The Club - Meeting 397 - All or Nothing

"What cannot be cured must be endured." - Thomas Burton

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our (more or less, though recently not really) 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.

Well, it’s been awfully slow here at the Disciplinary Couple’s Club, hasn’t it?  Little did I know that when I announced a very brief hiatus, and then ended up posting something anyway, virtually everyone would disappear.  This is probably the slowest it’s been since the blog’s first year. I hope everyone was off having fun.

My time off wasn’t exactly “fun”, but there was some adventure involved.  I made a major purchase that I think will give us a lot of enjoyment as we explore having a lot more time off. I’d been thinking about it for a long time and planned to do it, but the timeline was much shorter than I’d been planning on.  Moving forward on it much sooner than I’d anticipated created a lot of stress, plus a steep and ongoing learning curve. It also entailed some impromptu travel, which in turn led to hooking up with some old work friends.

Unfortunately, one of the net results of all the impromptu activity, scheduling changes and travel is it kind of knocked me off my game where behavior was concerned. Though, truth be told, things had been drifting for a while.  I had a few months there when I felt like I’d turned a real corner.  I was showing a lot of self-discipline on diet and had lost several pounds. I was getting into the gym regularly.  My bingeing on alcohol was a lot lighter than usual.  I was meditating regularly. My sleep was weirdly good, perhaps because of the decreased alcohol and more regular meditation.  

In short, I was kind of on a roll. Then I had a few nights where get-togethers with friends for “a beer or two” turned into several. The impromptu travel and hooking up with friends was a lot of fun but it too involved a few too many drinks, plus bad food over the course of a few days.  I was not sleeping well over part of this time, and as often is the case, fatigue made me crave simple carbs, sugar and processed foods, and conveniently, since I was on the road there were plenty of them available.

When I got back home, things got a little better behavior-wise but didn’t return to the sweet spot I had been in before.  Looking back over the course of the last few months, it’s not like there was one big fail or any decision to relax standards for a while. Rather, one small slip sort of led to another and another and another.  . . . I also found that when I tried to get back on track in one area, it didn’t really take hold as long as I was still showing a lack of willpower in other areas.

That’s how it always seems to work for me.  I’m kind of “all or nothing” where good and bad behavior is concerned.  To me, it seems intuitive that it should work that way – willpower should be like a muscle that can be trained to be stronger and more consistent. Yet, I’ve read about studies that indicate that’s not how it works.  Instead, willpower is an exhaustible resource that tapers off quickly after we’ve asserted it.  In other words, if you exercise a burst of willpower in resisting one temptation, you likely will have less capacity for showing that same kind of willpower on some other temptation, at least in the near term.

For me, it’s pretty clear that everything works better when I’m showing discipline across various areas and not just within one or two big ones.

Though, it’s also true that screwing up on one habit can have a disproportionate effect on others.  For example, I’ve blown plenty of good trends by having one bad night with too many beers.  I wake up tired and lacking energy. So, I eat bad food to power up again.  Maybe it also makes me blow off a workout.  The same applies to not carrying through on some good habits.  I’ve been a chronic insomniac my entire life, but I can keep it under control if I meditate daily.  Sometimes I get busy or distracted, or just slip out of the habit, and don’t meditate.  After a few days, my sleep always goes to hell.

So, what does this suggest about Domestic Discipline for you?  We talked about a somewhat related issue back in September, namely “zero tolerance.” But, that was really about taking a no tolerance approach to a single problematic behavior.  This week’s topic is more about whether areas that need to improve exist in relative isolation for you, such that you can target high priority areas while safely ignoring others.    

Or, are you like me and slippage in one area inevitably tends to lead to slippage in others, such that you really need to try to live a more disciplined live across the board if you are going to make much progress, or maintain progress, in those areas where improvement is really important?

I hope you all have a great week.

 

The Club - Meeting 396 - Hodgpodge of Thoughts and Updates

“Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

 

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our (more or less) 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.

 

I know I said I wasn’t going to post this week, but I woke up this morning and felt like engaging a bit on DD stuff, though I can’t say I have any particular topic in mind.  Honestly, between the ongoing war in Ukraine and the Kentanji Brown Jackson hearings, I’ve been way too obsessed with the daily news cycle, and this morning I finally succeeded in shutting off CNN and all my news feeds for a while.  And, while I don’t want to make light of anything happening in Ukraine right now, I did see this Ukraine-related meme recently that I thought was pretty damn funny:

 

 

As I said, I don’t have much of a topic in mind for this week, so I thought I’d give a general update and respond to a couple of reader comments.  I talked a few weeks ago about efforts to self-report more diligently.  For the most part, I’ve kept it up.  Though, as I said in the most recent post, the perhaps inevitable byproduct of reporting more regularly is also trying to talk my way out of it more.  I’m trying to get better about that too, but it’s definitely a work in progress.

