Update and Some Good Questions

Thank you so much to all of you who wrote saying, "Hey, where the heck are you? Are you okay?" and other sorts of things.

The answer is that, yes, I'm still here, and I'm very much okay. However, I'm in the homestretch of wrapping up a big contract (I work in politics and sometimes things get very hectic). As a result, there hasn't been as much time as I'd like for things like updating the blog. I'm working hard to clear my schedule and get back to my mountain retreat for at least awhile, and should be able to do so by the end of December -- at which time, I will probably start to have a great deal to write about as my partner and I have decided to try living together as a DD couple. This will be our first opportunity to really dig in and explore the relationship dynamics of DD on a day to day basis and I'm looking forward to sharing that experience with all of you, if you all can hang in there long enough!

In the meantime, I received a very thoughtful email from a new reader that I thought perhaps would be of interest to some of you. I'm sharing it with her consent, in the hopes that some of you might have responses to her questions. I myself have many responses, as many of her questions go right to the heart of the reason I started The Disciplined Feminist in the first place. However, I'd rather not let her email languish in my inbox until I have an opportunity respond, so perhaps some of you can begin the dialogue?

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Hi

I started reading your blog about DD and it really is fascinating. I am 34 and contemplating the whole DD thing but haven't told hubby yet until I am sure it is a path I really want to take.

The adult/child idea is very interesting. I do not think I am an emotional adult and have spent years pretending to be one, which is why DD appeals to some part of my inner-child. I think perhaps you really do have something there - it makes a lot of sense from a psychological viewpoint. It is often women who are strong, feminist and intelligent with a moral conscience and well developed sense of 'justice' who want to seek "punishment" or consequences for their misbehaviour. Most probably due to the strong feelings of guilt associated with doing what they know to be "the wrong thing" and the hope that in being punished their guilt will be washed away. However, I suspect it is also the "strong moral conscience and well developed sense of justice" that stands in the way of really embracing the principles of the DD lifestyle.

DD seems to have just enough of 'whatever it is that is missing from the modern relationship' to get the average, sensible, reasonably intelligent, emotionally-starved modern woman interested, and yet also has just enough inconsistencies, double standards and patriarchal overtones to give that same woman an uncomfortable gut feeling that there is something 'not-quite-right' about it too. At least that is how I am feeling about it, and the reason I am struggling and asking complete strangers questions!

One question I have is, do you think that maybe what makes the whole DD power struggle and double standards an issue is that it goes against fairness, equality and all the feminist teachings that most Generation X women have grown up with?

Also - I came across an interesting fact, did you know that the most common form of medication prescribed in the traditional marriage/Early baby boomer generation was VALIUM? Perhaps that makes being submissive easier?????

I find there are two main aspects of DD that I find difficult to process, the first is FAIRNESS, and what to do when I am angry with something HE has done - I could see myself in your comments about "When I am Angry".
The second is that I have children, mostly girls, and I look at what DD "teaches" and whether it is what I would want my girls to learn - do I want my girls to grow up to be submissive women who hand over the reigns of their life, their happiness, their emotional well being to a man ? The truth is, if they find a man who is worthy, respectable, strong, honest and displays all the positive masculine values and holds his own behaviour to a very high moral standard, then perhaps that would be ok, if it made her happy. BUT how likely is that to happen these days??? The finding a man with those traits I mean? (Even "Dr Phil" had several affairs in his first marriage! and I wouldn't want to be Robyn would you?) So honestly, I think my girls, with that teaching, would get eaten alive in a modern world.

Still, I am a 34 year old woman with a Masters Degree in Education, seven children and a husband who is a far cry from an "Alpha-male". I grew up with a weak father and a matriarch for a mother, so I could just be trying to go to the other extreme!

Goodness human beings are complicated! Really what we all want is to be HAPPY!

Adult vs Child

Apologies for the delay in posting this month's (August) article. I deeply appreciate those of you who comment and participate when I can't to keep our discussion going -- and I especially appreciate those of you who emailed me to make sure I was okay and that my slightly longer than usual absence wasn't indicative of any personal crisis. (It isn't. Just new job, long hours, high stress, etc.)

Several of you wrote comments in response to the prior article that included your thoughts on whether or not women who engaged in DD were adults. This an intriguing issue and it seems worth exploring a bit further.

