The Club - Meeting 413 - "Anytime, anyplace, anywhere"

"Sometimes we have to step out of our comfort zones.  We have to break the rules.  And we have to discover the sensuality of fear.  We need to face it, challenge it, dance with it." -- Kyra Davis

 

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 wasn’t as productive as the week before, but that’s OK.  Sometimes, you just need some time off.  

 

My week also started with an encounter that was totally normal in most respects but was an amusing twist on our eemingly never-ending fascination with witnesses.  

 

I got an email out of the blue from someone I worked around at my last gig.  We weren’t super close, but we liked each other and shared some hobbies.  Anyway, he was going to be passing through the town where we own a condo we escape to on the weekends and asked whether there was any chance I’d be around that day and up for having breakfast.  I hadn’t planned to be there, but I hadn’t seen him in a while, so I decided to make the drive up to meet him.

 

There was nothing out of the ordinary about the breakfast.  It was fun catching up.  What was odd in the context of all our “witness” and “others” conversations is that this is a guy whom I dreamed about spanking me! I've seen him since that dream, but not in a context where we were sitting around having a conversation together one-on-one.

 

I’ve related here that I don’t dream about spanking very often, which is itself kind of odd given how big a part of my life DD has become.  So, when it does happen, I tend to remember the dreams. I wrote about this particular dream here back in 2019, but I’ll describe it again:

 

I had a dream that probably speaks volumes about what I find really threatening.  I dreamed I was at a large gathering of business colleagues.  It may have been a holiday party or something like that.  But, unlike a normal work party, I also had family members in attendance, including both my wife and my father.  While the details are sketchy, someone had ordered me to be spanked for some office misbehavior.  It was to be done by our office manager, who is a man.  As he was attempting to take me to an adjacent room to spank me, I turned to my wife, who was sitting at a table with some other people from work.  I asked her to intercede.  I seemed to think there was something very unfair about the spanking, and I was very agitated and intent on pleading my case. 

 

Instead, she looked up from her conversation, and directed me very dismissively to run along and get it over with.  My father was sitting at a nearby table, and he too seemed fully on board with my forthcoming punishment.  He told me this one would be of a “totally different order” than anything I had experienced before. I was sullen and angry, though my concern seemed to be not so much the spanking itself but, rather, that everyone would know it was happening and might be able to overhear it.  Our manager took me out of the room, and in the odd manner of dreams I didn’t really experience the spanking from a first-person perspective, but I could hear myself getting spanked hard and crying.

 

 

The guy I was having breakfast with was the office manager who, in my dream, took me out for the spanking.  

 

As I sat there having breakfast with this guy, two thoughts hit me.  First, it was a very weird angle on the conversations we've had here about how we would feel interacting with someone who had witnessed one of our spankings or at least knows about them.  In this case, the guy actually gave me one, but only in my dream.

Second, I still cannot for the life of me figure out why my subconscious picked this particular person as the spanker in that dream.  He’s totally non-threatening. The relationship we had was non-hierarchical, though technically I would have outranked him by a lot.  So, very odd all around. 

 

None of that has anything to do with today’s topic but, rather, was more of an interesting anecdote I’m using partially for space-filler, since I don’t have a very coherent topic in mind for this week.

 

Speaking of which, I am still loving October and this whole season, for many reasons not the least of which is it gives me an opportunity to post Halloween and autumn-themed memes here on the blog.

 

 

As is often the case, we did seem to cover a lot of ground last week with what I thought was a pretty narrow topic.  Surprises led to discussions about rules, strictness, contrition, and penance, among others.   

 

With respect to the correlation between contrition and spanking, TG had this observation, which resonates with me.

 

“I think if there’s a relationship at all between contrition and punishment, it’s inverse. I had a situation last week where the bottom line was that what I said and did really upset her, although she was not directly involved - it was related to kids and grand kids. She’s suffering from a really nasty cold at the moment so it’s on hold, but there’s a punishment coming my way when she feels better. Here’s the thing though, she was prepared to see this as outside the scope of our marriage DD and move on. I’m feeling really bad about it and have said that I need the punishment to “wash it away” and move past it myself. So contrition and punishment go hand in hand here. Conversely, I think if I didn’t feel bad about it and she insisted on punishing me, I can’t imagine refusing it, but I think my reaction would be (inner) anger at being - what I would think was - unreasonably punished, rather than the feeling that I screwed up, it’s been dealt with and we can move on.”