 

I accept that trying to get out of deserved spankings is something I need to find a way to stop doing, but it’s also kind of a two-way street.  Anne and I have talked a lot about how this kind of relationship works better when the wife really takes up the reins and starts seeing spanking (and other punishments) as a go-to tool to address things that she thinks need to change, and it works less well the more I feel I’m in control of the process. Yet, no matter how much we talk about it, it never quite seems to really take hold.  A recent example involved me once again forgetting to lock the door to our house when I left, which she has made clear is a big deal to her.  In this particular case, I actually thought I did lock it, but apparently not.  While I was out, she sent a text with a picture of the lock and emoji that made it abundantly clear how she felt about it.  

 

Given all our discussions, I thought the next line of our text exchange would be her telling me I was in for a hard spanking, but it didn’t happen.  At some point, I keep thinking that something in her mind will click, and she’ll start thinking in the ordinary course that an if she’s mad enough to send an angry emoji then she’s mad enough to take up the paddle and address the situation until I’m in lots of pain and she’s satisfied I've learned a lesson.  But, it doesn’t seem to happen.

 

When we talk about all of this, it’s often in the context of me emphasizing that I really do want her to be strict with me.  Though, it occurred to me a few weeks ago that I wasn’t even sure myself about exactly what I mean by “strict.”  I actually looked it up in the thesaurus and decided that I may actually be using the wrong word when I describe what it is I think I need.  Here are a couple of distinctions I found helpful:

 

“The adjective strict always has to do with rules. Your strict parents enforced rules and expected you to obey them. Your cousin might be a strict vegetarian who always follows her own rules about what to eat. Strict laws demand to be followed, and a strict follower of the First Amendment supports free speech no matter what. The Latin root of strict is strictus, which means "drawn together, tight, or rigid." A rigid adherence to rules is exactly what makes someone strict.” (from www.vocabulary.com)

  

“How is the word strict distinct from other similar adjectives? Some common synonyms of strict are rigid, rigorous, and stringent. While all these words mean "extremely severe or stern," strict emphasizes undeviating conformity to rules, standards, or requirements.” (from Merriam-Webster.com)

 

 

I guess a “rigid adherence to [her] rules] is part of when I mean when I say I want her to be strict, but it’s only part and probably not the most important part.  I think the word that more closely fits what I feel like I need is “stern.”  For that word, www.vocabulary.com offers this:

 

“You know when you've done something really wrong, and the person who gets you in trouble has that unforgiving look on his face? The best word for that look is stern, meaning "strict" or "severe."” 

 

It even expressly references a linguistic relationship between discipline and sternness:

 

adjective severe and unremitting in making demands

“a stern disciplinarian”

 

We’ve had some exchanges recently regarding what exactly it is that drives our DD interest and how much of it is particularly focused on spanking, versus some even deeper attachment to female authority.  When I think about what makes me tick and what led me to my initial obsession with this lifestyle, I think a lot of it was reflected in stories I read on the Disciplinary Wives Club website in which the wives displayed a mix of unyielding adherence to the rules, i.e. spanking whenever one had been earned, and a tone which made it clear they were very serious about what they were going to do.  

 

 

 I still find this advice from Aunt Kay particularly instructive regarding the whole concept of being taken in hand by a woman with and appropriately stern attitude:

 

“Attitude is the whole thing in spanking a man. You can work on improving your techniques over time, but you have to start with the right attitude.  Think about it. How many times and in how many ways has he shown you that he is basically a spoiled brat, little boy, in a grown man’s body? A million, two million? That's what you are dealing with and if our world wasn't so confused it would be normal for the woman of the house to wield the moral authority and the hairbrush without a second thought.” (emphasis added)

 

It's that overt display of authority, combined with picking up the brush without a second thought, that I feel like I need and that I hope we are going to work on a lot now that we have more freedom in terms of both time and being in an empty nest.

 

Paradoxically though, while I consciously feel like I want her to display more and more stern authority, my subconscious seems more ambivalent and also seems to feel like it’s happening more than I appreciate.  I’ve had several dreams recently in which Anne is either (a) having an affair with another man and displaying it openly without any concern for how I feel about it; or (b) generally acting kind of haughty or dismissive of me. In the dreams, I’m always upset about the situation, but after I wake up and live with the dream for a while, there is an undeniably attractive erotic edge to it. 

 

Looping back briefly to the subject of reporting, I wanted to share this that ZM sent me:

 

 It is a box he built by hand to self-report to his wife on certain things that might not seem to bear reporting immediately but that she still might want to address.  I really like the concept of the box being openable only by her, such that once he rats himself out, he loses control over that confession.  I also am very envious of people who have the ability to build something like this from scratch, as I do not have a craftsman-like bone in my body.

