The Club - Meeting 388 - Really Not Wanting One

"It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one's acts." ― Mahatma Gandhi

 

Hello all.  Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, Domestic Discipline relationships.

 

I hope you had a good week.  Ours seemed to be a little better than the week before, which may be the best we can hope for after a couple of months that were just exceptionally hard.

 

This was one of those weeks where I’m reminded that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  It’s true on the national front.*

 

  

And also on the personal.  I’ve been pretty proud at how much some things have improved over the last year. My physical health, strength and stamina are way up as compared to a year ago.  My stress level is down.  It hasn’t been a super productive year, but that’s part of the process – learning to slow down and smell the roses more often.  Generally, it’s been a good trip and a good destination. Yet . . . every once in a while, old habits get the better of me.  It happened over the weekend, and Anne and I ended up in a very unnecessary tiff.  About two years ago, we had a similar incident in which she tried to yank on the reins and it led not to compliance but, rather, to resentment and even some questioning on my part about whether the whole DD and FLR thing is for me at this point in life.

 

Deep in my heart, I know it’s a fairly pointless question that pops into my mind when, and only when, I’m getting more or less exactly what I’ve asked for.  It’s also a now well-worn path that whenever I think that my behavior and attitude have improved enough that maybe I just don’t need DD  anymore, something happens that demonstrates beyond any real doubt that my efforts at self-imposing boundaries just aren’t lasting enough and require some external buttressing. 

  

Though, there is one big difference between this time and the previous incident I’m thinking of, which I told this group about, here: https://disciplinedhubbies.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-club-meeting-299-be-careful-what.html.  Last time, my angst was really about the FLR aspect of our relationship, i.e. being controlled in a preventative way.  Not about the discipline/spanking side of the relationship, i.e. being punished after the fact.  This time, it’s different, and I’m not entirely sure why.

 

 

It’s not at all unusual for any of us to want to avoid a hard spanking once we’ve earned one, but for some reason this time I really wanted to avoid it.  I kept hoping that somehow it wouldn’t happen, even though I suspected it would.

 

 

It’s not like I haven’t been spanked before, hard and relatively often over the years.  Yet, this time I didn’t just want to avoid one; I had a real aversion to it.  I can’t quite put my finger on what was different this time, but I think maybe it has to do with already feeling real regret about the behavior. Most of the time, after I know I’ve stepped out of line, I regret the bad behavior, but it’s a relatively mild regret.  Kind of like punishing yourself for breaking a diet by running some extra miles the next day. It’s not pleasant, but it’s part of the self-discipline process.  This time, I think my own sense of regret and genuine remorse is strong enough that I really don’t need the external correction. It feels unnecessary.  Superfluous.

 

I think another thing feeding the aversion is the lack of any erotic desire for it.  ZM, Alan and others have talked about how the erotic element of the spanking need feeds the disciplinary aspect of their relationships. The need for discipline is very real.  Not just a kink, yet the energy of the kink does somehow make the discipline not only tolerable but desirable. This time, I really do feel sorry about my behavior, and the externally imposed consequences aren’t feeding any kind of erotic impulse.  But, of course, my feelings regarding the relevance of my remorse aren’t the only ones that count.

 

 

So, does this boil down to just wanting to avoid the natural and foreseeable consequences of some bad behavior? It doesn’t really feel that way. It feels more complicated than that, including a genuine feeling that unlike last time, Anne sort of did encourage some of what lead to behavior that got excessive later. 

 

Have a great week.

 *Note, I liked the first meme in this post because of the captioning that seems pretty dead-on to me regarding much of the faux outrage of teaching the history of race and racial relations in our public school. But, most may not realize that the subsequent history of that picture is also a tale of redemption and growth. A few years ago, I got curious about whether there was any publicly known history on the white woman in the picture who has such a look of hatred on her face.  I actually found an article about her and how she was raised in an extremely racist family, but she later repented and reformed, and she's talked about how much it pains her that she will forever be associated with that face of hatred.  So, not all history that is uncomfortable is inherently divisive, and people often shouldn't be judged by the worst thing they've ever done.

The Club - Meeting 387 - Community, Reporting, Asking for It, Etc.

“Get comfortable with being uncomfortable!” ― Jillian Michaels

 

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

 

 

Finally, Halloween weekend!  I can’t wait for it, yet as with Christmas, I am sure I will be sorry to see it go.  I hope those of you in countries that celebrate it have a great time.  I’ve even looking forward to handing out candy to trick-or-treaters this year, since last year we got virtually none thanks to Covid.

 

 

I thought we had a good, wide-ranging discussion last week.  It seems like we do always find new angles from which to address the topics of witnesses and others knowing. I do want to thank Alan for telling us about the two instances in which others have overheard one of his spankings.  I had been in a bit of a funk where DD was concerned, and his story of his girlfriend and a friend coming home from shopping and his girlfriend sending upstairs for a spanking really was, for me, quite arousing.  I even told my wife about it, as an example of the level of control or openness that I find both fascinating and scary.  So, Alan, thanks for sharing.

