267. Free to be: Seeking Domestic Discipline

I wrote in my last post I had a lunch date that I was a little late to.  It was with my friend Valerie – one of my “lunch bunch” friends.   And what of Mike’s instructions of me?  I shared that he told me not to wear panties and he gave me one other instruction.  More on that “instruction” in a bit.

I found my friends situation fascinating, thus this post.  My fascination is less about her interest in Domestic Discipline and more about her fears, thus this post isn’t so much about “look at what she did,” and more about, “Wow, we often get in our own way when we try to seek fulfillment.”   

VALERIE
She’s a former co-worker, a few years younger than me, married just over 20 years, and a newly crowned “empty nester.”  If you read Post 222 you know I’ve come out to my friends about basically everything.  This prompted Valerie to talk with me privately about her own needs and desires.    

Valerie confided that she has always been a bit submissive with her husband.  Not in a D/s sort of way – deferring a lot to him and being more traditional in doing things for him.  She always got a thrill out of serving him, and even at times craved some discipline from him.  Not necessarily spanking, but she admitted to liking being scolded by him – something he doesn’t really do.  In fact, she described some of her behaviors to me that sounded an awful lot like “bratting,” to purposefully get a rise out her husband.

The concept of formal Domestic Discipline was foreign to her.  She always thought it was a role play thing, not a way of life thing, until she learned otherwise from me.   She has been in a heavily reflective mood with the last kid now out of the house.  Energized by my story, she feels she must do something to fulfill her needs.  She believes it is a great time to reinvent and reinvigorate her marriage.  

She wants to completely “come clean” on her past bisexual experiences as well as her current desires for DD – she wants to become completely vulnerable to him.  It is a scary thing, and not easy to do, thus she is looking to me for support.

HER MOTIVATION – “FREE TO BE”
She told me that they have always had a tendency to be a bit reserved with each other.  She figures after 20+ years of marriage, it’s a good time to stop being shy about various needs and desires.  She wants them to both feel “free to be” as she put it.  In my words, she is anxious to take all of who they actually are and present the “FULL” version of themselves to the other –  all their experiences, all their desires.  In essence, to finally be 100% vulnerable to each other.   

WHAT’S THE HOLD UP?
I have been talking to Valerie for three months and she still lacks the confidence to talk to her husband.  She called me over to her house to have lunch because she thinks she is finally ready, but needs a final pep talk.  I found it interesting to categorize all her excuses for not talking to him yet.  It illustrates just how hard open communication (vulnerability) can be. 

Fear of Rejection
She is afraid he might get angry, even though she admits it is unlike him to do so… but in her mind, “what if?”  This fear is hard to overcome, especially if you. . .

Lack of self-confidence
To allow yourself to be vulnerable you have to love yourself first.  While you need a good dose of self-esteem and self-confidence, you don’t have to think of yourself as Wonder Woman.  Just a generally good feeling about yourself and recognize the positive qualities you bring to the relationship.  It also means you don’t need your partner to define who you are or to complete you.   If you lack confidence, your insecurities will impact your mutual happiness.

In talking with Valerie I observed that none of her insecurities were rooted in anything her husband has ever said or done.  He sounds like a very loving partner.  Her insecurities were more rooted in her concerns over being judged by society, by her parents, and religious issues.  Keep in mind her parents are both deceased – but she still seeks their approval.   It was clear, in her mind, society, her parents, and her religion, has reinforced that she is not entitled to express herself or ask for what she wants.  She is basically to suffer, as that suffering is righteous and therefore fulfilling.   Ug!

We talked a lot about her marriage and I suggested to her that everything she has described to me about their relationship indicates she should be very confident that her husband will lovingly respond.   It seems clear to me that he never wants her to suffer and would move mountains to insure she doesn’t.

Appearing needy, emotionally imperfect
She felt she shouldn’t have such strong desires to want certain things from him, that perhaps her desires were not rational.  Sharing them could expose her as weak or needy.

