It’s been a weird week. Things were naturally busy after a shortened Thanksgiving week. Then yesterday, I couldn’t log in remotely. In truth, we all log in remotely to our cloud server in the sky. It’s that cumulonimbus floating by right now. See it? I don’t have many details, but it sounds like somewhere along the way, we were hacked. I don’t think it was us specifically. I think it was one of the programs between us and that puffy white void. Apparently, it’s ransomware. There’s no real estimate of when we’ll be up and running again. And then we’ll have to notify our clients that their personal information may have been compromised.

I was sort of lounging around today, playing games and not really paying attention to much. We ate lunch and Lion asked if I’d written a post. Nope. Not yet. I went back to my desk and forgot all about a post. Lion is writing his for tomorrow morning so I thought I’d write my own. I don’t have much to say. We didn’t do anything last night. I was achy and tired. And cranky. But the crankiness might be due to the achy and tired part. Or maybe not.

I take a serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. I asked for something for anxiety many years ago and, as it happens, this drug also helps with pain. Unfortunately, that class of drugs also messes with libido. I had no idea. When I went to the doctor, she said it’s the likely culprit. However, I can’t just stop taking the drug. Aside from the fact that you have to taper off, I still need it for pain and anxiety. The compromise we came to was to add in a non-serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor and back off from the evil one. The additional drug does not help with pain. And don’t I know it.

My nieces have asthma. When they were younger, they had to be rushed to the hospital a lot for severe asthma attacks. On TV, they always tell people having an asthma attack to calm down. I’ve always thought that was impossible. If I can’t breathe, I’m going to panic. And if I panic, I’m not going to be able to breathe. I feel the same way with this drug change. Am I anxious because I’m in pain or in pain because I’m anxious? Do I just need to get used to the new dosage or does my body need the higher dosage.

To be clear, the pain is not debilitating. It’s not constant. It’s insidious. It’s always there, waiting for me to screw up. Oh, see? You moved wrong. Pain. Did you really think you could mow the lawn without feeling like you’ve been run over? Nope. Sorry, but thanks for playing our game.

Ironically, exercise can help. It also causes pain. I keep thinking I can start walking to get some exercise and then we go to Costco and I’m wiped out. Sometimes, and this sounds weird to say, I’d like to trade for big pain. You know, just to change it up. The big pain, like a broken leg, would eventually stop. The nagging pain doesn’t.

Okay. So that’s my story for today, boys and girls. Tune in tomorrow for another exciting read.

Don’t get me wrong, I love being male, but there are certain disadvantages. My external genitals provide unsubtle feedback to my partners. This was particularly true when I was younger. A stray thought about sex would have me at full attention. Thinking back, I wonder if women notice that telltale bulge. If they do, most pretend not knowing I was happy with the current situation.

When I was exploring BDSM with a partner who knew as little as me, my penis betrayed me time after time. “Want me to tie you down and spank you? she asked.

I didn’t answer immediately. I didn’t have to. She reached down and rubbed the growing bulge in my jeans. She undid my belt and pulled down my jeans and underpants. She grabbed my cock and said, “Finish undressing.”

I did. She also got naked. Nice! She told me to lie facedown on the bed. That proved a little uncomfortable. My cock was pressed hard into our futon. She tied me spreadeagle and spanked me with a paddle and crop. I loved it. So did she. When she untied me, she told me to mount her. We both came very quickly.

I’m less responsive nowadays, but my cock still gives me away. When Mrs. Lion approaches with Icy Hot, I usually get hard. She finds that very amusing. She knows how much I hate the way it burns my balls and perineum. She can mitigate the pain by masturbating me after she slathers it on me. I can authoritatively assert that pain is reduced by sexual arousal.

Similarly, I get aroused when clothespins of various types are affixed to my nether region. Some of them really hurt. Again, Mrs. Lion will masturbate me to help reduce the discomfort she inflicted. What a lioness!