 

I also need to reflect more on the general topic of openness and the associated concept of community.  Caged Lion brought up the community aspect of some kinky practices:

 

I think that one of the appeals of the DWC was the opportunity share and validate disciplinary experiences. I spent many years as an active member of an in-person BDSM organization. It felt good to be among "my" people. We are social animals. DD is an isolating experience. Sex isn't because even though we don't share it with others, we all know everyone does "it."

 

That's far from the reality for those of us who practice DD. It would be nice to have a community, no matter how small, to validate our practices. In my capacity as a member of BDSM organizations, I've spanked and have been spanked in front of others many times. I never thought about the people watching while I was in the scene. It felt good that my kink was validated by others (lots of others!).

 

ZM concurred, but also pointed out the limitations of this current blog when it comes to community building:

 

[I]t would be great to have some sort of community to validate our practices. We do have that here, but the anonymous, virtual nature of it does take away somewhat compared to live human interaction.

 

Believe me, I too feel the desire for more community and am acutely aware of the blog’s limitations in bringing one about.  A few years back, I had an email exchange with Aunt Kay of the Disciplinary Wives Club, and I still recall her describing its get-togethers as being fun precisely because they were a “naughty shared secret.”  I also admit to getting very aroused when Tomy has shared stories about being sent to another wife for a spanking or when other husbands were sent to Aunt Kay.  Even without something that participatory, it would just be nice to have more genuine human contact around this whole thing, and it is clear that the thing that most gets in the way of that is our collective desire for anonymity.  The reason Aunt Kay and Tomy were able to foster something deeper is, as far as I can tell, because they were willing to give up anonymity and simply trust others a bit. 

 

I’m not really sure where I’ll take this desire for community over time.  Perhaps nowhere, as I haven’t gotten any signal from Anne that she has some burning desire to be more open about this, though perhaps one helpful development is that since buying her new bath brush, she has taken to leaving both it and the ebony hairbrush on very open display on the countertop in our bathroom.  We had been leaving the hairbrush out for a while, but there was little about a hairbrush on display where one would normally use a hairbrush that was likely to draw attention.  The two brushes together, and the bath brush several feet away from the shower and bathtub, seem far more likely to get a quizzical reaction from anyone who might see them. Of course, the only one likely to see them would be one of the kids, but that in itself is evidence of Anne getting a bit more risqué in allowing others a veiled glimpse into this side of our relationship.  As ZM’s recent adventures with openness demonstrate, you never know what will happen once even a small change starts to happen.

 

In that vein, it’s funny how much can change in a week. In last week’s post, I admitted to feeling pretty uninspired by blogging and even about DD itself.  That happens from time to time, but I really was starting to wonder whether we had hit some inflection point and that going forward it might not be as big a thing for us.  Yet, for no apparent reason it came surging back this week with a vengeance.  Well, it’s not quite true that it was for no reason. I do think that Alan’s stories about overheard spankings partially triggered some renewed interest.  A friend of mine in a M/f dynamic also let me know that after an unavoidable hiatus, she and her husband recently got back on track. 

 

 

Further, I think my need for accountability once again asserted itself once it had something to react to.  As I reported last week, my behavior has improved in major ways over the last year. But, over the last couple of weeks, there were a couple of incidents that suggested things might be drifting, or at least that things could if some of the behavior wasn’t nipped in the bud.  It was on my mind last week, to such an extent that I was on the verge of asking her for a spanking.  But, we had some unanticipated family get-togethers that got in the way, though it still stayed on my mind.  Another big impediment was simply inertia. Once you get out of the habit of actually doing DD or communicating about it, it can be surprisingly hard (for me at least) to just suddenly raise it, particularly since in doing so I essentially would be outright asking for a spanking that I clearly need but still don’t want.

 

Then, this week there was another incident that indicated some slippage, and I finally did “man up” and approach Anne, in the form of a journal entry.  I called out the pattern I was seeing, but I went beyond suggesting a spanking to get back on course.  Instead, I owned up to the fact that the whole DD aspect of our relationship had drifted, and I told her I felt like to get it back on track we might need to go back to some of the structure we imposed very early on, including more formalized reporting.

 

Many years ago, when we were trying to move DD from a somewhat sporadic experiment to more of an ongoing relationship feature, I had instituted a form of weekly communication that now seems almost laughably cryptic and paranoia-induced.  One obviously simple form of reporting was to simply send her an email each week, reminding her to think about whether there was anything she wanted to address and self-reporting any bad behavior that I felt she probably should address.   

 

The problem was, Anne has a habit of not deleting emails, and I was so paranoid about others finding out (see above discussion about impediments to openness), that I used a very cryptic euphemism in the header for the topic of DD spanking and I seldom listed any actual behavior at issue.  As silly as it seems to me today, I was that concerned that someone might hack or email or just accidentally see something in an open inbox.  The result was that it seldom really prodded her to action, and I often neglected to send it, particularly when I really deserved a spanking but really wanted to avoid it.

