reason trips to the principal’s office carried such emotional power, and why the memory does so today, is you knew what was going to happen when you got there . . . and so did everyone else!  If anything, the walk back from that office was worse than the walk to it, because on the return trip everyone knew what had happened to you, and you had to face their knowing stares.  Those teachers and principals back then knew how to concoct punishments that really stuck, didn’t they?

 

Danielle also had some great observations, including about why, even though for some us making the FLR or DD relationship more public is kind of a lurid fantasy, in reality it may make the relationship dynamic more real and less like an erotic game:

 

I think if our FLR was a totally secret thing we only did when we were alone, it would feel like an erotic game. Putting the power dynamic on display somehow takes it out of the bedroom and makes it feel more real. I love, for example, that when we have guests over for dinner, my husband is the one in the kitchen wearing an apron. If that aspect of our FLR was only practiced when we were alone, I would still benefit, but I would feel as though I wasn't really the head of the household. If it is real, it shouldn't have to be entirely hidden, should it? I guess the same thing applies to spanking. Disciplinary authority feels more real if it can be put on display.

 

Alan also emphasized how publicizing the husband’s status really brings home the reality of the whole thing:

 

Having a third party (first my former girlfriend’s best friend and later my wife’s sister) experience a spanking was like a quiet announcement to the world that I was under female authority and subject to discipline and that I accepted it. That moved DD from private where I could rationalize it was a form of kinky play to quasi-public where its reality was unavoidable and undeniable. So it altered my own self-perception from someone who could mark it all up to serious kinky play to a spanked boyfriend and later husband who was very much under female control. All of this was very healthy and brought me much closer to the core of who I am.

 

His comment about being brought closer to the core of who he really is resonated with me, though in my case it’s not a simple matter of bringing out who I really am, and I’m not sure whether there is a "real me" whose coming forth would be a good thing. . I’ll provide a little background so you can understand what I’m getting at.  It’s been a while since I wrote one of these weekly posts while sitting on a sore, swollen bottom, but that is the state of things today.  Anne recently bought a new bath brush, and this was the first time ever that she has bought something specifically with spanking in mind.  That seems like a big new step in her level of proactive interest in this thing we do, and it kind of is.  But, the reason for her employing it last night wasn’t new.  It was, as has often been the case, me over-indulging on alcohol after a party.  (Though, overall, my alchohol consumption has been way, way down over the last few months.)  What is just as telling as her buying her first implement on her own is what she didn’t use it for.  Again, some background.

 

 

Anne and I went on a road trip together recently.  Now, although I like travel, I will admit I am not the world’s most happy traveler, and my track record on road trips is kind of bad.  After a few days of long drives and poor hotel sleep, I can get pretty grumpy, and that happened a few times on our trip.  There was one point where I directed some of that ill-temper at her, and she basically said that I was lucky she didn’t have her new brush with her on the trip, because if she had she would have used it on me right then and there.  But, nothing prevented her from giving me a thorough butt blistering for disrespect when we got home.  Yet, she didn't. Instead, a week went by and then she gave me one for drinking too much -- in the evening ,at home, by myself.  And, sort of for disobedience because at one point she told me I should go to bed soon, and after she went herself, I ignored the instruction and stayed up late. But, it was really the over-indulging that led to me draping myself over her knees for a very long and hard spanking. 

 

Although I am glad she took me in hand, I see a potential problem in how things played out with respect to two separate events, either one of which could have led to a spanking but only one did.  When I say that I’m not sure that me getting closer to the core of who I am would be a good thing, I’m referring to the fact that part of who I am is someone who arrogantly loses his temper and directs that anger at others.  My temperament seems to be very close to our regular commenter, Arthur, who is spanked prophylactically once a week to keep his temper under control.  I have some of those same tendencies toward arrogance, sarcasm and aggression that Arthur and Liz have described here, and those tendencies can manifest in shows of disrespect to Anne.  We’ve talked about how it isn’t acceptable, and it really shouldn’t be. Yet, it has been very rare that she’s taken the logical step and spanked me for it.  Her seeming reluctance to spank me for disrespect while doing so for drinking seems backwards -- the former goes unpunished even though she is too often the subject of the bad behavior, while the latter frequently earns a spanking even though me staying up late and feeling like crap the next day really has very little direct impact on her.

