The Disciplinary Couples Club

Maternal Vibes & Bringing Out the Boy With Adult Disciplinary Spankings

Strong women intimidate boys and excite men. – unknown

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Hello all. Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club. Our weekly meeting of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline and/or Female Led (FLR) relationships.

Once again, before we get started, I would like to extend a specific invitation to our female readers to move from “lurker” to “commenter” status. We miss having you around.

Ours was pretty uneventful, which was nice after a busy few weeks.

We had a good discussion last week. Something interesting about DD and consistency is it seems to be almost universal that those who don’t have consistency want it and those who have it seem to like it that way. Many of us are subjected to very painful spankings that we genuinely do not want at the time they are happening. Yet, we all seem to aspire to a level of consistency that ensures we seldom get away with anything. Further, in ten years of blogging on this stuff, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a husband express any angst about having a wife who was too consistent or strict.

Consistent strictness is something I associate with maternal discipline, which is interesting because consistency is the antithesis of my real-life experience with maternal discipline. In fact, I strongly suspect that the erratic approach to rules and discipline that I experienced is one reason I crave a much firmer hand today and it probably was at the root of my incredibly strong attraction to the Disciplinary Wives Club when I first discovered it.

Although I didn’t recognize it for a long time, there definitely is some kind of psychological entanglement between my current DD needs and my teenage years when there was an unmet need for discipline and structure.

Oddly, for a long time I didn’t focus on the extent to which the DWC website and Aunt Kay’s pamphlets were replete with references to both the maternal nature of the discipline the group advocated and the ability of a hard spanking to reduce a husband to the mindset of a boy. Here are just a few examples:

“Just as a mother corrects her young child, the DWC woman guides and mentors her man in loving strictness. Firm, fair, unrelenting and demanding should be words that describe the DWC woman. Repentant, tearful, humbled and calm should describe the man.”

“Always remember that when you are in your disciplinary mode, he is in his spoiled brat mode. Remember when you were a child, was discipline or punishment fun? No. So you must think of punishment as something which will have the effect of making him think quite a while before challenging you again. And keep in mind that he is not, in fact, a small child. He is a grown man and needs an extensive spanking.”

You will have to learn to obey her and to do so cheerfully. I recommend to the wives that they avoid “play sessions” at first, until you have come to realize what her punishment sessions really mean. First, you have to learn that she can spank you until you are a “sorry little boy,” who wishes those spankings would be over a whole lot sooner.

You asked your wife to please take over your discipline. You have empowered her to assume the maternal role and have agreed to take the child role with respect to discipline. You want, more than anything else, for her to be powerful, assertive and in control.

You will have to put up with closer supervision than you are used to, and she will demand answers and evidence of your performance. This is perfectly normal and how it is supposed to be. If you feel resentful about this or don’t want that kind of accountability, remember how maternal discipline occurs in a “child -parent” situation. The child cannot simply wiggle out of his Mother’s watchful eye. If you are honest with yourself, you will admit that when you get your spankings, it is that bratty little boy part of you who is getting it.

For whatever reason, these maternal references went right over my head until someone pointed them out to me a couple of years ago.

I also shied away from talking openly about this issue, even though it is plainly a part of some couples’ DD dynamics and even though I came to recognize it as a key part of my own DD motivation.

And, not just with respect to discussing it on the blog. I also avoided talking about it with Anne. At least not directly and forthrightly. It wasn’t so much that I was embarrassed about it, but I wasn’t sure how she would react. It raises all sorts of controversial psychological and social issues. Oedipal theories. Manliness and sexuality.

That started to change a few years ago. We had talked from time to time about particular disciplinary archetypes. Things like strict teachers and principals. But, we never really talked about the obvious one – strict mothers.

Then, one night she said something about liking how her giving me orders reduces me to a little boy who has to do what he is told. I think she was tip-toeing around the issue in the same way I was. The nurturing but strict mother archetype resonates with her in ways that other DD images do not.

As I started to be a bit more open about it, she started doing things like talking in positive terms about using DD to reduce me to a “teen-age boy who needs a spanking from his mom.” She also has compared me to a teenager who mischievously pushes buttons just to do it, then is surprised when she actually does something about it.

The emphasis in our new reporting system on her assigning tasks and being more assertive about addressing things like “pet peeves” also has a decisively maternal quality.

The maternal element that I gravitate to isn’t all about spanking and discipline either. It’s about having someone else’s will imposed on me, preferably with an authoritative tone. Several years ago, a commenter described how his wife took control of him at parties:

“When she comes up to me at a party and takes a drink out of my hand and says “You are done, dear,” with a smile and tone that will not be bucked, it touches something deep inside me. She calls it the ‘eternal mother’. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I know that it feels like her authority is from something more than ourselves. I even think that those around me feel it. None of my friends has called her a B or teased me about it. They respect her for having the knowledge and the guts to cut me off. One friend said to me, ‘Wow, your wife knows how to use tough love.’ And I agree: It’s the same authority she uses to swing the paddle, just exhibited verbally and publicly. In those moments, I would do anything she told me to do. I feel her mother power.”

Part of me craves Anne taking me in hand with that kind of confidence and strictness, no matter how much I know I will hate it as it is happening. I also have a powerful attraction to being lectured/scolded in a way that has a strong maternal vibe, especially when it comes to ordering or threatening a spanking.

And, while it hasn’t happened so far, I wonder sometimes whether thinking of Anne in an openly maternal role during a spanking might move the perceived power dynamic in a way that might make me more open to crying. Crying in front of non-maternal figure is embarrassing, but doing so while over the knee of a mother–or someone who has expressly adopted a maternal role–is almost expected, right?

Yet, while I am increasingly open about being attracted to Anne assuming a much more openly maternal role, I don’t really experience spankings as “bringing out the boy” or reducing me to feeling like a boy. It’s more like the maternal authority is being extended into a very adult context. I’m not looking to regress to boyhood; it’s more like being subject to the same kind of discipline a misbehaving teenager would but as a grown man.

J. said something along those lines in a comment a couple of weeks ago:

“To my mind, the best thing is for DD to “refine masculinity”, rather than taking it away, a bit like the boys’ boarding schools of yesteryear. There were heavy punishments for infractions, but they encouraged masculinity, not always in a good way (e.g. hazing), but they did. Even the now-King Charles III was reported to be afraid of his governesses. To my mind, DD done best is DD that also enhances masculinity, but maintains the accountability into adulthood. A grown man should be able to take even more pain than a schoolboy and I think the best DD is focused on pain (which builds men up), rather than humiliation (which knocks them down).

I don’t have a well-defined topic related to this, but I welcome comments about anything in the post that catches your interest.

Have a great week.

Performance Improvement Update, and Immediacy and Consistency in a Domestic Discipline (Spanking) Relationship

“It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It’s what we do consistently.” – Tony Robbins

Hello all. Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club. Our weekly meeting of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline and/or Female Led (FLR) relationships.

Once again, before we get started, I would like to extend a specific invitation to our female readers to move from “lurker” to “commenter” status. We miss having you around.

I hope you all had a great week. Ours was pretty sedate. Though, things do continue to develop on the disciplinary front. So, I’ll kick things off with some updates before moving on to this week’s topic.

First, our discussion here about tears—particularly the comments by Alan and others regarding how essential the wife wanting or expecting tears is to achieving them—led me to feel Anne out about it again. While talking in bed about some DD-related issues, I told her that I still hoped crying would happen at some point. In the past, when I brought it up I always felt her response was equivocal or non-committal, in a way that indicated she had concerns about how she might react.

This time was different. When I told her it was something I still found compelling and hoped would happen, she said simply, “Good. I’m glad. I want you to. You can’t read a lot into seven words, but the tone was very different this time. There wasn’t any equivocation. It was simple and direct.

I asked her how she thought she might react. She said something to the effect of, “I think I’ll see it as gratifying that you finally got over that threshold and gave in. I would probably acknowledge it and tell you I was glad you were crying. But, I don’t think it would make me stop.”

I don’t think she’s determined to make it happen in the way, say, ZM’s wife was when she made it clear that a spanking wasn’t going to stop until he cried for the first time. But, I think she does want it to happen and, at the very least, won’t have any adverse emotional reaction if and when it does.

Second, with our family commitments finally out of the way, we resumed our “check-ins” around performance goals. I knew she had been mulling some tweaks to what I had proposed, but I wasn’t at all sure how weighty the changes might be. As it turned out, it was nothing earth-shattering, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t meaningful in terms of her increasing comfort with being in control, as well as for what they forebode for the state of my butt going forward.

Her changes included:

· adding an agenda item to deal with day-to-day household planning on things like places we want to travel, home improvements, family finances, etc. It has nothing to do with DD expressly but does recognize that sometimes my procrastination and lack of direction result, in part, from us not taking the time to coordinate plans as a couple;

· using the meetings not only to address the performance improvement/goal-setting items I had identified but also as a more general “check-in” on my behavior over the preceding week;

· adding a discussion of things she characterized as “pet peeves,” i.e. things that apparently have been grating on her nerves but haven’t been identified as “spankable” before now.

As I reported before, she also changed the frequency of our meetings. I had suggested that we do these check-ins monthly, because I thought weekly might be more of a burden than she might want to sign up for. But, she has not only scheduled the meetings weekly but tightened up on the deadlines I had proposed for hitting some of the action items on my “life goals” list. That’s consistent with Alan’s recent advice about deadlines:

I want to make a general suggestion about deadlines.

What we have found to be highly effective is setting the deadline as close as possible to the present. This not only keeps the task at the forefront of the assignee’s mind but also ensures timely completion.

For instance, instead of giving him a week, consider setting a deadline within a day or two, and specify the time as ‘by Tuesday noon’. Threatened punishment is an abstraction if it’s too far in the future or going to happen “some time,” But “ I am going to warm your ass if that is not finished by dinner tomorrow” focuses the mind.

