Excerpt: What He Wants

In the midst of pre-election frenzy, my apologies to Clare and Andrew at Variant for not posting the excerpt they wanted up sooner.  Here it is! 

This is the introduction to the latest book in the spanking series, "What He Wants."

Enjoy!

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INTRODUCTION:

 Dear Vivian,

Thank you for your books, they were really helpful in getting my husband to spank me –my first real spanking ever, finally!!!!!  I guess my question is, what next?  I mean, how do I get him to keep doing it?  It seems like he kind of loses interest. (reader email)

S

o there it is.

          We spend so much time fantasizing about, agonizing over, getting up the nerve to ask our partner for that first spanking.  When he finally says yes, it feels like our long journey to spanking bliss is over. Our problem is solved. We live in breathless anticipation of the next spanking, expecting a happy-ever-after spanking relationship to unfold as it does in our fantasies. 

And then, more often than not…nothing.  After that first spanking or two, it seems our partner’s lost interest.  Sometimes, it even seems like he doesn’t remember he ever spanked us in the first place. He promises spankings and then doesn’t remember to deliver them.  He says he’s too tired or too busy or “just not into it right now,” and sometimes he says these things in a not-very-nice way. And there we are, left in limbo, having had an oh-so-fleeting taste of the ecstasy of being spanked by our partner, only to have it all disappear without explanation. 

          The voices in our heads are relentless, full of doubt, guilt, shame and pain.  “Why did he stop?  Is he really just not into it?  Did he decide the whole thing is stupid, childish, ridiculous? Am I really going to have to choose between spankings and being with the person I love?”  Or, maybe worst of all, ”is there something wrong with me? Did I do it wrong?”

          The good news is that you’re not stupid, childish or ridiculous for wanting to be spanked, and there’s absolutely nothing “wrong” with you. The bad news is that there is likely something about the way you’ve been approaching being spanked by your partner is causing him to not want to do it. 

          This book is about fixing the thing that’s keeping your partner from wanting to spank you by sharing with you the secret to keeping your partner interested after that first spanking. As with most things related to spanking, the secret is very simple and very complicated all at the same time.

This secret is found in the title of the book.  It’s as simple as asking one simple question, “What does my partner want from a spanking?”  Because common sense tells us that if we make the act of spanking us more enjoyable for our partner, he’s more likely to want to do it more often and with more enthusiasm.  It’s as simple as that.  And as complex, too, because understanding what he wants requires making some profound adjustments in how most of us have been thinking about spanking.

Chances are good that this is be the first time you’ve consciously thought about what your partner wants out of spanking you.  If that’s the case, you’re not alone. Even after decades of work on this subject, it wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized that I’d never asked that question, either. More to the point, maybe, I’ve rarely, if ever, heard anyone else ask it, either.

That this question is seldom asked is in some ways surprising.  After all, those of us who want to be spanked are, by definition, seeking to enter into a relationship in which we want to submit in some very intimate ways to our partner and to his desires.  And yet, rarely do we focus on what those desires really are – or even that he might have them at all.

A big part of why we don’t think about what our partner might want out of a spanking goes back to the person we talked about a lot in the first two books – our Fantasy Spanker.

We all have a Fantasy Spanker. It’s the person in our fantasies who spanks us whenever, wherever and however we want.  He could be our fantasy version of our partner or our parent or a celebrity we have a crush on or our high school principal or babysitter or some faceless stranger with no particular identity.  Whoever he is in our heads, the relevant point is that he has no desires or needs of his own. In our fantasies, he’s entirely focused on what we want – he’s essentially a pre-programmed “spanking robot” with no function other than to fulfill our fantasies.

In How to Get the Spanking You Want, we talked about how our Fantasy Spanker gets us into big trouble when we try to get spankings in the real world from our real-life partner.  Too often, we assume that our real-life partner will do things the way our Fantasy Spanker does, and that’s where things go wrong – because of course, our real-life partner is not a pre-programmed robot, but an actual, living, breathing, thinking, feeling human being who isn’t going to do things exactly the way we fantasize about.

So it makes sense that that we might confuse our real-life partner with our Fantasy Spanker, and that we might also forget that our real-life partner has his own needs and desires with regard to giving spankings – and that those needs and desires might be very different from the ones we’ve projected onto our Fantasy Spanker.

          It’s this lack of attention on what our partner wants and needs from spanking us that I believe lies at the root of so many failed attempts to incorporate spanking into relationships beyond the first time or two. Oftentimes, we’re so focused on talking our partner into spanking us and worrying about getting what we want that we tend to forget that we have a responsibility for meeting his needs, too.

         

* From “getting” to “giving”

So is the problem that we’re selfish, thoughtless people who don’t care about our partners and just want things our way?  Of course not. Chances are good that you think about what your partner wants in all kinds of other situations, even if this is the first time you’ve thought about it with regard to spanking.  And that’s probably not an accident.  A big part of why the question, “what does my partner want from spanking me,” doesn’t get asked much may be rooted in the nature of spanking itself.