 

 

We talked about it a little last night, and I told her that I thought it was a problem that we keep talking 

about her spanking more for disrespect, but it never really seems to happen.  She recognizes the problem, and she says that sometimes she just can’t decide whether a given instance of snark or attitude really rises to the level of deserving a spanking.  We talked about the fact that it really shouldn’t matter whether I think it’s “fair” in a given instance.  If it was enough to make her feel mad or hurt, then she should spank first and talk about fairness later, if at all. As we’ve talked about before, for me there is something stirring about her deciding whether any specific spanking is fair, me having nothing to say about, and if she gets it “wrong,” well, too bad for my ass.

 

For me, this also kind of gets wrapped up in the talk about openness.  I really don’t know whether I act disrespectfully because that’s who I really am, or is that aggressive personality something overlays something deeper and more genuine.  If she really decided to get to the root of the problem through some combination of very consistent discipline, along with more open shows of authority that emphasized my place in the pecking order, would that chip away at some of the haughtiness and allow more humility to come to the surface?  I feel like there is a lot of truth for me in the combination of Alan and ZM’s comments, i.e. and that being more openly subject to her authority and discipline would be humbling in a way that would be both morbidly fascinating and also really a genuine and positive growth experience. And, as Danielle said, it certainly would make the dynamic seem more real if she were more open about it.

 

There may or may not be an actual topic in any of the above, but feel free to weigh in on anything that resonates with you about thinks like disrespect, “unfair” discipline, open shows of authority, road trips or camper vans. 

 

I hope you have a great week.

Sorry, but . . .

I warned you that my posting schedule might get looser than usual over the summer.  That's obviously turned out to be the case.  Anne and I got back safely from our little mini-vacation, but I now have some other things I'm trying to get done as the summer winds down, so I probably won't get to a post this week either.  There also hasn't been any DD action for us in several weeks, so I don't have much to report on and it hasn't been on my mind that much lately.  So, sorry for the long-ish summer pause.  I guess I should enjoy it now, since who knows what the fall is going to look like with respect to our ability to socialize and congregate, though I can't keep from seeing the whole thing as Darwin at work.

The summer really is winding down, isn't it?  We were in a mountainous area for our vacation, and I thought I detected hints of fall in the air. Then, when walking the dogs this morning I saw groups of kids plodding along to what must be their first day of school for the fall semester.  I distinctly remember that when I was growing up, summer vacation included the month of August.  Not anymore.  

Have a good week.  I will consider posting later this week if anything worth posting arises.

Out This Week

Happy Sunday to you all.  Anne and I are going to be on the road this week, and I won't have time to post. So, have a great week.

The Club - Meeting 379 - Topic Potpourri

The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate. - Douglas Engelbart

 

Hello all.  Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, Domestic Discipline relationships. I hope you all had a great week.

 

How is your summer going?  Although I can’t say we’ve done a whole lot, our summer seems to be cruising by a little too quickly for comfort.  We took one vacation, but other than that our weeks seem pretty predictable and consistent.  We both made health and fitness a priority for the summer, though in my case it really wasn’t optional.  I had some rehabilitation work that needed to get done, and it does feel a little like rehabbing a dilapidated house that has seen its better days but in theory with a lot of work could be renovated successfully.  So, for both of us the summer has involved a lot of time at your neighborhood gym. The results have been encouraging, though I truly believe a short course in gym etiquette should be a condition of membership.

 

 

I’ve also spent a fair amount of time on my motorcycle.  Although I’ve spent a bit of time in venues where other riders congregate, sadly I haven’t seen any riders quite this dedicated to the brand:

 

 

 Maybe because I have been keeping busy with other summer projects, my blogging inspiration dry spell continues.  I don’t have a coherent, well-defined topic in mind for this week, so instead I’m just going to throw some thoughts out there and you can respond to anything that catches your interest.

 

We spent a couple of weeks here talking about age, maturity and discipline.  I did have one follow-up, partially in response to a question one of our commenters brought to me off-line.  In discussion whether a certain level of maturity/age is generally a prerequisite for taking up the paddle, Al had the following observation:

 

I once saw a quote somewhere that said that "kinky' women were subs in their 20's, switches in their 30's, and dominants in their 40's. And we actually had a "kinky" friend for whom this exact scenario played out. And it is interesting that the dominant phase correlates with our observations as to when most women tend to be willing to become disciplinary wives.