This seemed like a submissive catch-22 to me.  Because she has always been naturally submissive to him, she feels expressing her needs goes against her own nature.   I found myself virtually reciting from many of my past posts, such as my Doctrine of Submission, or in discussing how you can’t hold someone else responsible for your happiness.   This ties back to the self-confidence issue.

Passive-Aggressive Behavior / Mind reading
I discovered that the two of them have been arguing more and more lately, and Valerie admitted she was the instigator.  She wasn’t just saying that out of some default thinking that everything is her fault.  She said she recognizes that she has been doing things like the silent treatment or doing other things to elicit feelings of guilt on his part.  Her justification is, “he should be able to figure out that I need something.”  In other words, he should be a mind reader. 

She was able to rationalize how counter-productive her behaviors are, but, said she just can’t help it.  I told her in my experience, passive-aggressive behaviors often come from not being 100% present in the relationship – that is, not being 100% herself, not being vulnerable, not meeting her needs first and rarely expressing them.  I believe those behaviors will go away once she discloses all her feelings to him.

This also reminded me of my discussion with my sisters about what it means to be degrading, unfair, and unhealthy.   Valerie’s behaviors certainly qualify. 

I suggested that her passive-aggressive behaviors and resulting arguments would be the perfect conversation starter.  “I know I’ve been overly sensitive and frankly a bit mean lately.  It’s because I have been trying to reconcile some things in my mind.  I now realize I need your help in doing that.  Can we talk?” 

LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH
I told her that what I have learned over the past three years or so was that love was not enough in my marriage.  I didn’t just want Mike to love me.  I wanted Mike to help me discover who I am and to help achieve the best version of myself. 

That required a lot of honesty and openness, with both myself and with Mike.  And through our journey, I also helped Mike discover who he is and help him achieve the best version of himself.

FINAL THOUGHTS
If you recall, the prior post ended with Mike giving me two instructions.  One is that I could not wear panties on my visit, and the other…..

“Valerie, since you are considering allowing your husband to discipline you, it might help you to see what a good spanking can actually do.  First off, I am not wearing panties because Mike forbids it – such are the types of rules I agree to be subject to.   Secondly, he told me to show you the results of the spanking I got just before I left the house and that I was to fully share the extent of the discipline I received.”

I lifted my skirt and bent over, exposing my backside to her.  It was still red.  I stayed in that position as I explained the full extent of my discipline…the soaping and the spanking.  I put my skirt down and sat back down once I finished explaining it.

I asked her thoughts.  She said, “That’s exactly what I crave from my husband. Well, minus the pee stuff.”   

Ha!  Yeah, I get it.   That revelation can be… ready for it?  here it comes….  “hard to swallow.”   And with that, she said she felt ready to have that conversation that night.

HOW DID IT GO?
He apparently took it pretty well.  She told me he was upset with her for keeping it a secret and not trusting him enough to have told him earlier.  But, the next day, told her he had some things to share of his own.  She didn’t tell me what it was, but, in simple terms, it’s what I see in most healthy relationships — vulnerability gets reciprocated. 

The resulting conversations yielded them sharing not just sexual experiences of their past which they never shared before, but talking about current dreams and desires, sexual and otherwise.  She was light on details, but said their sex life has been in overdrive.  And as for Domestic Discipline, she said she would like me to come over and talk to her about my Contract, as they are wanting to codify her Duties and Obligations!

How delightful!

Next: 268. When the Dom is Gone, the subs Get it On. . . . . . and a spanking

192. Vanquishing Negativity

Failure to understand the problem impedes any attempts to solve it.

If you’ve read enough of my posts, especially ones I’ve filed under Random Ruminations, I am someone who gets to the bottom of what I am feeling.  I keep at it until I am satisfied that I can reconcile what it was that triggered that emotion.   The reason I am that way is because I believe negative feelings are always symptoms of a problem. They are never the problem themselves.  Shining the brightest possible light on your feelings will help you get to the root of the problem.   

