For this week's brunch, we considered the issues surrounding the initial introduction of the concept of adult spanking within a relationship. Almost by definition, this is treacherous ground. Your carefully nuanced responses captured both the danger and the opportunities inherent in making this first move.
I am totally amazed by your wonderful insight. The range of wisdom and experiences is awesome. Some made me want to dance with delight. Others forced me to fight back tears. I hope by sharing these perspectives, we can all learn a little more about this kink we love, the process of partnering, and perhaps even something about ourselves.
I would like to offer a special MBS welcome to Reesa, Siderite Guy, OPB, NS, Anon, and Pagan! I’m delighted to have you participate in our brunch. Each of you has a unique voice that is definitely worth hearing.Mija: I wish I could contribute something optimistic here -- though I guess if one spins for the big picture it is.
My experience with introducing someone to my interest was with my first husband (who at the time was my boyfriend / partner). I asked him what his fantasies were and then told him mine, revealing that mine tended to be all about spanking.
His response was that he thought this 1) did not fit any image he had of me, and 2) was probably the result of childhood trauma and a sign I needed therapy. My reply was that it wasn't really very important to me, just something I was thinking about.
This was really the first experience I had of feeling ashamed of my fantasies. My ex was older than me by 15 years (at the time of this conversation I was 19). It took almost ten years to recover my sense of self-confidence about my desires.
If I had it to do over again I would have believed in myself enough to talk more about my desires. And if the rejection of them by my ex continued, I would have backed away from the relationship there and saved myself the pain of an unhappy marriage and divorce.
The happy ending? The month I started realizing that my fantasies weren't something to be ashamed of (Feb 1997) I went onto what was then
alt.sex.spanking. There, I met Pablo.
Life is better now. :)
My advice? Don't let anyone, especially someone who loves you, tell you your desires are wrong just because they don't share them. Loving someone should mean finding a way to accept and understand.
Doc: I don't really have anything terribly optimistic either. When I first introduced the idea to my partner, it was as an "oh, by the way" kind of statement. It was mulled over and considered, kind of. Then we talked about it a little more, and I fear that I let my mouth get away with me because the moment "dominant" and "punishment" escaped my lips, I fear I may have sealed my fate.
We tried it once, the hand prints scared him. Then we tried it again. Then we had a fight about it that wasn't really a fight so much as a conversation that didn't go my way. He just can't do it for fear of becoming an abuser, not that that would ever happen. He fondles my rear more often now, and generally pays more attention to the area, but spanking is almost unheard of. When I do get a love tap, it's exactly that, occasionally a single stinger with the palm on a cheek.
In conclusion, we tried, but it didn't work. The coming out wasn't painful, but it didn't succeed.
Eva: When I first mentioned the idea to Adam he laughed and said "Why would I want to hurt you like that?" I never brought it up to him again. I felt like there had to be something wrong with me to want something that made him laugh.
Ten years later, my desires and the Internet got the best of me. He found my trail and we began talking and playing some. He didn't laugh then. Over the next five or so years, we were sporadic with it, meaning we'd go months and months without spanking. We knew by then, though, that it was part of us, that we enjoy it.
Finally, last summer our nest emptied out and we've been playing hard ever since. It's amazing what can happen when the inhibition of others (especially one's grown children) hearing is gone.
Finding all these blogs has been a tremendous boost also. Through them, spanking has become normal and not some taboo kink. I find myself these days having to bite my tongue here and there because it would be so easy to let something slip in my real world. I think Adam has the same problem because the other night our daughter was relaying a story to us about dorm life and his reply was "I'd have to spank them all."
I was a bit surprised that he would say that but very amused. He's... we've come a long way.
If I had it all to do over again, there's one thing I would change. Twenty years ago, I would have said "stop laughing, I'm serious." THAT is my only regret.
Jigsaw Analogy: I brought it up with my partner on our third date, or somewhere very early on in our relationship. I knew it was something I wanted in a relationship, and at that point, I had very much less to lose if she found it repulsive, or refused to be involved in spanking, or anything like that.
