Spanking: A Reinvestment

This blog began primarily as forum to discuss the practice of adult consensual spanking and polyamory in a committed family (our family), within the context of a BDSM relationship.  Much of our attention here the last two years has been consumed by conversation about a maelstrom our family passed through as we transitioned through the abrupt end of my work career, and my drinking career, and the far reaching crises that ensued, exacerbated by a number of serious health issues and family deaths.  My passage into middle age and retirement has been far from boring or pleasurable.  On the other hand it has been referred to by my therapist recently as a period in my life/our lives in which I was transformed from coal to diamond under massive pressure.

I am declaring an end to our endless family crisis.  I want to get back to the discussion of our experiences with the primary topics of this blog, our relationships within the D/s context, our polyamory, and how the practice of adult consensual spanking emanates from our identities and our erotic love.

In the past I have declared that much of the fun joy and excitement of my life was tied up in the enjoyment of smoking, drinking, eating, and spanking.  When I celebrated a holiday, or a vacation, or a weekend, or whatever....these practices were my celebration. My enjoyment of smoking and drinking are ended, and I am so much healthier physically, emotionally, and spiritually without pursuing these addictions.    My eating is now a process of consuming those nutrients that I need to survive healthily.  While eating now is not always entirely an exercise in asceticism, it is far from the enjoyment that it once was.  In all these cases those changes which may seem like sacrifices (because they are) are more than offset by the improvements in my health and the potential for me to live a much longer and happier life as I age than I was headed toward a few years ago.  I do not need pity for having lost these previous passions......they were all killing me.

I have often described adult consensual spanking as my primary expression of erotic relatedness, excitement, fun, and joy.  That remains.  As the lone survivor of my previous menu of enjoyments, it is now not only important because of my drive to experience it, but because it seems to be my singular remaining expression of hedonism other than, of course, vanilla sex.

I want to revisit the discussion of adult consensual spanking and eventually to explore its role in my life.

It is interesting that during our preoccupation with our family’s crises of the last two years, our culture’s steady progress toward coming to greater awareness and acceptance of adult consensual erotic/ and or disciplinary spanking and D/s has expanded dramatically with the huge readership of the book Fifty Shades of Grey as well as depictions in a number of films.  At a minimum, those who were previously intimidated to admit, even to themselves, that spanking had a place in their sensual/erotic orientation or fantasy life, may now feel permission to explore that.  If anything, in our current cultural environment, adult consensual spanking is a fad and not the taboo it was once viewed to be.  Sadomasochism and its primary expression, spanking, have evolved from being a psychiatric diagnosis to a legitimate alternative erotic expression.  We  who share an orientation to spanking have gone from being viewed as perhaps having psychosis, or certainly neurosis, to today being seen as engaging in slightly deviant naughtiness....even  perhaps as being in the mainstream exploring a fad of progressive erotic expression.

This was certainly not the case a few decades ago.   I grew to my adulthood in the dark ages of having erotic feelings about spanking.  I described this in this post back in 2005 as my path to my present relationship, and my acceptance of my need regarding spanking.  I have changed so many aspects of my self concept over the last two years.  So profound an evolution has affected everything including my relationship to this seminal aspect of my personality.  I am more interested in the experience of spanking both as a spanker and a spankee.  It is more important to me to experience spanking from both ends of its inherent power exchange with my spanking partner.  I am less intensely sadomasochistic than I was.  I am still sadistic of course.  Spanking is sadistic.  Being spanked is masochistic.  I used to have far less concern for the level of intensity a bottom partner I spanked was experiencing.  The greater her intensity the more I liked it.  My spanking partners knew how intensely I played when I spanked and consented to that level of play or they did not participate.  Certainly the most intensely masochistic partner I ever had was my sue.  Now I am more solicitous of the experience of my partner, although considering the baseline of spanking sadism that was mine previously, I am maybe now “improved” to the level of most high end intensity spankers.  I also used to switch.  I switched to explore the experience of bottom partners so that I imagined what they experienced in reality. My sadistic enjoyment was, in its essence, my imagination of their experience when I spanked them.  I seemed to have a pretty high tolerance for the intensity of my being spanked then.  I don’t know how much it may have been that my sensual reactions were muted in those days, perhaps by my alcoholism, or some of the medications I was on for arthritis, or whatever, but today my pain tolerance is far less, and my wimpiness, when I am spanked, seems to be far greater.

My feelings about power exchange in general, Dominance and submission, are also changed, and I am not sure what I can say about that at this point.  I am sure that as we go on and relate those dynamics will  become clearer for us to write about here.

I find though that I want to return to spanking in my life, and in my writing.  I am still one of the more experienced spanking practitioners one will encounter.  One of the aspects of my age is that I have long experience.  I have one of the larger collections of spanking implements, restraints, furniture, etc. that one will likely encounter (some of which are shown in the pictures above). I am trained, experienced, and skilled in their use to create a variety of sensations, and intensities, in the safe but quite effective administration of spankings..........not just in the technical aspects of the physical act itself, but in the psycho-social dynamics of spanking as well. Fortunately, I have with me a family which is similarly equipped, experienced, competent, and inclined.

This is the beginning of my reinvesting in this aspect of my life.  It is my returning to a more normal existence that is not so absorbed in continually needing to discuss my feelings, my identity, my “issues.”

This post is my transition.  In subsequent posts I am planning to write about spanking......in particular adult consensual spanking......and its art, science, philosophy, history, psychology, physiology, theory, practice, politics, emotion, eroticism, etc.  I will base this on my experience and research.  I will encourage my family to chime in with their insights, information, and experiences as they are moved to join in.

I hope this may enhance our experience of our new reality.  I hope in that there are more people who are interested in exploring spanking today, this discussion from someone who has lived with this for a few decades might be of interest or help.

Thank you again for the friendship of so many loyal friends who have supported us here, as we have passed through this last two plus years of travail and growth.

All the best,

Tom

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