 

 

Anyway, this week I decided to dust off that old process.  I told her in the journal that I want to start sending her those reminders weekly, but this time I will be required to expressly list out any behavioral issues and to state expressly and frankly whether, in my own opinion, I should be spanked. I also suggested that if I fail to send an email, that should result in a separate spanking for failing to report.

 

This system is about as simple as can be, and I do think that some of my previous failures to implement real reporting and check-ins were the result of trying to do too much.  I also recognize that I am laying a pretty embarrassing paper trail in the very unlikely event that someone were to get into her email. But, I’ve decided I can live with that.  In fact, I see it as a way of making myself feel more vulnerable and under her control, which was something else some of you (Danielle and ZM in particular) talked about last week.   

 

 

It also fits in with me trying to be more open in general with her about some of what is going on in my head and other body parts, including being honest about some other fantasies and kinks that I might never want to try in real life but do kind of want her to know about.

 

 

The new system has been in place for a whopping two days, but so far so good.  Yesterday morning I sent her the required email, and it stated expressly that yes, I should be spanked for the trend in bad conduct over the last couple of weeks. This morning, she had to leave for something that was going to keep us apart for the rest of today.  Shortly before she left and as she was packing up to go, she announced matter-of-factly that she was going to take care of my spanking before leaving.  She then proceeded to put me over her knee and give me a short but effective spanking with her bath brush.

 

I don’t have any formal topics related to all this, so feel free to discuss anything that resonates with you. And, again, Happy Halloween!

 

 

The Club - Meeting #386 - Others

“A man who can't bear to share his habits is a man who needs to quit them.” ― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

 

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

 

 

I’m still really loving this time of year.  The trees have mostly turned where we live, and morning walks with the dogs have taken on a whole new luster. Also, is it just me, or did people put up Halloween decorations much earlier this year?  It seems like the Halloween holiday used to be a pretty time-bound event, with decorations staying up for only a few days around October 31^st.  This year, however, in our neighborhood a whole slew of people put outdoor decorations up on October 1^st or thereabouts.  Personally, I love that it and hope people do the same next year. 

 

We have not, however, been invited to any live Halloween events this year – perhaps such gatherings are still victims of Covid restrictions?  We also don’t have many people in our social circle who are into the kind of social events that could make Halloween even more fun as an adult that it was as a kid.

 

 I’m sorry for not posting again last week.  I was busy with some other stuff over the weekend, though in the interests of full disclosure, I also just did not have much interest in posting anything DD-related.  It isn’t uncommon for me to lose all interest in DD and blogging, but it seems like the cycles used to last longer.  I would be intensely interested for many weeks but then might hit a month-long dry spell. This year, it seems like I’m interested for a week or two then completely lose interest for a week.  Part of the issue may be that I simply don’t need DD as much right now, in two related senses. About this time last year, I hit what may have been a big inflection point where dysfunctional behavior was concerned.  I was coming of a hugely stressful period at work, then started setting the stage for a major career transition, and thanks to Covid it was a rare day that someone didn’t schedule a virtual happy in order to foster a continuing sense of “team” while everyone was working from home.  I also was dealing with a painful, chronic health issue.  It all added up to frequent bad behavior that meant I needed DD in the sense of I richly deserved it.  And, since my particular DD interest is heavily driven by accountability and exceeding boundaries, my subjective, internal need for DD and the structure it imposes also was running high. Now, however, the converse is true.  My behavior is WAY better than it was this time last year, so she feels less need to initiate any kind of correction, and I’m not doing nearly as many bad things that would result in me wanting to be held accountable.  Unfortunately, that also sometimes translates into a declining interest not just in DD but in DD blogging.  Anyway, we’ll just have to see how that develops over time.

 

I hope that you all have been tracking some of the developments in ZM’s relationship, particularly that (a) his wife opened up more or less fully to a friend that he is spanked and that it is discipline, not kink; and (b) there is a real prospect of him being spanked in front of a witness at some point.  It has been feeding into him being, as he describes it, “almost obsessive about wanting someone to know about” his DD activities.

 

I definitely understand being obsessed about DD and/or certain DD topics.  When I first discovered the Disciplinary Wives Club, it became an instant obsession, as did telling my wife about it.  After we started experimenting with it, I was probably still feeling some of that obsession when I told one of our mutual friends about it. 

 

 

I don’t think I have quite ZM’s level of obsession with witnesses and others knowing, but I do feel some of it and certainly commiserate with him on how that kind of obsession can drive you. Thinking through some of the issues he’s raised recently, it occurred to me that for me, others knowing has a stronger emotional force than others witnessing.

 

For example, I get very turned on my art that depicts someone seeing or commenting on the after-effects of a hard spanking, but not so much by someone witnessing the spanking itself.