 

Whenever possible, I like to let one topic transition into another based on reader comments, and I felt TG’s comment (especially the part in bold), while focused on contrition, raised an issue that was coming through in different ways in a few other comments.  Here are a few other illustrations of the point I’ll get to with this topic:

 

"When you enter a DD relationship your behavior is being judged by your wife or girlfriend. So, her judgement really determines if your behavior is well disciplined or not. And you find yourself being evaluated for things you probably never considered important before such as not cleaning up a mess, missing a chore or disobeying a “minor rule.” The last spanking, I got was for spilling my coffee in three spots and not cleaning it up while carrying it from the kitchen to my office working on an important project. I was very self-disciplined about finishing the project but my wife felt she had to supply the discipline for my disrespect for her rules about the house." – Alan

 

“Currently, I’ve gone a few weeks without a spanking, but that will change this week. I messed up, first not meeting a goal for maintenance on Saturday and then leaving my coffee mug in the bathroom this morning. I will be spanked on Monday and Tuesday. – DWC Fred

 

“I see such situations as part of the continuum of Disciplinary Wives expanding their powers. Most DW's begin with specific rules and behavior in the home and between the couple. These are then extended to respect and consideration for the wife's feelings. Later, these are extended to the wife's power of correction of the husband's moods. Often in parallel with this power extension, the wife starts controlling husband's interactions with "third parties" when in the wife's presence. Continuing further, the wife extends her power to situations where the husband's interactions with third parties that might "somehow" effect the wife's feeling. (Somewhere in this "power progression," the couple will have adopted the "wife can 'discipline anytime, anywhere for any reason' dynamic."” – Donn

 

The topic that I’m extracting from these disparate comments is a little amorphous, but it’s related to Donn’s observation about the “continuum of Disciplinary Wives expanding their powers.” He also characterized it as a “power progression.”  Also, is Alan right that "When you enter a DD relationship your behavior is being judged by your wife or girlfriend. So, her judgement really determines if your behavior is well disciplined or not"?

Is Donn right that such a progression happens in most DD marriages?  Do most wives begin dealing with a concrete set of rules and then progress over time to something close to “anytime, anywhere for any reason”?  Or, do some jump to the “anytime, anywhere, for any reason” relatively quickly without many intermediate steps, while others never come close to that level of control?

 

For us, I think there was a difference between theory and practice.  We did agree to some offenses that were presumptively punishable and even to a presumptive minimum number of swats for each.  But, that “system” was really designed to be a confidence builder and wasn't meant to limit her authority to punish outside those agreed-upon offenses.  I think that pretty early on, perhaps even in our very first discussion about trying DD, I proposed that the “rule” should be “for any reason.” 

 

That was the theory. In actual practice, it’s been a lot slower and more of a process, similar to what Donn describes but with somewhat different steps.

 

Also, in theory, Alan is right that Anne is the judge about whether my behavior reflects the kind of discipline she expects.  In practice though, she often asks whether I think something rose to the level of deserving a spanking. In fact, it happened just last week.

 

I was also intrigued by how Alan and DWC Fred’s coffee-related offenses fit into the power progression.  Have things like misplacing coffee cups and spilling coffee on the floor without cleaning it up been identified specifically as spankable offenses, i.e., made the subject of a rule, the breach of which would lead to punishment?   

 

 

 Are most of the rules that clear? Or, were those concrete examples of some less concrete standard, like “everything in its place” or “clean up your messes”?  In relation to Donn’s “progression of power” theory, were these very concrete, everyday behavioral issues around sloppiness or forgetfulness deemed spankable from the beginning, or did that evolve over time?

 

Or, were they ever identified as spankable? Maybe they were spanked for them because at some point--perhaps even in the moment--she decided to make those particular acts subject to her “for any reason” authority?

 

For those who have gotten to that “anytime, anywhere, for any reason” (or some variation of it) end of the continuum, how has that worked out?  Do you end up agreeing that the exercise of authority was “right” most of the time? Or, have you experienced something like what TG describes as a likely reaction when one doesn’t feel contrition, i.e., an angry or resentful feeling that a punishment wasn’t “fair,” even if by definition it fits within that “for any reason” grant of authority?  In other words, it’s all well and good to say, particularly at the onset of a DD relationship, that her authority is virtually wide open, but what happens when the proverbial rubber meets the road?

 

I hope you all have a great week.  I leave you with this pic of a couple in Halloween costumes, which makes me laugh every time I see it.

 

 

The Club - Meeting 412 - Surprise Spankings

Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.” -- Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

 

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

 

I hope you all had a great week.  For once, I felt like I got quite a bit accomplished over the course of the week. Nothing big, but I managed to check lots of small tasks off the to-do list.  I also beat most of the people in our neighborhood to putting up Halloween decorations.