Mrs. Lion is fond of telling me that I really like these painful activities no matter what I say. I’ve learned to keep quiet at those times. She’s right, I guess I do. One activity that doesn’t get a standing ovation from me is anal play. I stubbornly remain flaccid during butt plug and dildo activities. Ironically, I stand at attention when I think about Mrs. Lion doing those things to me. Go figure!

As you probably guessed, I am not hard when I am spanked. Even if I’m erect when Mrs. Lion begins, my penis is in full retreat within a minute of her starting. If I’m getting a play spanking, I may stay hard much longer. Eventually, the pain of the spanking discourages frontal arousal.

I’ve noticed that once an activity is an established part of our repertoire, my cock may not rise when activity is imminent. Mrs. Lion doesn’t need the visual cue. She got my standing ovation a long time ago.

When I went to sign in to work this morning, I discovered our system was down. We’re dead in the water. Most of what we do relies on one program that lives in the cloud. Someone must have done something massive to have screwed it up for this long. No one is sure when it will be fixed which means tomorrow might be more of the same waiting around. I had a lot of work to catch up on, too. The only bright spot, other than getting paid for doing essentially nothing, is that I cleaned my desk off and got some continuing education credits taken care of.

True to my word, last night after I changed the bed, I gave Lion some attention. I didn’t do any anal stuff. We might do that tonight. I’ll have to start out small again because it’s been a long time since we’ve done anything. I gave up wanting to fist him a long time ago. I’m not consistent enough to get him stretched out. If I commit to anal training, I feel like we have to do it every day forever. That’s too much. I don’t want to do anything day after day. I think that’s one of the reasons I told Lion I might get bored.

While it’s true I have enough of a variety of toys to change things up, I get stuck on one or two things. I’m either tying his balls or putting clothespins on or slathering him with Icy Hot. He thinks I like CBT more than anything. That may be true, but I have trouble thinking of anything else to do. Spanking is largely off the table because it’s punishment now. Any anal stuff, as I said, makes me think we’re back in training and we’ll need to do it every day. The Box o’Fun gave us a mixture of things, but it was still pretty much CBT.

I suppose it makes sense that most of what we do would be CBT. After all, the genitals should be involved in sex play. Unless you have a foot fetish, I wouldn’t expect a big toe to be anywhere in the mix. I guess I’m just not really that creative right now. I’ll have to figure out how to get my head back in the game.

There have been several studies asking people about sexual dreams and fantasies. It turns out that over 85% of both men and women dream about spanking. I’m not sure which end of the paddle they dream about, but I think it is probably about getting spanked. There are endless theories about why almost all of us dream about pain administered to our bare rear ends.

This subject is only second to genital sex in terms of our sexual dreams. Mrs. Lion paddling my bottom comes in second behind stimulating my penis. Relatively few people actually live out their spanking dreams. Let me correct myself about this. Most people who fantasize about being spanked probably experience some mild form of non-disciplinary spanking at one time or another. Many couples include it in foreplay.

This is Shilo and Merry, from their video, “Fun with Shilo“. Used with permission.

Domestic discipline is a form of consensual spanking that goes beyond foreplay. Because it involves punishment spankings, many people reject the very idea of it in real life. Yet, spanking fantasies are about being punished in a sexy way. Mrs. Lion and I practice domestic discipline. I asked her to be my disciplining wife. People who practice domestic discipline often seem very serious about it. After all, the spankings are real. They are meant to hurt.

I think that this appearance of seriousness, especially the way people write about it, puts off people who could enjoy the practice. I’m not trivializing our disciplinary marriage. Mrs. Lion is in charge and her spankings hurt and leave marks. I’ll get back to that later. Domestic Discipline (DD) is an adult game. It can be played in a lighthearted way or like any other game, it can be very seriously pursued.

DD is a game with rules

It has basic rules: At any given time, one partner is in charge. In our case, it is Mrs. Lion. I have agreed to let her punish me as she sees fit. Many people write a DD contract that spells out the boundaries of control and the nature of punishments. This is similar to the male chastity contracts some couples create. The contracts spell out the rules for the couple. Our contract is understood. I’ve agreed that Mrs. Lion can punish me in any way she sees fit for any offense I commit. She has created rules I have to follow. If I break one, I get spanked. It’s that simple. What about the spankings?