 

My follow-up question is, do men often go through a similar cycle from “bottom” to “switch” or “top”?  Based on the comments here, it doesn’t really seem so.  If anything, it seems to be the opposite – some men begin exploring DD or spanking kink as the spanker but later become “bottoms” exclusively.  Any thoughts on why that might be the case?  Why do many women who gain some maturity and kink experience migrate toward more dominant roles over time, while for men things seem to go in the opposite direction?  Any thoughts?

 

 

While our summer has been spent mainly on non-DD activities and there has not been a lot of spanking action, there has been some, including one incident that might spur some interest.  Anne decided I needed a spanking for a bit of bad behavior, but she had not specified a time for it to take place.  In the middle of the afternoon, she told me it was time and instructed me to bring her hairbrush. I did as she ordered and then went over to the window to lower the window shades in our bedroom, but she told me to leave them up!  She then told me to get undressed and to get over her knee, after she sat down on the ottoman in front of our bed.  I did so, and she proceeded to give me a vigorous OTK spanking.  Now, I really doubt anyone saw me getting undressed or getting spanked, but it is not completely outside the realms of possibility.  We live in a suburban environment, in a neighborhood with fairly small lots, and there is a house directly behind us.  While unlikely in the middle of the day, it certainly is possible that one of backyard neighbors could have been in his/her bedroom and looked through the trees to ours at just the right time.  I can’t recall any other time Anne has been quite so cavalier about someone finding out about our DD relationship, let alone risking someone actually seeing a spanking in progress.

 

 

On a more abstract note, another thing I’ve spent a lot of time on this summer is training a Covid puppy who has been severely lacking in social skills.  It has taken a hell of a lot time and attention, and imposition of both coercive/corrective stimuli to prevent/punish bad behavior and rewards to encourage modeling good behaviors.  On several walks, it really has jumped out to me just how much successful dog training overlaps with principles we’ve talked about here for years, including:

 

·      Preventing the bad behavior before it happens is often more effective than punishing it after-the-fact.  With our dog, that involves getting his attention quickly as soon as I notice him starting to get riled up about other dogs or other things that he generally reacts to.  A sharp command or tap of his e-collar at the first signs of reactivity is WAY more effective than trying to bring him back into control after he’s already started freaking out.

·      While I sometimes feel bad about the consistent consequences that are required for him to really absorb the lessons and behave better consistently, in the end its better than what might have to happen if the trend of reactivity and aggression he was on had continued.  In short, in the moment consistent discipline is hard for both the disciplining and disciplined parties, but it’s worth it for both.

·      Imposing boundaries on my dog has actually made him less agitated and more relaxed on our walks.  He seems to get that he doesn’t have to take the lead and that life is easier for him when he doesn’t.

·      If you give the dog a command four times and he ignores you three times and then you finally do something about it on the fourth ignored command, without you essentially are training him to know he can ignore you three out of four times without suffering any consequences.

 

I’ve thought about dog training as a metaphor for husband training a lot over the last few weeks, including the value of consistency.  Maybe with that in mind, a week ago I let Anne know (in a journal entry), that in my view some of my recent behavioral backsliding really needed to be dealt with.  Now, it is very rare that I will come right out and ask that bad behavior be addressed.  In fact, in general I am pretty relieved when I get away with things that I know probably should have earned a spanking.  So, it was with more than a little trepidation that I suggested to her that something needed to be dealt with, and I assumed that I would be blogging this week about the topics of “asking for it” and “consistency.”  But, that isn’t how it turned out (so far, at least).  Perhaps more on that next time.

 

I’m not sure when “next time” may be.  I have a mini-adventure planned for next week, and it’s pretty likely that I will not get around to blogging next week.  In the meantime, I hope you are enjoying your summer.

The Club - Meeting 378 - Age, Maturity and DD

“Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.” - Tom Stoppard

 

Hello all.  Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, Domestic Discipline relationships. I hope you all had a great week.

 

I’ll start out with a bit of apology. I know I haven’t been engaged with the blog very much over the last few weeks.  I wish I had an excuse, but I really don’t.  After we got back from our vacation, I just kind of lost interest in all things Domestic Discipline.   