Most of us think of getting a spanking as a passive activity. When we think of getting spanked, we usually visualize ourselves as the submissive, passive recipient.  When we get a spanking, we don’t actually have to do anything except bend over and take our spanking when we’re told to and maybe not make too much of a fuss about it.  And if we do resist or behave badly, our strict, stern and commanding partner does the work of “taming the shrew” and putting us back into a submissive position. 

          Because of the naturally submissive nature of receiving a spanking, it’s likely that most of us have, however unintentionally, consistently approached spanking from a “me”-centered perspective.  Like the seagulls in Finding Nemo constantly chanting “mine, mine, mine, mine,” we spend most of our time focusing on how to get a spanking, how to get our partner to give us a spanking.  Why he’s not giving us the spanking that we want. 

          Perhaps you’re seeing that part of the problem is built into the very language that we use to discuss spanking.  Look at that last sentence again:

…we spend most of our time focusing on how to GET a spanking, how to GET our partner to GIVE us a spanking.  Why he’s not GIVING us the spanking that WE want. 

When we look at the language we use, it becomes clear pretty quickly that our traditional view of spanking is essentially a one-way street where our partner does the giving and we do the taking.

Perhaps it is, therefore, no surprise that our partners quickly tire of this arrangement, even if they might have started out being relatively enthusiastic about the idea of spanking us. No matter how much our partner loves us or wants to spank us, he’s still likely to get burned out in a situation in which he’s expected to give and give without getting his needs met in return.

          In this book, then, I’m going to suggest that one of the lost secrets of creating a long-term spanking relationship might be to begin by simply shifting our language.  What if, for example, we thought of ourselves as “giving” a spanking to our partner – not in the sense of turning him over our knee, but in the sense that we have an obligation to give him an experience of spanking that fulfills his needs and desires as well as our own?

     In my experience, this fundamental shift in mindset, from “I want him to give me a spanking,” to “what can I do to give him a positive experience during a spanking” is perhaps the single-most powerful key to building a long-term successful spanking relationship.  This book is about teaching you how to make that shift.

To order the book, please visit the link above or click here for the publisher's site.

Announcing the new book(s)!

At long last, Variant has given the official okey-dokey to announce two new books.

You've all probably noticed I hardly ever update the blog. It's not for lack of interest. I just tend to think better in big chunks rather than incrementally (short attention span theater...).  

 What He Wants: His Seven Secret Spanking Desires

Many readers who have used the techniques in the first two books to get their partner to spank them have written to me requesting a follow up book that talks about what happens after that first spanking. They want to know how they turn one spanking into a lifetime of satisfying spankings in the context of a committed relationship.

What He Wants is the beginning of answering that question, by talking about how to make sure that your partner gets what HE wants out of spanking you -- so he'll be more excited about doing it more often.

The official release date for What He Wants is September 15, but you can pre-order the book on the Variant website and save a couple bucks at the same time.       Book is now available!  Click below to order.


Stay tuned for an excerpt when I get a bit more time to post one!

You can get more information about pre-ordering What He Wants by clicking here.

And there's a second new book, The Little Book of Spanking Stories, a small collection of spanking fiction written by yours truly.

Back when I was a struggling young person making my way in the world, a friend of mine suggested to me that I should write erotica. There was good money in it, she said, and a reliable market.

I took her at her word, and began writing stories about what I found most erotic – the world of pleasure and pain, dominance and submission. In the pre-internet era, the market for stories of any kind was magazines, and I was fortunate enough to have my stories published in some prestigious publications, including Roy Turner’s iconic British magazine Domina, and the Australian spanking magazine, Paddles.

It was only years later, when I mentioned to my friend that I’d taken her advice and written erotica to support myself during those early years, that I discovered that when she’d suggested, “erotica,” she’d meant Harlequin romance novels, not actual erotica stories.

It’s a misunderstanding that served me well, as writing erotica stories for magazines with readers around the world all those years ago was one of many elements that helped me to deepen my understanding of the spanking and discipline fantasies and desires that I explore in my nonfiction books.

The stories in this little book are a few of my favorites from that time in my life – some of them published long ago in magazines that are now out of print, others published here for the first time.





You can get more information about The Little Book of Spanking Stories by clicking here.

Enjoy!

Warmest,
Viv

What's a Little DD Between Friends?

I recently received a question in my inbox from a reader asking if domestic discipline (DD) could work in a platonic relationship.

This reader's partner wasn't interested in DD, and she felt trapped and discouraged at the prospect of having to choose between staying with a partner that she loved and accepting that her deepest desire would go unfulfilled, versus leaving her partner and fulfilling her deep longing for DD. Her particular question was whether it would work if she stayed in her marriage and also engaged in DD with a close friend in a non sexual, platonic way.