JENNY PSYCHOLOGY 
I am quick to play armchair psychologist.  I don’t have a degree in psychology, (but I was a school counselor and have a master’s in guidance and counseling).  So yeah, enough to play an expert on my blog.   No offense to you real experts out there.  Hey, if you disagree, then share your comments!

Example: “It makes me angry when you do x.”

You can deal with the symptom of anger by simply avoiding x.    Problem solved. Or is it?
More than likely, x will recur, and again you get angry.  In fact, other things may occur and you get angry at that as well.

Or, you can find out why x makes you angry.  You are likely to find it was rooted in far more than x.  There was a y and z that you didn’t realize were there.  Now address the root causes of  y and z, and suddenly, not only does x no longer anger you, but you are no longer unsettled by y and z that were subconsciously nagging at you.   Result- you are a happier you!

FIND YOUR TRUTH (Hint: it isn’t always going to easily reveal itself)
The challenge is having an open and honest dialogue with yourself.  Typically, this is where it goes wrong as the first fault is typically yours.  You fail to be honest with yourself, thus you justify your anger instead of confronting it.  To successfully confront it, you need to ask yourself “Why?” and whatever the answer, ask yourself again, “But why?” and then again, “But why?”  Keep doing it until whatever you are thinking soundly resonates with your soul. That’s when you know you’ve found your truth.

If you are honest with yourself, now you have to deal with being honest with others, and they must be honest with you.  That’s two more potential faults to overcome.  And where does all this honesty come from so that you can avoid the faults?   Hey, if you read my blog, I don’t have to say it.  Here it comes.  It’s that “V” word again. Vulnerability.  Many, many posts dedicated to that topic (just Google ddjennifer vulnerability). Lastly, sometimes all the vulnerability and honesty just aren’t enough.  That’s where I was with this.  I was stuck in trying to reconcile what I was feeling.   

I realized that I typically post about my feelings after I have reconciled them.  Thus, I probably come across as always joyful, always positive, etc.  Well, I am a joyful and positive person, but of course there are times I have to deal with stuff. 

This time, I posted before I worked through my issues.  Reason being was I was feeling stuck.  In other words, despite my best efforts I wasn’t connecting to the core of what I was truly feeling.  I had to really work through reconciling my feelings over the events I shared on my last post.    Writing about it helped. After I wrote about it, it just took one final talk with the three of us and it all started to come into focus.

REALIZATIONS
Here is a summary of the “mental walk” I went on:

PART 1:  My feelings about Kayla

• Sex that is raw, wild, and even crude, is not unfamiliar to me.  The three of us have been plenty “freaky.”  We have watched and have been watched by each other.  So it wasn’t the “rawness” that bothered me regarding Kayla, I am sure of that.
• I believe for me it “crossed a line” because it encroached on the “sanctity” of the Discipline Ceremony and Discipline Integrity.  However, those terms are unique to my Contract, not Kayla’s. 
• While Kayla’s submission has always been a “deeper, darker” submission than mine, until that moment her punishments still followed in the spirit of my ceremony and integrity.
• Part of what I was feeling was disconnected from what was happening.  That disturbed me.  But as I think about it now, I don’t have a right to require such as connection.  That connection is a bonus.  It is not an obligation that Mike or Kayla have towards me. 
• Her needs are different from mine. She is not me.  Mike has been phenomenal in treating us based on our unique needs and personalities.  I do not want Kayla to be treated like me, nor do I want to be treated like her.   
• My feelings that were at the root of my lack of compersion for what Kayla was experiencing were reasonable in the moment.  It was just something I never experienced before so it shook me a little.  I was thinking, “Does she really like that?” “Is that what she wants?”   
• Upon reflection, I see those questions were rooted in a bit of selfishness on my part.  “I” didn’t like that.  “I” don’t want that.  Thus, my selfish feelings disconnected me from the joy I normally feel for Kayla’s pleasure.     
• I rejoice in Kayla’s happiness with her dynamic with Mike.  I believe if I were to witness that incident again, I will feel joy for Kayla.

