DD and what it means to me

Well where do I start, the whole concept of domestic discipline is such a complicated subject to get your head around, in fact it is hard enough to explain it even to myself, and I am living it. Nearly every day I experience some of its many positive benefits, some of these I expected to encounter when we started with this journey but we have discovered yet more positive facets which I could never have imagined as being linked to such a lifestyle.

I try to look at myself as an outsider would and imagine how I would explain to them why on earth someone like me; intelligent, strong, capable, opinionated, feminist leaning, highly responsible, with fulfilling, well paid career and the 'perfect' family, own car/house/teeth, could possibly experience anything positive in agreeing to have her bottom regularly and painfully spanked by a man if she should step out of line and break 'the rules', even if these are rules to which she has previously agreed.

This is indeed the paradox of DD, at face value it does not seem possible for it to work, after all why would anyone in their right mind agree to let someone else 'assault' them. As this clearly does not make any sense one must assume that any woman who is prepared to do this must obviously be desparate, have no self worth or perhaps is just plain crazy. If she is not then her partner must be a manipulative bully at best and a 'wife-beater' at worst.

But DD cannot work if any of the above are true, there has to be a balance in the relationship, both parties must be equals in the relationship, equal but with different roles. For a ship to function effectively it cannot have two captains...

Lookout: Iceberg dead ahead, whatever shall we do?
Captain A: Righto, I see it too, hard to port Steersman,
Captain B: No, no, no, that will never do, Steersman - hard to starboard,
Steersman: So which way should I turn?

CRASH

Lookout: To the lifeboats, abandon ship
Captain A: I'm supposed to say 'abandon ship'
Captain B: No, I'm supposed to say it

...glug, glug, glug ...

Ah, so that is what happened on the Titanic, but I digress, clearly someone has to have the final say, the ultimate authority to ensure the safety of the vessel and all who sail in her. For that authority to be meaningful and effective they have to be someone who is respected and trusted by those underneath them, or at the first sign of difficulty chaos will ensue and people will get hurt.

For me this is one of the many aspects which underpins a DD relationship, to ensure that the relationship remains healthy, one needs to lead and the other to follow. But to follow you have to trust that wherever you are led you, will be safe.

Part 1 - Welcome, Wilkommen and Bienvenue

Well, how does one start, I am rather new to this whole blogging thing, but I have been so inspired by the other women who have decided to chronicle their own domestic discipline journeys (thank you Sara - findingsara.wordpress.com, C - rncblog.blogspot.com and Vivian - disciplinedfeminist.blogspot.com) that I have also decided to put pen to paper, well fingers to keyboard to be pedanctically correct, to try and capture my own slow progress down the sometimes rocky, sometimes glorious road which is DD.

Given the nature of the blog I will, of course, dedicate it to my wonderful HoH who since we started, our albeit short, DD life journey has been both a tower of strength and a smacker of bottoms, well actually just the one - mine!

Given the nature of the blog I will, of course, dedicate it to my wonderful HoH who since we started, our albeit short, DD life journey has been both a tower of strength and a smacker of bottoms, well actually just the one - mine!

So as this is "The Beginning" I suppose I should start with some kind of introduction, so here goes ... warning it may, no will, be long and rambling ...

My partner and I stumbled across the concept of Domestic Discipline (DD) completely by accident, while we were, to be honest actually searching for something erotic on the subject of spanking to augment our sex life. Reading blogs from the ladies listed above and the LDD site literally turned my life both upside down and inside out, just blowing my mind. It was if the pieces of a jigsaw which had been jumbled up for so many years inside my head had just suddenly fallen into place to reveal the image of the 'ready made solution to my problems', if only I had realised that it was "all so simple". Three months ago I had never heard of DD and now I cannot imagine living without it.

I am in my early forties with a partner in his late thirties, we have been together for a couple of years and intend to get married in the not so distant future, just need to find the time! I was married once before and have until I met my partner been bringing up, single-handedly the children from this marriage who range from primary school age to mid teens. This I had been doing at the same time as holding down a full time job in an extremely technical and male dominated environment. I have worked in this industry since I completed my Masters Degree nearly 20 years ago and am now in a senior position responsible for managing projects with large budgets typically in the 10 to 15 million Dollar bracket and have a pretty good salary commensurate with this level of responsibility.

