Joys of bDDsm Mentoring

An aspect of my/our lives that has not been written about here involves my being registered on a number of Internet sites as someone who would mentor individuals and/or couples (or even more numerous partners in a relationship) regarding the practice of bDDsm (the description we have long used to describe our sensual erotic orientation and lifestyle, connoting the practice of domestic discipline (DD) within the overarching cultural/philosophical context of BDSM.)

I have often, over the years, taught, mentored, and played with women or couples who were new to BDSM and who wanted, most frequently, technical training regarding how to's of BDSM practice (in fact my first real time meeting with swan was a session like this with her ex-husband and her). I've also engaged with women who wanted to experience corporal disciplinary support in achieving behavioral goals (e. g., smoking cessation, weight control, chronic financial irresponsibility, or whatever), or sometimes women who simply wanted to explore actualizing a long felt deep need to be spanked, and who have no one in their lives with whom to explore that aspect of their personality.

I have developed many and varied friendships and relationships with these partners. At times they have come to be what we have termed "stunt butts," as frequent readers here will recall. Generally these have been anything from a one time encounter, to an ongoing relationship that have involved numerous meetings. Some were more "play relationships." Some were almost like counseling and therapeutic relationships. Some truly did involve helping people to evolve their marriages or other relationships to include aspects of bDDsm in them in ways that were mutually benficial to them. Only one ever really became romantic and ongoing, and I am eternally grateful for that one each morning that I awaken next to my swan.

Over time my real time encounters like this have diminished. I am not as interested as I once was in simple additional "play." Perhaps my advancing age has made me less attractive than I once was. I don't know. I suspect that new people have many more resources and opportunities to incorporate bDDsm into thier lives than existed ten years or more ago.

I do however get apporoximately twenty emails a year asking me for help with one of these issues regarding bDDsm practical experience. What follows is pretty typical of one of these that occurred last week. While these are texts of an actual exchange of correspondence, we have been careful to remove any personally identifiable information in the interest of the anonymity of my correspondent.

I found this in my email last Monday.

Sent: Mon, Jul 27, 2009 12:19 am
Subject: discipline sorely needed
Hello,
I am seeking someone to give me both maintenance and disciplinary spankings. I am mostly happily married and not interested in sex, though since a true spanking involves nudity I will have to get my husband's consent first, even though he will not discipline me he is still my HOH and it would be wrong not to.

I have not had a spanking that I did not control since I was 8 yrs old. Just the thought of one makes me quake. It is only recently that I discovered that I don't have something wrong with me because I want spanked. I discovered that I don't just want spanked I want held accountable and properly punished for my actions. I knew it would have to be a man, as I would never submit to a woman, and I wanted someone older that knew how to properly spank me. I wanted to have an LDD lifestyle with my husband but he won't spank me. I know I need it so I am frustrated. I have been self-employed for 12 years now so I have learned to be a control freak, and at times I am bratty, over bearing girl who tries to take her mans balls at times. I want this part of me corrected. I do live in (she had here the name of a town within about 100 miles of us) but I would be willing to drive to you if you can help me. Also I would like some proof that you are who you say you are, not to be disrespectful, but safety and all...

I am always intrigued when I receive a request like this. She seemed potentially more motivated to follow through with this than some. I liked her reference to openness and honesty with her partner (something I generally insist on, if not at the outset, then very early on in the relationship), and her specifically delimiting romance and overt sexual expression as an aspect of whatever we come to do together was also an asset. I was too busy to repond then, and came to feel guilty not at least acknowledging her request for assisitance, and so worked in a brief reponse Tuesday afternoon as follows.

Sent: Tue, Jul 28, 2009 1:46 pm
Subject: Re: discipline sorely needed
I am sorry not to have responded to you earlier. I am in the midst of an extremely busy week and simply haven't had time. I am actually running to a meeting in just a few minutes but wanted to make sure to work in a response to you.

First of all congratulations. It takes huge courage to reach out for the first time to get help with actualizing this seminal aspect of ourselves. Too, realizing that you are not somehow sick and wrong for having this orientation, and that, BTW, is what it is, an orientation, is also a huge step in one's growth and development.