 

 

 

In addition to the (pleasant) distractions of travel and being busy with the typical summer stuff, I think my DD interest got caught up in a hormonal downdraft that affected my libido in general and my spanking interest in particular.  This has happened before, and I think I now have a better understanding of the likely cause.  Several months ago, I got a bad cholesterol test – bad to the point that I needed to get it under control or go on statins.  Fortunately, I was pretty sure I could get it under control because it was the not-so-surprising result of some dietary changes I had made late last year.  I had added a lot of eggs and red meat into my diet in order to try to add back some muscle as I was recovering from a surgery last year that, along with the underlying physical problem, had caused me to lose a lot of muscle mass.  So, after several months of that probably unhealthy but undeniably delicious cholesterol fest, I reluctantly got rid of eggs and bacon and cut back on read meat.  After eliminating eggs and breakfast meats, I kind of drifted into intermittent fasting, skipping breakfast most days and not eating anything until lunch.  It worked like a charm.  My cholesterol plummeted, and my bodyfat dropped pretty substantially.  But, after a few months, I found I just wasn’t feeling great.  Low energy. No libido.  The same thing happened when I tried intermittent fasting for weight loss a few years ago.  I’ve now educated myself a little more on dietary fat and now understand that while cholesterol and saturated fat get bad raps, they are absolutely necessary for testosterone production and cellular repair.  I suspect that I eliminated way too much fat and cholesterol and it played havoc with my hormones, particularly testosterone, which in turn led to a plummeting libido.  So, I’ve added beef and eggs back into my diet, and I’m a much happier camper.

 

Thanks to those of you who kept the discussion going a bit while I was being lazy.  Regarding the discussion about Belle, I think Alan best summed up my thoughts: “[I]f the frauds are the price we pay for real discussions by real women – it is a price worth paying.”  While I’m obviously not happy with “Belle’s” behavior, I think any cure I could come up with would likely be worse than the disease.  Danielle voiced concern that all “women” commenters would now be subject to suspicion, and I definitely won’t be going in that direction.  As I said a couple of weeks ago, “Belle” wasn’t the first imposter and won’t be the last. 

 

On a point more related to this week's topic, Danielle noted: “Most of the pictures Dan posts show women who are 30 or even 40 years younger than me. If some of the men here have associated me with images like that, I have been guilty of not minding.”  Honestly, it hasn’t been a conscious choice on my part. There just aren’t all that many pictures/drawings out there of older spankers (or spankees).  But here a few I’ve acquired over the years:

 

 

I truly find some of these more attractive and stimulating than posed air-brushed models.  Though, I’ve always been open about the fact that as far back as high school, I’ve had a thing for assertive older women. 

 

In addition to the aesthetic appeal of older spankers, it may (or may not) be that they are more true to how DD works in real life.  Several of our commenters postulated that interest in “genuine” Domestic Discipline seems to be correlated with attaining some minimum level of age-based maturity.  Here are excerpts from a smattering of those comments:

 

Alan: Most if not all of us actually in a DD have learned that a woman usually requires some maturity (say early to mid-40’s and up) as well as a long term committed relationship –before she becomes seriously invested in DD. Since the long running Belle narrative has now been moved from the serious non-fiction section to the frivolous fantasy fiction section, the generation question remains open.

 

Danielle: Like Alan, I found Belle's purported age interesting. Alan's point about most women being unwilling to consider DD until they reach a certain age was certainly true for me.

 

Al: I once saw a quote somewhere that said that "kinky' women were subs in their 20's, switches in their 30's, and dominants in their 40's. And we actually had a "kinky" friend for whom this exact scenario played out. And it is interesting that the dominant phase correlates with our observations as to when most women tend to be willing to become disciplinary wives.

 

ZM: I know that for me (in my late 40's at the time) it was much easier to share what I really wanted than it would have been when I was a young groom many, many years ago. Also, I was able to introduce it early in the relationship, which I think was probably much easier than springing it on someone that you have been with for many years. Finally, for young married couples, there are just so many things going on in life and so many things that cause momentary disruptions (and shifts of perceived power) that maybe would interfere with things? Anyway, just my thoughts.