In interest of stirring up a bit of controversy up front to make things interesting (!), my short response to this is that, no, I do not believe that women (myself included) who engage in DD are adults.

As I've written before in other posts, I believe DD to be, at its heart, a reaction to a deeply felt need for boundaries and accountability that is often absent in our culture, most notably as the result of so-called "progressive" parenting ("DD as a Reaction to Me-Generation Parenting") that emphasizes individual expression and personal freedom over boundaries and consequences. I've also mentioned in prior articles that DD seen in this light is an extremely healthy way for our infinitely-creative psyches to get what's missing in our lives in a way that feels safe, fair and straightforward. (see just about every entry!)

(DD does, of course, have other archetypal origins, and some day I'm actually going to write the article that explores those...)

My underlying theory here is that DD is first and foremost a re-parenting process -- a method of gifting our inner child with the experiences of being held accountable to rules and boundaries. That means that the role of the submissive partner in a DD relationship is at its core that of the externalized inner child. Spanking, scolding, corner time, grounding -- all experiences that are, of course, strongly associated with childhood rather than adulthood.

Being able to safely give up our adult selves to experience this powerful cycle of guilt, justice and forgiveness is, I believe, at the heart of what makes DD so appealing to many women. It's also what separates true DD (real punishments for real misbehaviors) for S&M sex play or disciplinary fantasies). I believe the need for some of us to have it "be real" to be effective is our strongest clue that something developmentally significant -- essential even -- is going on for us.

I believe that to fully understand and benefit from the DD experience requires us to let go of the illusion that women who have a strong need to DD are adults. We are not. If we were, we would already have progressed through the developmental stage that DD fulfills a need for.

Our society has systematically done away with most of the primitive tribal rituals that used to help people transition from childhood to adulthood -- mostly ritual pain experiences that are now viewed as barbaric but serve a critical developmental function of helping us to make the transition to adulthood. As a result, we have an entire culture of people, male and female, who live as adults, are legally considered adults, and have adult bodies and responsibilities, but who fundamentally do not have the emotional maturity and capacity of a fully grown being.

For all kinds of reasons, including social conditioning and weak parenting, they/we are lacking the internalized "strong parent" that is required for the child to become an independent, emotionally self-supporting, confident individual.

Some might be offended at the idea that women who crave DD are child-like. I hope those of you who are feeling a bit offended might re-think any perceptions our society has instilled in us that children are stupid or simple. Children are, in reality, vibrant, creative beings who actively seek out what they need to strive and grow into healthy adults. And women who seek out the loving solution of DD as a way to become healthy adults are demonstrating a striking amount of courage, creativity and resiliency that many others in our culture with similar needs (and that's probably most of us) don't demonstrate.

Most readers will probably agree that DD is one of the most elegant, simple and effective ways of meeting our unmet developmental needs -- of literally turning those of us who look like and live like adults into actual functioning adults by allowing us to turn back the clock to childhood to get the type of discipline and structure we need to complete our journey.

As I experience DD in my real life -- along with that empowering feeling of taking such literal and simple responsibility for my actions -- I can feel myself filling that long-unmet need. I'm literally growing up before my own eyes.

Becoming a real adult instead of a pretend one.

"Maintenance" vs Discipline: A Question of Conscience

Most of the spankings in our relationship in the past few months have been "maintenance" spankings -- meaning, spankings that aren't motivated by any particular misbehavior but are intended rather as a general attitude adjustment or stress reliever.

I suspect that the emphasis on maintenance spankings in our relationship is largely because my partner and I are still struggling with the Big Problem we have with regard to DD (Domestic Discipline): I rarely misbehave in a way that, to me at least, is unambiguously my fault. (see "When I'm Angry").

I virtually always believe that my behavior is either not inappropriate at all, or if it is inappropriate, is a response to something nefarious and egregious that he did first, and thus my misdeed is at the very least, equal to his and therefore justifiable -- and therefore shouldn't merit a one-sided discipline. (and no, there's no way in h*ll I'd even consider spanking him. That would, I believe, completely ruin the archetypal male/female energy of DD and undermine his role as an authority figure much the same way that a child spanking a parent would).

At any rate, the reason that I generally receive maintenance spankings is most likely that they're safer than disciplinary ones because they don't require a judgement about fault or blame and can be given "just because."

Our habit, therefore, has become to ignore anything that would require an actual, specific disciplinary response and focus on periodic, general-purpose maintenance spankings instead.

