Keeping The Thrill Alive

I’m sitting in our new house on one of our dining room chairs with the computer on our waxing/massage table . Mrs. Lion brought these items over to give me someplace to sit while I wait for our new washing machine to be delivered. (It never arrived. The store changed delivery date at the last minute.) It’s an odd feeling being in an empty, unfamiliar place. It will take a long time before we can make this our home. The movers are scheduled to come on Saturday.that’s when the real fun begins.

I’m writing using my new laptop. It’s one more unfamiliar thing. I’m fully dressed. This is the most unusual sensation. When I’m home or any other place where there is privacy, the rule is that I am naked. I guess I’ve become an involuntary nudist. It’s not exactly involuntary. At this point wearing clothing is what feels unnatural. The nudity-at-home rule has been in effect for the full 17 years Mrs. Lion and I have been together. After all this time, it’s my natural state.

That’s the thing about rules: obey them long enough and they just become part of your nature. For me this is true about masturbation. It’s been six years since I’ve jerked off. No masturbation was Mrs Lion’s first rule when I asked her to lock me in a chastity device. It isn’t the sort of rule you would expect a keyholder to make at the same time she was locking her male into a  chastity device.

Actually, it came about because I told her that one reason that I wanted to be locked up was because I thought it would be an incentive for us to interact sexually more often. I went on to say that over the last several years, I had been masturbating one or two times a week because we were not doing anything sexual together more than once a month.

She was surprised that I masturbated. She had no idea I did that. I was surprised she didn’t realize I was jerking off now and then. She was unhappy that I was getting off on my own. I think that she considers me jerking off is a form of cheating. I was having sex with someone other than her. I never thought of it that way. I just considered it a way of relieving sexual frustration.

That was that. I did point out that I couldn’t masturbate if I wanted to. I was securely locked in a steel cage. There was no way for me to play with myself. Nevertheless, she made it absolutely clear that locked or not I was to never make myself ejaculate. She would be my only source of sexual satisfaction. There were no exceptions. Some keyholders allow their males to masturbate under their direct supervision. Not me. My paws were forever forbidden to get myself off.

Mrs Lion understood that the key to conditioning me to keep my hands off her weenie was to never under any circumstances allow me to satisfy myself. I was surprised that after a few years of continuous lockup, I completely forgot how to get myself off. I don’t even think about it. I know that I could probably make myself come, but I don’t really want to. I do like making myself hard once in a while when I’m wild. Mrs Lion knows I do it and while she didn’t explicitly tell me I could, she never said I couldn’t. I’ve written about this practice several times and she has never said anything either way. [Mrs. Lion – Actually I told him he should watch himself. I don’t want him doing it too often.]

Operative conditioning is the process of instilling nearly-instinctive behavior through learning. This is what happened to me. It happens to anyone who is consistently made to perform or avoid a behavior. This is good news for the power exchange, but it does have a darker side?

Most people, when they read about someone who is conditioned this way, react negatively because they feel person was a victim of a Svengalian manipulation. People like me who welcome control, also have a problem with it. Nudity and hands-off the weenie are now built into my psyche. I don’t get any rush of sexual energy thinking about being naked or about not being allowed to get myself off. Those things are just part of me.

This happens even in casual BDSM situations. In those cases, there isn’t the kind of operative conditioning that changes a behavior permanently. There is a kind of familiarity that sets in and robs the bottom of the little thrill submitting provides. Anyone who has been in a dominant/submissive relationship knows that there is almost constant pressure to escalate the way the dominant partner exhibits power.

I spent decades as a top/dominant practitioner. I had several long term relationships with bottoms. Invariably, their need for escalation would push me to the point that it became too much trouble trying to satisfy their need to restore the submissive thrill.

In our relationship we need to be careful to manage this issue. It’s possible to both condition and keep the thrill alive. We discovered a way accidentally. When we first started our disciplinary relationship, we realized that neither of us had any real experience in the sort of power exchange we were beginning. Mrs Lion knew that we needed a lot of practice to instill the disciplinary habits we needed. She decided that if she made some rules I couldn’t help breaking, there would be legitimate reasons punish me and thereby teach both of us the disciplinary habits we wanted.