I brought up punishment more specifically a bit more than a year ago, and that was scarier. By that point, we'd been together nearly five years, and I had a whole lot to lose if she rejected me for it, and I would have had to choose between getting those needs met or having a life with the woman I love.
Fortunately, my wife, although she wasn't interested in spanking or punishment independently of me, has been very open to learning and exploring and stretching into new things.
The approach I used for spanking was just to tell her, in a shy and awkward way. I knew she was open-minded, and we started with small steps, and I was very clear throughout about how much I liked it.
I think my
blog was how I started with more direct discussion of the punishment side of things, and while it may not have been as direct, it certainly worked.
There's still a lot of discussion and figuring things out, but if I had it to do over again, I think I'd take the same approach.
I guess there isn't really any advice for people, since it all depends on the person you tell. Or maybe it's a matter of being clear about what you need from a relationship, and being clear about your relationship with the potential spanker. If they are a good, open, willing-to-stretch kind of person, it can work out well. Alternatively, it may also turn out that they are into spanking, too.
Diesel Diva: I "came out" so to speak over ten years ago to my husband of now 25 years. I think I must have scared him because he hasn't drank a drop in ten years... Coincidence? Yes, we've experimented with spanking, toys, etc., but he's not able to get past the whole "abuse" scene in his head. Although I fear it will be decades before he would initiate any play, he is willing to provide for my spanking needs when asked. I guess, for now, that's all one can hope for.
TX Spankogirl: I guess I've been luckier than quite a few of y'all. I brought up that I like spanking with my partner and he didn't think me strange. You should've seen the big smile on his face.
At first, it just started out with some swats from his hand during sex and that was OK, but a little frustrating for me. So I made it known that I'd like to try spanking before sex, not just during doggie-style intercourse. The next time we got together, he surprised me. We were at my place and he went to the kitchen and got a spatula. He told me to hike up my skirt, drop my panties and bend over. Well, I didn't get more than ten pretty light swats before we were all over each other, but it had him hooked on the idea. Lucky me! LOL
Both of us were very new at this. We're still fairly new. We’ve been playing for only about a year, or maybe a year and a half now. Like so many men, it took him a little while to get past the "I don't want to hurt the woman I love" issue. The more we talked about things (communication is SO important), the more open-minded he became about my needs. He knows now that this is not abuse. This is something I enjoy and something I need.
Our spankings are primarily erotic, and even punishments end up with us making love. I've only received a couple of serious punishment spankings (which I asked for by the way) and they were tough for both of us. Well, they're getting easier for HIM! LOL But there is always an element of sex in all our spankings.
I guess I lucked out. I had never REALLY been spanked before and he had never spanked anyone. I've been blessed to find someone so in tune with my needs and so willing to continue this adventure with me.
Don: I have been a spanker all my life. I probably spanked every gal I dated, including my wife, but I was never honest about it. Like many spanking enthusiasts, I hid my desires from everyone. In 1995, I did the pre-Google equivalent search on “spanking” and discovered
alt.sex.spanking which led to my understanding that I sure as heck was not alone.
So our ‘coming out’ was perhaps unusual. We were married for over twenty years before I got the nerve to be totally honest about my spanking interests. I had always made spanking either discipline based or light-hearted affairs. I never let on that it turned me on intensely. Once I made the admission, she chewed on it for awhile and then admitted to me that she married me because I was a take charge guy, and that she sometimes provoked me to spank her. My jaw must have dropped a foot. From that point, we were able to evolve to enjoying spanking as an erotic super-charged sexual activity.
