She Warned Me

On Wednesday night Mrs. Lion finally spanked me for failing to thank her for an earlier punishment. At one point the pain was getting very intense and I rolled away. She said,

“I guess that means I have to start again. I was only three swats away from finishing.”

I didn’t say anything, but I thought to myself,

“I don’t believe her.”

She resumed spanking me. At the time, I figured she was just finishing the job she started.

I know I had opened my big mouth and suggested that her experiment spankings were more severe than her punishments. As I yelped I was regretting that dangerous comment. Only the next day, when reading her post, did I discover that I actually got a lot more spanking because I rolled away. Grrrrr.

Truth be told, I was in no mood for spanking, or for that matter, anything else. As she aptly put it in her post, it doesn’t matter how I feel about it. If I am to be punished, I get punished. At times like this, I go through periodic self-doubt about this entire FLRD concept. I am enough of a brat to expect to be spanked when I want to be spanked, and be left alone when I’m not in the mood. In the past, that was pretty much the case.

That’s no longer true. Objectively speaking, it’s probably more beneficial for me to get spanked when I’m not in the mood. When Mrs. Lion punishes me when I don’t believe I deserve it or when I just don’t feel like it, I am accepting her power. I can’t pretend it’s a BDSM scene.

On Wednesday night she knew I was simply not interested in being punished. I wasn’t happy that I get spanked for forgetting to thank her and that I was comfortably prepared to watch an evening of TV. She made it very clear that we were not going to discuss how I felt about being punished. It was my job to lie face down across the foot of the bed and she would take care of the rest.

The spanking itself started with swats I could handle comfortably. It didn’t take long before my bottom was stinging and I was yelping. At one point I just had enough. I tried to roll away. I rolled onto my side and then thought better of it and rolled back. That’s when I was informed Mrs. Lion would restart the punishment. I felt nothing when she said that. I didn’t believe her.

Even after the spanking was done, I didn’t believe she restarted. I just thought she intended to go to some particular number of swats and kept going until she reached that number. When she made her comment about restarting, she also noted that my bottom wasn’t particularly red. That was one clue that she hadn’t finished yet, not that she was restarting. [Mrs. Lion – Actually I commented on the lack of redness long before I restarted.]

It’s true that spanking conditions my behavior. We’ve discovered that it works without me even realizing it’s happening. However, overcoming my will by punishing me when it’s clear I have no interest in it, or restarting a punishment because I did not accept my spanking the way I should, sends a very different conscious message. I can’t mistake what’s happening to me as a scene I want.

The spanking is punishment. I know it is because I’m getting it even though I’m not in the mood. I also know because I’ve had enough and I wanted it to stop, but it didn’t.

There are times when I’m punished and I’m glad I’m getting the swats. I can’t say I enjoy them, but I can say that I can get into the spirit of this punishment. In a real sense, those punishments are less meaningful than the ones I get at times I absolutely don’t want them. Similarly, when I have to sit on the punishment stool after a painful spanking, there’s a very good chance I don’t want to be there. I’m smart enough to realize that the reason I’m there is because Mrs. Lion is in charge and if I attempt to rebel, she will spank me more.

I think there are two aspects to the inevitability of punishment. One, of course, is that if I break a rule or annoying my lioness, I will be punished each and every time. The second is I will receive the punishment when Mrs. Lion decides I should. It doesn’t matter how I feel about it at the time. If I earn a punishment, I will get it at her convenience, not mine.

Inevitability is the magic word when it comes to FLRD. The practice isn’t so much about being in an autocratic dictatorship as it is about being expected to comply 100% to any and all requirements. In other words, I can continue making decisions that affect both of us. I can also make decisions about what we do. But, I will be painfully reminded of any breach of Mrs. Lion’s will.

A leader doesn’t have to micromanage. Her job is to decide where to apply her authority to best reach her goals. It’s a mature process, not a BDSM game. When it comes to administering punishment, it’s very difficult not to fall into the BDSM pattern. In a scene, it is fully consensual with clear limits defined. A FLRD punishment is consensual by definition, but is administered without the need for specific consent.

This became graphically clear to me on Wednesday night. While I wasn’t punished as a child, I expect I would’ve felt the same way when I was a kid and a parent decided to punish me. In that sense FLRD does have a sort of parent/child flavor. That doesn’t mean I’m a child, or for that matter, Mrs. Lion is my mommy. It just means that the way authority is expressed follows the parental model.

Why not? It’s tried-and-true. It’s a disciplinary relationship based in love. It seems to me that it’s a perfect model for what a husband-and-wife should practice. Because we follow that parental model, doesn’t mean we are acting as parent and child. It just means the style of punishment and the way it’s administered conforms to the way a parent punishes her child. It’s loving yet strict to the point that pain will continue until a lesson is learned. However, it’s clear that the punishment is administered with love.