As I said, none of her tweaks to my original suggestions are earth-shattering, yet cumulatively they add up to something different not just in degree but in kind from what I proposed.

Moreover, although we had agreed that it would be good for both of us if she stepped up her strictness and control, when it came to the specific items to be covered at these check-ins and their timing, she didn’t ask my opinion. She simply told me how it will work going forward.

And, it’s not just a change in process. At our most recent meeting, she identified behavioral issues that she determined added up to two spankings. She also informed me of one “pet peeve” that would earn a spanking going forward. This is something that annoys her but that I don’t see as a real issue. But, it’s clear that she’s decided that what matters is her annoyance, not whether I think that annoyance is reasonable.

She delivered one of the spankings that evening and said the second would come later in the week.

The, the next day, I got a text with a picture that showed I had violated the “pet peeve.”. It didn’t explicitly order a spanking, but a couple of days later I said something that she took as snarky, and she said, “You’re talking big for someone who already has two spankings coming.”

Honestly, given that it was a “first offense,” I thought forgetting about the pet peeve would result in a warning not a spanking. Instead, it was like Al’s Even More story, in which the husband immediately forgets the rule they had just implemented regarding toilet seats. He argues a warning would be “more fair,” but she sticks to her guns and spanks him anyway.

All of which is a segue of sorts into this week’s topic.

The combination of these weekly check-ins and her increasing strictness seems to be creating a situation in which spankings are no more immediate but are substantially more certain. In fact, while it’s a little too early to tell, the weekly check-ins might lead to her putting off some spankings for a few days, since there will be a meeting at which they are discussed and later dealt with.

Yet, regardless of what happens with immediacy, I find the likelihood of increased certainty to be pretty intimidating, particularly given that increased certainty will inevitably result in increased frequency. It’s been on my mind a lot since that last check-in meeting. In fact, I feel like, for maybe the first time in 20 years, we’ve hit on the combination that really gets my attention and makes me think twice before acting up.

We’ve talked about “consistency” a lot here over the years, though we’ve seldom defined it.

“Certainty” seems to be inherent in the whole concept of consistency. If bad behavior doesn’t get consistently punished, then there is no consistency.

Immediacy is, in my view, perhaps important to the effectiveness of DD as a deterrent but it’s not intrinsic to the concept a consistency. And, I use the word “perhaps” because I’m not really sure how necessary immediacy really is.

Last week someone equated DD to training a dog. I admit I’ve used the analogy myself, though it is an imperfect one at best. A dog is incapable of mentally linking a punishment with a behavior unless the former happens close in time to the latter. So, with dogs, immediacy is critical to behavior modification.

Humans, on the other hand, by virtue of both memory and imagination, can project thoughts about behavior and consequences forward and backward in time. We also are capable of thinking about behavior and consequences abstractly.

I don’t know whether more immediate punishments would result in more behavioral change. What I do know is that the prospect of more certainty—both in detection and punishment—by virtue of our new check-in system feels more intimidating than thoughts about how increased immediacy might feel. And, there also is the almost guaranteed linkage between the formality and regularity of the check-in system, the resulting increase in the certainty of punishment, and the further almost inevitable increase in the frequency of punishment.

In fact, there is something very humbling and intimidating about the fact that she is keeping closer track and that, even if a week or two had passed, there is a very good chance the spanking will happen. In some ways, the fact that I might feel less of a connection between the particular spanking and the particular offense feels like it is one more step in removing my judgments and preferences from the process and substituting her as the sole judge of timing and frequency, which in turn feels more like how I’ve always envisioned the DWC wife’s authority should work.

Of course, it’s not an either-or. In the past, immediacy felt like a loose prerequisite for certainty. If a spanking didn’t happen relatively close in time to the offense, it was likely to be forgotten or “real life” would intervene. But now, it feels like our formal check-ins will end up playing a bigger role in bringing about certainty and making “immediacy” less of a necessary component.

I also get the sense that our formal check-ins lessen any lingering concerns my wife may have about “fairness.” She is running the agenda, but it’s still a two-way street in terms of communications. If I don’t agree with her factual premises, I have the ability to raise those kinds of issues, but I get the sense so far that as long as the facts are as she perceived them to be, she isn’t going to be asking for much input from me on whether a spanking has been earned.

It also seems like she is coming down on the side of certainty and not worrying as much about immediacy. Including the “pet peeve” offense, she ordered three spankings in a single week but didn’t schedule them all for the same day. Between the offense, the check-in, and the execution of the sentence, almost two weeks could conceivably pass between the first offense and the last spanking.

Yet, it seems to be more important that each spanking actually happen than that they happen on a particular timetable.

I’m reminded of something a friend of mine, Rhiannon, who is the “top” in an FLR marriage said about consistency on her blog:

“I often struggle with balance or worrying about my husband feeling something is unfair or that it could be “too much.” The vast majority of contributors all suggest just taking control, owning it and acknowledging that while resistance or “unfairness” may happen, it is kind of what we each signed up for in deciding to walk this path. In fact, my husband does not want an equal relationship. He wants me to lead. So in spending countless time and energy trying to make it seem or feel equal or worrying too much about the impact something will have, I am really just spinning my wheels and depriving us both of what we actually need/want. It was this realization that got me back on the path of leading.

While I feared increased control or strictness could breed resentment, it has the opposite effect. He needs the structure and the clarity. He needs the consistency and knowing what is expected. I also think, although probably less so in the moment, that he craves the accountability as well. Being in this type of relationship really requires some shifts in conventional thinking and finding ways to make sense of concepts that perhaps seem counter intuitive. It is the difference between viewing follow up as being a nag or as holding him accountable.

It also is not just better for him. It is better for me. It is easier for me to know that when I make a decision, it will be followed because I am not leaving room for resistance. It is also easier because I have control over my own life and can be responsible for the choices I make, which also means I have no one to blame but myself if it turns out not to be the best choice. It is just simpler and easier.”

I think the formality of the new check-in system removes some of the second-guessing my wife previously subjected herself to. Like my friend, she recognizes that I need both strictness and consistency, and she seems to have arrived at the conclusion that, for us, the best recipe for consistency is:

· certainty of having a direct conversation each week about my behavior, met and unmet goals, procrastination, and any annoyance or hanger she’s experienced as a result

· certainty of punishment

· separate punishments for each significant offense, even at the expense of immediacy

Let’s explore this topic of consistency in all its angles. What level of consistency have you achieved in your DD relationship? Is consistency even a goal, or are you content with an on-again-off-again approach? For those for whom consistency is a desired state but remains challenging, what are the big impediments to getting there? What are you and your spouse willing to do, if anything, to overcome those impediments?

Do you see any tension between certainty and immediacy? Is one more important than the other?

For the wives, what are the challenges in achieving more certainty and consistency? Is it practical things like lack of available time, or is it more an attitude issue? Do concerns about “fairness” cause you to second-guess yourself? Or, is being consistent and strict freeing, as my friend Rhiannon describes?

I hope you have a great week.

Catching up, Wives’ Concerns About Fairness, and Tears

“To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Hello all. Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club. Our weekly meeting of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline and/or Female Led (FLR) relationships.

Once again, before we get started, I would like to extend a specific invitation to any of our female readers, if they still exist, to move from “lurker” to “commenter” status. We miss having you around.

Wow. What a couple of weeks. We were traveling and taking part in a family event that had been in the planning stages for a looooong time. It was a great event, but we both came back exhausted. One of those, “I need a vacation to recover from my vacation” trips for sure.

That’s probably why I’m doing a different post than I thought I would be doing this week. I’ve been teasing a post about some changes that Anne and I have been talking through that would involve her taking more control, being more strict, etc. Sort of an extension of the “performance improvement” system we started playing with a month or so ago. We both agree that the system is something we want to explore. In fact, we quickly started talking about how to extend it into a more formal system of “check-ins” but also, more generally, about finally implementing a stricter kind of DD, with her really taking the reins in a way we’ve talked about before, and maybe even assumed would take place naturally after retirement, but never seems to fully gel.

We got oh-so-close to some real momentum, but then all the family event planning took over our lives. We both agreed, however, that we would get back on that horse as soon as things settled down. Near the tail-end of our travel, we agreed we would have “the” discussion about it the day after we got back. But, we’ve both been in recovery mode all weekend, and I’m not 100% sure when it will happen. But, as soon as it does, I’ll provide the details.

In the meantime, there were a lot of great discussions going on while my participation was largely on hiatus. I tried to check in daily, but mainly to ensure no comments were caught in the spam filter, and I still haven’t had a chance to absorb everything. But, it’s safe to say there are probably at least four or five themes worth exploring further. I was tempted to jump into all of them this week, but I’ve learned that inspiration is a fleeting and undependable resource, so I’ll keep several of the obvious topics in reserve and just hit a couple of them today.

To kick that off, I’d like to thank Miss E. for dropping in. She’s the first new Disciplinary Wife we’ve had come around in a while. I’m glad she was able to jump right into the conversation and that you all made her feel welcome. Her questions and the resulting discussions covered a lot of ground, and I’ll refer back to some of those discussions in the coming weeks. For the first part of this week’s post, I’d like to discuss more about this part of her comments:

“Speaking of embracing being a “bitch,” I sometimes worry that because I was the one who initiated it, maybe he doesn’t in fact ‘need/want’ this like I do and is only tolerating it for the sake of our relationship. Granted, we have had many, many discussions about these fears and his wants, so this fear is not exactly valid, but I still worry.

I only say this because when I fully embrace and lean into my dominant side, I am fair, but am also a ‘bitch.’

It makes me feel alive in a very powerful way.

I feel like in the case of many of your relationships, you have an advantage in that the man was the one who initiated this dynamic, so your wife need not worry whether or not it is actually good for you.”

I love that line about how taking control makes her “feel alive in a very powerful way.”

Yet, those very feelings cause her concern, leading her to wonder if she gets more out of it than her husband and whether that is “fair.”