Kallisto: My experience has been very different. Spanky has always been the one most interested in trying out new things. I don't know if I would ever have realized that I was into spanking if not for him. I found that I was aroused by reading stories (with encouragement from Spanky) that involved spanking. Not that those were the only stories I read, but those were the ones that got my attention. They all (or mostly) seemed to involve spanking as something fun, not with the punishment idea attached, and I think that made me more interested in trying it out. Spanky doesn't even pretend to understand the appeal of spanking, and sure doesn't want to be spanked, but he has always been willing to spank me. It was rather tentative at first, as he was worried about hurting me. He seems to be very comfortable with it now that he knows he won't hurt me. He has proven to be my perfect spanker, knowing just how much to spank, adding variety and imagination. I know I am very lucky.
Tigger: I actually brought up the subject of spanking to my hubby. We had been dating at the time, but because we talked openly about sex and our relationship right from the beginning, I wasn't at all hesitant to do so. I told him that my favorite romance books were the ones in which the big, strong, handsome hero dragged the beautiful, feisty heroine over his knee for a well-deserved spanking. He wasn't at all surprised. In fact, he was very intrigued!
He didn't pull me over his knee right then, however. We started slow. I'd ask him to "pat" my bottom while we were making love, which he did. And it was yummy! But I wanted more! So, I asked him to do it a little harder. He did, and I just about melted! Since then, spanking has become a regular part of our sex life!
Jean Marie: I "came out" by realizing that I needed this element in my sex life, in my whole life. I wrote an account, published here a while ago, about how I first brought it up in college by buying my then-boyfriend a thick leather belt at a street craft fair. When he went to put the belt on, I told him that it wasn't primarily to wear, and I bared my bottom. (Maybe it helps if you have a J. Lo-type big butt and your significant other is an ass-man). We joked later and often that the belt was to "wear me out."
I've brought spanking up in every relationship since. Sometimes, I'll wait until we've had sex for the first time. During pillow-talk afterwards, I'll say that it was good, but that I know a way to make it great, and ask to be spanked. If he declines or doesn't do it energetically and enthusiastically, I know that we weren't meant to be. I don't want to feel "indulged" when it comes to something so vital to me.
Another time, just before a new boyfriend was due to stop by my apartment, I took a shower and self-spanked my wet bottom very vigorously. I greeted the guy at the door with my hair in a towel, and another barely covering my nudity. I let the towel slip once he was in side, and he noticed my reddened butt. I explained (acting sheepish) that I masturbate in the shower, and to climax hard, I always spank myself. He didn't need to hear anymore; he spanked me superbly, after which we cemented our new relationship with co-mingled body fluids right on the living room floor.
Sharing one's spanking fixation doesn't guarantee that the union is made in heaven. I'm in a relationship now where I'm spanked often but misunderstood and unhappy in other ways. So, I may be using these or other methods before you know it (especially if Kyle snoops and reads this post!).
Paul: I can't offer much. I knew almost the first time we met that my Mel was into spanking. The fact that my early life was very strict didn't hurt.
Mel was a spirited girl. The first time that I threatened to spank her if she didn't stop, she just smiled. This was in the 50's when corporal punishment was still used in schools and parents still spanked children when necessary.
We soon discovered how turned on spanking made us and we knew that it would be an important part of our lives and it grew into the D/s, DD lifestyle we both cherished. I was so fortunate in Mel, my soul mate and sub.
Elis: I first told Nick about four years ago that I had read some spanking stories on the Internet and I found them to be a real turn-on. I asked whether was he willing to try. At the time, our sex life was not great due to my lack of interest. So he was more than willing to try something I was interested in. During that early trial run, it was great fun and we grew closer. But I was never able to really explain that I needed/wanted more, harder. We let it drift away. Then seven months ago, I discovered blogs, Bonnie's to be exact. Since it had come up before, it was easier to tell him I wanted to try again. When he read Bonnie's work, he could not believe that a woman was actually writing it. He said it seemed like something only men would fantasize about. So maybe he had been thinking!
He has been wonderful! He now seems to be an enthusiast spanker. He reads many blogs and I will have to say that without the blogs, I don't know if we would be this far along. Having a place where he can read my thoughts and desires and seeing that so many other men and women share this love of spanking has helped to make it feel normal. He is slowly getting over the worry about hurting me. That took a while! He now makes me wonderful spanking toys. So while we are still new, I think we are off to a great start!!