 

 

I also have a thing for a spanking being heard, though not necessarily seen, and even more so to art or pictures that depict or suggest the recipient telling someone that they got spanked, perhaps as an additional part of the punishment.

 

    

I'm not sure why I have more of a reaction to scenes where some third-party knows about a spanking but doesn't necessarily witness it.  Maybe it’s as simple as, sometimes less is more where erotic visual stimuli are concerned.  I’ve always gotten more turned on by pictures of partially or almost nude women than I do at more open displays of full nudity.

 

I also suspect that this may be one of the few areas in which my current interest in DD and spanking may be related to things from childhood.  Corporal punishment was very open in the culture when I was growing up, yet I only really recall witnessing a single spanking.  Given how prevalent it was, I probably did witness a few others, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if others witnessed me being spanked, but I don’t have any memory of it. 

 

What I do remember is knowing that friends or cousins were being spanked or were about to be or just had been.  I don’t really recall hearing those spankings, but I remember being very aware of them.  Hell, for the longest time I thought that the whole purpose of a “cry room” in church was to give the parents a place to take unruly kids for a quick, efficient spanking. So, I think that for me it was the contemporaneous awareness of spanking discipline that was both a deterrent to bad behavior and a source of morbid curiosity.

 

While thinking about ZM’s current situation, a somewhat new angle on the whole topic of others knowing did occur to me.  While for me it doesn't really rise to the level of an obsession, I do get the perverse, almost morbid curiosity that underlies our interest in witnesses and others knowing. Plainly, many are interested in thinking or fantasizing about it.  Yet, very few ever act on the desire to bring their status as disciplined husbands (or disciplinary wives) more out into the open.  Why is that, do you think?

 

Assuming that you are, like most of us, more or less closeted where your DD relationship is concerned, what is it that holds you back from letting others know? Is there a specific social or professional stigma that leads you to keep it secret from most others?  Are there particular people or groups of people that you are most concerned about finding out?  Why? What do you think would happen if those people were to find out?  Would there be big ramifications, or do we over-estimate how much anyone would really care?

For me, my biggest concern about others knowing was seemingly very practical.  I was in a very conservative, traditional, and competitive profession.  I believed then, and I believe now, that there would have been professional blowback if my status as a disciplined husband were widely known in the office or to others I had to interact with professionally and often in competitive situations.  Also, for a long time I had in the back of my mind that I might run for public office sometime or go for a job that might require a security clearance, and I was pretty sure how something like being outed as a spanking blogger might impact those kinds of opportunities.

 

The thought of family members knowing also makes me squirm and, again, I’m not sure why.  I recall seeing one of my sisters get spanked, yet I would never want her to know I am spanked as an adult (though, in fairness, we don’t have much of an ongoing relationship).   

 

Somewhat similarly, my mother obviously knows I have been spanked, because when I was a kid she did the spanking.  Yet, I would be very embarrassed if she found out I am now spanked as an adult, even if she probably has a lot of insight into how my temperament and behavior might lead my wife to relish taking on that role.   

Finally, I am probably most resistant to male friends knowing, though that one I at least understand a bit. With them, it’s not just a fear of being rejected or scorned but, rather, we don’t really talk about anything related to our sex lives or anything very intimate about our marriages, so it would seem odd to have spanking be the one such thing that was out on the table.

 

 

Will Anne ever tell others? Honestly, I don’t know.  She doesn’t seem to have any friends who would be likely confidantes on that kind of thing, and so far she has never expressed any particular interest in letting others know.  If anything, she is more resistant to the idea than I am.  But, if there is one thing I’ve learned about these relationships it is, as ZM is learning now, never say never.

 

I hope you all have a great week.

No New Post Again

 

Hi all. Happy Monday.  I'm sorry, but this is likely to be another "no post" week.  I have some family commitments going on and, honestly, I'm suffering from an acute lack of DD topic inspiration.

I did want to address one comment from Alan that reminded him of the below meme that I saw recently. Alan observed: "Has anyone noticed that the world has all gone to hell – at the exact same time that I.T. has begun to take over the world? I know that correlation is not causation –but still…"  The meme seems to suggest the proliferation of I.T resources, including the internet, may not be the problem. 

No Post This Week

 

Hi all.  I don't think I'm going to get around to posting this week.  While it's not quite time for Halloween cookies . . .

 

 

I love this time of year, and there's just too much to do out there in the Autumn air to spend any of the available time blogging.  Please feel free to keep last week's conversation going.

The Club - Meeting 385 - Alternative Punishments

"Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.” - Theodore Roosevelt

 

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

 

Here, it's finally starting to feel like Fall has arrived, which makes me happy.  Red and yellow foliage.  Crisp morning air.  Oktoberfest and all that entails.