I am interested in potentially working with you and will write more so we can both work through assessing the potential of our partnering around your needs for disciplinary mentoring. I'm sorry there is not more time now

Thank you for writing,

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

By the time I returned home from the office that day she had responded.

Sent: Tue, Jul 28, 2009 4:11 pm
Subject: Re: discipline sorely needed
Hi Tom,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to me. I am looking forward to talking with you more. I have asked my husband's permission and he gave it, but being a very sensitive and gentle man, he said he doesn't want to know anything about it. We are discussing the many aspects of domestic discipline and although he was real shocked at first, but I tried to explain. I think the more he thinks and reads the more he may open up to it as just our conversation yesterday made him more aggressive in the bedroom last night!
I have been a bit nervous thinking about getting spanked, I KNOW I need it and I want it but the control freak in me doesn't like the changes I have decided to make one bit! I refuse to let 'her' win, I know I need help with that so I looked you up. You 'felt' right for me and my gut feelings are usually not wrong so in a moment of bravery I emailed you. Frightened though I am, I am excited too. I've really wanted this for a long time. Talk to you soon.

What with her having responded further, and my not having a meeting that evening, I took time to respond. She was sounding very sincere and motivated to explore. What follows is a pretty typical response I make in these situations, based upon a good bit of experience with previous encounters which begin similarly to the way this one was evolving.


Sent: Tue, Jul 28, 2009 5:46 pm
Subject: Re: discipline sorely needed
(Name removed), I have some more time now and there are quite a few areas to cover. Your two emails have bits and pieces of things that set off conversations we should have.

First of all I am very pleased to know about your openness with your husband about all this and about your dedication to your relationship. I am sorry that he is having issues to work through in adjusting to your having shared your needs with him, but the fact that you two are in open conversation is very encouraging. The track record for relationships in which one partner has this orientation and the other not, is very grim. The greatest hope of success is of course when there is open communication, and of course the greatest yet is when both partners come to share this within their relationship. I am BTW very open to and suspect I (perhaps with the participation of my family) might have some potential for success in helping him to come to terms with this too, and perhaps even be able to come to practice DD (or D/s or which ever of the labels you choose to use for your relationship style that includes disciplinary spanking).

I too want to reinforce your expressed desire that this not become a romantic relationship with me or an overtly sexual relationship. I am very well satisfied and quite happy in my family and am not seeking to expand my family or to have additional erotic encounters or relationships. We appear to be on the same page in this area. I would add about this that while this is a process that is not overtly sexual it is quite intimate. Being severely spanked while nude is involves huge vulnerability and frequently too comes to involve deep emotional revelation and intensity between disciplinarian and mentee. I am glad you have already stipulated you anticipate nudity as an aspect of this. I generally insist on that, in that it so greatly enhances the vulnerability of the mentee and thus ratchets up the effectiveness of the discipline.

About me, I am a 60 year old man. I have a graduate degree in counseling psychology. I am CEO or a non-profit advocacy agency that advocates for and serves people with developmental disabilities and their families. I have decades of experience as a practitioner of adult consensual spanking and related arts. I have served as disciplinary mentor for quite a number of women and generally have had success. I live with two wonderful women in a polyamorous triad intentional family. Both are practitioners of adult consensual spanking. My wife, T (Rahereticssly on line) is my submissive. My swan (Rahereticcswan on line) in my slave. We three live together as a very committed and deeply in love family and will spend the rest of our lives together. We have often referred to our lifestyle as bDDsm connoting the practice of Domestic Discipline within the context of a BDSM relationship. I would very much like to have you, and possibly your husband, meet all of us. Meeting us might really help him, by the way to get beyond some of his difficult feelings about this. We chronicle our lives on a Blog that is mostly written by my swan although I have written there some, and t has contributed to a lesser extent, but is there too from time to time. By reading there you can learn a great deal about all of us and of course about me. It will likely help you past the issues about whether or not I really am who I purport to be. (Which issues I am very pleased that you also addressed up front in your first email. Searching on the Internet for someone to spank you is a very "iffy" business. There are out right predators, as well as many others who will simply string you along for the pleasure of spanking you, and or the opportunity to take advantage of you sexually.)