 

On another topic, in a comment on last week’s post, ZM shared a recent event in which his wife invited a friend over while he was being punished.  While the friend did not participate or see it happening, she was there in the house and knew it was going on.  Alan commented on how this situation probably differs from something like attending a spanking party with people who all share “spanko” interests.  I thought the whole comment was very thought-provoking:

 

But it has to be different in DD relationships where discipline is the focus and one’s ego is very involved and usually the third party is not a spanko as such.

 

I don’t really remember how I felt in the days and weeks after my initial public spankings. I do remember the mix of burning embarrassment and erotic fascination that bubbled up in me early after.

 

But then I think I went into a fairly long reflective period about what had happened and what I wanted and even who I really was. All the defenses come down for a while and amid the clarity seems to come some lethargy. Looking back on it I think I must have been reflecting on whether I really wanted to be a spanked boyfriend (husband), did I really want to think of myself that way, and in particular did I want others to know or see it.

 

Moving DD spanking from a private world to public is a huge psychological step for both partners, so you wife might be going through some sort of reflective pause also. For both my former GF and my wife it was sort of a victory lap, probably partly because of my initial reaction to it. For me I think it was a kind of integration of the role spanking now played in my life.

 

For me I think a lot of the fantasy was gone and I missed that. But having the real thing was more than worth it. But that all took some time.

 

Although I haven’t been spanked in any kind of public or semi-public setting, I do think I get what Alan is talking about regarding how some spanking or disciplinary experiences can push you into a very reflective state.  I still recall fairly vividly one of the first times she gave me a very hard spanking for something “minor,” i.e. failing to do some assigned chore.  It wasn’t the spanking itself, as much as the reason for it and her strictness and sternness in ordering it and carrying it out.  There was something a little disturbing in the whole situation. It is what I had been asking for, and here I was getting it for the first time.  It definitely triggered some of those “do I really want to be a spanked husband” thoughts that Alan refers to. I remember feeling kind of pensive and reflective for many days afterward.

 

One other very short point I wanted to raise with this group.  We’ve talked a lot about how crying may be more dependent on duration than severity.  About two weeks ago, I had one of my more typical behavioral slip-ups, and Anne ended up giving me a very long spanking for it; probably one of the longest she has ever given me.  It still wasn’t long enough to bring me to tears.  Moreover, for some reason that I can’t quite figure out, I actually felt pretty close to crying almost as soon as lowered myself over her knees.  It wasn’t because of anything like an abnormally high level of remorse.   

 

Rather, for some reason I had gotten into a “little boy” headspace that isn’t that typical.  More than usual, I felt some of the “take it like a man” resistance break down from the outset.  But, that feeling drifted away as the spanking went on and on.  So, whatever the magic recipe is for bringing about tears, I still can’t quite put my finger on it.

 

I hope you all have a great week. 

 

Brief Hiatus

Hi all.  I hope you are enjoying your late winter or early spring, depending on the conditions where you live.  

I just wanted to let you all know I'm probably going to take a couple of weeks off from blogging.  We have some family vacation and travel activities happening over the next couple of weeks.  Unless some particularly compelling inspiration strikes, I don't anticipate posting during that period.

The Club - Meeting 395 - Delay, Anticipation, Avoidance cont.

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone." — Pablo Picasso

 

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our (more or less) 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 wasn’t a great week, but it certainly was a momentous week in world events.  As anyone who has read this blog for a while knows, I’m a political and world affairs junkie.  I started the day on Thursday very down that it appeared the worlds democracies were once again going to roll over and play dead in the face of totalitarian aggression.  Yet, over the course of the next few days and as a result of watching millions of Ukrainians put their lives on the line to stand up the neighborhood bully, the rest of the world somehow managed to find its balls.

 

 

Inspiring stuff.  Though, I’m fascinated by the collective amnesia of the politicians and pundits who are criticizing the current U.S. administration for not being strong enough in supporting Ukraine, after those same politicians and pundits argued left and right that it was no big deal for Trump to get caught on a “perfect” phone call trying to extort Ukraine by delaying military aid until they coughed up dirt on his political opponent.  No, no big deal at all. Shameful.

