The Burdens of Being a Disciplinarian

Wow. If there's one thing my partner and I are spectacularly good at, it's messing up our Domestic Discipline (DD) relationship in every way we can possibly find.

The good news is that after a prolonged absence, we're finally in the same house again, albeit only for a few weeks. The bad news is that getting back into the disciplinary groove is a lot harder than I'd anticipated.

I had this romantic vision of our reunion: falling into his waiting arms, submitting to a serious, much-needed and well-deserved "slate clearing" spanking, and floating away on a cloud of connubial bliss.

The problem is -- well, there are several, but the problem for this post is -- in all my imaginings, I forgot how much his spankings hurt.

So after several spanking-free months, when the first well-deserved swat landed, my instinctive reaction was, "OW! Stop that!" I promptly got up and indignantly protested this unexpectedly harsh assault on my person. When he ordered me back in position, my verbatim response was, "Like hell. Back off."

Now I suspect I know what you're thinking. It's likely the same thing I was thinking. His job in this moment was to take charge of the situation -- with force if necessary -- and resume the spanking -- with extra discipline added for my disobedience.

I need to add here this is the first time this particular situation has come up for us. We've had other occasions of me refusing discipline, but they've always been on the phone, never in person. Candidly, I used to think I was above that sort of behavior. I'd read posts from other women saying they resisted, moved out of position or put their hands back to block a swat, and I'd smugly think to myself, I would never do that. I'm disciplined (!) enough to take what's coming to me regardless of how much it hurts. But I have been humbled. Turns out I'm not above it at all.

Ultimately, I did manage to return, albeit not terribly submissively, to take the rest of my spanking, do my corner time, and proffer my apology. But I felt pretty crappy about how the whole thing went down on both sides. Whether he was or not, I was worried during the spanking that he was holding back and feeling uncomfortable. And I came away frustrated and unsettled, having missed out on the cathartic, mind-clearing, bonding aftereffects of discipline that I so needed and wanted. Instead of feeling close and loving, we spent an awkward, tense night dancing around each other's unspoken issues and pretending we didn't have a big problem to resolve. So much for connubial bliss.

The next day, when we talked about what went wrong, my partner admitted that while he was totally down for disciplining a willing woman, he had some serious concerns about disciplining an unwilling one. The lines of consent and non-consent suddenly became unclear, and that was very scary for him. As he put it, "If I spank you when you say no, am I an abuser? Is that assault?"

He'd expressed these concerns in the past, but I admit that since it never seriously occurred to me that this situation would come up, I hadn't made a serious effort to discuss it with him the way I should have.

This is another lesson, of course, in the importance of communication, even about things that seem far-fetched or unlikely at the time. If we'd communicated more thoroughly about his concerns beforehand, we might have had a shot at saving the situation from turning into a trust issue on both sides.

The larger concern that this brings up for me is a realization is that I -- and I suspect most submissives -- don't spend enough time considering the very real risks that the dominant partner takes in assuming the role of disciplinarian. I know for me, it's a constant struggle to remember to check in with my partner about how he's doing emotionally with regard to DD issues.

This lack of attention to the dominant's emotional state is likely because the majority of those who write about DD tend to be women, and women tend to be on the receiving end of discipline. We tend to spend a lot of time thinking about our issues, our perspective, yes, our vision of how perfect we wish our not-perfect partner could be. Also, since women (and likely submissives as a group?) tend to be more introspective than men, we're more likely to be more motivated than our partners to analyze and communicate our thoughts and feelings about DD.

In my perfect world, of course, my partner is all-knowing, all-strong, all-confident. He is the Indiana Jones of the DD world, spanking first, asking questions later, making heroic decisions with no hesitation or fear. This mythical view of our partner is a sacred cow for most of us, because let's face it, the idea of a disciplinarian who has serious doubts or insecurities is a bit of a buzz-kill for that "strong, handsome and totally in control" partner we all fantasize about.

But the dangers for the dominant partner are very real, and to have a fully realized, honest DD relationship, the dangers for both sides need to be constantly guarded against.

