Every so often someone who hasn’t seen our blog before reaches out and lets us know what’s “wrong” with us. Apparently, some people equate our power exchange with domestic abuse. After all, Mrs. Lion is the boss and enforces her will physically. There are two concepts in the last sentence that can act as triggers for the politically correct. The first is that Mrs. Lion is the boss. I acknowledge her leadership and authority. That’s a super hot button for many people.
The second, and more problematic to many, is that she enforces her will with physical punishment. In our enlightened age, couples should be democracies and motivation should be rewards, never retribution. It’s very difficult for a democracy to function if it has only two members. Votes can only come out two ways: unanimous agreement, or stalemate. It’s those troublesome stalemates that get a lot of marriages into trouble.
I’m not claiming that we have the ultimate answer for domestic tranquility. I’m very sure we have the answer for our domestic tranquility. We almost never have anything that you could consider an argument. In fairness, before we adopted our power exchange we didn’t argue. But what did happen was Mrs. Lion would defer to me. It’s her nature to be agreeable. It’s my nature to dig in my paws.
This complementary set of attitudes prevents conflict. It also is a breeding ground for resentment. Just because Mrs. Lion goes along with what I want doesn’t mean that she is happy. For the record, just because we have a power exchange that grants her authority and control, doesn’t mean that she will use it.
I suspect that most couples who adopt domestic discipline, or as I like to call it a Female Led Relationship with Discipline (FLRD), do it with the objective of helping the husband/male partner cure some bad habits. Frequently, these habits are destructive, like excessive drinking or drug use. In other words, there are some serious issues that need to be addressed.
Based on what I can find out, FLRD is almost always initiated by the man who believes a female -controlled domestic relationship will strengthen the marriage and help him overcome problems. The disciplining partner isn’t really in a position to initiate the power exchange. This is something that a lot of people don’t understand. How do you convince your husband to accept your authority and allow you to punish him when you decide he needs it? FLRD is consensual.
The mythology suggests that the woman blackmails him into it. She might say something like, “If you don’t want me to leave you, you have to accept my authority and punishments.” Really? I can’t imagine very many guys who are inclined to surrender authority accepting this ultimatum. In the real world it doesn’t work. Even if he agrees, since at best he’s a reluctant participant, it won’t take much for him to just tell her to go to hell and stop.
On the other hand, if a guy sees something going on in his relationship that he believes could be improved by this power exchange, he might be inclined to consider proposing it. Again, he has to be predisposed to putting himself in a position of submission to his partner. It’s no accident that men who are spanked by their wives find thinking about it sexually arousing. Let’s face it, we get turned on by feeling such strong control. I for one, can’t stay hard once the spanking begins. That doesn’t matter. My penis is signaling my desire for this sort of physical activity.
Even though a FLRD is a serious power exchange and the punishments earned are painful and intended to change behavior not turn us on, there is still an underlying sexual basis for us putting ourselves into this situation. It’s very likely that our disciplining wives understand this. Not too many women would be willing to assume the role of disciplining wife if they believed that there was no positive benefit for their partners. After all, I don’t think Mrs. Lion married me with the intention of rebuilding my personality. She married me because she likes who I am.
I know that it’s important for me to clearly understand that even though there may be sexual roots and a strong inner need for control, our FLRD doesn’t exist just to satisfy those desires. It may be why we started. It may also be why Mrs. Lion sometimes has to look for reasons to spank me. Under the surface, there is a great deal more going on.
It’s entirely too easy to chalk all this up as another kink. Certainly, it can be practiced that way. But, if Mrs. Lion, for example, consistently enforces my roles, I will change. I’ve learned that consistent punishment for breaking a rule will condition me not to break it. The easy answer to why I won’t break it is that I dislike the punishment and therefore work hard to avoid it. That was my theory going in. But it turns out that on a much deeper level I’m conditioned. For example, our earliest rule was that I shouldn’t spill food on my shirt. At the time Mrs. Lion created that rule, I managed to get food on my shirt on nearly-daily basis.