 

 

Mine was sort of – meh.  Not a lot happening, good or bad.  That in itself is kind of a problem.  Work used to keep so busy, I didn’t have time for much else, and I fantasized about all those things I’d do if I had more time. Now I have more time, yet I’m finding I still don’t get all that much done on an average day.  It’s amazing how much time gets chewed up with a few dog walks, working out, mowing the grass, running a few errands, etc. I’m finding that in some ways, leisure and adventure actually require more proactivity, more planning, than work ever did.  At work, a lot of my daily activity just kind of happened, and many of my priorities were set for me.  Leisure and adventure, by contrast, happen only with some actual effort to overcome inertia and get out of the status quo.

 

  

It was a good discussion last week. Though, there were times it seemed like people were talking past each other.  Part of it may be fault.  Perhaps I should have defined “zero tolerance,” but given the context of the specific questions—which all focused on whether particular issues are or might be punished without exception—I didn’t really think I needed to. Yet, I got the impression some commenters were focused on zero tolerance not with respect to a particular issue but, rather, as punishing anything and everything and, on that basis, objected to the whole concept.  Others focused on timing, i.e. not putting off a spanking when “real life” intercedes, though that seems to me to be a separate issue.

 

Personally, although I fully agree that zero tolerance can’t and probably shouldn’t be applied to all issues, I still think it may have a constructive role to play with respect to particular behaviors or failures that are particularly important to the disciplinarian or the recipient.  I got to thinking about it a few days before writing last week’s post because I was frustrated with myself over one particular ongoing behavior issue.  Actually, it really is one single aspect of one behavior, but it’s one that always seems to have an outsized negative influence.  It got me thinking that while I have a lousy record addressing some big issues, it may be possible to zone in on that one aspect of the issue that causes most of the problems or, more precisely, to ask Anne for additional focus—to the point of zero-tolerance—on that one sliver of the overall behavior.  It’s basically the Domestic Discipline version of the “80/20 Rule,” which I can characterize from a couple of different angles, namely “80% of my problems extend from 20% of my behavior” or “80% of our results come from 20% of our efforts.”

 

In the midst of talking about all this, ZM unknowingly suggested this week’s topic:

 

"And others have mentioned the difficulty of making punishments happen in the midst of busy lives, lack of privacy, etc. I think the answer to this could be found by exploring the use of alternative punishments as necessary. "There is going to be a consequence, and I can't spank you now or soon, so instead...""

 

As I noted, in the past probably the only topic we've talked about here that seems to meet more resistance than "zero tolerance" is “alternative punishments.”  I’ve never quite understood why, though it may be as simple as many of our commenters are highly into spanking and  only somewhat tangentially into discipline writ large.  Well, be that as it may, I’m going to give it another try.

 

In her comments last week, Danielle described an incident in which Wayne kept talking over her and their dinner guests, to the point that she had finally had it with him.  In her words: 

 

“I lost it because Wayne had ignored so many previous warnings . . . I made a real scene, yelling at Wayne for about a solid minute. At the end of my rant, Wayne was red faced and speechless. The other couple were dumbstruck too.  . . . Once we were alone, I ordered Wayne to pull down his pants, and I gave him several licks with the heavy strap, swinging it with the full force of my anger. Then I sent him to bed in the guest room.

 

While it could fall under a topic of “lecturing” or “scolding,” I also see Danielle’s “scene” in front of witnesses as a form of alternative punishment. (Or, since she spanked him too, perhaps in this case it would be categorized as “complementary” form of punishment.) And, it was a form of punishment that not only worked but seemed to work better than the spanking.  Glenmore concurred: “I agree with you 100% Dan, my wife scolding me in front of our friends was way more effective than a spanking to cure me of this habit, although the threat of a spanking still adds more weight to it.”

 

Like ZM, I’ve always been intrigued by alternatives to spanking.  I think there are two primary reasons for that interest. First, I see them as a kind of “zero tolerance” or “whatever it takes” tool that a wife could keep in her arsenal of spanking isn’t getting the job done.   

 

 

Second, as readers here know, I’ve always had a thing for “maternal” discipline, and many of the most common options for we talk about for “alternative” punishments coincidentally are those some of us experienced as kids. In fact, Danielle did a great job of summarizing some of them when responding to one of my posts about maternal discipline several months ago:

 

So, WHAT IF Anne pushed the adult/minor dynamic to its logical conclusion. She has already taken a step in that direction by assigning you chores and warning you not to forget to lock the doors under threat of being spanked. But if she really wants to exercise her authority in a “maternal” way, I think she should consider deploying the full range of disciplinary tools adults employ with minors. In other words, in addition to spankings, she could consider consequences like grounding, loss of privileges, early bedtimes, etc. She could also consider limiting your personal discretionary spending by putting you on an allowance which could be suspended for disciplinary purposes as she deems appropriate. She could impose curfews and require you to get her permission if you wanted to go out for drinks after work. From what you have said previously, I believe you would find those auxiliary measures more truly humbling and embarrassing than simply having your bottom paddled.

