coffee and a spanking

w and i are doing family stuff today. so i hoped maybe we would be skipping the whole "maintenance" thing this week. no such luck. last night, i got this text message:

what time do we have to get up for coffee and a spanking?

so here it is, not even nine thirty in the morning, and i've had a spanking already. it wasn't a very hard spanking, but she said i wasn't allowed to squirm, which really seemed to make it hurt more. and it's hard to control that involuntary response.

as the spanking was ending, it was like something loosened inside of me. like some knot of something untangled. not sure how to describe it. what it meant was, as soon as the spanking was over, i grabbed hold of w to hug her. i needed that hug as much as i needed the spankings.

what was going through my head? well i guess it was that for a little bit, i felt safer than i have in a long time. it's ironic that this would come from a spanking, because, you know, there's all that stuff where they talk about how it's re-enacting abuse or something, or else it's sexual.

that's not at all what went on with me.

maybe it's that some parts in the system have really been thinking about how spankings happened when i was growing up (well, beatings that were *called* spankings). and how even when it's really bad now, the worst spankings i've gotten from w, are nothing compared to the kinds of things that were doled out to little kids in my family. there's one particular memory... not gonna get into it right now, but i'll probably post it before too long, either here or at my other blog. i know there are parts who want to write about that one, but it's hard.

anyhow.

some of the release was just... it felt like a little barrier being taken away from my ability to trust w. like, i was able to trust her just one bit more, and that came with this feeling of release, like i had to hold onto her really hard, because all of a sudden, that was more possible for me.

because, yeah, for me, having this disciplinary relationship is a key part of my ability to trust w. the fact that she keeps on being consistent. that she will enforce the rules even when i don't want her to. that we have built up our ability to communicate, and our trust in each other.

it's not like discipline or the rules solve any of our problems.

and actually, thinking about the initial text message... it's not like i'm not still in charge of a lot of elements in our relationship. i am the one who suggests lots of the rules. and we work together to figure out when the rules are working, and when they need to be changed.

and also, there's the fact that we take my mental health into account. when the reason i haven't followed the rules is because i just couldn't handle it, then we decide together, on a case-by-case basis. because the fact is, it probably *would* be a replication of abuse to ask me to ignore what's going on inside of me in favor of following rules (specifically in this case the daily tasks; safety-related rules still have to be followed).

i think it's the communication we have to do for the discipline that helps this to re-write the patterns i learned as a child. no matter how i behave, it's clear that w still loves me, and respects me, and cares for me. and she's not going to go over the top just because she is frustrated. she's shown over and over again that she isn't going to cross those lines. and i really appreciate that.

not sure what else to say, so i guess i'll leave it at that.