Part 2:  My feelings about Mike

• Although the rawness and forcefulness no longer bothered me regarding Kayla, it still bothered me regarding Mike.  It was like I was watching a part of him I hadn’t seen before.  That was unsettling as we’ve been married 26 years and experienced a lot of things sex-wise. 
• Clearly, I did not like watching him delivering discipline and having sex in the manner he was doing it.  But my initial reaction was more than just dislike.  The word that resonated when I thought of it was “safe.”  In that moment, I didn’t feel safe. In other words, I felt threatened.   Now that I had a word for my feeling, I can work on resolution. 
• To clarify, feeling threatened is not the same as feeling jealous, although they are close cousins of one another.  Feeling threatened can come from jealousy, but it can come from other places to.  
• In this case, since I most connected to the word “safe” I believe the threatening feeling was rooted in fear. Fear in that this was what Mike liked. This was what he wants. Not from Kayla, but from me.  And since I did not have any positive feelings about what I was seeing, I was fearful that I could soon be in Kayla’s place, experiencing that kind of sex with discipline.  
• I will do a lot of things for Mike that are not what I would choose absent Mike’s demands.   The act of doing them is an act of submission.   The boundless joy and fulfillment I get from the submission completely negates any thoughts about my own preferences.  My overarching preference is to do as he demands, not do as I prefer absent his demands.  BUT — 
• There are limits.  And this is one of them.  Mike and I talked about not mixing sex with discipline. I even wrote a little bit about it back in April 2016, as sex started to intertwine with our DD (POST 14).   We never talked a whole lot about it because our early talks were very clear and we understood each other.  Thus, it was a non-issue until this incident.  
• Mike and I had an honest discussion and he agreed that we would continue to keep sex and discipline distinct in our DD.  He said he had no desire to mix them and in addition, knows that I don’t either.  
• Mike is not promising he won’t do this again.  He might incorporate the two with Kayla, but now feels this should be relegated to a rare exception.  While Kayla enjoyed it, as did he, he understands the value of keeping them separate.  In fact, he said that after seeing how Kayla reacted– she was very into it–  withholding sex when she is getting turned on by the discipline will serve as another punishment all by itself. He just will have to be more diligent with any urges he is feeling.  

So there you have it.  I fully accept what happened.  In hindsight I am pleased that it worked for Kayla and Mike.  Further, I can accept a recurrence of it, with the caveat that it remains an exception.  I still believe I will have an issue with it if it were an everyday thing.  Both Mike and Kayla understand why that is, and at this point they agree that they don’t want it to be a “go to” thing.  With that, I am closing the file on this emotional incident and stamping it, “Vanquished!”

BUT WHY?
P.S.  This post didn’t get into why I want to keep sex and discipline distinct.  The three of us had a lot to share about that.  Suffice to say, it’s just how I am wired.  Since there was consensus, we saw no need to dive further into why it should or shouldn’t be distinct.  Such a deeper dive would have been necessary if Mike or Kayla felt differently.  I wonder what the discussion would have been if we needed this deeper dive, but there is no value in speculating.   Everyone is happy with the outcome.  That is, assuming we were open, honest, and vulnerable to each other,   Based on our history, I feel confident we were.

NEXT: 193. Lovebirds and Spankings

89. Spanking jealousy away

I last left you with my finding my “truth” regarding some negative feelings that crop up now and then regarding Donna and Kayla.  It has been very liberating to have identified the “enemy” within and constructively deal with efforts to purge it.   It’s a process, but all I have to say is “I am getting that feeling” and whether I am talking to Mike, Donna, Kayla, or some combination of the three or all three, they all lovingly and supportingly ask me to elaborate.   They don’t do it in a “good grief, there she goes with her stupid reaction…”    As I stated before, they recognize it as my “truth” and allow me to express what I am feeling at that moment of truth.   Saying it out loud is very healing.  It reinforces what I “logically know is true” which, repeated and shared enough in positive, affirming ways, should eventually evolve into what I “emotionally feel is true.”