 

Anyway. On to this week’s post.  It’s kind of an update on recent developments and an extension of last week’s discussion.  As I’ve related on here a couple of times, one of my resolutions for the new year was to do a better job self-reporting any behavioral problems.  Unlike most of my resolutions, I’ve actually done pretty well on this one.  Not perfect by any means; but, not too bad.  However, I’m finding that for every action there is, indeed, an equal and opposite reaction.  Although I’m acting to be tougher on myself on the reporting front, the perhaps inevitable reaction is I’m working harder to delay the anticipated consequences of that reporting.  And, unfortunately, February proved to be chockful of events that allowed me to wriggle out of those consequences.  There were visitors and a couple of physical health issues, holidays (Valentines Day) and personal events that (a) interfered with her ability to deliver a spanking immediately; (b) allowed me to display some offsetting good behavior that warmed her heart, i.e. gifts given to her on a couple of meaningful occasions; or (c) gave me an excuse to argue for a short delay, i.e. “Ah honey, it’s Valentines Day.  How about tomorrow?”

 

 

Now, as I’ve related a few times here, I’ve always been kind of bad about trying to get out of what I know I have coming, or at least very actively hoping that something would come along and interfere.  But, I do feel like that reaction intensified after I started reporting more.  I don’t really try to avoid it entirely.  Indeed, if that were the overt aim, the best means would probably be to just “forget” to self-report.  Yet, I haven’t been doing that. Instead, my reluctance to get spanked manifests as various subtle and not-so-subtle suggestions that maybe she could just put it off a day or two.

 

The problem is, justice delayed very often turns into justice denied.  I’ve talked before about the trade-offs between immediacy and anticipation.  I do believe that allowing a misbehaving husband to stew about it for a while does have its place.  But, so does immediacy, not least because the big problem with providing a lot of time for anticipation also lays the groundwork for it not happening at all.  As ZM noted:

 

When things get postponed, it is almost never because my wife wants to keep me anxious about it. Rather, things get in the way, or maybe sometimes she just doesn't feel like punishing me at the time. When things get postponed - for whatever reason - they become less and less likely to happen with each passing day.

 

 

I couldn’t agree more.  Alan offered further support for the value of immediacy and the problems with lengthy delays:

 

This discussion about delayed or postponed spankings remind me about the relatively few “on the spot” spankings I have received. But I remember every one of them, even those that occurred years ago – and with few exceptions I either never repeated the behavior that caused the spanking -- or didn’t repeat it for a very long time. What I am saying is that spanking in real time is probably much more natural and more effective than delay.

 

Those who have studied the factors that make a correction effective tell us that it should be “certain”, “severe” and “swift”. In the real adult world we all live in, these are challenging conditions to achieve. But for those who believe spankings can’t achieve real behavior modification, I say: try certain, severe and swift for a while and see if you still think spanking doesn’t work.

 

I agree that “certain, severe, and swift” is almost certainly the right recipe for effective correction.  Throughout our fifteen-plus years of doing DD, however, we’ve almost always been a mere one out of three.  Anne’s spankings have always been plenty severe.  However, “certain” and “swift” are ongoing problems.

 

I’m being honest when I say that my resolve around self-reporting was an effort to build more certainty into our disciplinary endeavors.  What I am finding, however, is that in the context of Domestic Discipline, certainty and swiftness are not wholly independent variables.  Without swiftness, certainty becomes far less . . . certain.

 

In thinking through what to do about my efforts to self-sabotage the painful discipline I know I deserve, it did occur to me even before Alan’s comment that reducing the time between a self-report and her taking up the paddle and doing something about it is probably a necessary first step.  I’m not sure it would even require a major adjustment.  What I see happening time and again is I self-report, then we aren’t around each other for a while, then as soon as we are, I go into my subtle and not-so-subtle efforts to delay.  Over the course of even a few hours, I can find arguments to delay the proceedings, or often things really will happen on her end to interfere. So, what if she started eliminating some of the time that I have to maneuver and that events have to intercede?

 

As so often happens, I got to think about some of the inspiration we got early on from the Disciplinary Wives Club stories.  As I’ve said before, one of my favorites has always been the story Even More, written by our contributor Al.  It occurred that in that story, the wife calls the husband when she is on her way home from work and tells him to be ready for his spanking as soon as she gets home, after telling him earlier in the day that he was in for one.  That seems to me to be about the perfect amount of “anticipation” time.  He knows for a few hours that he is going to get one, then there is a short but powerful period in which he knows it is coming very soon.  In our case, there simply wouldn’t be much time for me to argue or maneuver if she were to call me on her way home from work to tell me I was getting my spanking as soon as she gets home.  It could also work in situations in which the husband is at work or otherwise away from the home.  She could call and order that he be home by a certain time and tell him to expect a spanking as soon as he gets home. 

 

The other thing about anticipation is I think wives may over-estimate its power.  I have a pretty short attention span, and I suspect other husbands do too.  If I know I have a spanking coming in the next hour, I will think of little else.  However, if the “anticipation” period is longer or more indeterminate, other thoughts naturally intercede.  Moreover, while soon after an offense I may feel a lot of contrition and a strong desire to be held accountable, those feelings have a pretty short half-life.