That leadership is hard is not a new thought for me, whether in the “real world” or concerning the DD aspects of our relationships. It’s not often that I use the same introductory quote two posts in a row, but the above from Friedrich Nietzsche seems very apropos of Miss E.’s concerns. It’s hard to will yourself to do great things and even harder to will someone else to greater performance.

In fact, although it seems like the vast majority of us are in very healthy relationships, the few times we’ve had commenters whose relationship did not sound so healthy, it was often the case that the wife seemed arbitrary or flighty in her approach to her role. In Femdom relationships, maybe it’s all about her, but here in the real world these relationships rise and fall with both parties taking the emotional impact on the other spouse seriously.

So, it seems to me to be very natural that Miss E. worries about whether her husband is actively engaged and getting as much as she is out of the relationship. What I hadn’t thought about very much was how much that might be magnified in those rare cases in which the wife was the one who initiated the relationship.

It’s something I should have thought about more, because I’ve talked to a female blogger in a F/m dynamic about her concerns around whether she was being too commanding, too strict, too decisive, and whether taking on the role in a full-blooded way might harm her husband emotionally.

Anne has displayed some of that concern, though it manifests in different ways. As discussed last week in a comment, she’s told me that had a hard time embracing her role for a long time, because she couldn’t understand why I would want my role, and that made her think that if she took more and more control, at some point I would balk and pull the rug out from under her.

Yet, part of her clearly feels empowered and alive in that more controlling role. Moreover, she likes it in the context of FLR precisely because she knows I struggle against it, and she likes to see that struggle.

The great irony in all this is, of course, that most of us here seem to wish history could be slightly altered such that it was, in fact, our wives who initiated the relationship. In fact, we wish she imposed it on us. The closer we could get to consensual non-consent, the better.

And, while Miss E. and my friend struggle with concerns about being too commanding, too strict, too verbally dominant, when I’ve conducted polls here in the past, a HUGE percentage of our group say they want exactly that: more strictness, more sternness, more consistent consequences, more verbal dominance, scolding, etc.

Maybe Miss E. can take some assurance from our majority’s expressed preference for more rigor and sternness, given that her husband is assuring her verbally that he too wants their lifestyle. But, I’m sure that’s a little too pat for many of the Disciplinary Wives, as I suspect any thinking, feeling, non-sociopathic “dominant” would have lingering concerns about the impact of their actions on their partner.

So, let’s take it on more directly with our current group. If you could change your dynamic in any respect, would you want more severity or less? More strictness or less? A sterner demeanor or less so? More control and direction or less?

How about the wives? (Since Miss E. is our only female contributor currently, men feel free to contribute how you think your wife feels.) Do you have concerns that, when you take control or become more consistent, that maybe it’s too much? Do you worry about being too strict? Too demanding? Punishing too often or for “small” things? Is your own enjoyment of your role limited by guilt or feelings that you shouldn’t enjoy it?

For me, I do feel I want more consistency, more sternness, more verbal control. In short, I have expressed that I want her to be more in control, set higher standards, enforce her will more quickly and consistently, etc. Now, whether I really want those things may be proven out once our new system/approach gets fully implemented. I have no doubt that if she carries through on what she has hinted at, I will struggle emotionally with it. But, that is kind of the point for me. I want to have the boundaries pushed a bit in that way. I’ve already warned her that she may need to stick to her guns, and I hope the attitude she adopts—one that threads the needle between Miss E.’s concerns and our desire for more strictness—is to expect some resistance but to stay business-like and resolute.

That would probably be enough for one week, but we did cover some of this ground already. Plus, I also personally wanted to follow up on Alan’s comment about crying from a spanking and Miss E.’s question about how the rest of us feel about crying, surrendering emotionally in that way, etc. Alan said:

“Miss E wrote about re-experiencing crying from spanking: “[I]f this is something that you want to achieve with your wife, what would be the best way for her to lead you in this?”

This question has been raised often enough to suppose it comes up in many F/m relationships. Crying seems very idiosyncratic; some cry readily under punishment, while others never cry. Realistically, I think at least some may never cry during a spanking. It can be challenging for a man in our culture to reach that point of vulnerability, no matter how much he consciously may want to do so.

But for the man who will cry when spanked, there seem to be three conditions that must exist beyond his prior willingness or desire to reach that point of surrender:

1. He must feel some real guilt or shame for the behavior that earned the spanking. It must be real, and in my case, at least that has meant a severe scolding in a situation where she has at least partially begun the punishment (brisk hand spanking, pants pulled down, put in the corner, etc.) That scolding, together with real shame or embarrassment, puts me in a frame of mind to accept the spanking, and it is necessary to let go and cry during it.

2. The disciplinarian should clarify that she expects tears, wants to see them, and considers them evidence that the spanking worked. This early communication in our relationship was crucial. I don’t think I would have ever cried if she had not emphasized her expectation that tears should happen. This is very tied up with the standard “tough masculinity” image most males carry into adulthood. It sounds as crazy as it is, but instead of crying when we are afraid, we are scared to cry. A little guilt, a lot of scolding, and strong permission/encouragement to cry help overcome that.

3. Finally, he must come to feel on some level that the spanking will never end, which can lead him to let go and probably cry. A man who doesn’t cry during a serious spanking is probably “holding on” but if faced with the belief (an illusion but very real at the time) that the spanking is going to go on forever, he may be able to let go and cry—something he both wants and needs. The spanking that will produce this is not necessarily the hardest spanking you ever gave him. In fact, Hard and fast spanking can be practical behavioral tools, but they probably make a man hold on more. Instead of bringing on tears, extend the spanking for 20 minutes or even longer. Build up the severity slowly. Continue scolding throughout the spanking, and use short breaks or corner items to help create a setting in which he believes it won’t stop until he actually surrenders to you.

Others on this blog have recounted their route to tears and maybe they will add to what I have written.”

As I’ve said many times, I am one of those who was near-obsessed with tears and crying after I discovered the Disciplinary Wives Club. Yet, twenty years later, it still hasn’t happened.

Perhaps one simple reason is I’ve never really been subjected to Alan’s three conditions. First, last year, Anne did start scolding much more harshly, but it hasn’t been part of any kind of “preliminary” spanking, like being swatted by hand or physically controlled while it is happening. I could see how that could go a long way toward breaking down those ego barriers.

Second, Anne has never let me know that she expects tears and, better yet, wants them to be shed. Early on, it felt kind of the opposite. This relates back to Miss E.’s concerns, as I think Anne worried a lot about whether what she was doing was “too much,” whether in terms of lecturing/scolding or spanking. Although I think those concerns are much diminished, I think she may still have a few qualms about how she would react to tears.

Third, and this is one I’d like to hear more about in particular from those who have cried, Anne hasn’t delivered a spanking that just went on, and on, and on. For me, given my tendency to go numb, I suspect that would take multiple sessions spread out over an hour or more. I’ve come very close to this point as described in the DWC story Big Boys DO Cry, but never been pushed quite over the limit:

And that is when we approach my limit. There comes a point, as all well-spanked husbands should know, when it all becomes too much. The fire in my backside rages out of control, and I know I can’t take much more. My pleading and promising becomes garbled and desperate, tears start flowing and I beg her to stop. At that point I will do anything, absolutely *anything* to bring the punishment to an end. I cannot possibly take even one more lick from that strap.

An interesting recent development is we’ve had a couple of recent spankings in which I hadn’t been spanked in several weeks, and from the very beginning, it was just excruciating. Both times, I felt like my emotions surged and I was very close to letting go completely and crying. But, that sensation lasted for maybe a minute, then I sort of “settled into” the spanking and, as it went on, I got further and further away from that initial “shock and awe” that seemed to almost bring me to the verge.

Are there any further comments on Alan’s prescription? Also, for those of you willing to go into it, how do you feel after a spanking that ends in real tears?

Is the emotional experience dramatically different from a spanking that was similarly hard but didn’t cause you to cry? Is there any extra element of “humbling” or embarrassment when tears happen? I am very sure that one reason I have been so focused on tears since the very beginning is that I feel like if it ever does happen, I will be extremely embarrassed, at least the first time. But, perhaps I’m wrong about that.

I’m also interested to hear more from him about how his wife and girlfriend reacted to his first real tears. Same for the rest of you who have cried from an adult spanking. What was your wife’s attitude? Was it something she had wanted to bring about? Did your full-blown crying lead to any concerns about it being “too much,” or was she fine with it from the outset?

I hope you all have a great week.

Disciplinary (Spanking) Wife Attitude, Temperament, Others Knowing, and Wisdom From a Former Commenter

“To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Hello all. Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club. Our weekly meeting of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline and/or Female Led (FLR) relationships.

I hope you all had a good week. Mine was pretty sedate, which is good because I needed to recover some energy for a family trip we have coming up next week.

Relatedly, just a heads-up that I will not be posting next week, as we’ll be on the road. I hope to be back in in posting mood two weekends from now, but it could be delayed by a day or two.

We’ve been so busy preparing for the trip that I haven’t had much time to come up with a topic, and there wasn’t a super obvious topic among last week’s comments. But, I will highlight a few here that caught my attention.

First, I had noted that Anne was always reluctant to be more open about our DD relationship at home was her fear that the kids might lose respect for me. This illustration from our Glenmore maybe unintentionally illustrates her point:

I replied with a military analogy: “In our scheme, Anne would be the general, which outranks me as a colonel, but I way outrank the kids who start out as privates and might graduate college as lieutenants at best.” In other words, Anne may outrank me, but I always outranked the kids by a lot.

Carl H. replied with this:

Dan, love your ‘military rank’ analogy which I frequently use. I like to say that marriage is the perfect democracy – because the vote is almost always tied – LOL. DD in an FLR is the ultimate ‘tie-breaker” While I can make a strong case for DD in a Male Dom relationship, I also believe that two aspects of DD are particularly suited to Fem Dom:

1) Males perform well in a hierarchy such as the military;

2) Males respond well to physical stimuli such as food, sex and yes, corporal punishment.