 

So, is it true that Domestic Discipline usually doesn’t kick off—or at least doesn’t get serious—for most couples until they are in their forties or later?  Was it indeed a tip-off that Belle was supposedly relatively young yet seemed to take to DD like a duck to water?  My instincts tell me that those who voiced that such opinions are right, yet my own experience doesn’t really seem to verify it.  I don’t remember exactly when we started DD, and I’m kind of a reverse-savant where dates are concerned, but I think my wife was about 32 when we started and I was about 37. (Yes, it is the case that while I've always had a thing for older women, I married a younger one.) Similarly, two women (one a “top” and one a “bottom”) who I’ve gotten to know through the blog both seem to have been in their early 30s when they got started.   While Alan was on board with the idea that interest in DD usually starts later in life, he also noted that the woman who introduced him to DD was only in her mid-thirties.  I believe ZM also has noted that his wife was relatively young when they started.

 

So, at the risk of asking people to restate or expand on a topic they introduced last week, does real adult discipline usually start in the 40s and 50s?  If so, do you think the recipient’s interest usually starts earlier but they just don’t get up the courage to ask for it until they hit middle-age?  In that vein, both Alan and ZM observed that it is much easier to introduce DD early in a relationship than to spring it on someone you have been with for several years.  All I can say about that one is that for me it wasn’t an option, as I simply didn’t have that interest in my 20s and early 30s and had no concept that adult corporal punishment was even “a thing.”  What has your own experience been with age/maturity and interest in DD?  At what age were you when you gave/received your first disciplinary spanking or entered into a real DD relationship?  How old was your significant other? For the ladies, how old were you when you became not just a participant in a DD relationship, but an enthusiastic one (to the extent that's true)?

 

I hope you all have a good week.

"Belle" and Just Checking In

Hi all.  I hope you all are having a nice summer.  It’s a weird one where we live, weather wise.  One day it’s pushing 100 degrees and the next I need to put on a jacket when walking the dogs.  Though here in our area, where vaccination rates are fairly high and life has gotten somewhat back to normal, things have improved over this time last year.

 

I guess I should just be happy not to be in Seattle or Portland.  My sympathies to any of our community who live in the Pacific Northwest and have been suffering through this week without air conditioning.  Unlike some of our fellow citizens, they didn’t even inflict it on themselves:

 

  

On the Domestic Discipline front, there have been a few developments.  Nothing earth shattering, but probably worth exploring in more fulsome post, which I’m not inspired enough to write on this Tuesday afternoon.  But, I did want to check in, and the situation with “Belle” has inspired enough comments that I thought maybe it was worth posting about.

 

First, a little more background, though nothing very illuminating.  On the same day that “Belle” apparently accidentally outed herself as a fake, I got an email from an address indicating the sender was someone named Alex, though in the body of the email he identified himself as Anton “an infrequent commenter and longtime lurker” on this blog.  I do recall some comments from someone identified as Anton, but nothing in particular, and if there is a way to search Blogger for comments from specific senders, I don’t know how to do it.  He asked me to post a link to his new blog in my blogroll.  I did and wished him well with his new blog.  (As an aside, the captioning haters must REALLY hate his new blog, because it not only is all captioned pictures but consists entirely of captioned pictures he has taken from other blogs and tumblrs and then slightly changed the dimensions.)  It was not until the next day that I saw the “Belle” commented posted from the ScoldedHubby profile.  It looks like the comment actually preceded his email to me by a few hours, but I had not been checking the blog regularly while I was taking my little break, so I didn’t catch it until the day after Tomy posted the first comment asking, more or less, "WTF?"  I waited a day to see whether “Belle” would respond or take down the comment, then sent an email to Alex/Anton asking for an explanation.  My “WTF?” was met with the same silence as Tomy's.

 

Reactions from our commenters have varied, and morphed a little, over the last few days. Tomy’s initial reaction was: “Oh no! Our trust is violated and it makes me feel like a real fool for allowing myself to believe those compassionate-sounding words. I feel like my confidence in reaching out and making new connections is set back.”

 

Courandir responded: “Please Tomy, don't feel ashamed or even betrayed by this fake person because his life is wide. I found the DWC in 2000 and learned important things about myself with Real people, and you were part of it! Thank you!”

