Power Exchange (Page 7)

Men and women are incredibly different from each other. I’m not referring to anatomy; nor am I referring to intellect. Intelligence is distributed evenly between the sexes. Given that, it makes sense to assume that the ability to process situational information would also be evenly distributed between males and females. It isn’t.

As a male, I tend to take a direct approach to most things. The idea of having Mrs. Lion in charge is arousing to me. Therefore, I want to experience it. I get turned on at the thought of being spanked. I’m thinking sexually. I’m ready to be obedient, get punished, have my sexual release tightly controlled. Why? Because it’s hot.

That’s male snow blindness. We can only see  the broad, sexy outlines of what we crave. As long as I continue to see those blurry outlines, I am a willing, submissive husband. Metaphorically, I’m being led around by my penis. I see a sexy game. Is that what my wife sees too?

I’ve learned that women have a very different perspective than men. In this case, my wife hears a request that I try to couch as beneficial to her. I tell her I will obey her, please her sexually, and give her the right to punish me. She silently wonders why I think she would want that. Do I think she is unhappy with me as her husband?

Women tend to look at things from the perspective of how an action will make others feel. She’ll consider if this request could hurt her relationship with me. She will also consider whether she can make me happy by agreeing. She may wonder if she wants to go to the trouble of doing this for me. Once she decides that there is no harm in trying all this new stuff out, she will agree.

Since this transaction only involves the two of us, the emotional equation she has to solve is very simple since it only involves her husband and herself. Of course, the more subtle female mind may also analyze exactly what her husband is offering and whether there are subtle undertones in his request.

He thinks she will be playing an exciting, sexual game with him. She’s confident she can do that. But she also sees that he has given her an opportunity he never considered. He’s asked her to use sex and punishment to satisfy a fantasy. She sees that she can help him improve as a man and husband while he plays this “game”

She teases and denies him just the way he fantasized. She also spanks him “just because.”  The spankings start playfully, but get more painful over time. She tells him it’s punishment, shouldn’t it hurt? He has to agree.  Our subtle female is annoyed that he leaves his clothes all over the house. She tells him to clean up his mess and that if he doesn’t put his dirty clothes in the hamper, he will be punished.

He gets turned on. This is what he imagined. He leaves his socks on the floor. His wife has him drop his pants and underwear and spanks him over her knee. He’s hard anticipating this part of the sexy game.  She tells him that she is unhappy he dropped his socks on the floor.

She spanks him. But it’s different this time. She hits full force with her paddle. He yells and tells her to stop. He starts to wriggle away. She gives him several hard swats on the back of his thighs and tells him she will keep hitting him there until he calms down. He screams at each swat, but stops trying to escape. He hates what she is doing. His erection faded after the first few blows.

His bottom is very sore, but deep down he is excited that she took charge and punished him. He hasn’t decided to stop dropping clothes at this point. Spanking is part of the game, after all.

She isn’t fooled. She knows he hasn’t learned anything. He’s still playing the game. She observes that the painful spanking didn’t hurt their relationship. If anything, he’s more attentive. She’s sure it’s because he is deeper into what he thinks of as a role playing game. At this point she can decide to just continue  playing the game, or she can try to get some value out of her new power.

As expected, within a few days she finds his underwear on the bedroom floor. She’s pretty sure he didn’t do it to provoke her. He just doesn’t care. She wonders what will happen if he realizes she expects him to actually do what she says. He’ll probably find it more exciting, she decides.

So, this time the spanking is much more severe. There are tears. After the spanking, she has him stand in the corner with his nose pressed into the wall. He has to stand there, red butt showing, for 15 minutes. Then she tells him to thank her for punishing him. This is followed with a lecture on obedience and picking up his clothes.

He may be in pain, but he is a happy camper. She’s really in charge!

She smiles inwardly. She can make him happy at the same time she helps him be a better husband. She wonders how much punishment she should administer to induce real change. She decides to turn up the volume a bit more next time he drops clothes. She researches discipline on the Web and gets some additional ideas. She decides that as long as he remains happy in his role, she will use her role to help him improve.

She lets him control the intensity and frequency of discipline. Breaking a rule earns punishment. Repeating the same offense earns a much more painful, longer punishment. That’s his game. She’s playing it.

He is responding to the sexual game he imagined. But at the same time, he is learning to be an obedient mate. She keeps her eye on his emotional well being and consistently increases her expectations of his behavior. He is never the wiser.

When it comes to sexual or emotional thinking, we males use a very broad brush. We rarely consider the underlying emotional subtleties in a social situation. It’s not in our DNA. I can be hopelessly naive. I want to believe that Mrs. Lion seriously loves denying me orgasms and that she thinks being able to punish me is, if not fun, at least something she is fine doing.

Women who want to be owned and punished like me, have no illusions that their partners do what they do for their own amusement. They understand it is a service to them. Even so, they can get into the role and believe it on some level. Guys don’t see behind the curtain. Women know this. If being a keyholder and disciplining wife is fun at all, it is because it comically shows up how her male actually believes the very mythology he created.

