I’m writing this on Monday. It’s punishment day. Every Monday and Thursdays are designated as punishment days;. I have to remind Mrs. Lion of that. Generally,she doesn’t wait for a punishment day to spank me for breaking a rule. Tonight I will be spanked for interrupting her on Saturday. Other activities interfered with punishing me sooner. That’s what punishment days are for. They assure punishments won’t be put off indefinitely.

It surprised me to learn how well I can be conditioned by negative reinforcement (spanking). As I’ve written before, the revelation came when I realized that I almost never spill food on my shirt or eat before Mrs. Lion. Failing to do either of those things gets me a spanking.

Once punishments rose to the level of being truly painful and hard to take, I found myself working hard to avoid earning them. In hindsight it seems obvious, but I didn’t realize that I had to seriously want to avoid being punished before I made any real changes. That was my first step. The next, and most surprising event is that I automatically avoid spilling or eating first. I don’t think about being punished. I’m conditioned.

Conditioning isn’t necessarily permanent. At some point I will probably get sloppy and spill or eat first. If I am severely spanked as a result, the conditioning clicks back into effect. When we went away over the July fourth holiday, I got salsa on my shirt. Mrs. Lion spanked me severely. There hasn’t been another spill since.

Each time I’m punished, it feels like Mrs. Lion is increasing the force and duration of the spanking. I expected that would happen. It isn’t easy to administer serious corporal punishment. It takes time, practice, and resolve. Mrs. Lion is demonstrating all three.

In an academic sense, I’m curious to see what happens when she begins punishing me for interrupting and being a know-it-all. The offenses and changes are mental. It isn’t as easy as checking to see if Mrs. Lion has started eating or dripping over the plate instead of my shirt. I have to change basic communication patterns. I think extinguishing both behaviors will be good for me. The actual change will be more complex for me to be conditioned to perform.

It’s probably good that Mrs. Lion has waited until now to begin this next phase. We jokingly call it Lioness 3.0. It’s characterized by Mrs. Lion feeling conscious awareness of any of my behaviors that break her flow of thought or conversation. I expect she will also become more consciously aware of things I do that annoy her.

She has the tools to punish me when she realizes I’ve annoyed her. Her go-to punishment right now is spanking. I imagine that won’t change. She’s threatened to also extend my wait for an orgasm as a penalty as well. I can see that or something else as add-ons to the spanking.

Obviously, anything she chooses to do as punishment can’t be something that I love to hate. It has to be something I truly want to avoid. For that reason, making me wait longer is too much fun to be an effective punishment. At least it’s a turn on if my wait  isn’t extended too much. A week or more without release from my cage would be no fun at all.

Of course, I like spanking, but her disciplinary spankings are no fun at all and I work hard to avoid them. There is no longer any overlap in my mind between play spanking and punishment.

It’s entirely possible that other things we have tried in a BDSM way can also turn into effective negative reinforcement as well. It’s just a matter of intensity and intent. At this point there is no real need for her to find other ways to punish me. We both know very well that spanking works. I don’t look forward to this evening when I am getting one.