This meant that at some point we would have two distinctly different kinds of rules. The first kind, like forbidding me to spill food on my shirt, had no real emotional loading and, given the way I eat, guaranteed to provide plenty of opportunities punish me. It also provided Mrs Lion a very good laboratory in which to learn how to observe my behavior consistently. It’s worked very well. A little surprisingly to me, I actually stopped spilling food on my shirt very often. I recently started again because my eyesight has suffered and I can’t always see where food ends up going. My current backlog of spankings is due to this problem. I don’t mind because we both still need practice.

The second kind of rule is much more difficult to observe and enforce. This is stuff that actually impacts our lives. For example, Mrs Lion hates it when I interrupt her. I suppose everyone hates that. For some time it’s been a punishable offense. She’s never consistently enforced it. In fact, she almost never lets me know when I do it.

It isn’t because Mrs Lion isn’t a terrific disciplining wife. It’s because there is a special kind of fear associated with calling someone out on something that carries the risk of being greeted with defiance or anger. It’s one thing to observe and punish something like getting food on my shirt. On the other hand, calling me out for interrupting can be risky on an emotional level.

Even though I’ve agreed that Mrs Lion has every right to punish me for doing things that annoy her, she knows that when she calls me out I will probably be upset because interrupting is an ingrained, if negative, part of my personality. It’s something I am doing that’s wrong. It isn’t silly or trivial. Actually, the trivial rules were put into place to develop the habit needed to enforce these more serious infractions.

But I digress. My point is that once some demonstration of power, whether it is a rule or some BDSM physical activity, becomes habitual, it loses a lot of its sexual value. You may think that this shouldn’t be a problem. After all, at least in our case, the rules and their enforcement are designed to lubricate our relationship. They aren’t about sexual thrills.

That’s true; they aren’t. It’s perfectly okay to completely disregard whether or not I get turned on thinking about breaking any rule. I’m on board with that. I know that I like those little tingles. I seek them out. Interestingly, one very common activity we practice is spanking. I always get a little aroused when I think about being spanked.

Over the last few years I received hundreds of spankings. Even though this activity is very painful and unpleasant, thinking about being spanked is remains a turn on. Given the way things like masturbation, spilling, and eating first became extinct thanks to consistent enforcement, you’d think that spanking would also become a routine part of my life.

It hasn’t. I still get that tingle when I think about being spanked. I get absolutely no sexual arousal out of the actual act. I hate every second of it. I can’t explain it. For some reason I am immune from becoming sexually indifferent about being spanked. I actively work to avoid spankings. I fear them. Mrs Lion has become a very severe disciplinarian. Yet, I can get an erection thinking about her punishing me this way.

This is relevant because apparently there are some things that never lose their thrill. Since spanking is not something that we do for play very often, it’s almost unfortunate that this activity turns out to be one that’s perennially arousing. It would be much better if I reacted sexually to things that aren’t associated with real punishment. The point is that those of us who are on the bottom crave that kind of sexual arousal. It doesn’t matter if the activity is painful or not. The anticipation and memories of having it happen turn us on.

So, when an activity stops getting my penis hard, it’s a loss. I want to look for other things to replace it.  I do long for the arousal I feel when Mrs Lion lets me know we will do some BDSM activity. She favors cock and ball torture. She enjoys putting Icy Hot on my balls, covering them with clothespins, or doing something else very uncomfortable to my genitals. Occasionally, she will doing anal play as well. I get very turned on thinking about that though I’ve never stayed hard when she’s done things there.

As a top, I disliked the pressure of having to come up with new ways to restore the thrill for my bottom. I know Mrs Lion feels the same way as my top. It comes with the territory. The key is for me to realize how difficult it is to keep that thrill alive and to work hard to make things easier for my lioness. She always has the good old standby of threatening me with a spanking.