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In: Domestic discipline

What happens if we run out of rules? Mrs. Lion and I have be practicing domestic discipline for years. We started it because I’m very turned on by the idea of being spanked and feeling Mrs. Lion’s control. Those feelings are sexual. When we implemented DD, Mrs. Lion created rules that I was sure to break. We agreed that I shouldn’t intentionally break a rule. The reason for the easy-to-break rules was to give us both a lot of experience with discipline.

It worked too well. The consistent spankings for breaking those rules trained me to change. I didn’t consciously try. I just changed. This was both good news and bad news. We learned that Mrs. Lion’s authority was real and her punishments were effective in changing my behavior. The relatively frequent spankings satisfied my inner need for spanking.

I admit that I was worried that I wouldn’t take the disciplinary spankings seriously. After all, I get aroused thinking about being spanked. In the beginning, Mrs. Lion’s spankings weren’t very painful. They hurt, but not as much as I’ve experienced in a BDSM play session. I encouraged her to turn up the volume and she did. Even with the less painful spankings, my behavior changed. Something inside me understood the difference between punishment and play. Nowadays, punishment is unmistakable. Mrs. Lion is a very effective spanker. The idea of being spanked still turns me on. Getting spanked is something I dread.

We both agree that relatively frequent spankings are important for us. Since Mrs. Lion isn’t finding any real reasons to punish me, she’s giving me five-minute spankings on our punishment days. It’s too early to decide if this is an effective way to keep things top of mind. Maybe we should just be happy that I’m not annoying my lioness and let it go at that. After all, if needed, she can always paddle me.

If the two of us came from a corporal punishment background, I think we could just be happy I don’t need to be punished. The concept of spanking, when needed, would be deeply ingrained, and there would be no danger that we would revert to old patterns. Unfortunately, that’s not us. When I’ve managed to obey my rules for a while, Mrs. Lion stops noticing when I get myself into some trouble. When she has me ride the spanking bench frequently, she is more observant.

What happens when even heightened vigilance fails to turn up infractions? That’s our current situation. Should we just congratulate each other and let DD fade into the past? If we had the right background, that would be fine. We know that I will need correction every now and then. It’s important to me that Mrs. Lion is ready to correct me. She’s inclined to let things slip until she starts reacting by avoiding me and not letting me know what I did to upset her. If she is in DD mode, she lets me know and spanks me. The tension is relieved. That’s what I value most about our disciplinary relationship. I love that I am learning to be a better husband. We agree that DD is helping us both. Keeping it alive and well is our challenge.

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In: Domestic discipline

Thursday morning Mrs. Lion caught me saying something that she didn’t like to the TV. This is a violation of her new rule about growling at the TV. I’m writing this post on Thursday afternoon. It’s punishment day. That means I get spanked for five minutes if I do nothing wrong. Since I broke my new rule, I expect a more vigorous ten-minute spanking after my shower. I know, I asked for it. Well, I asked for the punishment-day spankings.

Mrs. Lion wrote in her post yesterday (“Polishing My Paddle“), “Lion thinks I’ll feel more heard if I spank him for annoying me. I don’t know if I agree with that. It’s not that I disagree. I’m just not sure. I think yelling at him, or even a snarky remark, would make me feel better. It may not do anything for him, though. He’ll respond better to a sore bottom.”

She’s right that I will respond better to a sore bottom than I will to snarling or a snarky remark. The verbal responses are expressions of anger without any means of redress from me. Mrs. Lion communicates much more eloquently with her paddle. It isn’t that she lacks verbal skills. It’s more that a verbal response is unlikely to penetrate my mood at the moment. I’m convinced that an unmistakable message delivered outside of the heat of the moment does the most good for me. I think it does for her too. I may be wrong. There’s no harm in snarling and spanking me if that works better for her. It’s not an either/or situation. If snarling works for her and spanking works for me, why not do both?

I think there is a good reason why Mrs. Lion is unlikely to snarl. It takes her some time to process subjective offenses, and it may feel inappropriate for her to snarl if she decides to do it too far after my offense. On the other hand, she is perfectly comfortable informing me that I will be spanked hours after my infraction. Time works against snarls. Also, yelling or snarling can be interpreted as shrewish behavior instead of the act of a calm disciplinarian.

Mrs. Lion has to discover the right balance for her. She already knows the most effective way to help me change.