I suspect many of us have experienced something similar, finding ourselves in a serious relationship with a partner who isn't interested in DD and fearing that we have to give up our longing for DD if we want to continue the relationship. It's a heartbreaking situation to be in. (It's also a big reason why I agreed to write the books on how to get your partner to spank you. )

As I've discussed in prior articles, I continue to believe that we all have, deep down inside, a primitive urge to act out biological sex roles -- which means that I feel strongly that almost any partner could likely be "triggered" to participate consensually in a DD relationship if the subject is approached appropriately.

For this article, however, I'm going to put that theory aside, and focus instead on the reader's original question and the issues related to it: Is DD outside of marriage an act of infidelity? Is it even possible to have a satisfying DD relationship outside of marriage? Can two close friends engage in DD and get the same powerful, intimate results as a committed sexual couple would?

To clarify, we're not talking for our purposes here about a simple, one-time spanking (the equivalent of a one-night stand). Whether or not visiting a professional dominatrix, disciplinarian, prostitute or even a good friend for an occasional spanking constitutes cheating on your spouse is a separate question (but I believe the short answer to that question is yes). We're talking here about entering into an ongoing, intimate DD relationship in which one person is consensually subject to ongoing discipline by a trusted other.

As those who have read my prior articles know, I believe that much of the deep attraction of DD for many of us is that DD is, first and foremost, a powerful, ritual method of connecting one person's inner feminine to another person's inner masculine (in whatever gender configuration). That primal feminine-masculine connection is, by its very nature, fundamentally sexual.

We are sexual creatures and whatever other civilized things we've been up to over the past several millennia, the fact remains that Mother Nature intended for us to reproduce, and to motivate us to do so, we have powerful, primal urges that are awakened through the sex act -- an act which, for the purposes of conception, virtually forces us into primal archetypal gender roles (the male giving, the female receiving). Whatever position one uses, whatever progressive sex roles one brings to the party, whatever high tech methods are used in the lab, the fact remains that to get pregnant, a man must ejaculate sperm (give) and a woman must take it in (receive it).

The primal masculine-feminine connection means that one of the biggest benefits to a successful DD relationship is that DD literally "hot wires" our circuits by creating a direct connection between two people's primal sexual selves. In receiving a spanking, the spankee experiences the undiluted feminine energy of submission. In giving a spanking, the spanker experiences the undiluted masculine power of domination. The spark is struck, the fuse is lit, and bang... a sexual explosion ensues, whether it's acted on or not.

I suspect that this direct connection between primal masculine and primal feminine is so innate to the power of DD that, if DD is even a little bit rewarding for those involved, that primal sexual connection is going to be forged regardless of whether the participants are romantically or platonically involved. If the two people involved weren't sexually attracted and romantically involved when they started with DD, it seems likely -- I would suggest even inevitable -- that they would become involved once things got underway.

All of which means that it might inherent in the nature of DD that it simply can't be -- or at least can't remain-- platonic. And that entering into a DD relationship with a non-sexual friend outside of a relationship, however well intentioned, is the proverbial disaster waiting to happen. The spark to the powder keg of sexual energy that, once released, burns out of control, destroying the "vanilla" relationship that it was originally designed to protect.

Perhaps there are exceptions -- cases of two people who have managed to create a long term successful DD relationship without sexual entanglement. But I'd be skeptical. It seems that in such a case, perhaps the relationship WOULD be sexual but perhaps not acted upon (which would make it, perhaps, emotional infidelity, if one believes in such a thing?). Or, most likely, the full power of DD isn't being truly explored within the platonic DD relationship.

Looking at that second option more closely, much of the benefit of DD seems to be that it's an incredibly powerful way to create intimacy between two people. If the ground rules going in are that the relationship must stay platonic, then almost by definition, all of our "cylinders" won't fire (to continue our automotive analogy). The platonic pair might get some of the catharsis and physical release of spanking, but they'd lose, I suspect, the mutual journey into and out of the liminal space of guilt, pain, punishment and forgiveness that is likely only possible with total surrender and the complete dissolving of boundaries and inhibitions. And this total surrender is almost certainly going to be precluded if, by definition, both partners are holding something back to avoid sexual involvement or surrender.

All of which is why I believe that the answer is, no, it is likely not possible to have a truly satisfying long term DD relationship outside of a romantic/sexual committed partnership. And that any truly rich and successful DD relationship, regardless of the intentions of those involved, will likely become more intimate and more satisfying (and thus more necessary) than your primary relationship, and so would likely jeopardize the existence of that primary relationship.

So we come full circle, back to what I believe is good news: that the basic masculine/feminine connection (again, in whatever gender configuration) is so primal precisely because it lives in all of us, however deeply buried. I continue to believe that the most reliable way to create DD in our lives is to build a deeply intimate, trusting, long term relationship with a partner. The more intimate and trusting that relationship is, the more likely it is that the reluctant partner will have the courage and love to dig deep inside and find their own primal sexual spark. And at the very least, the more likely they are to want to help us to express our deepest desires.

These are the benefits and long-term rewards of fidelity.