Let’s face it, domestic discipline is a game. That doesn’t mean that playing doesn’t have real consequences. What it means is that there are rules and the players agree to follow them. Everything that happens is consensual. The game results in pain or frustration for the male players. They understand that going in.
Mrs. Lion and I have been doing this for years. For a long time, I thought that giving Mrs. Lion authority over me was a lifestyle choice. Many couples who practice this start out with a desire to correct behavioral problems. It could be that the husband drinks too much. The solution is that his wife can punish him when he does. Sounds serious, right? The behavioral issue certainly is. The solution seems extreme but plausible. In almost every case, the husband proposes domestic discipline (DD). He asks his wife to spank him when he does something wrong.
That’s what I did. I find it erotic to be spanked. I don’t usually find the spanking itself erotic, but the idea is a turn-on. I asked Mrs. Lion to play the DD game. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t fun when the paddles come out, but it’s a game. The basic rules are very simple: Mrs. Lion makes rules that I need to follow. They can be to do chores around the house or to behave in a specific way. For example, I have to set up the coffee pot so that all Mrs. Lion has to do in the morning is to start it. I have to wait to eat until Mrs. Lion starts. Failing to do these things earns me spankings.
If DD wasn’t a game, once I managed to do everything Mrs. Lion wants, I wouldn’t be spanked. The sun would come out and the birds would sing. DD did its job. That’s not what happens. If I haven’t earned a punishment for a couple of weeks, I start to feel that Mrs. Lion stopped wanting to be my disciplining wife. She becomes less focused on spotting infractions. Without realizing why, we aren’t having as much fun.
We both like the game. We hadn’t given a lot of thought to the idea that we were playing one. We both focused on the positive behavioral changes I’ve made. I thought that I needed “maintenance” spankings to keep us focused on our disciplinary roles. We tried that but it didn’t work for us. Mrs. Lion couldn’t put her heart into an unearned disciplinary spanking. I felt that and also felt that this was more BDSM than DD.
Domestic discipline is a transactional game. It has three parts: The first is the establishment of offenses. Mrs. Lion makes rules. These rules can be concrete activities I need to do or stop, or they can be less specific like spanking me for annoying her. The second part is spotting me breaking a rule. Mrs. Lion observes me and lets me know when I committed an offense. The third part is punishing me for breaking a rule. Mrs. Lion spanks me when I offend.
We’ve discovered that without an offense to punish, maintenance spanking doesn’t keep things going. That’s where the problem for us comes up. I’ve managed to avoid committing offenses for weeks at a time. That means Mrs. Lion has nothing to spot and I don’t get spanked. Even though we have been successful with DD, we are unhappy because we both like the action of the game.
Since we found that maintenance spankings don’t work for us, there are only two other possibilities to keep things alive: I can intentionally offend or Mrs. Lion can create more, easier-to-break rules. We agreed that intentional offending is dishonest and not in the spirit of our relationship. That leaves creating new rules.
This has proven difficult. I think that the problem isn’t that Mrs. Lion doesn’t have lots of opportunities to shorten my leash, it’s that she has a strong sense of fair play and it feels unjust to spank me for something she considers trivial. However, when we started DD my first rule was that if I spilled any food on my shirt, I would be punished. Isn’t that about as trivial as it gets? By any measure, getting a painful disciplinary spanking for accidentally getting food on my shirt seems unfair.
Mrs. Lion knew that. She also realized that we both needed practice in our roles. She reasoned that I spilled food on my shirt frequently, so she would have lots of opportunities to punish me. It worked out exactly as she planned. After a few weeks, it stopped working. I almost never spilled food on my shirt. I didn’t consciously work to avoid spilling. I just stopped. Apparently, I became conditioned to neater eating.
The same thing has happened with my other rules. I rarely break them. Being spanked for every offense actually works to train me. Once Mrs. Lion realizes that I almost never break a rule, she stops being as watchful. The game winds down. This is what we have to cure.
It may seem odd that a game can be a profoundly important part of our marriage. If we stop, I won’t be out of control and make Mrs. Lion miserable. That’s not the issue at all. We didn’t start DD to correct serious behavioral problems. We started it because I found the idea of being punished for not obeying Mrs. Lion exciting. I also want her to have a stronger voice in our marriage. I want her to let me know if something is bothering her. For us, it turns out, the healthiest way to do this is to spank me.
We’ve talked about this. Our conversations weren’t in the context of playing a game. They were mutually realizing that we both needed to keep the disciplinary relationship alive. If we shift our thinking to recognize that DD is a game that requires a certain level of disciplinary activity to keep it going, I think it will be easier for Mrs. Lion to find new rules.
The objective is for her to sharpen her lion-offense hunting skills and for me to work hard to avoid earning spankings. We are happier when we play.