This is, of course, a problem in a DD relationship, as there's a reason that it's called "Domestic Discipline" and not "Domestic 'Just Because'".

In addition to the problem of the Perfect Paddle, I suspect that the emphasis on maintenance spankings is equally responsible for the disappearance of all those wonderful empowered feelings I used to get from DD that have been noticeably absent since my return to my partner's city.

The disciplinary "bad girl" component of a spanking, for me, is crucial to the overall experience. I need to feel the knot in my stomach (and nervous tingling elsewhere) that tells me that I've done wrong and now I need to pay. I need to feel the embarrassment and humility of knowing that I've "got it coming" for a specific mistake I've made, that what's to come is not a favor or a way of helping me relieve stress (not directly anyway), but a fair consequence for an error that I've made.

And I need the security of knowing that when things go wrong in the relationship, there are specific, concrete consequences rather than the vague, silent tension that exists when there is no specific discipline given. And in the moment, I need my disciplinarian to be stern, distant and without visible compassion, not loving and supportive (that comes after).

Feeling guilty, then punished or disciplined, and then subsequently cleansed and forgiven, is so much a part of the cathartic, transformative experience of DD for me that without it, it's pretty much just theater. Perhaps minimally satisfying in the moment for its sexual subtext, but without any lasting psychological or relationship benefits.

This cycle of guilt/discipline/forgiveness is one of the many elements that separates DD from more deliberately erotic and sexual forms of pleasure/pain play, and puts it closer to the cathartic ritual pain practiced by many religious movements throughout the ages (starting well before the Catholic monks) as well as traditional parent/child punishments.

As human beings, most of us have consciences -- and a desire to cleanse them periodically. Unfortunately, our culture has precious few outlets for clearing one's conscience. The Catholic Church has the Rite of Confession, but most of us, of course, aren't Catholic. For most of us, unless we receive a speeding ticket, a library fine or a reprimand or other disciplinary action at work, there are very few healthy mechanisms in contemporary culture for expunging adult guilt for a transgression (and precious few mechanisms for kids either, thanks to so-called "progressive parenting" -- see "DD as a Reaction to Me Generation Parenting")

Much of the power of DD -- whether we realize it consciously or not -- comes in its ability to formalize and provide a safe, contained way of cleansing our consciences for wrongs that we've done to ourselves and those around us. To remove the element of guilt/punishment/forgiveness from the DD experience by giving too many spankings "just because" risks removing the basic psychological element that makes DD "work."

That's not to say, of course, that there isn't a place for role playing, erotic spanking and other non-disciplinary activities -- of course there is and those things can be a lot of fun, but at their core, they generally (though not always) lack the psychological element of conscience-cleansing that's inherent to DD. As an example, my "Perfect Paddle" was indeed perfect -- for sex play and fantasy, but not for discipline. (and has accordingly been shelved by mutual agreement between my partner and myself)

The difference between DD and these more sexually-oriented activities is that DD speaks directly to the very real, very human need to pay for one's crimes. And I suspect the growing appeal of DD has much to do with the lack of socially-acceptable ways for adults to pay for our transgressions, in a culture where anything goes and too many people seem to believe they have the "right" to treat anyone any way they please without consequences. (If you want to experience this lack of personal responsibility directly, just try asking someone to put their dog on a leash or not park their SUV in a compact spot and see the reaction you get.)

Deep down, the wiser, better part of us knows we don't have the "right" to behave badly just because we're adults, whether we push that knowledge away, cover it up with aggression and bravado, or acknowledge it. Those of us who recognize our need for DD are fortunate to be at least a little bit more in touch with our social and personal consciences than many of those around us -- which gives us a better-than-average shot at being better, more decent human beings than we would otherwise be.

Whether or not DD is ultimately a viable lifestyle option remains to be seen -- the surge of interest in this lifestyle seems the beginning of a social experiment in human behavior, sex roles and power in relationships. Time will tell whether or not the Big Problem of how to deal with the dominant partner's transgressions will be DD's undoing.

But divorcing DD from its fundamental role as a mechanism for regularly and safely experiencing the cycle of transgression, justice and forgiveness is doing the lifestyle and the people who take great personal risks to practice it a grave disservice.

If there is an answer to DD's Big Problem, it lies somewhere beyond removing one of the primary elements that make DD such a potentially healthy relationship choice.