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In: Domestic discipline

We are starting our new program of three-times-a-week spankings. Today is the second punishment day that it is in force. Having only had one thrice-weekly spankings, I’m feeling good about the program. The thing is that it doesn’t matter how I feel about it. I not only agreed, but asked Mrs. Lion to spank me each of our three weekly punishment days. She’s not going to stop because I change my mind.

There’s no reason for her to stop. We agree that this is necessary to help her learn to routinely punish subjective offenses. These offenses are particularly important to me. They are the sort of behaviors that can foster bad feelings between us. Mrs. Lion is not good at letting me know when I upset her. It takes several instances of particularly annoying things to get her to react in a way I can detect. Those reactions are passive-aggressive.

I think it is important that she let me know each and every time when I annoy her. We’ve learned that the best way to do that is to spank me. I improve my behavior quickly after one or two (or three) spankings. More important, Mrs. Lion feels heard when she spanks me. I’m not sure she always realizes this benefit. She says she spanks me because I’ve asked her to punish me. It’s true that I have. I believe that she benefits by bringing my offenses to the forefront as well. I can’t ignore or minimize her opinion. You try to do that when you get ten minutes of painful spanking. Nope. I have to take everything she thinks is important enough to spank me seriously.

That’s the most valuable part of domestic discipline. It levels the marital playing field. Mrs. Lion has the undisputed power to make me take her seriously. If I interrupt her and she spanks me for it, I have to look at my behavior carefully. If I don’t, another spanking will surely follow. Mrs. Lion is happy to punish me each time I break a rule. It’s up to me to avoid the spankings.

By:
In: Spanking, Domestic discipline

It may seem odd that we have started a series of scheduled spankings. It seems a little more like BDSM than domestic discipline. It isn’t BDSM at all. We’ve been stalled in our domestic discipline. Mrs. Lion is 100 percent consistent when it comes to spanking me for leaving the shower door open or failing to set up our coffee maker. She has no trouble delivering a painful ten-minute spanking for those offenses. When it comes to more subjective offenses, it’s very different.

We both agree that I should be punished for annoying Mrs. Lion. She dislikes it when I interrupt her (who could blame her?). She also isn’t fond of me acting like a know-it-all. A long time ago, she made doing those things punishable offenses. The problem is that she doesn’t spank me for committing them. This isn’t unusual. Other couples report the same problem with punishing these subjective behavioral problems.

I think there is a simple explanation. Breaking rules, like leaving the shower door open (if I do, the dog goes in and splashes around), are easy to spot and not subject to any interpretation. Interrupting, on the other hand, isn’t so easy to punish. Did I really interrupt, or was there a pause in the conversation that made me think she was done with the thought? Worse yet, did I really annoy her, or was she upset by something else?

It’s too easy to rationalize away those offenses. My perspective is different. If I interrupt, even if it is because of a long pause in a thought, I’m still wrong. I should be more aware of the flow of the conversation and less interested in inserting my contribution. As far as I’m concerned, nothing should mitigate an interruption. It’s no different than leaving the shower door open. The same is true of being a know-it-all. No excuses. As far as being annoying in other ways, that will take some time for her to work out.

Our new three-spankings-a-week routine provides an infrastructure for punishing subjective offenses. Before we started it, if I interrupted, Mrs. Lion would have to initiate a spanking. That’s not a big deal physically, but emotionally I imagine it is. However, if she is already going to spank me for five minutes as part of the new plan, it isn’t emotionally difficult to add five more for interrupting or annoying her. I’m already getting paddled.

This technique worked well when we first started DD. “Punishment days” were set up to help her remember to spank me for breaking rules. In those days, I had a bunch of easy-to-break rules that Mrs. Lion designed to give us both practice with dd. One rule from back then that I have to follow to this day is reminding her on each punishment day (Monday, Thursday, and Saturday). I do this faithfully. If I forget, I am spanked.

Our new agreement has me spanked on each punishment day for the same reason we started it years ago. It gives Mrs. Lion an easy reminder to punish me for subjective offenses. If I don’t break a rule, I get at least five minutes of spanking each punishment day. If I break one rule, I get ten minutes. Five minutes are added for each additional offense. Since I’m already riding the spanking bench, and Mrs. Lion is committed to at least five minutes of spanking me, she shouldn’t be terribly worried about whether or not a subjective offense is important enough to punish. She’s already spanking me. We’ll see how this works.