Just Because I’m Hard Doesn’t Mean I Want It — Or Does It?

spanked man's butt
The mark of success! A red bottom shows how much Mrs. Lion cares about me and wants me to improve.
(Click image to view larger)

There’s a very complicated relationship between adult discipline and raw sexuality. Most of the time people put off discussion of adult punishment by claiming it’s about domination and submission. This is overly simplistic. First of all, forums to the contrary, a person isn’t a submissive or a dominant. Both words are adjectives that describe behavior, not people.

For example, Mrs. Lion punishes me when I break a rule she has made. I’m also punished if my behavior upsets her. This sounds simple and easy to understand. I’m a responsible adult who holds down a job and does all the stuff a vanilla husband does inside a marriage. I don’t have any bad habits that need some sort of intervention. To a casual observer, we lead a very standard married life. We share responsibilities and work. I get to make at least as many decisions as my lioness.

Yet, we claim to be in a female lead relationship with discipline (FLRD). How can this be? Shouldn’t a FLRD feature the wife making almost all of the decisions? Shouldn’t the husband be doing the menial chores? Shouldn’t he be wearing a dress? Of course not!

There’s a gigantic gap between fantasy and reality when it comes to power exchanges. None of us has time to lead our lives while at the same time serving or commanding another human being. People who practice FLRD establish a context that allows them to make constructive use of the practice without having it consume their lives.

This is very true in our case. I asked Mrs. Lion to be my disciplining wife. I explained that I get sexually aroused thinking about her enforcing rules she makes for me. She didn’t see any harm in this and proceeded to create a couple of rules for me to follow. One was that I would be punished if I spilled food on my shirt (something I did quite frequently), and if I started eating before she did I would be punished. They were simple, easy-to-observe rules. They were also guaranteed to be broken quite frequently; at least at first.

When I broke a rule, I would be punished. Mrs. Lion knows I get turned on thinking about being spanked. It’s always gotten me hot to think about someone swatting my butt. So, her punishment of choice became spanking. Spanking is a remarkably good way to discipline an adult. It’s a raw expression of power. The person being disciplined has to meekly expose his bottom and present it for beating. That idea excites me. I also know that this is a humiliating thing to have to do; another hot idea.

Like a lamb to slaughter
At first, when it was time for me to be spanked, I would have a throbbing erection as I lay across the bed to await being paddled. Once Mrs. Lion got over her hesitance of hurting me, my erection would disappear a short time after she began swatting. Since my initial rules were very easy to break, this scene of an erect penis approaching the spanking became commonplace in our house.

I knew that the spanking would not be fun. It made no sense to be hard anticipating a painful experience. Yet I was. It’s that complex sexual tangle with power exchange at work. Of course, my arousal anticipating punishment works in Mrs. Lion’s favor. I am drawn to present myself for punishment by my own arousal thinking about it. This remains true now, even though I know I will be completely unhappy as soon as she begins.

From what I can tell, this isn’t unusual. Men who are in disciplinary relationships seem to have the same response as me. My deep-seated sexual fantasies about punishment turns this lion into a meek lamb presenting his bare sensitive areas for painful retribution. For me, at least, it’s entirely visceral. I can’t prevent myself from submitting when summoned.

There is more to this, of course. For this practice to have survived the years we’ve been doing it, there had to be more than just a sexual need for punishment. It has to have some practical value as well. Clearly, teaching me to eat more neatly and politely wait for my lioness to begin eating isn’t enough to sustain our continuing interest.

I think that in our case, the disciplinary relationship offers a significant opportunity to improve the way we communicate. Mrs. Lion is a very laid-back person. She avoids conflict at almost any cost. It takes a lot before she will show anger. I am much more demonstrative. I tend to express how I’m feeling. This inequality, I reasoned, has to eventually cause difficulty in our marriage.

