I’ve started this post at least five times. I’m wrestling with a concept that appears to have many sides. Mrs. Lion has been my disciplining wife for some time. Our disciplinary relationship has been evolving. We started out with me suggesting punishments I read about on the web. Mrs. Lion decided to use a simpler approach. She spanks me.
You would think that decision takes care of the punishment department. It doesn’t. The model I read about in countless blogs basically equates spousal spanking with the sort of mother might give her child. Most of the writers extend this concept to include other childish punishments like corner time and mouth so. I finally understand that in many people’s minds, punishing one’s husband is essentially the same as punishing a great big kid.
It’s true that Mrs. Lion has referred to me as her oldest child. It may be true. I think she often considers me this way. Apparently, a lot of her friends think of their husbands in the same light. Many guys will agree. There is something sexually humiliating about being considered a big kid and disciplined like a child. I think it’s pretty much impossible not to think this way. I admit that it is an attractive way to relate to a fundamentally alien concept.
After all, many guys were spanked as children, and those of us who weren’t were very aware of the practice. As a boy, the idea of having my bottom bared and then spanked out in the open, was an arousing fantasy. I have a lifetime of sexualizing spanking in my fantasies. That certainly explains why I get aroused thinking about being spanked. It also explains why I’m attracted to the other childish punishments associated with the spanking.
I think this is a good thing. From Mrs. Lion’s perspective, allowing me to get aroused at the thought of being spanked, guarantees my willing compliance when told to get into position to be paddled. It doesn’t diminish the ultimate discomfort of the punishment. It just motivates me to be cooperative in the beginning.
This is where I think we make the mistake. Just because the concept of being spanked arouses me, it doesn’t mean that the underlying fantasies dating all the way back to early childhood need to be made real. If you look back at my earlier posts on the subject of punishment, there is an unmistakable wish to punish me like a child. Why? Because that’s how my fantasy goes. I think it’s fair to generalize and say that most guys who get hard at the thought of being spanked have a similar background. The mistake is that just because I am motivated by these sexy fantasies, that punishing me has anything to do with spanking my fantasy child.
The reason this is important is that my disciplining wife does herself a disservice if she allows herself to think of her punishing me the same way she would think about punishing a child. As much as the idea is appealing to me, I think it moved her in the wrong direction. In a disciplinary relationship, I think it’s fine for the disciplined male to indulge in fantasies that facilitate control by his wife. However, I think it’s important that she understand that he isn’t a child and doesn’t necessarily relate to punishment the same way as he would if he were a boy.
This is where the light bulb came on for me. As an adult, I have the critical thinking ability to weigh alternatives. I can consciously compare a punishment with the offense that earned it. I’m not saying that if Mrs. Lion is too gentle when she punishes me for spilling food on my shirt, that I will turn around and get food on my shirt because I’m not frightened of the consequences. It’s not that simple.
As an adult, I think that a significant proportion of the corrective ability a spanking provides occurs on a subconscious level. We discovered that when we look back at how my behavior has changed in relation to two trivial rules. Once Mrs. Lion consistently punished me for spilling on my shirt or beginning to eat before her, my behavior changed. I almost never spill on my shirt and I always wait for her to eat first. I can say without any question that I didn’t make a conscious decision to avoid these behaviors. Almost without me being aware of it, the discipline conditioned me to behave the way Mrs. Lion wants.
In a parent/child relationship, it’s extremely unlikely that the parent will punish consistently. There is simply too much going on to make consistency a priority. On the other hand, in our adult disciplinary situation, the focus is much narrower. It’s absolutely possible for Mrs. Lion to consistently identify and punish any negative behavior I display. The reason for this is quite simple: As a mature adult, there aren’t that many behaviors to correct. I’ve been functioning responsibly for decades. The catalog of things I need to change is limited and easy to identify.
In our case, for a very long time Mrs. Lion was watching for only two behaviors: eating before her and spilling food on my shirt. I committed these sins fairly often in the beginning and gave her good experience at consistently spotting and punishing those behaviors. Now, she is expanding the catalog of misdeeds and is working to identify each and every one I commit.
Meanwhile, she has been refining her punishment technique. Through a long process of trial and error, my punishments have been refined. The most significant innovation has been the adoption of multi-day punishments. I’ve learned that once a spanking gets going, I don’t make much differentiation between a mild one and a severe one. What I mean is that I don’t equate a mild spanking with the fact that the offense was less serious than one that got a longer, more painful spanking. This led to the idea that a spanking is a spanking. There are no mild ones or extra severe ones. It’s true that on occasion, Mrs. Lion may be more severe. But I understand that it has nothing to do with the nature of my sin. Obviously it’s important that I understand that some things are more serious than others. I also need to understand that there are consequences to repeating an offense.
Serial spankings solve both problems. For example, spilling on my shirt earns me three spankings, usually given on successive days. Interrupting earns me five. Repeating an offense ups the ante. Repeating a spell a relatively short time from a previous one, will earn me at least five days of spankings. There is nothing subtle about this system. It’s absolutely crystal clear to me when Mrs. Lion wants to emphasize her displeasure with my behavior. If I’m in the middle of a series of spankings and I commit another offense, the new sentence is simply added to the end of that one I’m currently being spanked for.
The spankings themselves are becoming more severe. This is at my request. As an adult, it’s important that I understand on every level that Mrs. Lion’s paddle is expressing her displeasure. She’s not indulging a BDSM fantasy of mine. I do have spanking fantasies. Because I do, she has to be very sure that I understand the spanking I am enduring is in no way intended to make my fantasy come true.
As I see it, there are two aspects to punishing me: The first is to assure me that I am not getting spanked because I like the idea. Mrs. Lion will assure herself that I am thoroughly unhappy with what she is doing to me. She will also make it crystal clear to me the consequences of more serious offenses or repeating any offense. How many days of painful spankings I get is under my control. If I only spill on my shirt once in a while, chances are very good I will learn three days of spanking for each offense. If I spill on my shirt twice in a week, let’s say, the second one will earn me at least five days and chances are very good that if I repeat the offense yet again within a month or so, the five days will become seven or eight. I also run the risk that she decides that the number of days of spanking I was given simply aren’t enough to teach me a lesson. I could well find myself getting five or seven days of spanking for any repeat no matter how infrequent.
In our brief time of disciplining me this way, I can tell you that I only need to repeat an offense once before I clearly understand just how unhappy I will be if I do it again. I can endure, perhaps even in a way enjoy, a single spanking. After all at some level I like being spanked. However, three consecutive days of long, painful spankings are much more difficult to endure. By the third day I feel thoroughly punished.
As an adult, it takes more to get my attention. There is also no really accurate way to predict just how much punishment I will need before I learn to correct my behavior. This new system organically solves the problem. At one point, I had managed to earn eight days of spanking. I did this by violating more than one rule. Mrs. Lion consistently carried out my sentence. I hated each and every session. Actually, I became more and more unhappy each day the spanking was repeated. At one point during those eight days, Mrs. Lion turned up the volume. Her spankings became considerably more difficult to accept. This increased my dread of the next day’s paddling.
Now that my rules are going back into effect, Mrs. Lion will be refining her technique. I want her to be successful. I guess that means I want her to make me even unhappier each time he spanks me. After all, if I don’t want painful spankings day after day, all I have to do is avoid misbehaving.