Finally, I agree with Eva that my only regret is not bringing this up 25 years ago on the second or third date!
Mija: Two comments on one brunch -- this has to be a new one for me.
Anyway, I've loved reading the other comments here especially the optimistic ones. And found myself thinking of a much happier story -- that of my parents. My father apparently confided in my mother some five years into their marriage that what he'd always wanted (they'd dated since they were 15/16) is to spank her, and that this was his deepest fantasy. Her response was "great, let's try some of that then."
My mother, who told me this story some five or six years ago, was shocked when I told her that most people don't get as positive a reaction. Her feeling was that all couples have secret turn-ons, sometimes for one, sometimes for the other, and that part of being a sexual partner was being willing to embrace what turns your partner on.
The irony of my first marriage was that an important erotic element of our relationship was the student / teacher dynamic (he'd been one of my professors). But in the end, sex was always about what worked for him rather than for us.
I wrote my first response not to be a downer, but I guess because it would have been really hard for me ten years ago to read about all the positive responses without seeing anyone talk about the negatives. In the end though, my story is positive. Pab and I celebrate our second wedding anniversary next month.
Kasey: I don't really remember how the whole spanking thing came up. I think we brought the light bondage thing up first, which I have always dug. I had asked a previous (sort of) boyfriend and he wasn't in to it, but I just wanted to try it for fun -- so it wasn't a deal breaker for me. Then when I started dating Hubby, I brought it up and said that previous boyfriend wouldn't do it (but I really don't remember how far into dating we were -- we might even have been just friends and I was complaining on boyfriend). He seemed more than willing to show me that he would at least play -- which was all I was probably looking for. We played with it off and on for years. Hubby bought a very big, very scary paddle a little before we were married. We have had fun with it. I guess we have only started using spanking as a routine thing for a few years now. Hubby says it is faster than any other type of foreplay.
So, I have no idea what to tell people who are looking for someone who might want to spank them -- the only time I was denied, I wasn't even sure it was for me.
Reesa Roberts: When I married my man, a big factor was the fact that he had spanked me. That was something I'd always been interested in. Although we've been through a whole lot of ups and downs with that, we finally settled into a real spanking relationship. I've never been happier! So, to answer the question, he started the spanking thing, but I perpetuated it...
Sometimes I wonder, especially from the comments above, exactly what percentage of women do wish their men would spank them. I bet it's a lot higher than we'd think!
Siderite Guy: We have been married for 25 years with two only kids, eleven years apart. In the early years, my Loving Wife (LW) and I clicked sexually very well, so well that we never really had to communicate our desires. We were in just in sync.
Life progressed and after the birth of our first child, LW succumbed to depression. We did not figure this out for a long time and it hindered our sexual experimentation.
Spanking, for me, always had a sexual element to it. I grew up in a spanking household and used to lie on the couch and enjoy the feeling just thinking about it gave me. I had no idea what I was feeling.
It was not until after I was married that I came across the Penthouse letters and such that led me to understand that I was a spanko.
A while back we had one brief spanking experience. We were moving and she went ahead to look for houses in the new place. Upon her return, she "confessed" that she had been watching adult movies in the hotel room. I suggested that she needed to be spanked and we had a few "love taps" OTK and some very enthusiastic sex afterward.
The move took the wind out of that momentum and LW had a series of physical problems that lead to three major surgeries in five years, increased episodes of clinical depression, and constant pain from her lower back to her knees. These problems certainly interfere with sexual exploration.
This summer, we had refinanced the house to pay off credit card bills that amounted while older boy was in college. A huge part of the bills were for her spending on her hobby. She took active measures to hide the purchase from me. It finally got to high to hide and we had to take rather dramatic steps to resolve the situation. We talked about her limiting her spending on her craft hobby as she had purchased enough material to last many years.