 

Finally, as Alan alluded to, when the delay becomes substantial, additional acts of bad behavior or “acting out” seem to become inevitable:

 

[F]or us there is a certain self-correcting mechanism that never lets her paddle gather too much dust. If it goes too long or she lets my behavior slip I begin to act out, in effect challenging her authority –and then she reminds me both of her authority and that I don’t want to challenge it.

 

 

Please let me know your thoughts about any of this.  I hope you all have a great week.

The Club - Meeting 394 - Paradoxical Disappointments and Emotional Rollercoasters

The desire to keep doing what we love supersedes the desire to penalize bad behavior. - Nell Scovell

 

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our (more or less) 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 has been kind of up and down.  On the upside, after taking off more than a month thanks to the vacation from hell and then an extended bout of Covid, I finally got back into the gym for the first time in over a month. Though painful, it was good for me.  Kind of like the spanking Anne gave me last week.  I’ll use that spanking as the launch pad for this week’s discussion, while also following up on a few reader comments.

 

In response to the topic of what usually brings spankings to an end, some of you talked about the paradoxical feelings we sometimes get when a spanking we know we deserve ends “too soon.”  I suspect it is a feeling many of disciplined husbands can relate to, even if it seems counter-intuitive.  While we are in the middle of the spanking, we really truly want it to end. But, if it ends “too soon,” we may experience disappointment.  While it may seem illogical to some, I totally get it.  For me, so much of my desire around domestic discipline is tied up with a need to feel like I am being held accountable and that consequences are being imposed.  Even if I really want her to stop when she’s in the middle of whacking away at my upturned bottom, there is some disappointment there if I feel like the punishment wasn’t quite long enough to really clean the slate, and for me cleaning the slate requires a spanking that I am really, really challenged to take.  If she stops too soon, part of me is happy but another part likely will be disappointed.

 

 

I have a similar rollercoaster of conflicting emotions when it comes to avoiding a spanking entirely.  I am man enough to admit that the prospect of being spanked leads me to some very childish behavior in one respect; like any kid who knows he or she is in for a spanking, I almost always try to avoid getting the consequences that my behavior earned.  Even though I was the one who asked for this kind of relationship, as soon as I know I am likely to get a spanking, I start hoping that something will happen to interfere with her plans.  Sometimes, I will try to get her to put it off for a day or two. Sometimes I even have a legitimate reason for putting it off, but part of me is also hoping that justice delayed will end up being justice denied entirely.

 

Last week, I once again experienced that cycle of wanting imposed consequences then quickly not wanting them. On Sunday, I self-reported (as I resolved to start doing regularly), regarding some behavior and attitude issues.  She was well aware of the issues, particularly the attitude problem, but I had committed to self-reporting and I really am trying to make it a habit.  We weren’t together that evening and, therefore, she didn’t have the opportunity to take care of it that day. Then, I ended up with some back pain that was real, but I did use it as an excuse to ask her to give me a reprieve for a day or two.  Three days came and went, and I started to think that I might have once again managed to avoid one entirely.  But, as soon as I had that realization, I felt some disappointment.  I knew that I deserved a spanking, and the part of me that needs to be held accountable needed one.

 

Then, at dinner that night, she asked me told me to enjoy the time sitting down, because I wouldn’t be able to sit comfortably later that evening.  It took me by surprise, but I didn’t even try to put it off any longer.  Not that my feelings were unmixed or consistent.  On the one hand, I instantly no longer felt that nagging sense of unexpiated guilt and accompanying disappointment that I had felt when I thought I might have delayed my way out of a trip over her knee.  On the other hand, I was not looking forward to getting spanked, even though I knew I deserved it.

 

It did happen, and on a little faster schedule than I anticipated.  Although the scheduling varies, most of our spankings seem to happen around 9:00 or 9:30.  I had been hanging out in my home office watching television.  I wandered into our bedroom, where Anne generally works at night, at around 8:30, thinking it probably would be at least 30 minutes before she would let me know it was time.  Instead, as soon as I walked into the bedroom she asked if I was ready for my spanking. As has been the case in our three or four most recent sessions, it was OTK with the bath brush and hairbrush. 

 

 

She went for a few minutes and the bath brush was as hard to take as usual.  But, she stopped to inspect my butt and was plainly disappointed that parts of my bottom were starting to show what had to be very minor “spotting” of blood.  It was minor enough that I couldn’t find any evidence of it a few minutes later.  She was plainly disappointed that she couldn’t go longer, to the point that she told me I would be getting a second round the next day.  She said that she had not realized how angry she was about my recent attitude issues until she started spanking me.  It was clear that for her, the spanking she had just delivered was not enough to clean the slate.  I told her that it might need to wait a day, as I had (a legitimate) scheduling conflict the next day.  And, of course, you know what happened.  The second part never happened.