 

Let’s push the parent/minor analogy a step farther. If you were really a minor, there would be no reason for Anne to hide her authoritarian status from other people. So, if I was Anne, I would probably let some select group of people (maybe certain friends or family members) in on the secret that she wields real authority over you and expects you to obey her. Speaking to you in an authoritative way in the presence of certain people would certainly humble you, wouldn’t it? Then, if the people were curious, that could lead on to her revealing to them that she disciplines you, and maybe even to spanking you in front of a willing witness, as others have suggested.

 

So, with one comment from months ago, Danielle hit on a whole bunch of issues relevant to last week and this week’s topics and others that have come up a lot lately: doing what it takes to effect the change you want; public displays of authority; letting others know about the disciplinary relationship; and, a nice list of punishments that might complement spankings or be an alternative to them if the spankings aren’t working.

 

 

Are there non-spanking punishments you use or that are used on you?  Are there particular offenses they are used for?  Do they work as well as spankings?  Perhaps better?  Are there particular punishments you haven’t used or experience but would like to explore?

 

Have a great week.

The Club - Meeting 384 - Zero Tolerance

"He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else." ― Benjamin Franklin

 

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

 

I hope you all had a great week. Mine was, in a word, boring. I had this vision that, once work was less of an issue, all these other interests would arise and really bloom.  So far, it’s not really working out that way, and last week I found myself spending way too much time bingeing television shows (though, to be fair, TV is pretty damn good these days.  Did you watch the Emmys?  Go Ted Lasso!) and reading books I’ve read before.  I’m not sure what’s going on. The Zen, spiritual side of my brain tells me that I just need to ride it out; that maybe after a couple of decades of being crazy busy, I need to really experience boredom before I can move on from it.  The other side of my brain says this is no way to live and that I need to get off my lazy ass and do something. 

 

 

We did have a good discussion last week about tears, though it seemed to draw less interest than I thought it might.  Maybe it’s one of those topics that fascinate me but not that many others, or it may be that it’s a topic that’s hard to hit from a truly new angle.  In any event, for those who are interested in getting to--or bringing about—tears, the comments seemed to suggest two factors were paramount:

• the wife letting the husband know she wants him to cry; and
• a spanking of sufficient duration that he believes it will never end and, as a result, finally just surrenders to it.

While I’m going to move on to a different topic for this week, I’m happy to keep talking about “tears” if anyone has any additional thoughts.

 

This week’s topic came up because of a little personal failure I had over the weekend.  I won’t go into details, and it wasn’t a huge problem, but it involved telling myself I’d show some self-control in a particular area, but then I just failed to do it.  Again, it wasn’t a big deal in the scheme of things, but it just gets old when the same old temptations win out time and time again.  It occurred to me that maybe the only way to motivate myself to deny such a temptation when it is presented is – zero tolerance. 

 

 

In fifteen years of doing DD, we’ve never really had a “zero tolerance” issue.  I thought for a while that her issue with failing to lock doors when I left might become one, then she let a couple of incidents slide.  Interestingly, while I often bemoan my lack of willpower, I have successfully imposed a few “zero tolerance” rules on myself.  The example with the most staying power is tobacco.  In high school and college, I was a regular smoker and user of tobacco, and nicotine was my one and only true physical addiction.  I tried to quit several times, and a few times I succeeded for a few weeks. But, I always started again.  When I finally quit, I went cold turkey, and in thirty years I’ve never had another cigarette.  I just can’t.  I know myself well enough, if I had one cigarette on a special occasion, a week later I would be having “just one” a day, then one would become three, then three would become a pack a day habit.

 

I’m not sure “zero tolerance” needs to be for big things, like ending a tobacco addiction.  It seems like it might even work better for small things (like locking doors?), that don’t really involve deeply rooted habits or personal identity issues but are, instead, things that are somewhat important to one or both spouses but are not (yet) front of mind for the offender.

 

 

A few weeks ago we talked about severity and consistency, and everyone seemed to concur that most of the Disciplinary Wives exercise a fair amount of discretion in determining whether any particular offense should be punished. Sometimes they choose to just let things slide, even if some some bit of bad behavior is agreed to be “spankable.” 

 

On the other hand, are there some behaviors that are treated with zero (or very little) tolerance? That result in a spanking every single time?  If there is such an issue in your DD relationship, is it an issue that is important to her, or to you, or one that you both agree should be punished every time?   If she doesn’t treat any issue with such little tolerance, do you wish she would?

 

 

I hope you all have a great week.