A few months after resolving this, she called me while I was across the country on a business trip and said that she again spent a lot of money on her hobby. I was not happy and said we will have to discuss this when I got back. So I had a cross country trip to think about this. I was able to calm down, and she was very remorseful and I thought about ways to try to get her to change her behavior.
When you really think about it, there are very few things one to do to help an adult change their behavior if they don't want to. I decided that this may be a time to introduce spanking into our relationship. She had found some of my web surfing and we had briefly talked about it. She was not interested in the topic and with her pain she is not all that interested in a whole lot of things in a sexual manner anyway.
I wrote a long letter to her telling her that her behavior would have to change and suggested the following plan. First she needed to make amends for her latest spending spree and she would be spanked for that. I referred to the previous love tap spanking that we had done years before as I was focusing on the ritual rather than the pain aspect, as with her chronic pain, a painful spanking would be a non-starter. Once this spanking was over, the past was the past. I then suggested a monthly allowance and that any money spent above that would have to be paid for by spankings.
She thought long and hard about it, but the spankings did not happen. She did not want to mix up her troubles with spending with my sexual pleasure. But she did not rule it out in the future as a sexual "adventure". With the chronic back pain as a backdrop to our life, I don't foresee this happening anytime soon or often, but there is a chance.
On the bright side, her spending on her hobby has dropped to manageable levels.
Lisa: Even though I am more of a spanko in our relationship, Ed was the one that brought it up. He had been doing a lot of reading trying to find new ways to spice things up. He came across the Taken in Hand web site and asked me to read it. He then asked if this was what I wanted. I didn't exactly want that, but it led me to look further into the BDSM world. I told him I was interested in bondage and erotic spanking. This in turn led to reading several story sites and blogs. With a lot of trail and error, we have found a good level of fun between us. There are still areas to be discovered and we aren't always on the same page, but he does like to spank me. I just have to speak up if I want it more. He doesn't care for it as much as I do.
Fox: My husband and I have always had an adventurous relationship. I was previously married to a most unadventurous man. My sex drive was too much for him just on a whole. When I met my current husband, he had been fairly well deprived as well. When we first started exploring sexual likes and dislikes, he thought I was making it all up as a means of "getting" him. I showed him all my sexual desires through porn movies. I had a ton of them, things that I had wanted to do with my ex but he would never indulge. It took years before my current husband realized that it wasn't a means of getting him, but what I really wanted to do.
The spanking took a while longer. For as long as I can remember the idea of spanking caused little tingles to course through me. So I introduced the idea to my husband the same way I introduced all the other things I wanted to try. The first time I shared a spanking clip with him, his eyes lit up, he got this funny little grin on his face and, well, we are still working out the details, but that is half the fun, isn't it? Once all the details are worked out, you have to find new details. We are certainly enjoying ourselves.
Curtis: I have, at this time, no steady partner. I have found throughout my life that if a woman's bottom is an erogenous zone, you can introduce her to spanking -- provided it's fun and/or erotic at any time. When I was young and the woman I was with was a little sassy, I gave her a whack on the bottom to gauge reactions. More often than not, the reaction was positive and we graduated to more formal spanking. I have found that while making love to a woman with an erogenous bottom, but with no previous spanking experience, they can be profoundly aroused by spanking. I also found that if one talks to a woman about it before sexual play and they have an erogenous bottom, they will be willing to try it and see whether they like it – and most do.
On the other hand, if a woman does not have an erogenous bottom, there is nothing on God's green Earth that can make her enjoy a spanking. I know, because I married a woman who played spanking games during courtship, while we lived together for about three years and one year into marriage before she announced that she didn't like it, which led to a virtually sexless marriage for about twenty years until our child went to college and we could split.
What's harder is introducing a woman to switch. If she conceives of herself as a bottom, it takes a very long time to persuade her to try it. But once you do so persuade, I found a few that like to switch a lot. It is getting over the psychological hurdle -- that the man should take the lead, that the man is something less than manly if he likes to be spanked or that it would, in other ways, be psychologically awkward. But most of my partners over the years have tried it, enjoyed it and continued. I remember when Eve Howard of Shadow Lane fame first started writing and publishing, she proclaimed she would never, never, ever switch. That took about four years, now she writes that every woman into spanking can enjoy being a switch.