 

So, my spanking experience last week dovetailed very closely with a couple of comments by ZM and Glenmore.  ZM noted:

 

One of the best things about spanking is how it clears the slate, both for the spanker and the spankee. If she is spanking me out of feelings of hurt or anger, she should continue at least until those feelings been fully vented, at which point she will probably transition from feeling angry at me to feeling sorry for me. At the same time, if I reach the point of surrender, it will provide an emotional catharsis and purging of feelings of guilt for me as well. So, the spanking should end with a clean slate.

 

While the spanking she delivered actually did leave me pretty sore for at least three days and had purged most of my guilt, it plainly had not been sufficient to clean the slate from Anne’s perspective.

 

Glenmore raised another angle, asking: “I wonder if the length of the spanking is related to just how much is she enjoying it? The sense of power must be intoxicating for her and I notice her tone is not one of anger but almost amusement sometimes.”  I have experienced that, too. Anne plainly does enjoy her role as disciplinarian, though she seems to get off more on the pre-spanking activities than on the spanking itself.  She is very open about the fact that she likes it when I show signs of nervousness about either getting spanked or about her starting to exercise more authority. We talk pretty often about her becoming much more strict with me (though our follow-through has been pretty spotty so far) and exercising much more authority, going down more of an FLR path. When we have those talks, it turns me on but it also does make me feel more than a little nervous. It shows, and she plainly likes that it does.

 

She has also said that she enjoys telling me to get ready for a spanking or to get into position, and then watching me comply.  Over the last year, she’s also taken to being more vocal during the spanking itself, repeating her displeasure with my actions and asking rhetorical questions about whether she is getting through to me.  So, I do think she does enjoy delivering the spanking and that it is, as Glenmore suggested, all about the sense of power.

 

I don’t have a formal topic associated with any of the above but welcome any thoughts you may have.

The Club - Meeting 393 - Stopping

 

“What cannot be altered must be borne, not blamed.”- Thomas Fuller.

 

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our (more or less) 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.

 

Remember how I said in my last post that one of my resolutions/aspirations was to make sure I didn’t backslide on some of the behavioral gains I made last year?  Well, it didn’t take me long to blow that resolution.  Though, technically I was probably a little behind schedule, since the second Friday of January is officially national “Quitters Day,” the day on which most New Years resolution makers are most likely to give up.  https://nationaltoday.com/ditch-new-years-resolution-day/  In this case, it probably earned me a spanking; the first of the new year.

 

 

My other resolutions are also off to a bad start, though getting off to a good start on those wasn’t entirely within my control.  I had hoped to back into the gym and into some new athletic endeavors and get the new year off to a strong start on at least that front.  I also wanted to start some volunteer work.  Unfortunately, it ended up taking me almost one full month to shake the Covid symptoms.  Fingers crossed, I think I’m finally ready to really get started on 2022, a full month late.

 

One thing that did seem to get off to a good start for the new year was the discussion here at the Disciplinary Couples Club.  We covered a lot of ground – resolutions; differences in “alpha” and “beta” (though I’m not wild about that term) male approaches to Female/male discipline; “hotwifing” categories; M/m spankings; how to accommodate DD with kids still at home . . . Good stuff. 

 

However, one thing we didn’t get a lot of was suggestions for future topics.  If you have thoughts about things that might be good for a group discussion, please let me know, either in a comment to this post or by email.

 

Glenmore did have a suggestion for a topic:

 

 

When a spanking should stop sounds like an interesting topic and linked to a subtopic of what is the objective of the spanking? To cause immediate pain, or to be feeling the effects for days after, or both. Very often if a spanking stops too soon the effects disappear very quickly, which is a source of frustration for her as she feels she did not do a good enough job.

 

We’ve talked in the past (multiple times) about how long spankings take, or “should” take.  Though, it never seemed to get much response.  But, Glenmore’s angle on it is slightly different; not so much about duration per se but about what exactly does, or should, bring one to an end. 

 

So, that is this week’s topic.  Is there something that usually brings a spanking to an end in your disciplinary routine, and does it depend on the objective the spanking?  I can think of many possibilities.  Perhaps she has a particular number of swats in mind? Or, maybe she uses a timer?

Maybe she’s going for a spanking that is long enough to make him sore for several days and knows from experience how long that takes?  Maybe he cries and that is the signal that the spanking should end, or that it should go on a bit longer but not too long?  Or, maybe her arm just gets tired?

 

For us, it seems to be the condition of my butt that most frequently brings a spanking to an end.  While I need to lose some bodyfat in other areas, I don’t have much on my ass, and I do a lot of leg and glute work in the gym. I think the skin, stretched tightly over my buns with little fat to absorb and distribute the force of the swats, contributes to small breaks in the skin, resulting in minor “spotting.”  Although it truly is minor, it often leads Anne to stop a spanking that I think she otherwise might have continued.