Some of the risks he takes:

1. Legal liability. This is the big one, and it likely worries your partner more than you realize, especially if this is his first DD relationship. All it takes is one particularly nasty argument and all of a sudden, he's being reported to the authorities as an abusive spouse. And you've got the bruises to prove it.

This may sound far-fetched, and I keep telling my partner it would never happen, but in a culture with our rabid, zero-tolerance, ask no questions approach to domestic violence, it's a huge risk for any man to take. If the relationship turns sour and we want revenge, we have the power to send him to prison, ruin his career and reputation, humiliate him in front of his friends and family, and get the state to revoke custody of his children.

Yes, I know we're all sure this would never happen, but HE can never be 100% sure, and the truth is, neither can we -- because no one can be 100% sure of anything when it comes to intimate relationships. After all, consider that virtually all relationships start out full of love and the promise of trust, and then consider how many of them end vindictively in divorce court, or worse, violence. None of those couples thought it would end that way, either, but it does. All the time.

2. Emotional trauma. My partner is a decent, feeling, caring human being, and I'm assuming yours is, too. (If not, you probably shouldn't be in any kind of relationship with him, much less a relationship requiring the trust and control that DD does.) Decent, feeling, caring human beings aren't naturally inclined to want to hurt the people they love. Yes, of course our partner understands that we want and need those hard spankings -- he wouldn't give them to us if he didn't. But that doesn't mean it's always easy to spank us when we're sobbing in pain and remorse, or to ignore our pleas for mercy. Inflicting pain on another human being always carries an emotional price, no matter how consensual that pain is. And when it's not clearly consensual, that emotional price skyrockets.

3. Mental energy. Being an effective disciplinarian is hard work. (Just ask any good parent.) To discipline responsibly requires being focused, making good judgements, and staying present in the moment, constantly judging the level and appropriateness of the timing and degree of discipline being meted out. Disciplining another human being is a huge, stressful, often exhausting responsibility.

And since most of us demand consistency in our discipline, this requires a whole new level of alertness in keeping track of what our misbehavior is, how he disciplined for it last time, etc. Not to mention the effort required to respond to our misbehavior with appropriate discipline (and ideally some level of enthusiasm) even if he's sick, tired, distracted, in the middle of a big project at work, or just really looking forward to watching the game on TV. As hard it is sometimes to accept discipline, his job is much harder than ours is.

4. Isolation. Yes, of course, DD is a powerful bonding experience on both sides, and in many ways, brings us closer to our partners than we could ever be in a more egalitarian relationship. But being a disciplinarian means being a leader, and being a leader is a lonely place to be. For a start, DD is likely not the sort of experience he can generally share with his buddies (especially if, like my partner, his buddies are his colleagues in the progressive political world), so he often has nowhere to turn for advice, a sounding board or just to share his experiences with others in his situation.

He is also denied many of the benefits that we as submissives enjoy as a result of being disciplined. He has no structured outlet for his negative emotions. He has no formal way of clearing his conscience when he feels bad about something. He has no one to be accountable to for his missteps. We get the luxury of regressing and abdicating responsibility sometimes, particularly during our discipline. But he has to be an adult virtually all of the time -- an adult that lives up to our shining ideal of what an adult should be. Yes, being adored and deferred to has its benefits, but that doesn't make the loneliness of leadership any less difficult.

Fortunately for me, my partner and I are pretty good about understanding that DD, like any relationship, is a work in progress. We talked about my need to know that discipline is inevitable regardless of my feelings on the subject, and about his fears of being accused of abuse if he spanks me after I've said no.

The issues we have didn't disappear. In fact, I suspect they'll come up again and again as we struggle through this. But the key to a healthy DD lifestyle seems to lie in the willingness to accept each other's imperfections, to expect things to go wrong, and to be willing to live with the reality of how DD works in a real relationship, rather than expecting everything to go like it does in our daydreams. After all, perfection is what we have those lovely masturbatory fantasies for, right?