I Only Forgot To Set Up The Coffee Pot

You probably won’t be surprised that I got myself in trouble on Sunday. Actually, my goof was on Saturday. I forgot to set up the coffee pot. When Sunday morning rolled around, Mrs. Lion had to take care of the coffee. Actually, I pointed out to her that I forgot before she got up. I figured I could go in to take care of it on Sunday morning. Nope. She pointed out that I want her to be consistent and binary. Yup, I do. So spanking is on the Sunday agenda.

(I just took a break to set the coffee up for Monday morning. I’m not that stupid!)

Okay. Coffee is set up for tomorrow. That will save me a repeat spanking. The bottom line is that domestic discipline really works. It has the obvious benefit of providing a painful consequence if I fall down on my job or upset Mrs. Lion. Since she became serious about spanking, the consequence is serious enough for me to avoid earning new punishments.

There is a less obvious benefit. Without our disciplinary relationship, Mrs. Lion would have walked into the kitchen and seen that the coffee pot was not set up. Without a doubt, she would just get it ready for breakfast. She might not even think about it consciously. But I’m willing to bet that over time, these seemingly minor offenses add up. Sooner or later, they will emerge in a relationship-damaging way. It’s the old squeeze-the-tube-of-toothpaste-from-the-middle -of-the-tube sitcom scenario. Little seemingly-inconsequential annoyances eventually build up to a major explosion.

We don’t have to worry about that. Each and every issue, no matter how small, is handled promptly. Mrs. Lion expresses her displeasure in a very clear way. There isn’t a doubt in her mind that I don’t get the message. It only takes her a few minutes to give me a very painful spanking. By the time she’s done, I understand that I’ve done something wrong. I also know that I’m going to work hard to avoid repeating the problem.

Both of us have acknowledged and appropriately responded to a problem. I know that some of our readers think that it’s inappropriate to give a painful spanking as a consequence of a minor infraction. We’ve learned that this response works for us. I learn rapidly when Mrs. Lion consistently punishes me. She expressed her displeasure and moved on with her life. I feel the result of that spanking much longer. That’s a good thing. It’s a very clear reminder of my misdeed.

After a lot of experimentation, we’ve learned the best way for us to incorporate punishment into our marriage. We’ve tried many things. We built a point system that dictated how many swats I get. We thought that would make it easier by having assigned sessions during which the earned swats would be administered. It didn’t work for us because it was complicated and more importantly, by the time spanking was administered I had forgotten why I was getting it.

We tried adjusting the intensity of the spanking to correspond to the seriousness of the offense. This didn’t work either. It was difficult for Mrs. Lion to figure out how to provide different levels of punishment. Minor offenses earned light spankings that didn’t deter me from repeating the offense.

We learned that for a spanking to be meaningful to me, it has to be severe enough to make me want to avoid it. It also has to be administered as close to the offenses possible. Delay makes it harder to associate the pain with my misdeed. Along with that, we learned that it’s difficult for me to change if I’m not punished each and every time I do something wrong. Exceptions make matters seem less serious to me. It’s as though my offense isn’t really a problem. The punishment is more a BDSM activity than a serious response to a problem.

When Mrs. Lion spanks me each and every time I do something wrong and makes the spankings painful enough for me to want to avoid them, I learn very quickly. I do backslide sometimes. A good example is forgetting to set up the coffee on Saturday. I do the coffee pot every single day. It should be an automatic habit. Somehow I forgot. There were reasons I didn’t get the coffee done. We had gotten a large shipment of groceries and Mrs. Lion had them all over the kitchen. When I went in to set up the coffee pot, stuff was everywhere. That would certainly be a reasonable excuse. Right?

It isn’t. I could have come back later when the kitchen was clear. I let it slip my mind. On Sunday morning when I pointed this out to Mrs. Lion she could’ve excused it. She’s done things like that in the past. She’s let me off when there was a reason I might not have been able to do what I’m supposed to do. This time she didn’t. It was exactly the right thing for her to do. I could’ve found a way to get that job done. If it was important to me, I certainly would’ve done it one way or another. I let it slip down to the level of a chore I should do if it’s convenient.

A sore bottom, a very sore bottom is a sure cure for my failure to properly prioritize this chore. Anything less would be easy to shrug off mentally. Letting me get away with it sends the message that it really isn’t very important whether I do it or not. That’s why consistency is critical and a binary approach to spanking is effective for me.