Interrogating, Probing and Monitoring in an FLR-DD Spanking Relationship
When it comes to effective discipline, you get the behavior you measure and monitor.
As I note at the end of each article, for several years now, I’ve maintained a blog that is basically a discussion group for men (and over the years, several women) who are in Female Led and Domestic Discipline (adult disciplinary spanking) relationships.
To promote a lively conversation, the weekly posts center on a discreet topic or question. Last week, one of the commenters suggested this:
This may be a separate topic, but I wonder how common it is for wives or girlfriends to ask regularly, during scolding, or while having a “discussion,” etc., about behavior she may not have witnessed. Both women who have disciplined me have used versions of it and it is a game changer for me when used to work on a particular behavior.
I confess if she directly asks about behavior that I would never self-report. Lying of any kind is not an option when she asks. Part of it is just the insanity of being untruthful when I have asked for discipline, and part of it is just the utter power she assumes in asking: “Have you been obedient?”
But the greatest impact on me comes from the message that she cares about the behavior and will use her authority to control or stop it. Caring about the behavior is why I respond so positively to being asked. If a woman wants to modify male behavior — making her expectations clear and then asking regularly if he has been obedient — is a sure path to success ( at least if the culprit is me).
Our new “goal-settting” check-in process.
The commenter’s suggestion was time, as I’d been thinking for several weeks about a process for using disciplinary spankings to “motivate” me to apply myself more diligently to long-term life goals.
I’m in my mid-50s, but I semi-retired about three years ago. (Have I said before that disciplined husbands not only often aren’t submissive followers at work but, in fact, tend to be very successful?) The first two years went well, but last year I kind of stalled out.
I had lots of things on my list of activities I wanted to explore and contributions I wanted to make once I got off the career hamster wheel. Yet, I found myself chronically unmotivated to do any of them.
I’ll write more about this in another article, but I blogged about using disciplinary spankings to help meet personal goals, as opposed to their more traditional use for behavior correction.
But, I had never suggested anything like that to my wife, because I assumed she wouldn’t be interested in motivating behavior that wasn’t having a negative impact on her. Surprisingly, after reading the topic on my blog she brought up the possibility of using domestic discipline to give me the motivation I seemed to be lacking.
She said, “I have no problem at all devoting some time and attention to making you the best You you can be.”
To support this new twist on our disciplinary routine, I proposed a monthly “check-in” meeting, at which we would go over my list of goal-oriented action items and, if sufficient progress had not occurred, she would order one or more hard spankings.
She quickly countered that monthly wasn’t frequent enough. She wanted weekly. We also agreed that, since we would be having a meeting anyway, we should expand it to include a general assessment of my behavior.
Finally, we agreed the meeting would include her asking me: “Is there anything you think you should be spanked for?”
Self-reporting is freaking hard.
This would be a new thing for us. We’ve talked (and talked, and talked) about having some kind of check-in process, but it’s never really taken hold.
My wife has, until now, never been big on actively probing for misbehavior or rule-breaking that she doesn’t personally witness.
And, while I have been interested in using something like a reporting or check-in process to promote more consistent discipline, that always seems to be in the abstract.
When the rubber meets the road — or the wood meets the bottom — I suddenly become very uninterested in ratting on myself.
The reason is obvious — real disciplinary spankings hurt! A lot! It’s one thing to recognize you’ll benefit in the end from being held accountable. It’s another thing entirely to, in effect, hold yourself accountable by reporting something she doesn’t know about.
Interrogating, probing, and monitoring.
Since self-reporting may be . . . challenging . . . for a husband who gets real disciplinary spankings, a wife who wants to ferret out all his bad behavior may need to be more than a little proactive.
Aggressive even.
We take a lot of our inspiration from the old Disciplinary Wives Club (DWC) website. While the DWC’s Aunt Kay had a lot to say about lecturing and scolding immediately before and during a spanking, the DWC website doesn’t say much about how much a wife should work to find out about behavioral offenses that she didn’t personally witness.
However, the DWC produced and sold a handful of publications, and I did find a few snippets of advice for the Disciplinary Wives:
“Discipline should have a positive effect. It is a waste of your time to continually address the same situation, and it also undermines your authority. The best way to make sure you are succeeding in bringing a change about is by being very specific about what you expect to see and closely monitoring for the results.
Just like you would closely supervise a child to make sure that they were practicing the habits you sought to instill in them, you must do this with your husband as well. This is especially true until he has earned your trust by showing you that he does keep his promises.”
And this:
“Your success begins with cultivating your observation skills. The more you are aware of what your husband is doing, the less likely it is that you will find yourself losing control. As a DWC wife, you are absolutely entitled to ask your husband about anything you want to know and to expect an honest answer.