She established the rule to give both of us practice in our disciplinary relationship. For some time she either missed observing my infractions or decided it was too much trouble to punish them at the time. Not much changed. Perhaps I ate a little more carefully for a day or so, but the frequency of getting food on my shirt didn’t go down very much.
Then something changed. Mrs. Lion committed to observing every offense and punishing each and every one. To her eternal credit, she followed through and keeps following through to this day. A few months after her increased diligence, I realized that I wasn’t getting spanked very often. I mentioned it to her. She was a little surprised. It wasn’t that she went back to her old habit of disregarding infractions. I had stopped spilling food on my shirt. I have been conditioned to be a neater eater.
Granted, this is no giant behavioral change. But it is very concrete evidence that a disciplinary relationship will, in fact, change behaviors on an unconscious level. Apparently, consistency is the key. At the time I was spilling on my shirt, Mrs. Lion wasn’t spanking very severely. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that she observed my infraction and responded to it in a way that I couldn’t ignore.
All this proves is that adult spanking is an effective behavioral modifier. Apparently, it doesn’t have to be cruel. It just has to be consistently applied when a rule is broken. Of course, Mrs. Lion wants more than unconscious behavioral modification. She wants me to be aware of my infraction and consciously avoid repeating it. Eventually, I’ll change even if I don’t pay attention. That’s not good enough.
To get my active, conscious cooperation, punishments need to be sufficiently unpleasant to make me put avoiding them top of mind. Because there is a strong sexual component to spanking, this is only my theory, the initial spanking for an offense is buffered by the perverse sexual satisfaction it provides. I’m not claiming that it’s fun or that it turns me on. But I do believe I anticipate it and some part of the sensation goes to satisfying that sexual need.
It doesn’t help that it’s nearly impossible to spank me severely enough that I will have a sore bottom for more than a few hours. No, this isn’t a challenge. It’s a discovery Mrs. Lion is made. The latest innovation in our disciplinary practice is for Mrs. Lion to spank me on multiple, successive days when I commit an offense. So, a relatively minor offense like spilling food on my shirt, might earn me a spanking on three consecutive days. That may seem disproportionately severe, but for me, at least, by the second day all the sexual fun is out of it. By the third day, I’m thoroughly sick of the idea and actively hope Mrs. Lion will forget about it. I feel active dread when I see her paddle on the bed.
Serial spanking has the desired effect of making me work actively to avoid a repeat punishment. It also helps focus my attention on the fact that all offenses are not alike. Since it’s not really practical to vary the severity of an individual spanking, the only way to send the message that a particular offense is more serious than another, is to sentence me to a longer series of daily spankings.
For example, I managed to forget three out of four Saturday punishment day reminders for Mrs. Lion. Normally I would get three daily spankings as punishment. But since I keep repeating the offense, Mrs. Lion upped it to five daily spankings. Unfortunately, on Tuesday night I interrupted and annoyed Mrs. Lion. She announced that when she finished the five spankings for forgetting about Saturday punishment day, I would be getting another series for annoying her. I don’t know how many I’ll get for that, I’m sure I’ll find out.
Believe me, daily spankings are getting old! Each one is painful and burns for a while. Mrs. Lion is made it clear that she will not forget and even if she’s tired my butt will get paddled. I think that we may have stumbled onto a way to make adult spanking a truly effective punishment. There’s something about repeating something unpleasant every day for a while that feels a lot worse to me.
I also think that daily spankings for a fixed period of time sends a positive message to Mrs. Lion as well. She now has an effective way to let me know how strongly she feels about something I do. Before we instituted this plan, in my mind there was no real difference between annoying her and getting some tomato sauce on my shirt. Clearly, she thinks of those two things differently. Now, if she spanked me for five or six days for annoying her and just three for spilling, I get the message: It’s a lot worse to interrupt her then to get some salsa on my T-shirt.
This time I got lucky. Since I’ve been getting daily spankings for five days as punishment for repeatedly forgetting to remind Mrs. Lion of Saturday punishment day, she’s only adding two more days for annoying her. Merciful Lioness!