None of this may work for anyone who's orientation to spanking is disciplinary or for punishment, but if it's for play, fun and erotic stimulation, all things are possible.
Mary: My first experience telling someone was when I was 21. I was dating my first "bad boy." He was a doll. He was not really the guy for me, but he made me tingle in ways I wasn't used to. One night, while feeling particularly naughty due to the way his kissing made me feel, I asked if he wanted to spank me. NOT only did he say no, he told my best friend about how "weird I was". I did confess it to my ex-husband. He was the first person I slept with and he tried it once. But he didn't really enjoy spanking or sex for that matter. Three years later, near the end, he stated he didn't like sex because I was "boring in bed." I think if he had been a bit more willing to play he would have discovered that he was SOOOO WRONG.
The third time around was when the guy I was dating playfully said I needed a spanking. When I offered my behind, with equal playfulness, he just patted it gently and sweetly kissed me saying, that I was "too sweet to spank" and that he wasn't truly into it. SO, the next relationship, the one I have often shared about here was started based upon our mutual interest in spanking. The purpose was to spank (his) and be spanked (mine). It was a wonderful multi-level romantic relationship and friendship. Every minute was a wonderful, delightful experience full of joy and exploration. However, I fell madly deeply in love, and realized recently that he still guards his heart - including from me. Realizing I was fully invested but alone in this depth of investment, I ended the relationship a few weeks ago. I miss him.
I have had a couple of dates recently, for the time being I look for other "traditional" behaviors such as opening doors, manners, taking charge of the date, and the like. Perhaps if the man has traditional values and actions he may be more likely to be interested in spanking? I know that I loved having spanking and sex and each enhanced the other, but I am not at the point of wanting anyone else to touch me in either context yet.
Katie Spades: The only time I ever brought up spanking was when I was with my boyfriend when I was 17. We were making out and I told him to spank me and he looked at me with a very strange look. I got really wierded out and never said anything again.
It was never brought up again until I was 19 when my at the time boyfriend brought it up and I've been with Jake since and the rest is kind of history.
I don’t think I could ever bring it up if it wasn't brought up to me because of the experience I had.
Cindy’s Dave: I think it is FAR easier to convert a vanilla into a spanker, than into a spankee. From the time I first noticed girls, I pretty much have tried to, or successfully spanked, almost everyone I wanted to spank.
In every case, obviously, I was the one initiating the interaction, and actually was pleasantly surprised by the percentage who responded favorably. Of course, in the vast, vast majority of these cases the spanking was relatively mild, and much more swats than spanks.
However, in the case of my two marriages to two vanilla women, it didn't work out in the end. In both cases what was fun and playful during courtship was frowned upon and rejected once the rings were exchanged.
As far as my approach, I'm sure I've used DOZENS over the years. I began spanking neighborhood girls when we were in grade school playing 'house'! I think I pretty much either told them they deserved a spanking, or were going to get one and then waited to see how much resistance I got. All in all, most of them willingly lay across my lap.
Cin-D-Girl: I have known since I was very young, about six or seven, that there was something about spanking inside me. It was never sexual then, and not for years after.
Sometimes it would lie quietly inside me for a while, and then resurface. I'd struggle with it until I could quiet it down again. I never shared with anyone, and I never understood it myself. I just always 'knew' I had to keep it a secret.
About ten years ago, I had a huge spiritual awakening, and it changed my life dramatically. Just one part of that was that all of the things I'd ever held inside myself just had to come out. When I was dating my ex-husband, I had admitted to fantasizing about different types of bondage, and he very willingly obliged me. But it had stopped there. Even with that shared between us, I admit that when I first confronted my interest, I searched online in secret.
