Since we started our female led relationship, I’ve struggled with the apparent contradiction between being in a serious Female Led Relationship with Discipline and finding it sexually exciting that I am in this situation. The same basic conflict exists with male chastity and orgasm control. On one hand, it’s very frustrating and aggravating to be forced to wait to ejaculate. On the other hand, it’s probably the most exciting sexual activity I’ve ever had. That’s easy to understand. After all, it’s all about sex.
My conflicting feelings around discipline are much harder to reconcile. It’s true that I’ve always enjoyed being spanked as part of a BDSM scene. As I’ve discussed many times, this enjoyment challenges Mrs. Lion to distinguish a punishment spanking from one that I like receiving. For the record, she’s done a very good job.
We’ve both discovered that our disciplinary relationship isn’t purely about correcting my behaviors. From the beginning, I’ve tried to believe that our FLRD is a serious, non-sexual matter. Yes, I know I am turned on thinking about being spanked, but I also know that once I start receiving a punishment spanking there is no sexual pleasure. If we stop there we have a consistent disciplinary relationship. Both of us have discovered that once I correct the behaviors that earned punishments, both of us feel a kind of loss.
Mrs. Lion and I don’t consult about what we’re going to post. A good percentage of the time, our posts end up being quite closely related. The past few days are a good example of this. Each of us has provided our unique side of the same issue. We are not happy that I am no longer committing offenses. As Mrs. Lion said in her post on Monday, I did interrupt her and she handled it with a growl instead of a spanking. That was the only offense in at least two weeks. She went on to write that she needs to look for new offenses I can’t help but commit fairly often.
This may sound odd to you. It seems that she wants more opportunities to spank me. We are not talking about play spankings. She can give me as many of these as she would like. She’s referring to full-on disciplinary spankings. I didn’t say anything to prompt her comment.
At the same time, without any consultation, I wrote about how I felt there is a hole in our relationship. I missed the sense of stability and control I get when Mrs. Lion spanks me. I proposed maintenance spankings as a way of filling that gap. Obligingly, Mrs. Lion gave me one on Monday night.
If this is just about the need to spank and be spanked, it would be very easy to provide maintenance spankings on a frequent basis. Neither of us is shy about asking for or delivering spankings of any intensity. There’s just a little problem looking at things that way. Mrs. Lion doesn’t get pleasure out of delivering a disciplinary spanking. She enjoys doing the play variety, but not the much more painful disciplinary sort. Similarly, I don’t like receiving disciplinary spankings. It’s true, the idea of getting one is arousing. The actual delivery is anything but pleasant. Even a rather mild maintenance spanking is something I’m sorry I’m receiving.
If both of us don’t consider giving and receiving harsh, disciplinary spankings enjoyable, then why do we both feel we need to find situations to deliver more of them? I know Mrs. Lion is not a secret sadist. I’m definitely not much of a masochist. I believe there’s a great deal more going on than we talk about.
I think we both want the exceptional closeness our disciplinary relationship gives us. You could think of it as a sort of game. I think this is probably true in any domestic discipline situation. The game is fairly simple. One player, the disciplining wife, has a set of rules that both people have agreed upon. In many cases, like our marriage, she also has the right to unilaterally create and punish actions that had previously not been agreed to as rules. The disciplined husband has a very strong incentive to obey all the rules, both explicit and implied. Failing to obey one results in a very painful spanking.
The reason I couched this in the language of a game is based on my most recent discovery. Mrs. Lion and I want more than just to correct my behavior. We want, even like, the challenge of observing behavior and penalizing errors. This may not seem to make a lot of sense. I know it’s true of us because Mrs. Lion’s discipline has been very successful in correcting the behaviors she wanted to change. It’s exceptionally rare that I break any of my rules. If I do, like forgetting punishment day, a disciplinary spanking renews my attentiveness.
Mrs. Lion likes catching me. I like it when she does. I know I’m not going to like what happens next, but that’s the cost of playing the game. Recently, Mrs. Lion felt that a full disciplinary spanking seemed much too severe for infractions like spilling food on my shirt. I agreed. So, she replaced spanking for these minor offenses with mouth soaping and corner time. For the record, I don’t like either of those punishments.
A little surprisingly, getting my mouth soaped didn’t improve my memory and I continued forgetting punishment days. When Mrs. Lion went back to a disciplinary spanking for forgetting, my memory improved immediately. This was nothing conscious on my part. I always try to obey my rules. I genuinely forgot those punishment days. My memory actually improved once my bottom was made sore enough.
I realize that a lot of people are heavily invested in the “seriousness” of a female-led relationship. It does have serious aspects. It isn’t a joke and I have absolutely no way to change the dynamic. The truth is I don’t want to. The more surprising truth is I want Mrs. Lion to find more ways to catch me. I know the price and I openly accept it.
What’s different is that I am much more aware of how important the “game” is to both of us. The outcome of “playing” is that I become a better man. More importantly, we both feel closer the more intensely we play it. I think it’s this very strong benefit of increased intimacy and closeness that makes us both want to remain as strict as possible. The reason corner time and mouth soaping weren’t effective is that they didn’t offer a strong enough consequence to keep us both playing seriously.
Mrs. Lion and I have exchanged emails talking rather lightly about the fact that we need more, easier-to-break rules. For very different reasons, we both want more of those butt-blistering spanking sessions. Even Monday night’s maintenance spanking added a distinctly more positive tone to the rest of our evening. I guess lions just like to play rough.