IMO, he’s right on all counts.

Ward had a couple of great comments on negative attitudes:

My problem has never been alcohol or drugs. I can very quickly become negative and when she sees it, I know that one or more spankings are coming my way until she sees a change in attitude. I was recently spanked three days in a row. I can be very stubborn about letting go of a negative attitude given challenging circumstances. Three nights of going to bed so sore that it was difficult to sleep. I finally gave up the negative attitude. She has been very happy this week with my change even though she knows it will most likely be short-lived. She can become very strict when she sees the attitude. The truth is I want her to blister me good for it because it is my nemesis that I can’t control much like alcohol for some it is something that I can’t stop.

I understand hanging onto a bad attitude. We do sometimes have a tendency to nurse our grievances and tempers, don’t we? His comment about getting spanked three days in a row, until the attitude finally disappeared resonated with me, as Anne and I have been talking a lot recently about the need to be resolute and firm and being willing to mete out punishment until I finally change the behavior at issue.

Ward also had this to say about how his bad attitudes contrast with his wife’s more balanced temperament:

“My wife is always right until she’s not, but her ego is so much less in the way than mine, so empowering her to spank me even if I might be right keeps my ego from bullying her into things, and she will always figure it out eventually. I guess in some ways being spanked even when you are convinced that you are right empowers her more, because I’m trusting her with everything, knowing that she will get us to the correct answer every time even though it may not be instantly. She doesn’t let her ego get in the way when she realizes she may have been wrong. She won’t apologize for spanking me because she is the boss, but she will admit her error and correct her thinking that’s what makes her so perfect for me.”

That too resonates strongly. I don’t think Anne is any smarter than I am, and I don’t think she necessarily has better judgment. In fact, I tend to be more analytical and linear in my thinking than she is. But, where she vastly exceeds me in a way that matters for who should be in control is temperament. She’s simply more balanced and less prone to excesses.

ZM had this to say about openness and the prospect of others, including family members, knowing about a husband and wife’s DD hierarchy:

“For us, there is no question that the thing that kept us from going forward to check-ins was never having the house to ourselves. And on the very rare times that we were alone, who wanted to spend it on punishing me?

I think that is one reason that at some level, I wish that DD could just be totally open and matter-of-fact with no element of privacy. So then it wouldn’t matter if others were around or not. Of course, I am not saying I would really like that, and certainly part of the big attraction to FLR/DD things is the hidden/kinky secret side of it. But still, in practical terms, the need for privacy has been the biggest impediment to actually implementing it and maintaining it consistently.”

I told him I understood that tension well and that it reminded me of comments made on this blog several years ago by a Disciplinary Wife who went by the name Holly. She had grown up in a home where mom was in charge and it was an open secret—or no secret at all—that dad was spanked along with the kids.

A couple of years ago, I compiled some of the older comments into a searchable format, so in conjunction with replying to ZM I reviewed several of Holly’s comments. There was so much lived experience in them, I really do wish we could entice more female participation.

So, for this week, since I had no topic, I’m just going to post some of Holly’s comments and let people react to them and to anything above.

Regarding growing up in a DD household and knowing dad got spanked:

“Kids know or suspect if you are in a serious disciplinary relationship, even if no spanking is involved, and for sure if regular spanking occurs. Living in the same house you cannot not know a spanking is being administered or that one has been administered. Even if you don’t hear it you know from the way everyone acts. (I will admit boys are a little dense about this, as I knew well before my brothers did.) My mother was probably more open than most women and probably spanked more often than most. But ALL spankings were in private and as far as I know she never talked about it until well after we were grown. Before my marriage in my case and after marriage in the cases of my brothers and their wives.”

I don’t know whether she’s right that kids always will know or suspect. When ours were younger, we waited until they were in bed. As they grew older, we generally did it only if they weren’t in the house at all. We generally kept tools locked away, but was there never a slip up? I also have kept hardcopy journals for years. Could they have snooped and discovered one with spanking references? In the end, you just never know.

But, I do know that over the years our kids have figured out that Anne has assumed some preeminent role around some decision-making and that she does things like handing out chores. They also have picked up on the fact that she sometimes uses language that sounds more like a command than a request.

All that fits with this Holly comment:

“As you have described your wife, she actively uses her authority, gives you orders, expects to be obeyed, and more and more acts in charge. A woman is not a disciplinarian only when she is holding a strap. Your kids are aware of that relationship between you even if they are not aware that you are punished with spanking. She is in charge. I grew up knowing that and believe I chose a husband who allowed me to behave much as my mother. (Actually, he chose me, but his knowing my mother spanked made a big impression on him.) Your wife may be correct that the kids don’t know about the spanking. But the physical discipline is only part of “passing it on.” It’s the presence or absence of real DD in the relationship. My three brothers also chose women who controlled them. Two of them are spanked by their wives, while I am not sure about the third. But they are all happy (so are their wives).”

In the end, I don’t know what our adult kids know now, but I agree with ZM that our hyper-sensitivity about kids knowing was the #1 factor in preventing us from achieving any real consistency as long as there were kids in the house. Of course, it didn’t get that much better after they were gone, but the pattern had been laid and it now takes conscious effort to break it.
Here’s more from Holly on growing up in a family where spanking was the norm and how that probably made her more comfortable with it later:

“I have read that being spanked makes you a better disciplinarian but that wasn’t my experience. Although my mother often took the strap to my father, I never saw it. But I did see my brothers punished many times and it left me convinced that males were easily controlled with a strap.

When we were first married, I never expected to discipline him using corporal punishment, although I was in charge from our first date. Only after seeing my husband display many of the behaviors that got my father punished (particularly temper tantrums), did I decide to introduce him to the strap. Even then it was my mother’s encouragement, after she heard him call me a “bitch,” something he had done before but that I had let go. The really funny thing about it is that I was completely oriented to using the strap and my mother even gave me one when I started. But it turns out my husband has a fetish for being spanked that way, so these days I deal with him with my sorority paddle or a cane which definitely do not turn him on.”

Again, Holly’s stories had a ring of truth to me because she often did things consciously to avoid playing to her husband’s fantasies, like figuring out he had a fetish about a particular instrument and deciding to use something other than that instrument.

Here is this regarding how her husband’s brattiness was the equivalent of asking for the DD relationship:

“Calling me a bitch was what led to my husband’s first appointment with the strap. He had done it before, but my mom heard it for the first time and told me I was a fool for allowing it. There were other things going on at the time, including his general brattiness and increasing temper tantrums when he was frustrated. It was a big change for me because I had been determined to manage my own marriage different than my mom had done. But over a period of time, about three years, I saw the same behavior in my husband that had got dad in trouble with mom. When I told him what was going to happen, he gave me almost no resistance. That makes me think he wanted me to take charge and his brattiness and tantrums were his way of asking for it. He knew how mom had run things and I think that made him want the same thing from me. The strap transformed him into a sweet loving husband. I don’t think that would have ever happened if I had not acted (or, to be honest, if mom had not pushed it.)

Something that always gave Holly’s comments the ring of truth for me is that while moms passing along spanking tips to their daughters often is spanking fantasy fodder, she was initially very resistant to her mother’s prodding. It was only after her husband finally crossed a line that she decided to pick up the strap.

Once she did so, however, she came to accept that being the disciplinarian wasn’t just about controlling her husband. Rather, she came to affirmatively enjoy and get off on that power and control as this comment, in response to my topic about whether discipline ever involves an element of “payback”, illustrates:

“This is a good topic. I want to answer that deterrence of his childish and unacceptable behavior is my reason for spanking him. It was my original reason, encouraged by my mother (appropriately), and I had reason to believe it was something he wanted too, but he was unable to admit he felt he needed boundaries (now he readily admits it). But the desire to punish him is also part of it and was probably there from the beginning. I am getting stricter with him, which means his appointments with Ms. Strap happen once or twice a month. Controlling his behavior is still what motivates me to consistency and follow-through. But payback from a sound spanking is part of what I get out of it too. I guess what I am saying, and a little shocked at saying it, is that even if I got no behavior rewards from spanking him I still would do it for punishment. Maybe I am turning into a bitch, but men just do better with boundaries and consequences.”

More on “bitchiness” and embracing her assertive side:

“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 that 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 stuff. Hopefully, there’s enough above to drive a good conversation until we get back from our trip.

Using Adult Disciplinary Spankings for Goal Achievement and Self-Improvement

“He who cannot obey himself will be commanded.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Hello all. Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club. Our weekly meeting of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline and/or Female Led (FLR) relationships.

I hope you all had a good week. It’s been a weird couple of weeks here weatherwise. We got a major early spring storm at the end of last week. Yet, here we are just a few days later and it feels like motorcycle weather is just around the corner.

This is probably the only artwork in my collection depicting a male getting spanked while draped over a motorcycle. It’s not something Anne has explored and, since she doesn’t ride, it probably would have to happen in our garage, which is unlikely given that the neighbors might overhear. But, given her newfound openness around things like raising the bedroom shades during a session, who knows. . ..

And, I do, unfortunately, have one coming. It was a difficult week from a behavioral perspective. Lots of travel. Lots of socializing. An ideal recipe for the kind of misbehavior I’m usually guilty of. Anne has already told me that I’m in for one tonight. It’s been several weeks since the last one, so I know this one will almost certainly be very painful.

Some of the misbehavior illustrates the good and bad of my retirement social life. Most of my friends over the last three decades have been work colleagues. With me retired and most of them still working, many of those relationships drifted, and for the first two years of retirement, they weren’t replaced with anything. That changed several months ago, when I started hanging out with a guy I met through some local political initiatives. It’s been great making a new friend at this stage but, unfortunately for my butt, we share many of the same vices.

The odd thing is, while I’m sure nothing like the above picture would ever happen, both Anne and I have detected some FLR-like vibes when we’ve gotten together socially with them. She’s a very successful career woman and clearly used to being in charge at work and at home. Our friendship isn’t quite at the stage at which I would unilaterally spill secrets regarding our DD relationship, but I could see it happening in the future. Stay tuned . . .