A red butt builds a stronger marriage
It seemed to me that we would both benefit greatly if Mrs. Lion could feel free to let me know when I do things that upset her. Our FLRD is a perfect opportunity to allow her to make her feelings known unmistakably. It’s more than just having her learn to let me know when she’s upset. It’s way too easy for me to dismiss or ignore her quiet anger. However, if every time I do something she doesn’t like, she punishes me, I’m sent a powerful, painful message. More importantly, she gets the message that how she feels counts a lot. She knows I want her to hurt me as a way of training me to treat her the way she wants.

This has proven difficult for her. She has told me that it seems unfair for her to punish me for something she hasn’t explicitly made into a rule. That means at least the first time I do this particular thing, I won’t be punished because she hasn’t told me I’m not allowed to do it. I disagree with this. Probably the most important way I can be trained is to learn to avoid doing things that might upset her. The best way for me to learn this is to have a sore bottom every time I do something even a little annoying.

I really want this. Believe it or not, even though there is a sexual component to disciplining me, it actually works and changes my behavior. I used to get food on my shirt several times a week. Now, it happens so rarely we are both a little surprised when I manage to splash something. The same is true with waiting for Mrs. Lion to eat first. I haven’t made a mistake with that in a very long time.

I didn’t set out to change. Her punishments weren’t so severe that fear drove me to eat cautiously. Somehow beneath the surface, I have been conditioned to behave the way she wants. The reason I made these changes is very simple. When Mrs. Lion evolved into lioness 2.0 and then 3.0, she became a very consistent disciplinarian. I couldn’t get away with breaking any of my established rules. Consistent enforcement conditioned me.

To punish for something, first you have to see the offense
Mrs. Lion is learning to realize when I do something she doesn’t like. She’s starting to avoid stuffing her feelings. I’m not going to claim she’s reached the point where she punishes me consistently, the way she does for spilling, but she is starting to growl and does occasionally spanks me for interrupting her.

I don’t know if other couples have made similar discoveries. I do know that punishment is proving to be a positive force for us. We still have quite a long way to go. Punishment spankings are less severe than “play” spankings. I’m pretty sure that will change now that I’ve observed it. Mrs. Lion reads my posts and takes what I say to heart.

Even after all this time, I still get turned on thinking about being punished. I believe that will always be true. I think it’s very useful that this continues. It makes me a cooperative partner in my punishments. Thanks to those relatively trivial initial rules, we’ve learned that to be effective, punishments must be meted out for each and every offense. They must be severe enough to make me want to avoid a repeat performance. Because I find spanking a turn on, it’s important that I understand on a physical level when I’m being punished.

We’re both making progress. I’m pretty sure that we will never stop our FLRD. I will be experiencing Mrs. Lion’s paddle and other punishments for the rest of my life. These tools help perfect me.

This hurts me…
The classic line “This hurts me more than it will hurt you” is supposed to let the punished child know that there is a cost to the punisher that may well exceed the pain the naughty child receives. I think in our case, there’s some truth to this old saw. When Mrs. Lion writes about punishments she often comments on their severity.

For example, yesterday she wrote that I would have to do something horrible like masturbating to ejaculation before she would lock me in the Jail Bird and leave me there for days on end. To her, this is a horrible punishment. In the past she said that me jerking off to ejaculation is nearly as much of a betrayal as cheating with another female. I don’t see that, but I respect how she feels.

red balls from icy hot
The deep red color stays with me for hours after the Icy Hot burn fades.

On the other hand, she’s comfortable covering my balls with powerful menthol liniment. She knows how much I hate that. I can’t really compare which of the two would be worse. It’s true, that the Icy Hot would be done cooking my balls in less than 1/2 hour. Spending time locked in the Jail Bird could take hundreds of hours. I would have to agree that while the suffering isn’t going to be as intense, it’s going to go on and on.

There’s a certain logic in reserving long solitary lockup for sexual offenses. After all, if my penis caused the offense, it should pay the price. Two weeks untouched in solitary certainly sends a message about unauthorized sex. I wonder if this would apply if I get myself hard too often?

The whole concept of punishment, at least as it applies to me, has been more about providing me with intense discomfort. Since I’m punished in private, none of my punishments involve any sort of public humiliation. Mrs. Lion generally refrains from expressing amusement at my plight. If she did, that would give me the additional sting of private humiliation.

