Invariably questions come up whenever Mrs. Lion or I write about discipline. It’s really not that complicated but brings up a lot of emotions in many people. Adult punishment like the kind I receive is consensual. I asked Mrs. Lion to take me in hand. I want her to spank me when needed. That doesn’t mean I get to decide when or how much I get. This is where the confusion begins.
I asked Mrs. Lion to punish me if I do things she feels are wrong. She made a few simple rules at the beginning that I agreed made sense. Over the years, we are both comfortable with her deciding on her own what deserves punishment and what that punishment should be. Whether I can withdraw consent is a question we haven’t confronted.
Put it this way, I’m sure if I decided I no longer wanted this to be a disciplinary marriage, Mrs. Lion would probably go along with me. I think it would be a very bad mistake for me to do that. To both of our surprise, we have discovered that this power exchange brings us closer and more balanced in terms of how we relate to one another.
We both know that I like spanking. That’s what started the conversation four years ago. I find it sexually exciting to think about being spanked. Prior to our disciplinary relationship, we would play and Mrs. Lion would spank me. After my spanking I would be excited and she would get me off. Big fun!
The disciplinary scenario is different. I’m still turned on thinking about being spanked. When she tells me to get into position for the spanking I feel a little tingle. Once it commences, I invariably feel sorry that I am hurting so much. It’s clearly a love/hate situation.
This is where things start to get interesting. Some people focus on the fact that I want to be spanked. They contend that my spankings are not really a punishment. I’m getting something I want. On the other side, some people focus on the fact that I’m being hurt, beaten painfully which they contend is abusive. You can’t seem to win. It turns out that getting turned on by the thought of being spanked and receiving painful punishment as a deterrent for future bad behavior are not mutually exclusive.
For example, it took a long time, years, before Mrs. Lion could spank me painfully enough to be a truly memorable punishment. Even when spankings were not particularly painful, it turned out they worked. One of my first rules was not to spill food on my shirt. I tended to do that a lot. Mrs. Lion reasoned that because I do this often, we would get practice observing infractions and punishing them. It absolutely worked. However, within a few months of beginning, I very rarely spilled any food on my shirt. I didn’t make any conscious changes I just became a neater eater.
The simple fact that I was punished, even though it wasn’t particularly painful, built some paths in my brain that “trained” me to eat more neatly. I very rarely spill food on my shirt and when I do I’m punished.
One way or another, Mrs. Lion got a lot of practice spanking me. She learned how to administer painful, memorable spankings. That’s what I get now. As her severity increased, I learned more quickly. More importantly, Mrs. Lion has been learning that I want her to let me know in a particularly painful way every single time I do something that she doesn’t like.
She’s made remarkable progress. I think it’s still difficult for her to identify most of the times I do something that annoy her. When she does, I have a meeting with her paddle. That’s what I want.
I’m still turned on by the idea of being spanked. Mrs. Lion says I’m more easily aroused and edged after I’ve been spanked. This is true even when the spanking was very painful and something I hated when she did it. Apparently, the sexual and disciplinary values of having my bottom paddled coexist comfortably. It’s not logical. Something that turns me on shouldn’t be something I would work hard to avoid. But in this case, it is. That is the spanking paradox.