It was a little quiet here on the blog last week, at least with respect to the actual topic. But, there were some interesting comments. I especially liked this from MW regarding getting frequent spankings for a combination of different behaviors:

When we’re spanked for missing a different habit or combination of habits each time, it feels consistent because our specific wrong choices or mismanagements come from one underlying mindset and attitude. We leave the spanking thinking about how to manage the whole day better, not just a small part of it.

I think that’s a great observation and, in my case at least, I do think that most of my punishments result from a small handful of attitude and temperament challenges, including from a “big picture” perspective things like self-indulgence and risk-taking, along with some basic carelessness. Anne doesn’t generally spank for “attitude” per se put, as MW’s comment illustrates, on some level, it’s all attitude.

I would also encourage any of you who missed it to look at Alan’s comment from earlier today on the self-defeating nature or resisting a spanking even if you genuinely believe it is unfair. I won’t repeat the whole comment, but here is the part about the value of giving in to “unfair” spankings:

But what about when she is threatening or punishing you for something you strongly feel is unfair -or is she just wrong about it? This is probably the most challenging moment in DD consent -taking a spanking (or other punishment) you “know” you don’t deserve.) I have accepted several of these in our marriage, and I consider them among the best investments in our relationship I have made.

Why? Firstly, while she allows me only limited appeals before a spanking, there is no limit on discussing my feelings after a spanking (and there have been some spankings that she apologized for). We have thrashed out many issues with the hairbrush being back in the drawer. This has served as a safety valve against resentment.

But beyond that, I accept spankings that may be unfair because the cost of fighting them is much higher than the cost of accepting them. I could compare it to hiring a lawyer for 1000 dollars to fight a 100-dollar ticket. Even if you win, you have already lost. The spanking will be over in ten minutes, absolute top– but the cost of defying her over one can go on for weeks, months, or even forever.

I seem to have once again run out of ideas for new topics, so this week’s post is more of an update on some of the things Anne and I have been exploring. I’ve mentioned a few times now that we’ve been experimenting with using DD to help me drive forward on some bigger life goals. I was going to wait until we’d been at it for a while before devoting a post to it, but thanks to some big family commitments we’re probably going to have to pause it for two or three weeks. So, I’ll describe it a bit here and then do an update once we’ve had an opportunity to really focus on it.

This all started with some very personal frustration I experienced last year. My first year of retirement was devoted mainly to getting my health and energy back after burning the candle at both ends for too many years. The second year included a lot of exploring new interests and activities.

Then, last year, I hit a real flat spot. For unknown reasons, I stagnated on multiple fronts. Way too much time was spent reading bad books and watching too many streaming series. I had been doing quite a bit of writing the year before, but last year this blog was the only creative activity I maintained. By the end of the year, I was very frustrated with myself but seemed to lack the will to overcome the inertia.

When I get to the end of a calendar year, I usually come up with a list of goals for the following year. But, in the past they were heavily focused on career and financial goals. This year, I decided that instead of listing some obvious areas of improvement (lose weight, exercise more, etc.), I committed to trying to get unstuck. I put together a spreadsheet, which I used to list activities, fantasies, dreams, etc. that I recall having as far back as when I was a little kid. I then identified those that had stuck with me, in one form or another, through multiple big life phases.

I also identified, from among the hobbies and pursuits I’d tried over the years, those few that I’d stuck with for many years.

I then ranked all those individual items in terms of (a) how much they still resonate with me today, and (b) for those that I’ve thought about and thought about but never actually committed to, how much I think I’ll regret it on my deathbed if I don’t at least give them some real attention and effort. I narrowed the list down to about five key areas. Then, in each of those areas, I identified specific, concrete action items that would help move things forward.

Anne and I have never really used it for that purpose, and although we have talked a lot about instituting a reporting or “check-in” system, we’ve never really done it. Honestly, while I always knew I would benefit from accountability around meeting personal goals, I always assumed that Anne would find it too burdensome, since my issues around procrastination and laziness with respect to big life goals had little real impact on her.

But, around the time that I was putting my “goal ranking” system together, I did a blog post on using DD for self-improvement and goal-setting. Anne does read the blog fairly regularly but seldom comments on any particular post. We do, however, often talk about our DD relationship when in bed. Honestly, it’s sort of like a form of foreplay, but it’s often me doing most of the talking.

Well, it became clear that Anne had read that blog post, because she brought up the possibility of “helping me” achieve my goals and get over my procrastination problems.

Since some of the things we talk about regarding DD when in bed don’t actually end up happening, I wasn’t sure how seriously to take it. So, I wrote her a journal entry, asking whether she was serious about exploring it and suggesting what a system might look like.

She confirmed that she was very serious about it. I may have even detected a bit of “be careful what you ask for, I may give it to you” glee in her voice.

So, we had a face-to-face meeting in which I walked her through the spreadsheet and explained how I’d generated it. She didn’t want to try to hit all five of the big areas at once. Instead, she pushed me to narrow down which was the most important to me. She then immediately assigned four specific action items.

My original conception was to do a check-in once a month, so it wouldn’t be too burdensome on her. With that in mind, I would assume I would have a month to work on each set of action items. But, she decided that nothing she had assigned was all that ambitious, so she dictated that I had one week to complete all four.

The bottom line is, I got them all done. The entire week, that “to-do” list was on my mind. Near the end of the week, I realized I hadn’t finished one of them, and I went into a bit of panic mode. It felt both humbling, but also oddly reassuring, that I knew specifically what I needed to accomplish and what would happen if I didn’t do it.

The jury is still out on how this will work out over time. But, the big surprise so far is how it seemingly has been as much a focus for Anne as for me. As in most of these relationships, it’s been me as the DD recipient who has been the most consumed by it. I feel like now that dynamic is changing a little, with Anne showing increasingly consistent interest in being in charge and holding me accountable.

Also, my narrow focus on life goals seems to be getting extended into other areas, like Anne assigning chores. A couple of weeks ago, we were having guests over, and she handed me a note card with four house clean-up assignments, and titled it “Dan’s [but using my real name] Task List.” I got them done and left the checked-off list for her on the kitchen counter. One of our kids noticed it when visiting a few days later and commented that it was remarkable that I got such a list and that I actually complied! Last week, Anne wanted to clean up the house so it wasn’t a mess when the dog-sitter arrived, so she again gave me a task list.

We also agreed that, since we are planning to do check-in meetings on my goal list weekly, we will use those to address behavior issues more generally. At the end of each meeting, she will ask me if there is anything I think I should be spanked for. If I don’t report honestly, there is always the risk that she will order multiple spankings, one for the behavior and one for the lack of honesty.

More positively, it’s also an opportunity for me to ask to be held accountable for something she may not have noticed or cared about but that has been nagging at me. While it doesn’t happen often, there are times that I do feel like I need to pay a price for something I did or didn’t do, like being extremely careless about something that ends up costing me time or money.

So, that’s where we are with our new check-in process for life goals and behavioral issues. As I said, we have some commitments coming up that are likely to interfere with implementing it consistently, so the big challenge is not letting it become one of those things we talked about but didn’t follow through. Given Anne’s level of interest, however, I don’t think that’s how it will go this time.

I’ll keep you all posted. In the meantime, have a good week.

The Role of Probing, Questioning, and Interrogating in a Disciplinary Spanking Relationship

“He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer.” ― Elie Wiesel, Night

Hello all. Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club. Our weekly meeting of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline and/or Female Led (FLR) relationships.

I hope you all had a good week. Mine was pretty good, though we experienced one of those spring storms that kept us mostly holed up inside our house for a couple of days. Unfortunately, that led to a little too much time on social media and interacting on-line with some folks I’m involved with on a local political issue. Maybe it’s a result of thirty years in a profession that was all about persuasive communication, but I really hate people whose go-to moves are chest-beating and name-calling. Perhaps, down the road, I’ll ask Anne to help me deal with losing my temper on-line, but not yet . . .

That was a great discussion last week, on what I thought would be a pretty mundane topic. Right out of the gate, Antonio took my “DD and health” topic in a direction I hadn’t been thinking about when I wrote the topic, namely DD and mental health. Here’s how he described the effects of his wife’s use of DD to address his depressive tendencies:

“Now the amazing thing is that when she has finished disciplining me, my depression has completely lifted, and my unpleasant attitude has been replaced with a burning desire to please her. I don’t know what a therapist would say, but I don’t care because it works for us. She usually follows this with lighter preventative DD for the next few days just to “keep my mind right.”

I can’t explain it or why it works but it has made a major difference in our life. It has allowed me to stop taking antidepressants and instead of going into a two-week slide down the vortex of depression and then having to climb out, it is over in 10 minutes.

I cannot overstate what a difference this has made in our life. She has said a number of times that she wished she had known about this 30 years ago.”

As for what a therapist might say about it, my retort is: “Whatever works.”

Near the end of the week’s discussion, Alan had this to say regarding a comment by Ward regarding confession:

“Ward said: “I will confess if she asks…. Believe me, I know better than to fail to tell her the truth.”

This may be a separate topic, but I wonder how common it is for wives or girlfriends to ask regularly, during scolding, or while having a “discussion,” etc., about behavior she may not have witnessed. Both women who have disciplined me have used versions of it and it is a game changer for me when used to work on a particular behavior.

Like Ward, I confess if she directly asks about behavior that I would never self-report. Lying of any kind is not an option when she asks. Part of it is just the insanity of being untruthful when I have asked for discipline, and part of it is just the utter power she assumes in asking: “Have you been obedient?”

But the greatest impact on me comes from the message that she cares about the behavior and will use her authority to control or stop it. Caring about the behavior is why I respond so positively to being asked. If a woman wants to modify male behavior– making her expectations clear and then asking regularly if he has been obedient—is a sure path to success ( at least if the culprit is me).”