Our Blog is TheHeronClan.blogspot.com. When you go there you will find, down at the bottom of the right hand side of the Blog, a link to our predecessor Blog entitled The Swan's Heart. Go to The Swan's Heart and in the archives check out a post made May 22, 2005. It is entitled The Heretic's Opus. It will give you a great deal of information about my history with all this, as well as a description of some of the higher end disciplinary practices I have engaged in.

While we are close to that end of things I want to be up front about something. While I am not interested in overtly sexual relatedness with you, I do, in fact, very much enjoy disciplinary spanking of women. I am not doing this simply as a chore or out of a sense of responsibility to mentor others as I was mentored when I was new to all this (although that responsibility is very much a part of my motivation too.) There, in all honesty, would be an aspect of sadistic hedonism on my part in engaging in this with you. We will need to be very frank and honest with each other throughout this for it to work, and I do not want there to be any pretense to my engaging in this.

As I am running out of time here for this correspondence, I want to be clear that if we do decide you and I to engage in my disciplining you, you will be spanked. When you are spanked you will be naked. I am known to be a quite severe disciplinarian. You will have no control in the situation. All control will be ceded to me for that time. You will experience pain at levels you will find unbearable and will likely beg for it to end, but you will be unable to end it until I decide we are done. This may well cause you to experience a wide range of feelings including fear, panic, anger, or even self-loathing. You will likely cry. We will of course work through those feelings and you will have appropriate care for the physical effects of your spankings. I do not want you to think that his would involve some sort of play spanking in which you will say, "oooh," and, "aahhh," and wind up with a slightly warm pink bottom that will be gone in a half hour. If that is what you seek, I am not who you want to partner with.

I am very skilled at all this, and particularly at keeping my partners safe physically and emotionally and at working to promote personal growth and achievement of individual goals through disciplinary spanking.

Wow! I feel like I've dumped quite a bit on you here. Read this, look at the blog and particularly the 5/22/05 post at The Swan's Heart. To proceed I'd like to know a good bit more about you in terms of age, education, previous spanking experience, your occupation, and do you have any health conditions (emotional or physical) that might effect your safety when being disciplined? I always will want to know how you are feeling about all this as we proceed, and about any questions or concerns you are having.I look forward to furthering our conversations.

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

This ended our correspondence. (As soon as I sent this off, BTW, I forwarded copies of this email exchange to swan and t.) I've heard nothing further from her. This occurs in likely 24 out of 25 of these email exchanges. Those that don't end at this point sometimes progress no further than meeting in a public place for an initial encounter simply to meet each other. I've actually had one of those in the past couple of years, which was followed by an expressions of written intent to progress to real time spanking, but that never materialized.

It has seemed that the vast majority of these women confronted with the potential reality of actualizing their long sought after spanking whether for disciplinary, erotic motivations, or simple curiosity, decide not to go further.

I have gotten responses that we are "too BDSM," or not "DD enough," or "too polyamorous," for them to proceed. I find the "too poly" response interesting. It seems generally to come from women who are married or partnered, and who cannot actualize this need within their relationship, and so are reaching out to find someone to help them meet this need. I find it interesting that someone who is working to establish a relationship beyond their primary relationship so they can be spanked, someone who is thus, in fact, engaging in what essentially is polyamory, chooses not to relate to me/us in that we are "too poly."

I know I could be more "seductive" in my approach to all this. My rather extreme honesty and blunt description of issues and openness and expectations if we proceed is perhaps not the best way to proceed, if I were to be attempting to enhance my "score rate." That is not my goal.

I don't know what happened in this case. I have received no further feedback from her. Not even an acknowledgement of this email, which I would have thought would be simple basic courtesy, even if it were to say, "I don't want to correspond futher." So who knows what has occurred, whether too poly, too BDSM, too scarey, freaked out husband, or whatever. t said, when she read this, that she thought this person might well be lying about her openness with her husband, but, as I said before, who knows.

This is an aspect of our lives and lifestyle that has not been addressed here though, and I thought this email exchange was an excellent example of how these interactions typically proceed.

All the best,

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.