The Club - Meeting 280 - Reporting & Monitoring

“I don’t need any new resolutions, since last year’s are all still good to go.” - ZM

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

I know this post comes a little late in the day. That may be the new norm.  I keep finding that I have other responsibilities much of the day on Saturday, so my new plan for 2019 is to be a little less rigorous in getting the blog done, as other things in my life sometimes do need to take priority. 

I hope you had a good week.  I finally got some serious time off.  While work was slow the last quarter of the year, that’s not quite the same thing as actually taking time off.  I probably should have put that on my list of resolutions for 2019: Relaxing more and just enjoying the scenery.  Though, I’ve read that on average of the de-stressed feeling following a vacation wears off after ten days or less.  I’ll do my best to stretch that out a bit.  In the meantime, I come back tanned, rested and ready for 2019. Without revealing too much about our holiday, it involved a little of this reaction on my part:

Speaking of resolutions, this week’s quote (above) comes from ZM’s comment to last week’s post.  Just about fell out of my chair laughing.  And it hit way too close to home for comfort.

To kick off 2019, let’s talk about reporting.  It is a subject that came up several times over the last couple of posts, in connection with both consistency and resolutions.  Therefore, it seems particularly appropriate for kicking off a new year, one in which we try to improve our behavior and performance consistently.  

On the issue of the extent to which self-reporting should be a part of a Domestic Discipline relationship, there was a wide range of views expressed.  Alan kicked off last week’s discussion by observing:

“I offer a resolution I won’t make but should make: I resolve to self-report more often and more promptly behavioral issues that might result in discipline. I am not going to make that resolution because it would utterly fail and I know it.”

Perhaps at the other end of the spectrum was a comment from Elizabeth from a couple of weeks ago:

“He has to confess, and he does that by keeping an honest and complete journal. Those of you who are unwilling to come clean and instead are expecting your wife to find out about all your misbehavior are living in a dream world. It's dishonest and disrespectful.”

Unlike Alan, I did make a resolution to report more consistently, though my view of reporting is somewhere between his and Elizabeth’s.  I said in a reply to her:

“I get what you are saying and agree in general with the distinction. But, I do get what Alan is saying, too. For whatever reason, some of us who are wired like this just do better when control is taken out of our hands as much as possible, and self-reporting does—for whatever reason—feel like keeping some degree of control. Now, as a practical matter, I think that’s just the way it has to work in adult relationships. But, what we crave is the note from the teacher or principal telling mom or dad we had gotten spanked and school, knowing it will mean a second one at home. And, knowing that if the note didn’t make it home, we’d get it even worse when the truth inevitably came out. I’m not arguing with your point, as I think it really does reflect the inevitable reality that getting ratted out by others is unlikely as adult, and expecting a wife to detect and deal with every offense on her own also is not realistic or helpful. But, the psychology for some of us really does seem to involve wanting to be taken as far out of the control loop as possible, while also wanting the discipline to be consistent and rigorous. I suspect you can have or the other, but not both.”

My view really is somewhere in the middle between Alan and Elizabeth.  In addition to being concerned about his chance of living up to a self-reporting resolution, Alan sees self-reporting as a form of “topping from the bottom.” Also, his wife is not really interested in it and may want to maintain control over dialing things up and down, and he likes her having that control and feeling like she is the one imposing things. As I said above, I totally get that and feel it myself.  For me, the very perverse attraction of DD has always been heavily wrapped up in both hating and needing boundaries.  Because I do hate them so much, I need them to be imposed from outside, and part of me craves being taken well outside my own comfort zone and being really subject to someone's hard, rigorous authority.  The more I am responsible for keeping things moving, including by reporting my own bad acts, the less the whole thing meets my need to have control affirmatively taken away from me. It's why I still get butterflies thinking about how schools used to send notes home after a spanking there, knowing it would result in a second, harder spanking at home that night; it's the way the whole thing is taken out of the recipient's control. 

But, on the other hand, I think Elizabeth is right that few wives are going to sign up to rigorous behavior monitoring and, thus, if the husband is not going to report regularly, any chance of discipline becoming a regular and sustained part of the relationship is diminished. Few of us have third-parties to rat us out and our wives don't have crystal balls that allow them monitor our daily misdeeds at work and outside the home.