 

 

We had a good discussion about dealing with the loss of a spanker.  Although loss of a spankee also was included in the topic, we didn’t get much on that, which I guess isn’t surprising given that virtually all our commenters these days are on the receiving end of the paddle.  I wasn’t sure whether the topic was broad enough to generate much interest, but I think it did serve as a launching point for people to emphasize what a big role DD plays in most of our commenters’ lives once it is established. 

 

While we were all discussing that topic, Glenmore sent me an email with the following topic suggestion:

 

"I notice that for most of us, including myself, we know about a spanking and that it will be coming. But I do have a couple of occasions where she 'ambushed' me and the spanking was a complete surprise.

 

While the spankings were not welcome at the time , those two events tend to resonate with me upon reflection.

 

On both occasions, the spanking was deserved but I had just assumed she had no intention of following through. On one occasion she was waiting for me after coming out of the shower (she did permit me to dry off thankfully), and the other was after an evening entertaining friends and we were doing the tidy-up after she left.

 

The surprise element left me mostly speechless although my initial impulse was to resist or argue for a reprieve. I just wasn't ready to be spanked, but she remained determined.

Neither were the hardest spankings I ever got, but she certainly seemed to enjoy the power she asserted in those situations and how my resistance quickly dissipated into acceptance.

 

It certainly kept me 'on my toes for a while after that not knowing that a spanking may be coming or if you did something to upset her unknowingly.

 

Planned spankings you have time to get your head around and can prepare yourself mentally and physically, but not when she 'ambushed' me."

 

While it hasn’t happened a lot, I can think of a few instances in which she took me by surprise, though sometimes the spanking itself, or that she decided to spank for something, wasn’t a surprise but the timing was.   

 

In fact, that happened in a recent spanking I talked about here. A few weeks ago, I asked for comments about how couples here deal with multiple offenses and with attempts at delay.  It had come up in the context of me seeking to avoid or delay getting spanked for not locking doors.  Virtually all the commenters said that I should have been spanked for each and every instance of leaving the garage door open, and possibly for arguing.  I’m never sure when Anne is keeping up with reading the blog, so I summarized the comments in a journal entry, which I sent to her by text one afternoon.  I knew that by putting it down in a journal entry, I was increasing the odds that a spanking would actually happen, but I also thought that if it did, it would probably be that night.  To my surprise, a few minutes after I sent the text, she came into the kitchen and told me to get upstairs for my spanking.  I must have looked as surprised as I felt, because she commented something to the effect of “Oh, you didn’t think I’d take care of it that quickly, did you?”  The result was our first daytime spanking in front of a window without the shades drawn, which I talked about a few weeks ago.

 

 

There have been a couple of other times I can think of when she ordered a spanking unexpectedly, and as I recall both involved chores.  One was failing to sweep the kitchen floor after she told me to do it. The other was forgetting to clean a rice cooker.  Both came as a surprise because I had forgotten about the tasks, but also because she carried out the spanking immediately.

 

Glen noted that in both of his “surprise” spankings, he deserved the spanking but didn’t think she would follow through.  I can’t recall any times that has happened to me, and I can't really think of a time when I thought I would get away with something but didn't.  

 

Glen also noted that his first reaction both times was to resist or argue for a reprieve.  “I just wasn't ready to be spanked, but she remained determined.”  I can understand the “I wasn’t ready to be spanked” reaction.   

 

We’ve talked a lot about how immediate spankings are probably best in terms of actually modifying behavior, but the reality in our DD marriage has been that there is almost always some substantial delay between the offense and the punishment or between her telling me I’m going to be spanked and it actually happening.  For the most part, I think a short delay can make a spanking more effective, because it gives you time to think about it, accept that it's going to happen, and to let that inevitability really sink in.  I do think it takes some time to process the whole thing, so I get what Glen means about not being ready to be spanked.

 

How about you?  Have you been taken by surprise by a spanking?  Why was it a surprise?  How did you react? Did your disciplinarian seem to enjoy an additional sense of power in taking you by surprise?

 

I hope you all have a great week.  I’m going to continue to enjoy the wonderful Fall colors and maybe do a little additional decorating.

 

 

The Club - Meeting 411 - Loss of Spanker or Spankee and Selective Self-Discipline

“Discipline yourself, and others won't need to.” - John Wooden

 

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

 

While September was a lot of fun, I admit I’m a little glad to see it in the rearview mirror.  Kind of literally.  I had two big road trips, both consisting of some fairly adventurous travel.  In retrospect, it’s all going to be great.  But, in the here and now, it was pretty damn tiring.  Anne felt it too.  We both felt like September got very busy, without a hell of a lot of planning on our part.  It was all good, but we’re both in the mood for some downtime at home. 