Life has been very challenging, due to issues around my own childhood (I'll probably bore you all with more details of this in later blog entries) I picked the wrong man to marry and spent the whole of my marriage "wearing the trousers" in the relationship, bearing all of the financial, practical and emotional burdens of the family, taking on, mostly out of necessity (my ex neither had the ability nor the desire to do this) but also, to be truthful, partly as it is my nature, the Head of Household (HoH) role as well as the more traditional role of wife and mother. When I finally woke up and 'smelled the roses', extricating myself somewhat painfully from the marriage, I naturally carried on performing this role, knowing no other, acting for the last 5 years as both father and mother to my children, as well as providing the roof over their heads and the food on their table.

This was an extremely difficult and stressful time, bringing up 'lots' of children alone is hard at the best of times but doing this whilst working full time, as your life and theirs falls apart is for most people an impossible task. Indeed, I know I could not have survived these last few years if I had not been an incredibly strong, determined person. Some, might of course call me stubborn but I would counter that it was this stubborness that helped to save my life and bring me back from the brink of suicide on more than one occassion.

Today, after many years of therapy (!!) I can finally say that I am extremely proud of my achievement in both my professional life and with my children's progress, however, as to my success as a wife, this was as you may have gathered, a different story...

However, as I suspected, and you probably feared, this introduction has turned out to be rather (too) long, so to enable you all, gentle readers, to have a comfort break or to put the kettle on for a nice cup of tea, I'll stop here and put the rest in - "The Beginning - The Sequal".

Thank you for your perseverance in reading thus far, you deserve a medal, I hope you will stick around to enjoy - Part 2!

Hil

Part 2 - the beginning continued !

Well after part 1 you would, by now, probably be thinking that me finding a fantastic man was a lovely end to a long and difficult story, but sadly this was not to be the case and this was solely my fault.

In this new partnership, as was the case in my marriage I still held on firmly, obsessively even, to the balance of power. Although my partner has an excellent reputation in his profession, it is not very well paid and I thus earn several times what my partner makes. I also have the kids, house and rest of the 'trappings of wealth' whilst he has very little to his name, other than a lot of rather old and awful cars and suits (sorry Darling!). Due to issues in his own past, he is also not a particularly strong or self-confident person and is gentle by nature I thus exploited him mercilessly. Having held the role of HoH for so I was not able, nor it seems willing to surrender this familiar role, despite the fact that what I knew I both wanted, and desperately needed, was a strong, dominant husband to take care of me. I wanted, desperately wanted, to relinquish the HoH role, which, in fact, I should never have had in the first place, and submit fully to his authority.

What we clearly needed was a way to redress the balance of power in our relationship, whilst I still thought I should retain the "HOH" roll for my children, I obviously needed to submit totally to him in our relationship, to let him take care of me. But the way that I was treating him, was often totally insulting and disrespectful, sort of constantly challenging him to take the dominant HOH role, whilst ensuring that he never got the chance to do so, due to my 'vitriolic' nature and his reluctance to fight back in case he upset me. As there were no consequences for me for this appalling and destructive behaviour, I continued to repeat it ad infinitum. He loved me so much he was prepared to put up with my behaviour because he did not want to leave me. I knew that this was not the way I wanted our life to be, I so despised myself for behaving in that way, but just seemed unable to stop. I was destroying our relationship, and I realised that I would do anything to make sure that we stayed together. This time, for the first time in my life, I did not just want to be with him because I was afraid of the alternative, being alone, I wanted to be with him. I knew I did not deserve such a wonderful man and I hated myself so much for behaving in this way but I just could not find a way to put on my 'brakes', everything just seemed so dark and depressing.

Then, we read the blogs on DD which I mentioned in part 1 of this introduction and it seemed as if the lights were switched back on, on full beam! The more I read about these strong, capable, highly intelligent women the more I realised that it was if they were describing me. The experience was overwhelming and somewhat scary, it seemed as if these women could read my mind. But, here in a most unlikely guise, for a seemingly dominant woman like myself, was the solution to all our problems, an ideal way for my partner to become my HOH and to take "proper charge of me". A way that ensures that I am forced to relinquish the HOH role, and submit, giving my partner both the space to take up that role and grow into it, and the tools to maintain it. I was going to have to suffer real consequences if I stepped out of line and broke any of the rules which we would jointly agree upon, and I would have to learn to submit, fully, to him.

DD finally makes me step on those brakes, both for my sake and his.