[As an aside, where I don’t quite agree with Elizabeth is that if a man does not always report his bad behavior, it means he is playing games or not serious about the relationship.  As I said in a post about this a couple of years ago, there is one obvious impediment to more rigorous self-reporting: while confession may be good for the soul, it is not so good for the bottom of a truly disciplined husband.  In fact, in several years now of running this blog, I think the only folks I’ve heard say something along the lines of “if you aren’t reporting fully and completely you are playing games,” are (a) husbands who admit that they are in FLR or Femdom relationships in which whatever spankings they receive are not really full-blown punishment spankings; or (b) the Disciplinary Wives who, most often, have never been on the receiving end of the kind of punishment spankings they dish out. On the other hand, the men who tell stories that have the ring of truth about receiving real, true punishment spankings ALL seem to appreciate the challenges of being forthcoming when you know what that may bring.]

Now, that said, I do recognize that as much as my fantasies may involve Anne taking the reins fully and not needing any kind of reporting from me, as I said to Elizabeth, that probably isn’t realistic if I want to see real improvement in behavior and performance, and while I may want boundaries to be imposed by someone else almost against my will, I also need them to be consistent. As ZM said last week:

“It seems that most everything that I feel needs to change stems directly from my undisciplined life. If I had to make a single resolution for 2019, it would be that I want to learn how to live a more disciplined life. It would greatly reduce the stress and anxiety that I experience, and would also lower the stress of those around me as well and make our family more financially stable.”

Amen, brother.  So, as much as I know it will result in a bottom that is more sore, more often, I know I need to report more regularly.  And, I think it would be good if Anne gets into keeping better track of those things that annoy her and piss her off, both to increase her own sense of authority and to address the concerns Alan and I both have that self-reporting subtly reinforces a level of control on our part that negates some of what we need/want from this relationship.   

The imperfect but practical solution may be something Elizabeth brought up a couple of weeks ago that had already been on my mind. She observed: 

“We developed consistency over a number of years. It was based on taking advice from Aunt Kay's site about having a weekly Reckoning. And keeping a journal in between the weekly sessions. I think that any submissive husband who keeps a journal of misbehavior is more likely to get regular discipline from his disciplinary wife. At 1st my husband kept a journal. After a few years I began keeping one as well because I wanted to keep track of the issues that he was less aware of.”

As I've discussed, at the very beginning of our DD experimentation, I kept a notebook in which I tracked each agreed-upon offense and tallied up the minimum number of swats we agreed to.  I still have the one we initially used, and I took a look at it a few weeks ago. What I didn’t remember was the extent to which she would comment on particular offenses, hand down her sentence, and document when the punishment had been carried out.  We didn't keep that system in place very long, because she quickly got over the need for establishing some minimum number of swats.  But, I think we both knew that reporting had its benefits. Over the years, we have tried other systems, like sending her emails with a daily/weekly journal, kept in a password-protected file.  But, the journal is not a great vehicle for simply reporting offenses, as it is more of a “stream of consciousness,” contemporaneous check-in on what was going on, driving me, stressing me, etc.  The entries can be long and detailed.  

I've also tried more succinct reports. Over the last few months, I worked on a couple of reporting formats (including one modified from a form Glen sent me), including weekly summaries . . .

 

and daily reports for particular offenses.

 

But, we have never implemented these in any regular way, probably because I am not diligent in using them.  And, while reporting electronically or in forms that are reviewed and then disposed of is undoubtedly more secure than a paper journal that might be found by prying little eyes, that is less an issue for us these days.  So, our old “offense-only” journal and the failure of my other efforts got me to thinking that maybe a simple, paper journal that she and I both use to keep track of things might be the way to go.  Therefore, for Christmas I gave her a small, leather-bound journal as a stocking stuffer.  My current thought is it will reside somewhere in her office, where both of us can access it and enter offenses as they occur. We do, however, still need to talk and agree to the logistics around how it will be maintained consistently, when we will go over it, etc.  Again, it needs to be something simple.  Elizabeth explained her system as follows:   

“Frank has a small spiral notebook that fits in a pocket. He carries it everywhere, and he is required to enter every date, even if there are no misbehaviors. Next to the date he writes the specific behavior that we will address, such as "2 extra drinks at lunch business meeting," or "forgot to do dishes last night" or "left socks on the floor" or "did not put car in garage last night." There is nothing else in the journal. Our week starts Saturday morning because Friday evening is our reckoning. He strips naked and sits at my feet while I review his list and mine. I assign implements and strokes for each transgression.  Establishing a regular system like this makes it very easy for me to be his disciplinarian.”

So, aside from what we've already discussed, any ideas on what an effective reporting routine should entail?  For those of you have implemented a reporting or review system, how does it work? What do you keep track of?  Does it cover only agreed-upon offenses, or is it more flexible?  Do both parties have a role in documenting and formally tracking the misbehavior?  Does it cover work-related issues or only relationship/household stuff?  And, most importantly, have you been able to do it consistently and, if so, how?

I hope you have a great week.