Alan’s observations were well-timed, because I had actually been planning to do a topic about “interrogation,” i.e. about a wife actively probing to discover bad behavior that may have gone unwitnessed and unreported.

It was on my mind because of the check-in process Anne and I have been working on. (I’ve been planning to blog about it, but its implementation was paused for a bit because of my illness issues. We also have some big family events and travel coming up, which are likely to get in the way of some momentum building. But, more to come.) As originally conceived, our check-ins were focused on helping me get “unstuck” regarding some life goals. But, we’ve been talking about broadening them to include a more general check-in on my behavior, including her asking me something like: “Is there anything you think you should be spanked for?”

This would be a new thing for us. We’ve talked (and talked, and talked) about having some kind of check-in process, but it’s never really taken hold. Similarly, Anne has never been big on actively probing for misbehavior or rule-breaking that she doesn’t personally witness, though immediately before a spanking she does sometimes ask me to recount why it is about to happen.

In preparing this topic, I looked through the old Disciplinary Wives Club website materials, because I thought there was something on there encouraging wives to very aggressively monitor and probe for bad behavior. Maybe I imagined it, because if it’s on there I couldn’t find it. But, I did find these snippets of advice to the wives in one of the DWC publications:

“Discipline should have a positive effect. It is a waste of your time to continually address the same situation, and it also undermines your authority. The best way to make sure you are succeeding in bringing a change about is by being very specific about what you expect to see and closely monitoring for the results.

Just like you would closely supervise a child to make sure that they were practicing the correct habits you sought to instill in them, you must do this with your husband as well. This is especially true until he has earned your trust by showing you that he does keep his promises.”

And this:

“Your success begins with the cultivation of your skills of observation. The more you are aware of what your husband is doing, the less likely it is that you will find yourself losing control. As a DWC wife you are absolutely entitled to ask your husband about anything you want to know and to expect an honest answer.

Sure you may get resistance, just like from any bad boy who doesn’t want to tell. But, he has asked for a DWC relationship, he really wants one, and deep down inside he does want to tell you everything.

If you have had the responsibility for supervising or raising children at any time, you will recall that it took extra alertness to always be aware of where they were and what they were doing. If you haven’t had that kind of experience don’t worry about it. Just go along with me now and you will get the idea anyway.”

She offered the men some closely-related guidance on accepting authority:

You will have to put up with closer supervision than you are used to and she will demand answers and evidence of your performance. This is perfectly normal and how it is supposed to be. If you feel resentful about this, or don’t want that kind of accountability, remember how maternal discipline occurs in a “child -parent” situation. The child simply cannot wiggle out of his Mother’s watchful eye. If you are honest with yourself, you will admit that when you get your spankings, it is that bratty little boy part of you who is getting it.

As I said, monitoring, probing, and interrogation have never been a big part of our DD lifestyle, though we seem to be moving more in that direction. And, I know myself well enough to predict that if we do, I probably will resent it as it is happening, just as Aunt Kay warned. But, it also will probably prove to be a very important part of both reinforcing the hierarchy and emphasizing the “maternal” element that we are both increasingly comfortable admitting is a thing for both of us.

Regarding staying aware of what I’m doing, journaling is a part of it, though it’s more about giving her better visibility into what I’m thinking and feeling. But, there is one way in which does do some active monitoring: She made me enable my “Find My iPhone” app settings so she can see where my phone is at all times and, hence, monitor where I am. Though, back when I was working I quickly figured out that, while the app does a great job of tracking horizontal movement from one location to another, it can’t do vertical. Hence, it couldn’t tell her when I’d gone to happy hour with the team, as long as we went to the bar that was 15 floors below our office in the same building!

Of course, as Alan points out, actively probing for misbehavior works only if the husband replies honestly. I admit, I don’t have a perfect track record. On occasion, she’s asked me how many drinks I had after going out with a friend. I would almost always turn it into a joke and claim to have had one. Now, technically, I wasn’t telling the truth. But, does it count as a lie when she knows it’s one and you know she knows?

I have to imagine the biggest impediment to a wife following Aunt Kay’s advice is a lack of confidence. When we first began our DD lifestyle twenty years ago, I’m not sure Anne had the confidence to actively push my buttons by probing for information in the way Kay suggests. But, with twenty years of both DD and life experience, I think she is much more comfortable going into “strict teacher” mode to ferret out the information she wants.

How about you? How actively does your wife probe for information regarding your behavior or interrogate you to assess how well you have obeyed her rules? Is there any additional or different consequence for not owning up when asked?

If any wives would like to weigh in, I would love to hear what your approach has been and, to the extent you actively probe for misbehavior or disobedience, is that something you had to grow into over time?

Have a great week. An advance warning that we are going to be traveling this week, so I may be less engaged with the comments than normal.

Disciplinary Spankings and Health

“Get comfortable with being uncomfortable!” – Jillian Michaels

Hello all. Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club. Our weekly meeting of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline and/or Female Led (FLR) relationships.

As previously announced, I wasn’t planning to post this week. But, I seem to have recovered enough from my bout of illness that I can string some semi-coherent thoughts together. And, in an indication of how fuzzy my thinking process had been, it turns out we aren’t traveling this week but, rather, next week. It is such a good thing that I have a smart Disciplinary Wife who actually can use a calendar without screwing it up.

There’s not a lot to highlight from last week’s discussion, which is probably to be expected for a topic that focused on the relatively narrow issue of instruments. However, sometimes a particular comment resonates with me enough to call it to everyone’s attention in case they missed it. Last week, it was this from Mark, in discussing the cane:

“Very like at school though, the ritual is compelling. You voluntarily bend over with both of you knowing that you are about to experience extreme pain, that your bottom is going to be marked with red hot raised welts, and that you will have visible bruising that will make sitting uncomfortable for a week. And then it starts.”

In just three sentences, he perfectly captured what a real disciplinary session is like for many of us. What jumped out to be was the “with both of your knowing . . .” line. When you get a true disciplinary punishment for the first time, you may not understand what you’re in for. But, you sure do afterward. And, for each session after that, you voluntarily submit. Similarly, the wife knows what it is she is about to deliver but also that it is beneficial and needed. Great stuff. Something about the respective postures of the couple in this drawing by Leondardo seems to me to exemplify two parties who are fully aware of the seriousness of what she is about to deliver and he is about to take.

As I mentioned when announcing I wasn’t going to post this week, I was struggling with an episodic health issue that I’ve had for well over a decade. I wrote about it a bit back in 2021, when I was transitioning out of my career:

“So, life is getting back to normal. Unfortunately, so is some of my bad behavior. After many weeks of relative temperance, I fell off the wagon. To some extent, that’s happening because I’ve been in the process of transitioning away from work and that has itself led to a surge in socializing. But, I do not want my new normal to look like my old normal. And, honestly, I really can’t let it. For years I’ve had to deal periodically with some nagging health issues, basically a constellation of “chronic fatigue” or fibromyalgia-like symptoms, with periodic bouts of fatigue, joint pain, digestive problems, etc. The irritating thing is, lately even when I am relatively good on average, if I have one slip-up on diet or drinking or exercise, everything seems to go to shit. It’s like I must live like a Buddhist monk just to have a shot at feeling somewhat healthy. It really is irritating as all fuck, though I suspect I have myself to blame, thanks to burning the candle at both ends for so many years. Even back in high school I was living like I was on borrowed time. I suspect when you spend 40 years digging an energetic hole, it takes more than a few months of relatively healthy behavior to pull yourself back out again.”

I could get down on myself and say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. But, getting off the 24/7 work hamster wheel did help. I no longer have quite as stark a choice between living like a monk or suffering the consequences. And, I don’t really know whether this time it was some lifestyle flubs that led to a flare-up. I did have one day where I had too many beers and ate too many fatty, unhealthy meals. But, I was starting to feel “off” even before that.

However, I can’t help wondering whether, with better behavior resulting from stricter discipline, I might have avoided the problem altogether.

It’s in that vein that I bring up something ZM said that I highlighted in that blog entry back in 2021:

“DD for health-related things is a very good idea. While it might seem a bit extreme to give a spanking for missing a pill or two, often these small patterns are what ultimately lead to poor health. An extra piece of cake or two here, not getting enough exercise this week because life got busy, not taking medicine when needed, etc. Since the marriage long term kind of requires both partners to be alive, I think it is a totally valid use of DD to help ensure that your spouse will be around for many happy and healthy years to come.”

So, that’s the topic for this week. Have you used domestic discipline to foster better health?

If so, how exactly did you go about doing it? What kind of system, if any, did you put in place?

How did you track compliance? Was it reliant on self-reporting, or were there other ways for her to track how you were doing?

Was the focus on health inputs, e.g., diet, exercise, taking medication, etc.?

Or, was it more results-oriented, like getting punished if you didn’t take off enough weight or didn’t succeed in lowering cholesterol or blood pressure? I know I have a tendency to focus on whether I’ve “followed the rules,” i.e. did I work out, did I eat healthy, often to find the scale didn’t budge. Let’s face it, we often have a tendency to cheat or slack off, or we aren’t properly motivated to discover what actually budges the needle for us. So, maybe it would be better to take a “bottom line” approach, assessing whether the goals were actually met?

And, was using DD to address health issues something you initiated, or did the idea come from her? In the big scheme of things, I agree with ZM that a wife would be very justified in imposing such a system. There are all sorts of fairly trivial things that a wife may decide to use DD to address.

I have to admit my own dietary goals have often been as much about vanity as health, which is probably kind of pointless at this age. No matter how much I exercise, I doubt there is a new career was an underwear model in my future.

But, doing what you can to ensure your spouse is around for years to come seems like a very worthwhile goal.

I hope you have a great week. Before I go, speaking of healthy living . . .

Spanking Instruments and Their Cultural Influences

“The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.” – Charles Darwin

Hello all. Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club. Our weekly meeting of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline and/or Female Led (FLR) relationships.