Sure you may get resistance, just like from any bad boy who doesn’t want to tell. But, he has asked for a DWC relationship, he really wants one, and deep down inside he does want to tell you everything.
If you have had the responsibility for supervising or raising children, you will recall that it took extra alertness to always be aware of where they were and what they were doing. If you haven’t had that kind of experience don’t worry about it. Just go along with me now and you will get the idea anyway.”
She also offered the men guidance on accepting their wives’ authority, including have their behavior monitored and scrutinized:
You will have to put up with closer supervision than you are used to and she will demand answers and evidence of your performance. This is perfectly normal and how it is supposed to be. If you feel resentful about this or don’t want that kind of accountability, remember how maternal discipline occurs in a “child -parent” situation. The child cannot simply wiggle out from under his Mother’s watchful eye. If you are honest with yourself, you will admit that when you get your spankings, it is that bratty little boy part of you who is getting it.
Monitoring and probing foster consistency, and consistency is key to effective discipline.
As I said, monitoring, probing, and interrogation have never been a big part of our DD lifestyle, though we seem to be moving more in that direction.
And, I know myself well enough to predict that, as that happens, I probably will resent it, just as Aunt Kay warned.
But, it also will probably prove to be a very important part of reinforcing our agreed-upon hierarchy.
It also emphasizes the “maternal” element that we are both increasingly comfortable admitting is part of our dynamic. Being probed about my behavior during our recent check-ins is humbling in a way that undeniably evokes being subjected to hard questioning from a parent or teacher.
In reviewing the DWC material in preparation for this article, I was a little surprised at the extent to which probing for bad behavior and expecting an honest answer were expressly tied to a maternal dynamic, but for me, it certainly has that tone.
However, I’m not so tied to the gender dynamic. It feels like being subjected to a parent’s authority, rather than something exclusive to the maternal role.
Regardless of the specific emotional vibe it entails, my wife’s efforts to more actively probe for details about my behavior — and about whether there are things I feel I should be spanked for that she hadn’t picked up on — is part of developing an ongoing acceptance that bad behavior will be revealed and dealt with, and that can only help with bringing about real behavioral change.
How my wife monitors behavior.
We are kind of newbies at this monitoring and reporting thing, but my wife has always had ways of monitoring my behavior at some level.
Journaling is an important, ongoing part of it.
For most of our domestic discipline relationship, I’ve shared a journal with her in some form. Although, it’s more about giving her better visibility into what I’m thinking and feeling, sometimes that includes confessing to things she doesn’t know about or candidly stating that I think some particularly egregious bit of bad behavior merits a hard spanking. Believe me, those are very hard entries to write.
She also has taken advantage of the latest technology to keep track. She’s always insisted that I have my “Find My iPhone” app settings enabled such that she can see where my phone is and, hence, monitor where I am.
When I was working, it was a way for her to track whether I was slaving away at the office into the evening or, rather, had popped out for a team happy hour. That may seem intrusive, but the unfortunate fact is I have had issues around living my life like a beer commercial, and it’s something she’s always been empowered to rein in.
Probing is a confidence builder, but it’s kind of a “chicken and the egg” thing.
I have to imagine the biggest impediment to a wife following Aunt Kay’s advice is a lack of confidence.
Her response to that concern, while not expressly stated, is implicit in the advice itself:
But, he has asked for a DWC relationship, he really wants one, and deep down inside he does want to tell you everything.
Her advice for getting past any intial reluctance boils down to, “Even if you’re not comfortable with this at first, trust me. Try it. He wants it.”
That advice could and should be given to any wife who finds herself unexpectedly confronting an earnest husband asking her to try a Female-led disciplinary spanking relationship.
However, gaining confidence is a process. Some people are innately confident, but others can and do develop confidence with time and practice.
When we first began our DD lifestyle twenty years ago, my wife probably didn’t have the innate confidence to probe actively for information in the way Aunt Kay suggests.
But, she now has twenty years of additional DD and life experience, and the two have been mutually reinforcing. Taking on the disciplinary role made her more confident in other aspects of her life, and as she grew more confident in those other roles, it inevitably spilled over into her confidence in controlling our disciplinary arrangement.
Today, she is much more comfortable going into “strict teacher” mode to ferret out the information she wants.
I hope this article was helpful for those of you who may be considering giving this lifestyle a try or looking to take an existing FLR or disciplinary relationship in new directions.
If you would like to discuss these issues directly but don’t feel comfortable leaving a public comment, feel free to reach out to me at dwc_husband@proton.me. If you’d like to be part of a wider discussion with others who are in this lifestyle or interested in exploring it, drop by a blog I’m associated with. www.disciplinedhubbies.com. The comments are moderated to keep out the crazies and the trolls, and participation by both disciplinary wives and disciplined husbands — or those who are interested in being one of those — is encouraged.