The punishment fits the crime
In some respects, we seem to have stumbled on making most of my punishments fit the crime. If I’m going to be thoughtless and interrupt, I’m acting like a toddler. The toddler, albeit a big one, gets a red bottom for this bad behavior. Most of what I do wrong is naughty. Interrupting, spilling, eating first, being annoying are all toddler offenses and warrant toddler discipline.

The other major class of offense I commit is forgetting to do things. Actually, so far I’ve only been punished for forgetting to remind Mrs. Lion of our scheduled punishment days. I’m required to remind her each Monday, Thursday, and Saturday that it is punishment day. Failure to do that earns me a punishment. The menthol-rub-on-my-balls punishment was for forgetting to tell her it was punishment day this past Monday.

I think it’s good that Mrs. Lion now has at least two punishments in her repertoire. As she becomes stricter, there will be occasions when my bottom is just too marked up for yet another spanking. Or, like yesterday she just may not be up to beating me. It takes no energy to apply the Icy Hot roll-on to my most sensitive areas. Reapplying it if she feels I need more time to repent takes seconds and burns me for 20 or 30 minutes.

Most punishments don’t cost as much energy a spanking. Mrs. Lion gets a good workout bruising my bottom. Other punishments require very little time or energy on her part. I don’t think punishments should be judged by the amount of energy it takes to administer. Spanking, for example, takes a lot of time and energy, but it offers a seriously good payback to the spanker.

For one thing, she gets to express her feelings in a concrete, visible way. For another, it’s a very intimate activity. She’s interacting with a part of me that almost no other people see, much less touch. And, she knows that I am humiliated by the very fact that I present myself for a painful beating. She also knows that I’m embarrassed by the fact that thinking about getting this beating gave me an erection and receiving it has been pure misery.

lion's punishment stool
Lion’s punishment stool. It has a rough, coconut fiber doormat attached to the seat. The sharp fibers dig into his sensitive skin.

In the past, we’ve talked about “punishment desserts”. These are activities that follow the main event, like spanking. It’s traditional, for example, to have the spanked person retire to a corner of the room facing the wall. His red bottom is exposed and he has nothing to do other than think about how he got into this predicament.

Sometimes, Mrs. Lion does this with me. Her variation is that I am made to sit on my punishment stool. This is a wooden stool tall enough so that when I sit on it my feet barely reach the floor. The seat is covered with a coconut fiber welcome mat. The mat is very abrasive and the fibers poke into my tender nether regions. It’s not a comfortable seat. At other times she’s washed my mouth out with soap. This is unpleasant, but it’s nothing near as uncomfortable as being spanked. The most constructive benefit of mouth soaping is how intimate it is. Mrs. Lion rubs her soapy hands all over the inside of my mouth. She then puts the softened, wet bar of soap between my teeth and makes me hold it for a few minutes.

Aside from being a very childish punishment, it’s a true expression of naked power. I have to stand passively with my mouth open and allow her to rub nasty-tasting soap inside my mouth. I then have to stand as soapy drool runs down my chin and onto my naked chest. The demeaning nature of this is not lost on me.

When I think about it, an effective punishment has a few components: it has to be painful, or at least truly unpleasant. It has to demonstrate the absolute power of the punisher. It has to make me demean myself by passively accepting painful and humiliating treatment.

This makes a lot of sense. I think that one of the key benefits of a punisher/punished relationship is the ability of the punisher to immediately demonstrate her power over, in this case, me. A big reason I get an erection thinking about this is that I crave and get turned on by this exercise of pure power. I think it’s a little difficult for Mrs. Lion to fully understand this. She knows that I am more sexually responsive after a recent punishment and she’s also seen the visible evidence of my anticipation of an upcoming punishment.

Maybe it’s true, I not only want to be punished; I need it. I’ve been looking forward to lioness 3.0 because I know she will be much stricter and will be punishing me more frequently. My hard penis gives me away every time.