I hope you all had a great week. Mine was OK. I obviously failed in my goal to post on Friday instead of waiting ‘til the weekend. I had done some writing in another area earlier in the day and was, honestly, a little burned out. Though, my enthusiasm was rejuvenated later in the evening as I was re-watching the streaming series Weeds on Hulu and came to this scene from season 4, episode 7.

Later, you see the main character admiring the lingering hand marks in the mirror. There are a couple of other very explicit spanking scenes in that series. One or more of the writers or showrunners have a spanking thing for sure.

We missed our scheduled check-in under our new “performance improvement” system, but we now have committed to doing them weekly, as opposed to my original plan for monthly meetings. I’m still not quite ready to do a full post on it, because we haven’t been operating under it that long. I will say, however, that Anne seems uncharacteristically enthusiastic and committed to it. I say “uncharacteristically” not as a dig, but simply in recognition of the fact that we have talked and talked and talked over the years about her really taking over our whole DD process and stepping up the overall level of control and strictness. In the past, all the talk never gelled into persistent change. This feels . . . different.

I don’t know why, but it may be as simple as she has more time and fewer important distractions than she had pre-retirement. But, the attitude itself seems different. Maybe it’s like KOJ’s wife dramatically asserting herself once she was no longer concerned about her dominance negatively affecting her career. Or, maybe it’s just the confidence that comes along with age? Who knows, but I do feel like it’s an interesting transitional period we are going through.

It was a good discussion last week, though I don’t have much to highlight from it. I didn’t go back and tally up the responses, but it seems like the group is fairly evenly split between those who would fulfill their fantasies if given the opportunity and those who prefer to keep the fantasy and reality separate. At least with respect to Glenmore’s specific example of a group spanking with multiple spankers and spankees. There seems to be a similar split on the broader fantasy of witnesses. I do wonder why that one fantasy is so prevalent, but it clearly is.

This week’s topic is going to be pretty succinct, because (a) I’m doing a bunch of other stuff this weekend; and (b) I couldn’t think of a broader topic or a good way to expand this one.

It comes from an off-line discussion with Al about some of our instrument preferences, which led to some observations about how prevalent certain instruments were when and where we grew up.

It does seem like certain cultures prefer certain instruments, and I’m not sure whether any instrument is ubiquitous across cultures.

While the ebony hairbrush is, to me, perhaps the most iconic instrument among DD enthusiasts, I don’t think hairbrush spankings were common where I grew up. I can’t recall knowing about a single instance in which a hairbrush was used for spanking purposes, though of course we were all embarrassed by the spankings we got—even though they were pervasive—and we didn’t go around talking about the details.

In the communities I lived in, the almost universally used instruments were paddles and belts. But, while both were ubiquitous, they were used respectively in two very distinct contexts.

At home, the most common instrument by far was the leather belt, wielded with authority by both moms and dads. However, it usually was dad’s belt that was used, and since it was a cowboy culture, they tended to be thick leather western-style belts or heavy work belts.

At school, it was the paddle, to the exclusion of every other instrument. But, as far as I know, paddles were virtually never used at home. I’m not sure why that bifurcation existed, but it did. Maybe the absence of paddles for home discipline came down to the fact that most of the men wore belts daily, so there was almost always one readily available, so why invest in a paddle?

Al and my discussion focused on switches. They were part of the childhood experience for both him and his wife, but not at all for me. Perhaps because of the differences in our experiences, switches are still used for adult discipline in his relationship, while I’ve never been switched. I wonder if this is another example of how geography matters. I grew up largely in the dry Southwest and sort of the Midwest depending on how you define that. There weren’t a lot of large bushes around, so “Go cut a switch and bring it to me” really would not have worked.

Canes seem to me to be a very culturally-dependent instrument of correction. They are iconic to the English, but are they very prevalent in the US in any non-adult setting, and perhaps, while used for DD, mainly among the BDSM community?

My impression is that in other parts of the UK, including Ireland and Scotland, straps and tawses are more prevalent than the cane, but I welcome correction by any of our UK commenters. Given the geographic proximity, I wonder why canes seem to be such an almost exclusively British thing.

I also wonder whether the preference for belts in my early community was because so many of the non-Hispanic population in those areas were of Scotch-Irish descent and the belt was the closest corollary to the strap or tawse? But, there were also many of British descent, and yet caning was unheard of.

Although I think that the cultural-based instrument preferences I observed growing up influenced my emotional reaction to certain instruments, they don’t seem to have had much influence on what we actually use. Anne used to use straps a lot, but seldom anymore, and she’s used belts only very rarely. She rarely wears belts, and maybe that’s unfortunate. Is there anything as sexy to men wired like us as a woman taking off her belt?

Paddles have been more frequently used recently, but not nearly as often as one might expect given how common school paddlings were when we were growing up. Increasingly, we seem to have settled on the ebony hairbrush and the bath brush, with the latter being by far Anne’s “go-to” instrument, even though neither played any role in our early disciplinary environment.

I do wish sometimes that canes, while not a part of my upbringing, were part of our adult discipline repertoire. As time has gone by and having received dozens and dozens of hard spankings, I don’t mark or bruise much anymore. And, like the character in Weeds mentioned above, I admit I liked lingering over the marks of Anne’s labors, including raised welts from a hard strapping or caning.

How about you? What were the most common instruments for disciplinary correction where and when you grew up? Were there certain instruments that were more prevalent in your culture/geographic area? Do what extent did those early cultural instrument preferences influence your preferences, positively or negatively, as an adult?

Have a great week.

Disciplinary Fantasies That Maybe Should Stay Only That

Hello all. Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club. Our weekly meeting of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline and/or Female Led (FLR) relationships.

I’m posting a little early this week, as I’m going to be tied up much of this weekend. I may start shooting for more Friday postings, as our comments seem to wind down earlier in the week, and I seem to have fewer things going on Fridays. While I think posting on the same day every week did help build up the blog, I find that in retirement I’m just not very into keeping an inflexible schedule on any front.

I hope you all had a great week. There’s not much to report here. It was a pretty sedate week, with no major drama. Although, there was one thing vaguely FLR-related worth mentioning. It was a minor thing in and of itself, but it’s another indication that Anne may be in the early stages of a transformation similar to what KOJ has described in which his wife became far more open in her displays of authority after she retired.

We were visiting my parents. Anne was telling some story, and I interrupted her with a somewhat snarky comment. Without missing a beat and without even turning to acknowledge me, she said very firmly and directly, “Excuse me. I’m speaking,” then went on with her story. Again, it sounds minor, but her demeanor was totally in command, in a way that I’m not sure she would have displayed even a couple of years ago. And, the fact that she was that comfortable with a confident display of authority in front of my parents, plus two of my sisters, also seems to me to speak volumes about her increasingly in-charge mindset.

We had a pretty good discussion last week, on what I thought was a very narrow topic. It’s notable that several of you didn’t accept the underlying premise that DD could be a deal-killer in a future relationship, preferring to take the positive view that it probably would not prove that hard to find a woman who was interested in it or to persuade a partner to try it. And, as Al pointed out, it’s almost certainly a case of “nothing ventured, nothing gained”:

“It often seems to be a truism in the F/M DD/DWC community that it is usually quite difficult to convince a wife to take a disciplinary role. However, it is probably even more true that most men are so concerned about the possibility of rejection and looking foolish (weird, unmanly, sick) that they never bring it up (it took me a few years to do so, and even then it was while we were both drunk and swapping sexual fantasies – when I confessed to a “mild interest” in being spanked). This is certainly a very understandable concern, and yet, what I have often seen in spanking forums such as this over the years is that once a wife was approached, they were quite often willing to give it a try to some degree, and many quickly came to enjoy their role as a disciplinary wife.

There were different, and somewhat opposing perspectives on the best timing for approaching a future partner about your disciplinary needs. Mike represented the view that it may take some time to develop the kind of relationship in which one would feel comfortable admitting to that kind of need:

I guess it always depends on the person I would be dating. If she had a strong “take charge” mentality and I sensed an authoritative vibe coming from her, maybe I might open up. But it took me 10 years of marriage and being in a very emotionally vulnerable place to finally open up to my wife about my spanking need. I don’t know if I would have that level of trust and vulnerability at the beginning of a relationship.

Alan took a different view regarding timing, and I really liked his spin on DD as a “deal-maker” rather than a “deal-breaker”:

DD is definitely not a deal breaker at the beginning of a serious relationship, but it can be a “deal maker” and has been for me in my two DD relationships. The depth and intimacy that DD offers make it impossible for other women to compete with a woman who adopts loving female-led discipline. In earlier relationships, I always found myself searching for something missing. What was missing, of course, was discipline and spanking. With it, I am emotionally fulfilled.

However, I think waiting is not the best strategy. One reason is simply it is unfair not to tell her of needs that are so deep that might later sabotage your relationship. But a better reason is that early in a relationship is the interval when she may be more open to exploring unfamiliar (to her) aspects of sexuality—and it is also the time she is going to be motivated to show that she wants to meet your needs. What I am suggesting probably actually happens rarely. But in today’s world –with the increasing honesty about sexuality (especially for emerging generations), it could work.

There was also an unexpected diversion into the topic of pre-spanking erections. Maybe I’ll do a full topic on that in the future, though we covered it pretty thoroughly in the comments.

As the week was winding down, I got this topic suggestion from Glenmore, along with two of his drawings:

Just another potential suggestion for your blog. I have attached a couple of scenarios that are likely fantasies for many of us, but my question is how many of us would actually do this, and how would we react if this really happened?

· Would it be worse if you did or didn’t know the other men and women?

· How would you feel about being spanked by the other women, and would you have a problem with your wife spanking the other men?

· Do you like it but would prefer it just remained a fantasy?

Just a few thoughts and I’m sure you could add a few more.