 

Fortunately, our calendars and the weather are cooperating in that respect.  Definitely a chill in the air that wasn’t there just a couple of weeks ago. Long-term readers of this blog know, I freaking love this time of year.

 

 

One thing I needed to face up to after all the adventuring was the need to write a post.  Unfortunately, I had zero inspiration as to any particular topic. Thankfully, a couple of you helped me out over the last couple of days.  Here are a few of the relevant exchanges:

 

J:  When DD ends because of the passing of a spouse . . . If it was the spanker who passed away, how does the spanked spouse remain disciplined? If the spanked spouse passed away, how does the spanker adapt to not having a spouse to spank anymore?

 

I assume Aunt Kay's husband is still around, but I haven't heard anything on how he is staying disciplined in her absence. How have you remained disciplined since your wife's passing?

 

KOJ: I also suggest Dan consider this as a topic. The question might be: Are spanked husbands undisciplined people who need discipline imposed by their wives? It would seem at first blush as if a simple yes would suffice. But in my case, and it seems among many writers here, I was very self-disciplined in some aspects of my life (work, attitude at work) but not others (chores at home, attitude toward wife, exercise, food, alcohol, flirting, etc.). So can self-discipline be selective? Is that truly possible? Don't we have it or not have it? Can it be compartmentalized?

 

Or is something else at play, like we both bought into the dynamic of me as undisciplined to the point of naughtiness and her as my disciplinarian. Maybe it was all kink! Maybe me being undisciplined at home was a reason to create a power exchange that we both wanted in our marriage?

 

All of these questions have been rolling around in my mind since her passing,

 

J: I was very undisciplined (outside of the armed forces rules imposed on me) and getting married caused a sea change in my character! I suppose this speaks volumes about me! I seem to be prone to going off the rails without a firm hand on me. I am surprised I was able to get married at all, given my habits, but my wife no doubt saw what I could be with some discipline.

 

ZM:  KOJ said: "I was very self-disciplined in some aspects of my life (work, attitude at work) but not others (chores at home, attitude toward wife, exercise, food, alcohol, flirting, etc.)." - Are we twins? ;-) This pretty largely describes me.

 

"So can self-discipline be selective? Is that truly possible? Don't we have it or not have it? Can it be compartmentalized?" - I certainly think it is possible to be self-disciplined in some things and not in others. There are at least four things that could be at play.

 

1) Need - You are more likely to be "self-disciplined" if there is an actual need to be disciplined. So perhaps at work you felt more pressure to be self-disciplined, and when you were at home trying to relax, you didn't feel like it was as needed.

 

2) Reward (and consistency of timeline to see rewards) - perhaps at work, you knew that if you worked very hard and were very self-disciplined, you would get a good raise at the next review. The things you mentioned that were outside the workplace mostly have longer term rewards if you are self-disciplined, but immediate gratification if you aren't.

 

3) Audience - at home, you had mostly your wife to impress. At work, you had many people to notice your stellar performance and to praise you.

 

4) Desire - maybe you really wanted to get ahead at work, but didn't really care so much about some of the "home" things you mentioned as deeply?

 

"Or is something else at play, like we both bought into the dynamic of me as undisciplined to the point of naughtiness and her as my disciplinarian. Maybe it was all kink! Maybe me being undisciplined at home was a reason to create a power exchange that we both wanted in our marriage?" - Could be, but for me at least, I can say that I would be at least as undisciplined at home if I didn't have my wife around, so I am pretty sure that while we might like the "kink" aspect of our DD relationship, my self-discipline problem is real and runs much deeper than that.

 

Regarding the passing of a spouse, I haven’t experienced it directly, so I don’t have much to contribute on that specifically, but perhaps others with more experience can chime in.  I do think it might be helpful to expand the loss of a spouse or significant other to divorce and other permanent separations, as that might help get a few more responses. 

 

Regarding Aunt Kay’s husband, I am still in contact with him, though I actually don’t think he is “still around” if by that you mean around this blog.  When he stopped participating here and stopped updating his own blog, it was because he made a conscious decision to put that phase of his life behind him, I think because he wanted to ensure it wasn’t blocking his ability to move onto a different phase.  I don’t want to go into in a lot of detail because I don’t want to share confidences without permission, but I know there have been times when he screwed something up and felt the old need to be held accountable.