 

 

I also used to believe there wasn’t much point in continuing a spanking after my butt got numb, which it almost inevitably did with heavier wooden paddles.  I’ve started rethinking that lately, however.  A few weeks ago someone pointed out that even once the butt goes on, a longer spanking may result in that “you aren’t going to be sitting comfortably for a week” deep soreness.

 

I’m genuinely not sure what would happen if Anne were to decree that a spanking would not end until I was crying real tears.  As I’ve said, it has never happened so far.  But, then, she has never given the “this spanking won’t stop until you are crying” approach a try.  I do think that because of the numbness issue, in probably would require multiple sessions with minutes of downtime to let the feeling return.

 

 

How about you? What typically brings your spankings to an end?  Does it depend on the objective of the spanking (punishment vs. maintenance vs. preventative, etc.)?  And, for the husbands, do you think the spankings stop too soon, not soon enough, or just right?  I'm not sure the answer to that one is all that obvious.  For example, some of us are perversely attracted to the idea of crying, and even if you really, really want a spanking to stop when it is in process, I don't think it is all that uncommon to feel some disappointment if it ends before tears or while he is still comfortably within the limits of what he can take without breaking down and really submitting or surrendering fully to her.

 

  

I hope you all have a good week.

The Club - New Years Edition 2022

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.” - Benjamin Franklin

 Hello all.  Welcome back to the first meeting of the Disciplinary Couples Club for 2022.

 As long-term readers know, my New Years posts tend to be both reflective and verbose.  So, hopefully those who have been here a while and who come for the camaraderie will bear with me. Those who are here just for the spanking porn may want to come back some other time.

 “Well, what a fucking year.” That’s how I began my traditional New Years post for 2021.  I thought (hoped, prayed, assumed) things couldn’t get any worse and that 2021 would yield a “v-shaped recovery” from the shitshow that was 2020. Although I do think the world recovered some of its collective footing after a very unbalanced and unbalancing 2020, it hardly was the major positive change I was hoping for.  If 2020 was a series of disasters, 2021 was like a long, slow grind.  Though, I guess at least the overall direction of the grind at least was upwards.  Sort of.

 For us, the old year ended on a very stressful note, and the new year got off to a very bad start.  I won’t go into details because it really would be a little bit too revealing, but our community dealt with a real tragedy near the end of the year. Then, I  contracted Covid and had to quarantine. While we were traveling in a foreign country.  Not fun. 

 If you live in the U.S., I encourage you to think twice before traveling internationally until the CDC lifts its current travel restrictions. They require a negative Covid test no more than 24 hours before flying back to the U.S. from a foreign country and, and that restriction applies no matter how long you might have quarantined after a positive test.  The problem is, the CDC itself notes that you can test positive for months after you are no longer contagious and aren’t experiencing any symptoms.  The only other option if you keep testing positive (which I did for several days after the CDC’s five-day quarantine period), is to get a signed letter from a doctor saying you had Covid but have now recovered.  Good luck finding a doctor in a foreign country who will examine you wherever you are quarantined, and who in addition to doing his job as a doctor will also be so kind as to write a letter for you containing whatever magic words your airline may require before they will let you onto a flight back to the U.S.  I’ve also heard that some airlines are unilaterally requiring longer quarantine periods than the five days the CDC currently suggests.  In short, there is a highly transmissible disease going around, and if you get it while traveling abroad it is all too easy to get stuck for some indeterminate period before you can come home.

 

  

Regarding the virus itself, I encourage you to keep taking steps to protect yourself.  The Omicron variant (which I assume is what I had, though I have no way of knowing for sure) has been characterized as “mild,” but that’s a relative term that is used mainly in comparison to Delta and the original Covid 19 variants, which have killed millions worldwide.  Based on my own experience and that of fully vaccinated friends and family, Omicron may not put you in the hospital or kill you, but then symptoms can still be pretty debilitating and can last a long time.  It was 12 days between when I first experienced symptoms and when I finally tested negative, and my symptoms—especially the more flu-like symptoms like exhaustion and “brain fog”—actually got worse after I tested negative.  It’s now been three weeks since I had the first symptoms, and I still can’t fully shake the cough, congestion and fatigue.  Friends who have contracted it recently experienced very bad fatigue and severe body aches, and severe fatigue.  Therefore, while I understand the hope that Omicron’s combination of high transmissibility and mild(er) symptoms might lead to herd immunity without maxing our hospital and morgue capacity in the process, based on my experience Omicron isn’t a joke. 