Glen’s illustrations centered on multiple spankers and spankees coming together for a disciplinary session. I’ll answer his questions on that specific scenario, but I’ll also broaden his question a bit to include: “Are there DD or FLR-related scenarios you fantasize about but probably would not actually do if given the opportunity?”

My answer to Glen’s specific questions are:

“Would it be worse if you did or didn’t know the other men and women?” I don’t have a real opinion on which would be “worse.” But, I do think whether I knew the other men might have a big impact on whether I would ever fantasize about, or be attracted to, such a scenario in the first place.

For me, “authenticity” is a big driver of my DD interest. If there isn’t some element of real accountability/punishment in it, I don’t have much attraction to it. If a session involved only men and women I didn’t know, I think it would feel like a game or party. I wouldn’t say I have zero interest in ever attending a spanking party, but whatever level of interest I have is quite low. So, while I think the scenario is very unlikely to ever happen, any fantasy I would have about it would probably be limited to it happening with someone I actually know.

“How would you feel about being spanked by the other women, and would you have a problem with your wife spanking the other men?”

Being spanked by another woman isn’t a huge fantasy for me, but I admit to being more than a little intrigued by stories Aunt Kay’s husband has shared about being sent to another woman for a session.There are also stories on the DWC website—like “Military Duty Calls” in which a female soldier going on deployment sends her husband to her mother for a spanking—that I am attracted to, as long as there is a strong, real disciplinary component.

As for whether I would have a problem with Anne spanking the other men in Glen’s joint scenario, the simple answer is no. While it’s hard to know for sure, I honestly don’t think I would have any problem with Anne spanking any man in any real disciplinary scenario. I’m not sure whether I would want to see it happening, but I don’t think I would have any problem at all with her doing it. In fact, although I think the chance of it happening is virtually nil, I would have tell her to go for it if the situation ever presented itself.

“Do you like it but would prefer it just remained a fantasy?” Glen’s specific scenario doesn’t really rise to the “fantasy” level for me. But, I could see it being something I would be open to exploring under the right scenario. I think it probably would have to be limited to one other couple. I would need to have some kind of personal connection to the other husband, though that could include someone I’ve known only electronically through this blog. Even though I see other men naked in the gym almost daily, I suspect the full nudity would be at least as embarrassing as the spankings. Would I do it if Anne ordered such a thing? Undoubtedly yes. Is it a scenario I would actively pursue in real life? Probably not.

As for my own question as to whether there are DD or FLR-related scenarios you fantasize about but probably would not actually do if given the opportunity?”

It may seem odd for someone who spends as much time writing about DD as I do, but I don’t have that many fantasies about it. And, I suspect the ones I do have are not the least bit appealing to most of you.

I’ve often commented on how envious I am of JR’s woodshed stories, and I do have a thing for both woodsheds and barns and would very much like to experience a real disciplinary spanking in one. There’s nothing controversial or even all that interesting about that fantasy, of course.

However, many of the stories I’ve read that include those elements involved male spankers. There are no shortage of stories out there about being taken to the woodshed by a father or uncle. Although the woodshed/barn scenario is appealing to me by itself, the M/m aspect of many of those stories also appeals to something deep within me.

In fact, the photo immediately above is one I came across a long time ago as part of a spanking story that involved a dominant male who was in a D/s sort of relationship with a couple. The husband had done something the dominant male and the wife agreed should be punished, but the wife kept blowing off phone calls to schedule it. So, the dominant male interrupts a dinner party the couple was hosting and lets the husband know he will make a scene if he does not accompany him to a horse barn on the couple’s party. Once there, he whips him to tears before letting him go back to the party. That story is one of the first in the spanking genre that I recall having a very strong reaction to. A big part of my DD need is rooted in wanting to have my will overcome such that I am held to account even when I don’t want to go along with it.

I’ve also recounted that, while I seldom dream about spanking, a particularly vivid one I did have involved being taken from a party at work to be spanked by a male office manager, with everyone in the party (including Anne, my mother and my dad) knowing it was going to happen.

Are these M/m stories and dreams something I might fantasize about but would never do in real life? I don’t know. I think that much of my DD attraction is rooted in power dynamics and parental authority, including both maternal and paternal authority. My morbid desire to have discipline imposed is less gender-specific than it probably is for most of you. And, in the very unlikely event that Anne was to order such a thing, would I go along with it? Almost certainly yes.

There is a sense in which Anne’s recent assertiveness, and the “goal achievement” and procrastination check-ins we recently implemented, has been a long-term fantasy, and one I could come to regret. Just like the M/m and woodshed spanking scenarios appeal to me because they involve being literally and psychologically taken to a place outside my “control zone,” a lot of what Anne and I are exploring involves her increasingly setting the rules, enforcing them when and how she sees fit, and generally empowering her in ways that I may have less and less control over as she explores these more aggressive and assertive parts of her personality.

Most of my other DD-related fantasies are pretty pedestrian and involve being spanked in unconventional or risky places, like the backseat of a car or in the woods. I definitely would go along with anything like that if Anne wanted to.

How about you? How do you feel about Glen’s scenario and his questions about it? Is it something you are attracted to? Is it an attraction you would be game to pursue in real life, or is it one of those things that is better as a fantasy? Are there other fantasies that fall into that category?

I hope you have a good week.

Is Domestic Discipline a Deal-Killer for Any Future Relationship

“Women marry men hoping they will change, and men marry women hoping they will not. So each is inevitably disappointed.” – Albert Einstein

Hello all. Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club. Our weekly meeting of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline and/or Female Led (FLR) relationships.

I hope you all had a great week. Ours was interesting. I’ve mentioned a few times that I had talked to Anne about the possibility of using DD to give me some additional motivation to overcome procrastination, move forward on some bigger life goals, and basically get past some of the stagnation I let myself drift into in 2023. Somewhat surprisingly, she has not only been open to the idea but downright enthusiastic about it. We had our first face-to-face, in-depth discussion about it this week, which I think makes it premature to talk about it in detail so soon. But, stay tuned.

Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful week. The only hiccup was I’ve been getting involved in some local political issues, and it’s easy to get frustrated with that kind of stuff. We live in what has to be one of the most highly educated counties in the U.S., yet I often feel like I’m surrounded by stupid people. I think that not keeping my temper may have to be an actionable item in Anne’s new performance improvement plan.

We had a good discussion last week regarding why we continue DD even after we know what a real DD spanking entails, though I’m not sure we arrived at any answers. It is such an individualized question and inevitably get tied up in discussions of our individual DD origins and what drove our interest in the first place. But, I never get tired of hearing origin stories, so even if we didn’t get too many answers it was interesting.

A couple of the comments hit on something I wrote down as a possible topic a few weeks but couldn’t quite figure out how to develop. Honestly, I still can’t. This is going to be one of the shortest posts since the beginning of the blog, as I can’t find a single meme, drawing or photo that relates to it, and I don’t have a whole lot to say about the topic myself. But, here goes . . .

Norton kicked it off with this comment:

Mike’s story was a lot like mine, including the desire to have your wife spank you, and the stress relief you get from spankings. Describing your “need to submit” and the turn-on you get from “the threat of a spanking from an authoritative woman”, resonate with me. My wife couldn’t really embrace F/M DD, and that was a huge issue for us. After we split up, and I finally got what I always needed, life got much better. Like Dan said, hopefully your wife is just going through a pause. For me, however, I finally have had to accept that my lifelong obsession with F/M spanking is simply never going to go away. At this stage, I would not consider being in a serious relationship with a woman who wasn’t into F/M spanking as well as DD. It’s just too important to me.

GH responded:

Same here, Norton. It really is an obsession, and even though my libido declines with age, the obsession with spanking never decreases. That’s why I am here, I suppose. My wife is very sporadic about FLR and DD these days, and sometimes I wish I could just let it go. But I can’t, so I need to talk about it. Like you, I couldn’t imagine getting into any new relationship that wasn’t female led and that didn’t involve DD.

So, the topic for this week is: If, god forbid, you found yourself contemplating a new relationship, whether due to loss of a spouse or from divorce or break up, to what extent would DD be a deal-killer for any future relationship?

For Norton and GH, it sounds like it would be. I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking to Aunt Kay’s husband since she passed, and while DD isn’t a deal-killer for him in any future relationship and, in fact, he seems resigned to accepting that he’s unlikely to find anyone who would be into, it’s clear that he still has a strong interest in it and having someone fill that need would be a strong preference. KOJ did lose a spouse, I but I don’t recall whether he’s addressed this in any of his comments, and I hope he’ll share any thoughts he has about it.

For me, I think I would feel about it much like Aunt Kay’s husband does. In an ideal world, it would be something a new partner would be into, but it wouldn’t be a deal-killer by any means. I got along fine for the first decade of married life without even knowing there was such a thing as domestic discipline and, honestly, that probably was the period in which I could have used it most.

Would I like it to be a part of any theoretical future relationship? Yes. Could I move on and live without it? Yes.

If I were, god forbid, to find myself looking for a new relationship, would I tell potential partners about the DD aspects of my marriage? Almost certainly. I know myself well enough that I’m 100% sure I wouldn’t be involved with a prude in the first place, and I have 0% ability to keep my mouth shut about much of anything in any intimate relationship. I am very sure that I would bring it up, though probably not at the beginning of the relationship.

I also stick to my belief that there are very few women out there who have a present, known interest in DD or know they want to be in an FLR. I believe that in real life, in the vast majority of cases Disciplinary Wives are made not born. If I wanted DD to be part of a future relationship, I’d probably need to do what I did this time around – tell my partner about my interest, describe it at a high level, refer her to resources that are out there like the DWC website and this blog, and see where she takes it from there.

How about you? Is DD a deal-killer for you for any future relationship? This is an easy one to address from the perspective of the disciplined husband or the disciplinary wife. For the husbands, would you be OK with a future relationship that did not include domestic discipline? For the wives, now that you’ve experienced the benefits and empower that DD and FLR bring, would you be OK doing without them in any theoretical future relationship?

I hope you all have a good week.