 

I have more to contribute regarding KOJ’s questions as to whether spanked husbands are merely undisciplined people who need discipline imposed by their wives, and whether self-discipline can be selective.

 

I have fairly strong feelings about the first part of that question.  Yes, we may lack discipline, but compared to whom? And, on what scale?  I think many many who gravitate toward this lifestyle have a lot of drive and energy and passion, but they also tend to hold themselves to very high—perhaps absurdly high—standards.  Maybe we need more discipline, but perhaps we also hold ourselves accountable far more than others.

 

I often think about this in relation to my own biggest behavioral challenge – binge drinking.  I always feel like it’s something I need to control better, yet I have many, many friends who drink far, far more than I do.  The difference is, when they wake up with a hangover, they see it as the natural price to be paid for the good they had. I, on other hand, tend to see it as a moral failing on my part.

 

While drinking too much is probably the starkest example, I can hold myself to absurdly high standards in many areas.  Exercise. Productivity at work. Business development at work. Time management.  Diet.  If you asked people who know me how I do in those areas, I think many would say I’m more disciplined than the norm.  Yet, internally, I feel like I’ve let myself down if I’m not either perfect or working toward it.

 

Conversely, I feel like many who are most proud of their self-discipline and ability to follow rules are, in fact, natural followers who don’t give into temptation because they don’t feel much of it.  It’s the difference between a race horse and a stable pony.  One may be full of rebellious energy, but man what great things can happen when it’s directed and focused.  The other doesn’t create much trouble, but what does it accomplish in the end, other than its primary purpose of settling the more spirited down?

  

Regarding whether discipline can be selective, I’m of two minds.  On the one hand, I do feel like when I let my self-discipline slip in one area, it tends to spread like a cancer to other areas as well.  There definitely is an “all or nothing” aspect to it for me.  

 

 

On the other hand, it definitely is the case that I’m more likely to let the self-discipline slip in some areas than others.  When it came to work, I could always outwork pretty much anyone.  If I had a major matter I was handling, I would walk through a minefield to meet the client’s goals.  I’m also pretty disciplined around exercise and physical health.

 

On the other hand, I can’t seem to make myself clean up my office no matter how often I set it as a goal.  I spend way too much time surfing the internet and watching TV, no matter how often I tell myself it’s a waste of energy.  I’ve had lots of ideas for books I want to write, yet I seldom get around to putting pen to paper.

 

I think ZM is right in his four-factor analysis, though for me the categories of “need” and “audience” entail a desire to avoid failing or humiliating myself in front of others.  

 

I’ve always believed that while my profession seemed hyper-competitive, a lot of that behavior was driven by chronic insecurity.  In short, in those contexts I either didn’t need external discipline or the prospect of losing respect within my professional or social groups was itself a form of external discipline.

 

 

I also have issues that seem to be impervious to self-discipline and that cut across multiple social contexts. I can have a bad temper, and it flares at work, at home, while driving, while in the gym if someone is monopolizing equipment or leaving a mess in the locker room, etc.  I have told my wife several times that I feel like she should make disrespect something she punishes for much more aggressively, but I also wonder sometimes how amenable that problem would be to external discipline. 

  

 

I created quite a few problems for myself at work because I couldn’t hold my temper, yet whatever consequences occurred never stopped me.  Though, those consequences tended to play out over time and were kind of amorphous, which isn’t a prescription for effective behavior modification. 

 

 

Perhaps a more immediate and concrete consequence—a spanking other quick, sure disciplinary punishment—might have an impact (no pun intended), where workplace consequences failed.

  

Thanks in advance for your thoughts on all this, and thanks to J. and KOJ for their topic suggestions.

 

In the meantime, happy October.

 

 

Out for a Week or So

All, sorry for the inconsistent posting recently.  September somewhat unexpectedly became a very busy month.  I'll be out through the end of next week and unlikely to be posting.  I'll also have very little time to check the spam filter for pending comments, so post at your own risk.  Google's algorithm has seemed, however, to settle down a bit over the last week, with more comments getting through without my intervention.

Have a great weekend.

The Club - Meeting 410 - Changes, Openness, Bitchiness, etc.

Have you ever gotten the feeling that you aren't completely embarassed yet, but you glimpse tomorrow's embarrassment? - Tom Cruise

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, a Domestic Discipline relationship.  I hope you all had a great week.

 

It’s been an interesting few weeks for us.  Anne retired a couple of months ago.  We’d talked a lot about whether that would change the disciplinary aspects of our relationship.  We both agreed it should but I admit I had my doubts about whether it actually would.  I thought that things would change profoundly when we became empty-nesters, but they really didn’t. I wondered whether this latest life event would similarly prove to be a non-event where DD is concerned.