The Club - Meeting 383 - Tears

"I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.” - Charles Dickens from Great Expectations

 

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

 

 

Mine was pretty good, though not without some spanking-related angst. In my last post, I related a recent incident in which Anne spanked me for not locking doors and closing the dog door when I left the house.  As I discussed, I was sore for several days. Though, apparently, not quite sore enough to get the message across fully.   A couple of days after that spanking, I ended up having to leave the house unexpectedly for a quick overnight trip to cover something that neither Anne nor I had on our calendars.  I dropped whatever I was doing, packed an overnight bag, and headed out.  In doing so—I’m sure you all know where this is going—I forgot about the dog door, again.  When I got home, she sent me a text with picture of the open door. My heart jumped, because my ass really was very, very sore from the last session.  Well, as it turned out, I somehow avoided the spanking I was sure I had coming, though she did comment on it at least once during the week.  And, to cap it off, near the end of the week, I left in the middle of the day and left the front door unlocked.

 

 

Now, one could surmise that I just didn’t take the first spanking seriously, but that’s really not the case.  Sometimes, it just takes a while for an unwanted but somewhat unconscious behavior to become “front and center” in your conscious mind.  My favorite story on the DWC website is Even More, which describes a couple getting started with DD. The husband asks the wife to try such a relationship, they agree to a list of offenses, and he promptly forgets to comply with the rule against leaving the toilet seat up, resulting in his very first bare-bottomed disciplinary spanking. 

 

When his wife brings the offense to his attention and orders a spanking, his first reaction is to try to talk to his way out of it, objecting that he had been distracted and just forgot about the new rule. While understandable, she doesn’t let him off the hook. Honestly, that was kind of how I felt about both offenses this week, though the first was more defensible than the second.  The first really did involve something where I rushed out to cover something that neither of us saw coming, and I left only the dog door open, not the front door.  I really felt like I had rushed out to cover something that I hadn’t even known about, so the oversight was understandable.  But, on the other hand, it’s also simply a fact that she is plainly making this one of her priorities, and I am going to have to figure out a way to remember it or risk back-to-back spankings.

 

 

It’s one of those things that kind of brings home the reality of an FLR or “real” DD relationship.  I handed over authority to her. She is now starting to exercise it and doing so on an issue that is important to her but not to me.  But, I can either choose to get on board with her priorities or get a painful spanking until I do so.  I really do have a sense of my autonomy being curtailed in a significant way. And, it’s bringing to the fore the classic contradiction of DD from the disciplined husband’s perspective – I don’t really like being told what to do; I hate being spanked, and I really hate being spanked on an already sore bottom; but, her exercising her authority in a way that I’m not fully aligned with makes that exercise of pure power all the more erotic.

 

Anyway . . . on to this week’s topic.  It’s an offshoot of something ZM brought a couple of weeks ago, noting:

 

By the way, one of the most interesting things I have noticed is that we have had openness as a theme or at least a subtheme for quite a bit of the last year. It keeps coming back. Yet even so, we keep finding new angles on it, like last week it was kind of how it might affect the witnessing party. It makes we think we could take almost any topic, like tears, and go for a lot longer than you would expect before running out of new insights.

 

It is interesting just how often our discussion spins off into various tangents regarding openness and others knowing about our DD lifestyles.  It’s clearly a topic that holds a lot of fascination—morbid or otherwise—for our little group.  I don’t have anything else to say about it this week, though I did coincidentally come across this Paula Meadows drawing on the subject.  The look on recipient’s face is priceless!

 

 

But, while I’m happy to continue to talk about openness to the extent people have something new to say about it, instead of trying to come up with something new to say about it myself, I’d like to take up the other repeat topic that ZM called out – tears. 

 

As long-time readers know, this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart.  In fact, when I try to put my finger on what exactly it was about The Disciplinary Wives Club that hit me so hard, I’ve always thought it was the prevalence of tears in so much of the advice and in so many of the stories.  For example, in her Tips & Methods section, Aunt Kay advised:  

 

When handling discipline issues be firm but fair, strict, demanding, aloof and unyielding. Don't be afraid to degrade and humiliate, and above all, when that bare bottom is turned upside down across your knee waiting for the paddle or hairbrush, don't disappoint him. When you let him up, his eyes should be wet with tears, his knees should be quivering, and it should be obvious by looking at his bottom that he is displaying the marks left after a GOOD session.

 

Similarly, in the very first fiction story on the website, at the beginning of their very first disciplinary spanking the wife announces:

 

Now this is going to hurt more than you can imagine. I am going to give you a much longer and harder spanking than any you have ever had. I won't stop until you are crying, but don't worry. I won't stop when you start crying.

 

Then, this interaction during the course of that first spanking:

 

"Now be a good boy and don't try to resist. It will be better for you if you don't. " Smack, whap, whack, the spanking continued, and I began to cry, I mean really cry; I had been begging for mercy for several minutes, but now I was in tears. "Good boy" I heard, "You are crying. I like that. " Becky continued to spank me, it seemed harder than before. I wasn't resisting anymore. I was lying over her knee, accepting what she felt must be given without movement or plea. I don't know how much later it was, perhaps two or three minutes of continuous spanks, until she finally stopped.