Just typing 'spanking' into a search engine made me feel levels of guilt that were almost unbearable, and I couldn't shake that constant 'looking over your shoulder' feeling. A few months later I finally confessed to my then husband.
Throughout our eighteen year marriage, we had been very open and honest with each other and could talk about anything. Except, apparently, spanking. He sat across the bed from me as I tried to explain, but it was hard to look in his eyes. He was very quiet for several minutes. I was just beginning to think I should leave the room when he reached over and grabbed my arm and pulled me across the bed toward him... and he began to spank.
And he kept asking, "You like this? You like this? Is this what you like?" It was awful. When I finally got away, I ran to the living room, and he came right out after me, pulling me close and apologizing. It was a complete shock to both of us.
When we settled down, he was willing to listen to more, but there seemed no way to really explain it. I think I started out with too much. I had tried to explain EVERYTHING inside me all at once, instead of just simply saying I liked and wanted to be spanked.
To his credit, he did try. But I could feel him holding back. I could feel how screwed up he thought the whole thing was. I had met some very good people online who were willing to talk to him, and he talked with them. And at HIS suggestion we both attended a Crimson Moon party. And we drove the eight hours home from that party explaining what we both had felt and sensed, and then withdrawing by turns into silence. In the end, he simply could not accept any part of it.
He admitted that my confession had changed how he saw me ... it did not fit his image of me at all. It also left him feeling as though he couldn't meet my needs. I felt that each time he looked at me, he saw the words 'spanko freak' written across my forehead.
In the end, we divorced. What I had done by putting this interest between us is change everything. He completely lost faith in me because I had taken so long to confess my interest. And I lost faith in him for the way he pulled back from me when I needed him the most. The divorce was hard, as most are, I know, but we still loved each other deeply. We just couldn't find a way to get past our loss of faith in each other.
Happily, we have remained very close friends, and for several months after the divorce he would bring the issue up. Sometimes saying that he thought that he could accept it now and take part, and then once again sure that it would lead to deeper and darker things. I finally told him that if we were to remain friends, we simply couldn't keep rehashing the past. I had screwed up in many ways to be sure, but we both shared the blame for what happened in the aftermath of that confession.
It's been four years since the divorce, and as he has seen me settle into my new life, he willingly admits that finally being able to have my needs fulfilled has changed me for the better. We talk very easily about the blossoming interest in both of our kids, and he will often call me and share spanking startles that he comes across. So I guess in the end we both ended up where we needed to be.
I think often that if I had it to do all over again, I'm not real sure what I could do differently. Maybe I wouldn’t share so much to begin, and maybe not admit the discipline aspect of it until he understood the sexual side of it. I honestly don't know, but for my children's sake, I hope they find a better way!
OPB: I have always found spanking a great turn on, and my wife of twenty years knows this, but is unwilling to participate on either side of the knee. Not just spanking, but many other activities that are often part of sex too. Our sexual relationship could be described as not even flavoured with vanilla. This is a source of frustration for me and for my wife also. She sees it as a problem for us both, but it's just too big a mountain for her to climb. The subject is in the open, but it is buried there. I guess I'll have to go on spanking myself.
NS: I answered this question on my
blog.
I believe in taking the direct approach and doing so early on in a relationship. I don’t like to beat around the bush. (OK, that gave me a funny visual - I didn’t mean it THAT way). I’ve had the best luck in new relationships with just bringing up the topic of sexual kinks. I ask my partner, potential partner, what she likes or what really turns her on. Then I mention my spanko fetish. If she is turned off by the idea of spanking or has no interest at all, well, that is something I want to know ahead of time. Relationships without spanking are just not as fun.
I learned this the hard way though. It is a lot harder when you have been in a relationship for some time and you have never broached the subject. You ask your partner what really turns them on and they say something like, “Scented candles and a back rub” and you are thinking, “A leather strap and bottom marks.” That can be tricky. So I’ve vowed to just be honest up front and I think that is the best way.