 

Somewhat surprisingly, things really do seem to be changing in ways that are probably great for our relationship and her empowerment but not so great for my butt.

 

First, I do seem to be getting spanked way more often.  In past years, there have been more than a few times I’ve wondered what basis I had for writing semi-authoritatively about Domestic Discipline when sometimes months would go by without any real disciplinary action.  Since Anne’s retirement, however, it’s become more like weekly, and sometimes more than once a week.

 

Second, she’s spanking with more immediacy, no longer letting days go by between the offense and the punishment.  That may explain in part the increased frequency since, as we’ve discussed here many times, when too much time goes by after an offense it becomes less likely it will be punished at all.

 

 

Third, she seems to be gravitating toward being much less shy about her status and that she spanks me.  A couple of years ago, I did a post here about being spanked in front of windows.  At the time, I hadn’t experienced a spanking in front of a window with the shades up.  That changed a couple of weeks ago.  In accordance with her new commitment to immediacy, Anne decided to give me a spanking in the middle of the day, which isn’t typical for us.  We went up to our bedroom, and the shades were up.  I asked her if she’d like me to close them. I’m not sure why I asked the question instead of just closing them, but I did.  Surprisingly, without really skipping a beat, she said “No, leave them open.”

 

It wasn’t a one-time thing. A few days later, I got another spanking.  This time the window shades were closed when we went into the bedroom, and Anne walked over and opened them.

 

How did this new openness make me feel?  Maybe not quite as vulnerable or embarrassed as I once thought it might.  I think the fact that it was during the day probably makes it less likely that the people in the house immediately behind us (the only house on our block with a possible view into our bedroom) could see anything.  Glare on the glass makes it harder to see inside during the day, and the odds of them being out or at work were higher. 

 

 

I later asked Anne about the new openness, and she quipped, “It’s just the neighbors.  Who cares if they know?”

 

That got me thinking things through a bit more, and I thought of one situation that actually would have made me feel pretty vulnerable.  I don’t know our current rear neighbors very well, but they seem like nice people. I did not feel that way, however, about their predecessors.  I had “words” with the wife a couple of times about some things regarding our respective dogs.  She initiated those words and, frankly, I thought she was kind of a bitch.  Had Anne’s timing for this new openness been different, I definitely would have felt much more embarrassed if there had been any chance those former neighbors would have seen a spanking in progress, because I have no doubt the wife would have been joyful at seeing me humiliated and might have even brought it up.

 

Speaking of bitchiness, a couple of our commenters last week mentioned that their spouses enjoy either spanking them or being in charge.

 

T said: “My wife enjoys spanking me and for her it’s a turn on.”

 

I commented that it was a shame that women seem to have more trouble embracing their power, leading Cynthia Ellen to observe, “My husband has no problem getting off on control. He loves it! He just doesn't like hurting me so he won't spank hard. I guess maybe it's still easier for men to get aroused by control in our culture.”

 

 

I do see it as problematic that Disciplinary Wives probably are subject to a double standard.  We disciplined husbands often like it when the step up and take charge, but the broader culture doesn’t always seem okay with that.  To some extent, it’s probably not a gender thing.  We’ve created a society in which everyone goes to great lengths to express their devotion to egalitarianism, even if the reality is a lot different.  We are so into equality and suspicious of power that it’s uncomfortable to even suggest that getting off on exercising power might be okay in some contexts.

 

It's a shame, because I think a Domestic Discipline or FLR relationship probably is more likely to work and become core to the dynamic if the wife isn’t constantly concerned that she might be seen as “bitchy” for taking control.  Ironically, while I think women do worry their men may balk if they really do exercise strong control, when I used to run polls here asking what men want “more” of in their DD relationships, the highest number of votes invariably went to things like “more sternness in communications” and being “more openly dominant.”

 

 

Until the recent “open window” incidents, Anne hadn’t shown any real inclination to be more open about her authority or this aspect of our relationship. Yet, she is candid with me that she does, in fact, get off on exercising power.  It’s not so much about the spanking.  It’s about exercising the authority that leads to one.  She says she likes ordering me to go upstairs and get ready and watching me do it.  She likes instructing me to get over her knee or whatever position she’s decided to spank me in.

 

She also clearly gets off on “service domination,” i.e. ordering me to do things around the house or to serve her.  She says she loves it when it’s plain from the look on my face that I so want to tell her to fuck off (she knows how much I hate service domination and being ordered around), yet I comply.  She would plainly be much less into it if I were more into it.  