 

Then, there was this from the story titled Even More, written by our own regular commenter, Al:

 

David was lost to all but the searing, burning pain of the wood against his skin. He had tried to be strong and resist it, but it was too much. Finally he gave into it. Tears turned to sobs as the paddle continued its seemingly unending dance across his severely tormented bottom.

 

And as David began to sob, Susan decided he had learned what a real spanking was all about. She knew this had been his fantasy, and she also knew that he was surely shocked by the reality of what he had asked for. His bottom was a solid red, spotted with purple bruises. He had kicked and screamed, begged for her to stop, and now was sobbing openly. Certainly, he must have had no idea of the truth behind his fantasy.

 

Now, these stories appear under the Fiction section of the DWC website.  I don’t know how prevalent spanking is in “real life” but here are the stats I got in response to a question I put in a 2018 poll (before Blogger got rid of its polling feature) about commenters’ experiences with crying from a disciplinary spanking:

 

I have not but want to:                                            46%

I have not and do not want to:                                12%

I have but only a few tears:                                    17%

I have, including crying hard or sobbing:               22%

 

For the fifteen or so years that we have been doing Domestic Discipline, I have been among those 46% who have not cried but want to.  Or, at least, I think I want to.  As I said, I think the prospect of crying was probably the most significant driver of the emotional reaction I had when I first discovered the Disciplinary Wives Club. Although those stories undeniably did turn me on, it was WAY more than that and far more complicated.  Stories of men being brought to tears over their wives’ knees fascinated me, but it was morbid fascination.  Those stories left me with butterflies in my stomach, though that is a huge understatement.  I couldn't sleep.  I could think of little else. It really was an obsession, and one I felt like I had to act on.  And, the decision to bring it to her attention was one of the most nerve-wracking I’ve ever made because, as I said in response to a comment last week, unlike the character in the Even More story, I didn’t try to pass it off to my wife as just some titillating bit of kink I’d stumbled across.  While I’m sure my words wandered all over the place, I think I was reasonably clear that this was something I was asking her to seriously consider doing. In so doing, I was absolutely cognizant that I was asking for something that might result in a very humbling spanking, one that might involve breaking down into real tears.  In fact, I was naïve enough at the time to think that my spankings would be exactly like those fictional DWC spankings and that, once taken over her knee, I would at some point surrender to the pain and to her authority and dissolve into heaving sobs. It scared me like nothing else ever had, or has since.

 

Yet, here we are so many years later, and I still have not cried, even during spankings that plainly fall into the "severe" range.  So, while I think the intensity of the spanking matters, it’s just one piece of the puzzle. What are the other pieces? Here are a few thoughts. 

 

 

First, the last time we addressed tears as a topic ZM made the point that he got there after a spanking in which his wife more or less announced that she wanted to make it happen.  It does seem to me that it is far more likely to happen if the wife has announced that she wants it to.  Her verbalizing it may be important for a couple of reasons. First, if you’ve been conditioned for some time to accept her authority, I think you are more likely to cry in direct response to that authority being expressly aligned with the goal of bringing you to tears.  Second, I would think that her making some pronouncement about it in advance would relieve concerns you might have about whether seeing you cry might scare her off of the entire arrangement.

 

Second, and relatedly, is the role of embarrassment.  The above quote from Aunt Kay makes it clear that, in order to serve its purpose, a spanking probably should be embarrassing. Yet, I have no doubt that the prospect of being really embarrassed is one reason I resist crying.  I have to think that a wife announcing she wants you to cry has to take at least some of the edge off the prospect of embarrassment, or at least would make it subservient to the fact that she wants you to cry, even if that does entail wanting you to experience the embarrassment that goes along with having your bottom blistered for bad behavior.

 

 

Third, I have become more and more convinced over time that severity/intensity of the swats is probably a very distant second to duration when it comes to getting a husband to really surrender to the spanking and to the whole situation in a way that will open him up to tears.  As ZM related after the first time his wife brought him to tears:

 

I don't think she punished harder than usual, but certainly longer, and plus she had said before that the next punishment would certainly result in tears, so I think she set the stage for it and that helped me to get into the proper state of mind. Anyway, the tears took it to a whole new level of "real" feeling for us.

 

As I said, fifteen years into this DD relationship, I have never cried.  So, I don’t hold myself out as an expert on tears or how one might bring it about.  I also don’t have a more focused topic in mind than whatever thoughts any of you may have on crying and tears.

 

Finally, one housekeeping matter.  Google must have implemented some technical change in its spam detection algorithms, and it seems to be more than a little klugy.  Some comments are being flagged as spam even though they are from identified commenters, and often with other comments from that same commenter let through with no problem.  There doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason for why a particular comment ends up in the spam folder, and Blogger doesn’t give any notice when a comment has been identified as spam and is in the folder awaiting review.  So, if you try to comment and it doesn’t post right away, chances are it was flagged as spam.  Hopefully, Blogger will fix the problem soon, but in the meantime I’ll try to check the spam folder more regularly.