In response to my post, The Carrot or the Stick, Susan’s Pet remarked:
Dear Lady,
It is obvious that your companions submit to you and are nearly perfect because of the love of you or the love of submission to you. Your control by virtue of your presence is admirable.
However, I wish to add an observation that is partly based on how I feel, and partly on how I understand men who are willing to serve. I love to serve my wife, and my major goal is to make her feel good under all circumstances. But that does not always happen. How she deals with it is the difference between her and other women who are served by a man. For my purposes I like the loving relationship that you exhibit, and that I experience. I would not want to be treated brutally. Yet I also like to be taught to do my best, and in this somewhat kinky relationship that requires an occasional “course correction.” This is not to say that all relationships should be that way. My observation of other relationships are based on blogs dealing with FLR. Most men in these situations can use, even crave, discipline. The severity and frequency varies, but it is a common theme.
Your being a benign and loving Domme does not preclude you from an occasional handing out of discipline other than just your verbal disapproval. Submissive men thrive on that.
No one who has ever submitted to me was “nearly perfect” and I was not in any way saying I or my way of doing things was perfect either. I don’t control by “virtue of my presence” – I’m very proactive, very directive, very persuasive, and I reward those who do as I wish. There’s nothing passive about all that.
What I do works for me. Others have different ways of doing things and apparently they work for them. As I said in “The Carrot or the Stick” post, there have been misunderstandings and mistakes. There have been times when he may have been giving a little less than his best. What I said was there were not any acts of disobedience (a statement that was in response to a direct question regarding punishment for disobedience.)
I understand and respect that some men crave physical discipline or being spoken to harshly. That form of interaction isn’t something I choose to do, therefore I have not been in relationships with those types of men. If I were, he would be very frustrated and so would I. There are men who are more interested in strictly psychological control and those are typically the ones that appeal to me. They may not be the ones who blog, but there are plenty out there. Before I closed my YahooGroup there were 1800+ members, most who were interested in being controlled by having their thoughts and feelings gently guided.
Discipline doesn’t have to be physical nor does it have to be harsh. It can be verbal and it can also come in the form of loss of privileges (sexual release can be a privilege). And yes, discipline can be in the form of his own personal disappointment for failing to please me. For some people, that knowledge is worse than being physically punished. To me, the important thing is to know the submissive well enough that I know exactly which buttons to push.
Training someone to do their best can be accomplished by setting goals and rewarding behavior. Perhaps I might deny someone sexual release until they finish a particular task. In fact, I’ve recently been doing that with someone who has never before experienced dominance. It’s been difficult for him – really difficult. He asked a few days ago if he could have permission to release even though his task was not yet complete. My response was the choice was his – he’d given control to me, certainly he could choose to take it back. He decide it was important that he continue obeying, because while he had always had the choice, my permission was what he craved. Since I would not offer that, he wanted more to do as I asked than he did to release. I’m really proud of him – he’s learning.
Perhaps my relationships are not as difficult as they could be because I’m not doing anything strictly because the fella wants it – *I want it*. I enjoy it – it pushes both of our emotional, cognitive, and sexual buttons. If I were strictly doing it because I loved him or out of some sense of obligation, it would become a chore and we would both feel dissatisified and frustrated. He would feel rebellious at times as well. I think knowing I *really* get turned on from controlling him has to motivate his desire to obey – because “obeying is pleasing, and pleasing feels so very good”.