In the beginning, Mrs. Lion barely stung my bottom. Punishment spankings were the same as the play spankings she gave me because it turns me on to be spanked. They hurt. I used to be hard when I got into position for a spanking. After less than a minute my erection was gone. Still, I was aroused when I thought about being spanked. Over time, the spankings became more severe. I learned to stay in position for much more painful punishment. I realized that the more severe the spanking, the more I got out of it. I continue to get aroused thinking about being spanked.

The fact that I get aroused thinking about getting a spanking that I will hate is confusing to people who haven’t experienced it. I can’t explain why I feel that way. I have also learned that if Mrs. Lion gives me a long, painful spanking, I feel more centered and grounded when she is done. I’m convinced that if she continues to improve the quality of my spankings, the benefits to me will grow. I think we will both know when she has reached the level beyond which it will be too much. We aren’t there yet.

It’s not just spanking, two have to play

DD is a game for two. I am not just the recipient of punishment, a victim; I’m an active participant. DD is a service to me as much as it is a way of giving Mrs. Lion authority. As she has written, punishing me doesn’t make her feel she is wiping the slate clean. She said that she gets that feeling from growling at me. She spanks me because it helps me. Aside from any sexual value, it lets me avoid feeling guilty. It also actually trains me.

I never expected this, but when Mrs. Lion consistently punishes me for breaking a rule, no matter what that rule is, I break it less often. There are two examples that surprised me: I have a rule that I am to not start eating until Mrs. Lion begins or tells me I can begin. This is the first rule she enforced with absolute consistency. If I take one bite before her, I get spanked. As a result, I almost never eat before her. I didn’t obey consciously. I was conditioned to wait for her. Once in a while I forget or think I see her start. She gives me a smile that says I am dumb to earn a spanking. Later, I get spanked. More recently, when I forget, the spankings have been rather mild. I think Mrs. Lion feels the offense is minor and so takes it easy.

The same is true of another early rule: I am not to spill food on my shirt. When she made the rule, I was pretty sloppy. I would get spanked several times a week. Those were the days of very mild swats. As Mrs. Lion increased her severity, incidents of me spilling on my shirt became less frequent. Now, I can’t remember the last time I broke that rule.

keeping it fresh

Since DD is a game, we need to keep things interesting. The rules, even the trivial ones, all improve me in one way or another. Some areas I need to improve are very difficult for Mrs. Lion to help me. These are things I do that annoy her. She hasn’t been able to consistently punish me when I upset her. She knows I want her to spank me when I do, but she is having difficulty doing it.

That’s fine. We both need to be comfortable with what we do. While I would like to correct my behavior in that area, it isn’t horrible if we can’t apply DD to fix it. Maybe Mrs. Lion can come up with less difficult to enforce rules.  She’s been thinking about it, but so far we have not come up with any.

Mrs. Lion is far from gentle now as you can see. I actually want her to be more severe.

That brings me to some apparent contradictions. If you look at DD as a lifestyle, the ultimate goal is never to need to punish your spouse. I don’t like that idea at all. I like the game; so does Mrs. Lion. You might be thinking that I could get myself spanked if I purposely break a rule. Yes, I could, but it would be wrong. It would be cheating. I have to earn punishment, not force it.

Another area that even confuses Mrs. Lion is severity. I want her to be more severe. I’ve learned that a truly serious disciplinary spanking works best for me. Right now, she gives me very painful spankings. I rarely feel them the day after, but they hurt like hell when she paddles me. In the interest of research, I am asking her to keep making her spankings longer and harder. If I’m right, I will benefit more. If I’m wrong, I will learn to change even more quickly. It’s a win-win.

The point is that domestic discipline is what you want it to be. It is a game played by two. No matter how seriously you play it, it is still a game. We will be playing it as long as we live.