 

Alan observed: “One must wonder what his point was. Kicks and giggles I suppose. But what a lot of work just to produce a tacky charade. Call me naive but I still believe the vast number of contributors to this blog are authentic.”

 

Brett seemed less convinced that authenticity is the rule and not the exception: “I don't know what's going on here, but I suspect that, with anything sexual in nature, men posing as women online is common.”

 

ZM noted: “Anyway, this is the ever-present danger of these online forums. As far as I know (unless we have some seriously good hackers here!) only Dan knows who I am in real life, and I only know who Dan really is as well as of course KD, who is out there for the whole world to see!  I don't think we should be disillusioned by the occasional poster who pretends to be someone they are not. It is common everywhere else in the online world, and so it will sometimes happen here as well.”

 

My own reaction was, at first at least, fairly blasé.  This certainly isn’t the first time that someone has slipped up here and accidentally revealed something about their assumed identity that wasn’t quite what they purported it to be.  A year or two ago we had the multiple variations of “Helen” and her husband, who may or may not have even been two people and who kept flaming out and then reappearing again and again in different guises.  There also have been multiple times that “real” commenters have slipped up and accidentally posted from their “real” identity’s email account or accidentally used their real name in “signing” their comment.  (I've done the latter myself a time or two.) Whenever I’ve caught that, I’ve scrambled to take it down for them without waiting for them to request it.  Though, those instances of inadvertent identification are hardly the same thing as intentionally misleading people, are they?  As ZM indicates, KD is out there for the world to see, but he is the exception.  Most of us are participating with constructed identities designed to protect our anonymity to one degree or another, and that’s fine. 

 

But, it definitely feels different when we learn that someone was not just hiding their identity but actively lying about themselves and their their DD dynamic.  It’s not just covering up something.  It’s wasting people’s time and engaging in the conversation in bad faith.  I don’t go quite as far as Tomy’s initial reaction of feeling betrayed, but it is annoying to me precisely when it comes from people I found myself kind of gravitating to on the blog.  I liked engaging with Belle and was glad when she showed up and started adding more “female” perspective to the blog.  Similarly, some of the longer-term commenters may remember Peter and Anna who, near the end of their tenure as commenters, also slipped with a post that indicated to me they were pulling something over on me. I had liked "them" a lot, and it was disappointing to discovery that a lot of what I saw as a relationshiphad been BS.

 

It’s hard not to get a little riled up when you feel like you’ve been duped or had your time wasted. But, overall, my reaction is somewhere between Alan and ZM’s.  I do think that most of our long-term commenters are more or less who they are and in the dynamics they describe, but exceptions are going to reveal themselves from time to time. It seems to me that assuming pretty much every “woman” who shows up on the blog is a sham would be counterproductive to getting more women to participate and I’m also, in the end, just not willing to lead my life being skeptical of every new commenter just because a few will successfully dupe me for a while.  In the final analysis, I probably have less invested than the folks who hook up through on-line dating sites and discover their new companion bears little resemblance to the handsome professional from the Tinder profile.

 

And, really, what is the alternative? Tomy has noted to me that Aunt Kay solved the problem on the DWC by requiring live telephone calls with the wives who wanted to participate.  I haven’t quite gotten to the point of being willing to reveal my own identity by having live conversations with everyone who wants to participate here, and it definitely would drive away some of our commenters who I do believe are real and whose participation I value.  I also think that women might have been willing to talk to Aunt Kay live but likely would be more reticent about talking to me, a man.  Most of us here seem to guard our confidentiality more or less tightly and, while at times I actually would prefer a much smaller but more openly participatory group, I think the current balance is about the best I can achieve right now given my own anonymity preferences. (However, it’s interesting how my “circle of trust” has expanded a bit as time has gone by.  ZM notes that I’m the only one he has revealed his identity to.  I think I am now up to five who know who I am or have had some direct contact that would allow them to easily figure it out.  And, two out of the five are women and have morphed into genuine friendships over time.)

 

Anyway, while it has irked me a little, I’m not going to change my attitude or practice much as a result of Belle’s little deception and, in any event, I tend to believe what goes around comes around.

 

I hope the rest of your week is fun and relaxing.  For those in the U.S., I hope you enjoy this Independence Day weekend and that is it is filled with many genuine interactions with family and friends.