Anon: I have read the comments here with interest. I have to confess to being sadly deprived. I have known all my life I have this need, but it has never been fulfilled. My husband and I shared a very active sex life, but he never understood my need to be spanked and essentially his needs were paramount. I did not push the issue, but occasionally resorted to brattish behaviour to elicit a response. The response was for him to walk away from me until I calmed down. I was not really feeling brattish, just trying to find a way to satisfy a need. In the meantime, after three decades of marriage, he found love elsewhere. I am now alone with just my fantasies for company and a sense of utter frustration and the knowledge that I shall never know the agony and ecstasy of a spanking/sexual relationship.
Pagan: I'm feeling rather ashamed now of how lucky I am, and how I haven't always felt that way.
I had my first spanking relationship with my first sexual partner. I was sixteen the first time he spanked me. Although I had been obsessed with thoughts of spanking my whole life, I couldn't have asked for it. I didn't even realize people actually DID it. He asked a couple of times, I said no in an embarrassed, flustered way. Finally, he just grabbed me and spanked me (though not very hard).
It was SUBLIME. I was off to the races. We were together as a couple for three years, and then were each other's occasional play partner for another five.
Then I met my husband. The second weekend we were together (we lived in different cities), we were horsing around. I forget what I said or did to provoke him, but he picked up a heavy plastic ruler, dumped me over his lap, and gave me a fairly solid spanking. Can I say how thrilled I was? I HAD FOUND ANOTHER ONE! Early in our relationship, he would threaten me with a spanking if I was 'acting up,' or pull me over his lap and give me a few swats.
After we started living together, that kind of behavior just tapered off. I mistook the playfulness of an early relationship for a dyed in the hide spanko. Not the same beast. I made a couple of very subtle, halting requests, but he didn't act on them. So I didn't say another word, for twelve years.
Fast forward. Marriage, kids, dual careers, a mortgage. And somehow, the movie in my head stopped being enough. I typed the 's-word' into Google, and the rest is history. I lurked on some boards for a bit, and then starting thinking that I just shouldn't HAVE to hide this.
So I screwed up my courage, and when we were fooling around in bed one night, I asked him to spank me. He couldn't say yes fast enough, continued with the foreplay I was enjoying (of a decidedly non-spanking variety), and we had great sex. But no spanking.
OK, so I waited a bit, and did it again with the same result.
After the third time, I froze. We were curled together in bed, with me tucked in against his side, and I suddenly burst into tears - something I rarely do. He didn't understand what was wrong, of course. When I told him how hard it had been to force myself to ask him to spank me, how HUMILIATING it was, and asked him WHY he'd say YES with such passion, and then NOT DO IT. He absolutely gaped at me.
His response? "YOU WERE SERIOUS?" Sigh. He thought I was just 'talking dirty' to him. Just as he had over a decade before. He wasn't appalled. He just had normal 'nice guy' concerns about hurting a woman.
I must say, telling him about my first lover helped. Let me see if I can capture his comment. "Let me get this straight. You can tell SOME BOYFRIEND about this when you're JUST A KID...and that's fine. But not, apparently...YOUR HUSBAND?!"
His first attempts were a half dozen love taps that barely stung. If my skin started to turn pink, he stopped. If I said 'ow,' he stopped. That was three and a half years ago. Now he comes to spanking meets with me, where he's spanked some of my spanko friends. We're going to the Florida Moonshine weekend in February. He has so many toys that he now stores them in a rolling suitcase he keeps locked under our bed.
We don't do DD, and he's never disciplined me in any real way. Having said that, I have noticed that I get spanked harder or longer (or have a mighty short warm-up) when we've had some altercation or I've been completely unreasonable. I'm sure that's just a coincidence though. Right? ;)
He's not naturally dominant, and is really only my Top in the bedroom. But it's better than I would ever have hoped. :)
Thanks to all for making this our best brunch yet! See you next week…Keywords:
spanking,
introducting spanking,
talking about spanking,
spanking relationship,
learning about spanking,
My Bottom Smarts,
spanko brunch