 

I know the first time Anne carries through with chastising me in public or referring openly to her intention to spank me, I will almost certainly be extremely embarrassed.  Had you asked me a year ago, I would have said it was very unlikely she’d ever take the step of referring openly to her authority and to how she uses it on my naked, upturned butt.  I thought there was some chance she might tell one or more of our kids, but I thought it was highly unlikely the openness would extend to anything more public.  Now, however, I’m much less sure of that.

 

I’m sure when it happens I will absolutely hate it in the moment. But, I also think it’s highly likely that I will find it very arousing in retrospect.  Part of me can’t help but hope she becomes more comfortable over time with openly demonstrating, and reveling in, her own power.  In that light, I found a couple of old comments from real Disciplinary Wives about embracing their “bitchiness.”

 

Danielle: Once I took up the hairbrush, I regretted not having done it when he first asked me. He became an attentive husband, and I discovered I liked being in charge. I like the way I can instantly put him in place with a spanking or just a threat of a spanking if he starts to get argumentative or moody. I think I may always have had an inner bitch that has now been freed. I like having the final say, I like being obeyed, and I like being able to express myself bluntly, either with the hairbrush or a verbal dressing down, when I am dissatisfied. Nobody except my closest friend knows I spank Wayne, but I no longer hide my bossiness from family and friends. I like that people can see I’m the boss.

 

Holly: I think we are all "bitches" to our husbands when the rubber hits the road (so to speak) I reconciled myself to this long ago. The amusing thing is that growing up I thought my mother was a bitch for spanking too often and severely. Now I find although I probably do not spank as often as she did, I certainly spank harder. If a wife wants results she does need to be a bitch sometimes (As Tina Fey said " Bitches get stuff done") I am not saying that being a bitch is necessary to be a good disciplinarian. But sometimes being a bitch is just what is needed and don't be intimidated by the fact that someone (like your husband) might think you are a bitch once in a while.

 

Great advice.

 

I don’t have a concrete topic related to any of this, so just let me know your thoughts and reactions to any of it.

The Club - Meeting 409 - Erotic v. Disciplinary Spankings - Distinct or Not?

Everything in the world is about sex, except sex.  Sex is about power. -- Oscar Wilde

 

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, a Domestic Discipline relationship.  I hope you all had a great week.

 

Our week was such that Anne and I were both commenting this afternoon that we feel totally exhausted and, yet, it’s only the beginning of a three-day weekend here in the U.S.  Getting old does kind of suck.  I’m at that stage where I need a weekend to recover from my weekend.

 

 

Thanks to everyone for the robust discussion around a pretty limited topic, i.e. marking.  There’s definitely a wide range of experiences and preferences out there, from actively avoiding to tolerating to willfully causing.

 

Near the end of last week’s discussion, Alan made this topic suggestion, which I’ve posted in full:

 

“I am going to suggest a topic that really deserves at least one post. For years when we discussed the question of “how many are there are out there” we have treated “erotic spanking” as something outside of DD, discipline and certainly FLR’s of any kind – at the same time acknowledging that spanking was almost certainly going mainstream among many adults.

 

For sure distinctions among the types of spanking are complex and appear to reside in the heads of the couple doing the spanking.

 

But just now I am reading a biography of Socrates. Socrates was certainly and old fart and while he didn’t deserve the hemlock, he was irritating a good deal of the time. And one reason he was irritating was his habit of questioning everything. “How do you know” was his regular refrain.

 

So planning to drink neither the kool aid nor hemlock I ask a question some may find irritating: How do you know when you engage in “erotic spanking” that it isn’t actually disciplinary in nature?

 

Think about it. Spanking as a stereotype and a template is inherently about punishment and discipline. We all learn that as children whether we were spanked or not. And in everyday language we tend to use the word spanking to describe punishment in settings as diverse as sports journalism or politics. My point is that spanking as an act and a concept is understood early as a punishment by most people.

 

Yet we are to believe that as adults it suddenly becomes an erotic pleasure perused for its sensual pleasures or to “role play.” There is a page missing there.

 

I don’t doubt that many adults experiment with spanking as a bedroom game without any disciplinary overtones. But once someone continues to incorporate spanking into their relationship after that experimental phase—they are inevitably using it as discipline at some level, often laughing all the way. The logic and purpose of spanking is just too compelling to argue it is just “erotic.”

 

This also explains why many people report “evolving” from erotic spanking to DD. They didn’t evolve. They just allowed the reality of what they were doing into consciousness. Many “erotic spankers” never do this –and continue to make the distinction between what they do and the much scarier discipline stuff they would never do.

