Is Marital Spanking the Answer?

Proponents of domestic discipline swear by it. Liberated women and modern men despise it. Some say its just BSDM under a new label. Others scream "abuse". Mention "marital spanking" to some, and their jaws will drop in utter disbelief. Still others say spanking is humiliating and unfit for your naughty, disrespectful child, let alone your marriage equal. But few can deny that when loving marital spanking is part of a marriage, the marriage somehow seems better able to weather the inevitable storms that rip other marriages apart. How can something as simple as a spanking affect the integrity and stability of a marriage?

Let's start unwrapping marital spanking by looking at what marital spanking is not. It is not an excuse for one spouse to beat up on the other. It is not the playground for a husband with a bad temper who lacks self-control and needs to vent by hurting his spouse. It is NOT a form of physical abuse, and should never be confused with physical abuse. It is not a vehicle to communicate emotional abuse. It is not a mechanism to degrade or humiliate the wife. When done correctly, most marital spankings will hurt, but will not cause harm. Marital spanking is not exclusively sexual, although it can certainly enrich a couple's sex life.

In old-fashioned, marital spanking, the role of the spanker and spankee are not considered interchangeable. The kind of marital spanking that was practised in the time of your grandparents would have had sexual perks, but no-one would have thought of it as kinky or sexual. It would have been functional first, and"fun" might follow, but it wasn't primarily about having fun. The spanking roles would have been clear: the role of spanker belonged to the husband, while the wife inevitably landed the role of the spankee (the one who gets spanked). Today, those domestic discipline roles are not gender-specific as they once were. There are certainly couples where the wife disciplines and the husband bends to accept the sting of the paddle, but these relationships are not the topic for discussion here.

So can marital spanking really iron out the wrinkles in a modern marriage? It would be naive to assume that a couple of swats across a bare bottom could make all the problems in a marriage magically disappear. But it would be just as naive to disregard marital spanking as a legitimate way to reduce tension in the home, and help the couple settle into a harmonious way of living. If experiences of yesteryear can be trusted, then marital spanking certainly presents good odds in favor of a healthy marriage.

How does marital spanking help produce harmony in a relationship? You may have noticed that we haven't satisfactorily answered that question in the above paragraphs. We have grappled with what marital spanking is and what it looks like, but we haven't begun to make sense of how it works. We have come to understand that marital spanking has the capacity to deeply enrich and stabilize a marriage. We understand that at the heart of this achievement is the fact that marital spanking is a form of effective communication quite unlike any other used in marriage. But how does marital spanking do what the old folk claim it does? This blog is a journey into old marriage secrets. It allows us (and our readers) to map the journey as we discover and explore new ideas. To learn more about marital spanking, and how and why it works, join us on this journey. You can subscribe to this blog using your email address, and new posts will be delivered directly to your inbox ensuring you don't get left behind as the exploration continues.

Spanking Communicates Authority II

In “Spanking Communicates Authority Part I”, we considered the possibility that spanking is a physical form of communication between a husband and a wife. How does the husband spanking his wife’s bare bottom translate into marital communication?

In the traditional marriage, the husband assumes the role of the leader responsible for his marriage and his home. He accepts the authority that comes with the leadership role, and is expected to exercise his authority as the leader. The wife’s role is that of the submissive partner. She chooses to submit to her husband’s authority. She is not worth less as a person, because she submits in marriage. She simply has a different role than her husband has and has taken up the challenge of letting her husband lead.

Many couples start their journey into marriage fully intending to assume their traditional marriage roles. Before too long, they learn that it is difficult and exhausting at times to exercise authority or submit, especially when you don’t feel like doing it. The inconsistency in staying true to the traditional roles causes tensions to develop in the marriage. It does not take long for the build up of tension to challenge the peace in the home and damage the confidence that the couple initially had in the power of traditional marriage roles. The partners may try to remain “in character” through their choice of words, but the constant bickering and relentless arguing will eventually merge their distinct roles into matched generic, neutered roles.

You may be thinking that was a nice collection of sentences, but it doesn’t explain how a spanking can help avoid this disintegration of a marriage. How does a spanking achieve what words cannot?

When a husband defends his words of authority with an act of authority, he emphasizes his authority. Why is that important? The wife’s genuine respect for her husband finds its foundation in her recognition of his authority. A wife who does not truly recognize her husband’s authority in the relationship will not offer heart-felt respect as her gift to him. The more she respects her husband, the easier it becomes for her to submit to him. When a husband boldly spanks his wife, he is reminding her that he has authority over her. The act of spanking is less about punishing or inflicting pain on his wife, and more about communicating his authority over her.