 I didn’t really expect to start the new year with a rant, but there you go. I also need to try to keep a wider and more positive perspective on the year as a whole.  I spent a good part of the year recuperating and rebuilding from a surgery to fix a chronic health problem that had limited my physical activity for two years.  It wasn’t an easy or painless rehab, but by mid-year I was taking on some physical challenges that, in my humble opinion, were fairly impressive for an aging guy such as myself.  For the first time ever, my proclivity for social binging on alcohol dropped like a rock.  I also finally let go of a career that, although lucrative and fairly good at serving my ego needs, had not been serving me well from a mental/spiritual/bodily health perspective for many years.  The end-of-year tragedy I spoke of above, and the lack of inquires about our welfare by a lot of people I worked with for many years served to reinforce that I probably should have moved on long before I actually pulled the trigger.  In past years, I’ve posted this meme, which reflected some real frustration about my chronic lack of yearly progress:

 

 

But, this year I can say that in some areas I actually did become a better, healthier, more energetic person.  The goal now needs to be to carry forward and not lose ground.  On that note, my Covid quarantine and the year-end drama our community went through did lead to one epiphany that I think and hope will have an impact on how I approach 2022.  I left my career without any real plans for a second act, and I’ve never had any obsessive hobbies or compelling interests to keep me busy post-career.  In combination with the necessary process of rehabilitating my body, my lack of concrete post-career goals led me into a months-long process of decompression and recuperation consisting mainly of a lot of dog walks, daily gym workouts, reading, and a lot of Netflix binging.  While I genuinely need some time to just decompress after burning the candle at both ends for way too many years and almost ruining my health in the process, I realized that my daily routine while quarantined in a hotel room was not all that different from the way I had been approaching retirement, i.e. whole days drifted away with me sitting around the house doing little other than surfing the internet, reading books and streaming series and documentaries on Netflix.  A life comprised of consuming media and entertainment content isn’t much of a life.  So, whatever plans I put in place for 2022 need to involve a conscious effort to overcome inertia and do some exploring and serving. 

What about the DD/FLR/kink front?  Well, it was another up and down year.  I continue to be surprised that as we have progressed further and more solidly into empty-nester status, things haven’t progressed that much in terms of DD or Anne taking charge.  There is a complicated mix of reasons.  First, my physical recovery imposed some hard limits on physical discipline for several months. Second, and relatedly, it’s hard to get any momentum going after a long break.  Third, although I “retired” mid-way through the year, Anne is still working. Therefore, while I had fewer distractions to get in the way of DD consistency, she did not. Fourth, for much of the year my behavior was, in fact, much better than it was when I was neck deep in work pressure and work-related socializing and travel. Finally, there was one time near the holidays that I did something that I know undermined her authority and, unfortunately, it went unaddressed. 

But, there were bright spots on the DD front that could foreshadow changes and real progress this year. For the first time in more than 15 years in this lifestyle, without any prompting from me Anne searched for and bought a spanking instrument.  (Unfortunately for my bottom, it was a bath brush. I hate those damn things.)  Further, she started leaving it and the heavy ebony hairbrush on display together in our bathroom, in a way that indicates to me that she’s getting much more comfortable with our kids potentially figuring out that someone in our house gets spanked.  

 

So, with 2021 in the rearview mirror, what do I want to accomplish in 2022?  Unlike in the past when I would set out some very specific goals for the upcoming year, this year’s list is a little more “thematic” and includes:

• Solidify the progress I made last year on reducing the number of excessive drinking incidents.
• Renew and energize some friendships that I let drift away over the last few years when I was too focused on career.
• Volunteer on some effort that has a real and substantial impact on the lives of vulnerable or powerless people.
• Take at least three long road trips with Anne and the dogs.
• Complete drafts of two books I’ve wanted to write for some time but never seem to get around to.
• Multiple multi-state motorcycle trips.
• Take up some sport or demanding fitness activity that doesn’t take place in a gym.
• Reverse the recent losses in our investment portfolio.

On the DD front, my aspirations include:

•  Weekly reporting of any misbehavior.  I started this one last year but my consistency was dismal. 
• Inject some additional kink into our disciplinary relationship.  I don’t have anything really firm in mind for this one, but maybe something like being spanked outdoors or in a car.
• Finally, after 15+ years, cry from a spanking.

I haven’t asked Anne what her resolutions might be, but here are a few she might consider that do reflect what I see as particularly relevant to our relationship:

 

How about you? Do you have any specific goals or aspirations for the new year, whether related to domestic discipline or more vanilla aspects of your life or relationship?  Anything that you particularly want to achieve?  Any specific bad behaviors you’d like conquer?   

I hope you have a great 2022. The bar is set awfully low for this to be a better year, but let’s all try to do our part.  Of course, I said the exact same thing last year, and look how that turned out.