 

So let’s talk about whether people are into spanking or not --because the distinctions we make, between “erotic” spanking and DD – don’t hold up to close scrutiny. They are distinctions without a difference.

 

 

The excerpts I bolded above are the ones that evoked a response in me, though unlike the response of the Athenian citizenry to Socrates, it wasn’t irritation, except maybe a tad at the bit about consciousness and accepting reality.

I was in a hurry when I read Alan’s suggested topic, but I put some initial thoughts out there, which were as follows:

 

“My initial reaction is that the quoted paragraph is kind of a non sequitur. There are obvious overlaps between disciplinary and erotic spankings, and it might be that real life spanking stimulated a desire to simulate disciplinary spankings in an erotic context. But, the desire to simulate a disciplinary spanking doesn't mean that the simulated experience becomes real, let alone that it is inevitable that it becomes so.

 

If this were a Venn diagram, it seems like you're insisting that if there is an "erotic" oval and a "DD" oval the overlap is 100% My view is that just because there is an intersecting oval between Oval Erotic and Oval DD doesn't mean that there is 100% equivalence between the two. The fact that A includes B, and C includes B, doesn't meant that A = C.

 

If anything, based on the anecdotal evidence, I kind of see the argument working in reverse. People may incorporate DD and believe they are doing it for purely non-erotic purposes, but for one or both parties it either becomes erotic or they come to admit there is an erotic element to it.

 

IMO, it's not the case that these are distinctions without a difference. We've discussed here before why many of us believe DD is not some subset of BDSM or DS. I believe that there are important distinctions in intention/motivation and also desired effect/outcome.

 

You also said, "They just allowed the reality of what they were doing into consciousness." I'm always suspicious of any argument that depends on its opponents being oblivious to or incorrect about their "real" motives or desires. Seems like that Freudian view of things has been pretty well debunked. I personally don't like it because the assertion that someone thinks they are acting for one reason but really it's another reason isn't provable one way or another, and taking that position would require me to assert that I really know more about what makes someone tick than they themselves know.”

 

I don’t really have a lot to add to that, but I’ll quickly make a few additional points and then turn it over to the group. 

 

First, Alan said, “This also explains why many people report “evolving” from erotic spanking to DD.”  I’m not sure it’s factually the case that many people report evolving from erotic spanking to DD.  It’s probably the case that many of our readers report that to have been the case, but I don’t think that can or should be taken as an indication that many people who are into erotic spanking evolve, transition, adopt, or experiment with DD.  Obviously there is no real data to turn to, but if you take the position that Alan took in his first paragraph that erotic spanking has gone mainstream, but the also acknowledge that DD seemingly has not, the more plausible conclusion would seem to me to be that very few who experiment with or get into erotic spanking end up doing the same with DD.

 

Second, I can think of all sorts of areas in which something may be seen as a punishment in one context or at one stage in life yet be seen as beneficial at another.  How about, to take a pedestrian example, running?  Many adults run either because they enjoy it or because they think it has beneficial health effects that make it worth any discomfort.  Yet, most student athletes probably experienced it as a punishment.  I think this reflects a few fairly common-sense truths.  First, context matters.  Second, our perceptions of an activity's utility or desirability may evolve over time. Third, our perceptions regarding an activity's utility may come to outweigh our natural aversion to it.  

Third, I do balk at the suggestion that erotic spanking versus disciplinary spanking is a distinction without a difference.  There are obvious differences that we’ve talked about here dozens of times in the motivations of the parties, the agreed-upon purpose, etc.  I don’t the fact that both may share some level of eroticism renders those very substantial distinctions to be without differences.  In one, eroticism is the entire point.  In the other, it’s more of a byproduct or one component, but only one, of the underlying drive or motivation.  Further, as I said in my original comment, I don’t think it follows that because people once experienced or were fascinated by real discipline and they now engage in simulated disciplines means that those simulations of discipline are or will inevitably become real discipline. 

 

Finally, I do take issue with the assertion that people who see a difference between erotic and disciplinary spanking to so because they aren’t conscious of their underlying reality.  To me, it’s really the same as asserting, “You disagree with me about what makes you tick. It can’t be because you know what makes you tick better than I do.  It must be because you lack self-awareness.” Though, I also fell into making that kind of argument a bit myself when I said that some people who are into disciplinary spankings may come to “admit” there is an erotic element in it.

 

I look forward to your responses to Alan’s thought-provoking topic.  For those in the U.S., enjoy your long weekend.