Spanking Communicates Authority I

If you can get past the idea that a husband spanking his wife is too barbaric to even contemplate, you may be ready to ask how spanking achieves what the old folks say it does. How does spanking help to strengthen a marriage? Surely a grown woman doesn’t need to be disciplined like a naughty child? Her pain threshold is higher than a child’s so how does a bit of butt-warming administered by her husband have effect on her? Is it all about her husband humiliating her or deriving selfish, lustful pleasure from beating his wife?

Perhaps the most powerful attribute of a sound spanking is that is clearly communicates authority. Most people get wrapped up in how unfair it is for a husband to lay his hand across his wife’s behind and cause her some pain. They focus on the pain and the embarrassment of spanking and become oblivious to the very thing that is vital for a healthy marriage: a husband IN AUTHORITY and a wife who SUBMITS to that authority.

What does a spanking have to do with the husband’s authority and the wife’s submission? A spanking is the most physical and safe way for a husband to clearly demonstrate that he is in authority. A spanking is the most physical and safe way for a wife to demonstrate her submission to her husband. In giving and accepting a spanking, both the husband and wife are communicating (and perhaps reminding themselves) of their commitment to their marriage roles.

Couldn’t the husband and wife simply communicate their authority and submission with words? Yes, they can and they should. The husband should always first make his stand with a verbal declaration of his authority. He should never be afraid to speak out as the leader of the home. In like manner, the wife should be bold about her submission. She should grab every opportunity to express her respect for her husband, in his presence and when he is absent.  Spanking does not substitute for this verbal level of communication between husband and wife. Spanking complements the verbal communication.

Spanking as a Consequence

For the husband to successfully deal with repeated challenges to his authority as leader of the home, he has to be prepared to offer a consequence less pleasant than the embarrassment caused by him communicating to his wife that he finds her behavior disrespectful. If telling his wife that she is damaging their marriage through her disrespect is not enough to adjust her behavior, it is time to deliver a less pleasant consequence that will be more likely to cause a positive change.

The consequence you choose as the husband and leader must be one which is effective in changing behavior. Some husbands report success with consequences such as: no use of the family credit card for a period of time; no “girls night out” for a limited period; extra house chores for a limited time; no surfing the internet for a period of time. These “time outs” from social and shopping activities provide much-needed stretches of quite time (often sorely absent in most busy families) where both the husband and wife can relax and spend time together investing in their marriage. Obviously, banning the weekly “girls night out” will not prove too effective if the wife doesn’t actually enjoy being out with her girlfriends and prefers to spend a quiet evening at home. It is essential for the husband to choose a consequence that matches the offense and the personality of the wife.

Since this blog is devoted to unearthing and understanding the secrets of successful old-fashioned marriages, the most obvious old-fashioned (and unpleasant) consequence cannot be ignored. Have you noticed how respectful and loving the partners in old fashioned marriages are towards each other? Have you noticed how they speak kindly to each other? Have you noticed how they seem to enjoy touching each other? How is that kind of tolerance and desire possible when you can see that the individuals do annoying things that would drive you crazy?  If you like a challenge and want to explore this further on your own, don’t continue to read this post. Simply spend some time investigating why the couples who claim to be old fashioned and have been married for decades still seem so in-love and happy to be around each other, and you will likely learn something that may shock you.

Many old fashioned marriages share one common consequence for wives who disrespect or disobey their husbands: good, old fashioned spanking. That’s right! The husband spanks his beloved wife as a punishment for her choices and as a deterrent from repeating the behavior that threatens the integrity of the marriage. This course of action has a politically correct name: domestic discipline. In marital domestic discipline, the wife submits to the authority of her husband, and accepts corporal punishment of his choosing when her husband deems it necessary.

Isn’t this an outrage? What right does a husband have to discipline his wife? Those are topics we will explore in other posts, so we won’t digress now. Whether or not a husband is entitled to tan his wife’s naughty, naked butt is not nearly as captivating an idea as the fact that this “barbaric” act seems to serve as part of the superglue that keeps old fashioned marriages together decades after the marriage vows were exchanged. If spanking is one of the hidden secrets of strong marriages, then its time to bring this secret out into the open for further analysis. What do you think?