That doesn’t mean that none of this is real. It is very real. It’s just not real in the sense guys think it is. I see the sexy game. I learn to obey because I don’t like the consequences of failing. It never occurs to me that this is all of my own doing and that I can just refuse. Why not? Because I believe that if I do such a thing I will lose all the happiness and security I have.

Despite all I have written, just like all the other males, I need to believe that what Mrs. Lion and I do is 100% “real”. My happiness depends on that belief. I guess my male mind needs to know that I am completely under the power of my lioness. I can believe I started this as a fantasy, but I “know” that what we have now is completely real. I painted over any possible cracks in this story.

It’s clear to me that women are in touch with reality and consider FLR, DD, and enforced chastity first as things they can do to make their partners happy. Over time, they see it as a process they can use to improve their husbands as well. We males drink the Kool Aid and over time become more and more ensnared in the fantasy we brought to life.

If you have read my posts, you know that I completely buy in to the power exchanges. Even though I know on one level that the way I look at all this isn’t the same as the way Mrs. Lion sees it, I’m still fully engaged.

I know that Mrs. Lion has been concerned that if she goes too far and hurts me too much, I will be angry and she will lose some of my love. She worries that my attachment to the game can be broken by too much domination. It’s fair. I get it.

The fact is, at least in my case, the opposite. The stricter she becomes, the more I feel her involvement and interest in me. If she should upset me more than she expects, it’s really easy to make things right. If a particular beating made me cry and feel horrible, some nice hugs and snuggles and sweet words about how good I was to take my medicine will make me feel better. I’m really a simple creature.

I can see you women rolling your eyes. But if you have any serious experience with strict control of your husband, you know I’m right. The minute you put yourself in my shoes, you start to lose. We don’t think the way you do. We process your punishment differently than you may imagine.

The best way to play the game, at least for me, is to make your power useful. Use it to manage real life issues. Women have a great sense of fairness. I know Mrs. Lion does. I trust that she will always try to be fair to me. My job is to convince her that being fair doesn’t mean giving me the benefit of the doubt. It means judging what she requires fairly.

It’s fair to make me do things for her. I ask for that. It’s fair to expect obedience regardless of the situation. It may not be fair to make me do 100% of the housework, or to give up everything I like just to prove I am submitting. I totally trust her.

Last, I think it’s super important for both men and women to recognize that they are different. Nowhere is it more obvious than in FLR, enforced chastity and domestic discipline. Take advantage of the differences. We’ll thank you for it.

I was thinking about my last few posts and the reaction they received from some of our readers. I’ve been writing about domestic discipline and my need for strict punishment. The comments and emails have been very polite and well reasoned. The underlying message is, “How can you let someone hurt you like that?”

Of course, this is completely understandable. It’s also interesting to note that this isn’t the first time we have heard this said. Way back when we first started the Journal, we got a large number of comments asking, “How can you let Mrs. Lion control whether or not  you get to have an orgasm?” After a while, that kind of comment and email stopped coming. Either the people who found enforced chastity inconceivable left, or some of them came to understand, if not want to practice enforced chastity.

The simple fact is that what we do, or any 24/7 power exchange is extremely rare. Over the decades I have been active in the leather community (BDSM), I’ve run across only a handful of people who practiced lifestyle power exchange. All of them involved master/mistress -slave exchanges. I met only one man who practiced enforced chastity. I never asked him if he did it full time, but when we met he had and Access Denied chastity belt on (I know because he showed me without my asking).

Of the couples I met who got together because they wanted a master/slave relationship, not one remained together after two years. Couples who were together before adopting the power exchange, tended to drop it too, but they remained together. I’m not saying that no one manages to sustain a full-time power exchange for life, but I never knew any.

Let’s face it, almost all chastity devices sold are now living in someone’s sock drawer. A full time power exchange won’t last unless the people involved get substantial, lasting benefits from it. Mrs. Lion and I are no exception. We found that our relationship improved due to our practice of enforced chastity. The change is so beneficial that we won’t stop.

Domestic discipline doesn’t enforce my chastity, nor for that matter, does a chastity device. My chastity is enforced by my knowledge that Mrs. Lion considers any orgasm not provided by her a betrayal of trust. Jerking off may not be quite as serious as having an affair, but it is close. We both take my surrender very seriously.

Our most recent addition is the domestic discipline. It has evolved from some spanking experiments to punishments that are quite serious and very painful. How could I want this? See? The questions I’ve been getting are fair. But maybe it is less of a “want” than it is a “need”. But will it last? We don’t know yet. For it to become a permanent part of our lives, we need to find value. As Mrs. Lion has been getting more serious about punishing me, I’ve been feeling more grounded. Oddly, the more I dread the inevitable spanking when I break a rule, the more settled and loved I feel as well. At this point, Mrs. Lion hasn’t expressed that she finds any particular benefit from being my disciplining wife beyond “pleasing” me. That’s not enough to sustain a lifetime power exchange.

The point is that any full time power exchange is exceeding rare. Both enforced chastity and domestic discipline are inconceivable to the vast majority of people who hear of them. I wonder if after continuing to read the evolution of our foray into domestic discipline, you may decide that it is conceivable, even good for us. Chances are overwhelming that you won’t want to do it yourself. Let’s see how the comments go.