I can already sense the feeling of jealousy is feeling less like jealousy and more like envy.  Both are still bad, but to me, jealousy is more toxic.  To me, jealousy feels like I am threatened and my mind goes into “fight or flight” mode or a “protect what I have” mode.  My heart races faster, the volume of my voice goes up, my mind needs immediate resolution of this dire situation.  It’s like envy+fear+anger.   Envy on the other hand, is just wanting what someone else has.  Envy has a touch of melancholy to it that jealousy doesn’t have.  It doesn’t demand immediate resolution.  It still isn’t fun, but it is not nearly as toxic as jealousy.

I find I get that feeling whenever I feel like I don’t have control, the glaring exception being the control I have voluntarily given up to Mike as his submissive.  One thing we learned is that with just a few words Mike can take this negative feeling that starts to bubble inside me and squash it with a firm command.  It’s like being submissive to him gives me all the permission I need to let go of trying to control anything.

Should I be punished for feeling jealous?
I had a conversation with Mike about what we should do when I have “those feelings (jealously/resentment).  Should I be punished?  Mike said that punishment felt wrong to him in this situation.  I respectfully disagreed.  I told him that punishments and submission have been very effective at reminding me of my commitments, which I value and cherish.  They help me internalize the fact I can’t and don’t want to control everything.  They focus me on our loving family and all the things I am grateful for.  So when I self-report that I got “that feeling” again, I am open to any punishment if he decides to give it.

So Mike got an idea for a special “jealousy” punishment.  He didn’t tell me what it was and said he would tell me when it became time to deliver it.  Well, that didn’t take long.

Donna shared with me some plans she and John are making for an upcoming vacation. They are deciding between several fun options ranging from a ski trip to possibly the Bahama’s, or a Southern California/LasVegas get away.  Their options are limited only by their time and money.  I got jealous of that. Mike and I could afford such trips, but it is the challenge of either finding someone to watch J, which I prefer not to do unless absolutely necessary, or finding a vacation that can both accommodate his physical needs and provide him a positive experience.  Again, really dumb for me to feel that way, but that’s my “truth” for now.

My Punishment
I shared this with Mike and he sent me to my room with a writing assignment of sorts.  I had 20 minutes to hand write a list of all the people and things I am grateful for and why – and I can’t repeat any of the “why’s.”  I was starting with a baseline of 100 spankings which would be delivered by hand and with “various” force, per Mike.  (Hand spankings are my favorite!).  He would then take off one spanking for each item I was grateful for.

At first I thought, no problem, that’s just 5 things per minute. I would be able to do that and not get spanked.  It was way harder than I thought.   The list of people and things were easy, but the “why” part was hard, especially as the list grew and I couldn’t repeat my reasons why.  After whipping (no pun intended) through about 15 in no time, I started to take longer and longer.  Penmanship always counts on writing punishments, so if I don’t write very neatly it doesn’t get counted. Plus, I didn’t have access to a thesaurus!

I got to 48, which I was very proud of.  Mike took off three because of sloppy writing, thus, I was left with 65 spankings.  I went over his knee and with Donna watching he delivered the 65.  At around 20-25 it began to sting, and starting around 40 it was beginning to be unbearable and I was flinging my body around quite a bit.  I actually like it when Mike holds me tightly and wraps his legs around mine to keep me from wriggling.  Then with about 10 to go he ramped up the force and finished with very hard ones. My ass was very red.

And that was that.  Mike said he had some variations of this in mind for future “jealousy” punishments, perhaps with different writing topics and different spanking implements.   Is it right for me to admit I kinda’ am looking forward to it?

Next: 90. Delightfully Naughty – Mike’s Date Night with Donna.