Glad you are enjoying your relationship. One place where I disagree with you: it is not true that you can't find a man who will love and provide for you but also treat you as an equal. I did.

"Pat"

Dear Mike's Girl:

We are in an equal relationship and we don't care or think about who leads. My point is, he loves and provides for me without having to be the leader. This was something you mentioned as being a contradiction in terms of the other women who wanted an equal relationship. But it isn't a contradiction and it does exist.

"Pat"

noone wrote: For example, there have been times when my wife has said that she can feel rejuvenating energy rushing into her body when I touch her. Likewise, she says she experiences a healing quality just from being held at night.

At the same time, she freely admits (to me at least) that being physically taken in hand and paddled on her bare bottom clears her head like nothing else. For her, it is the ultimate catharsis. To say that she is outwardly "broken" by the experience tells only half the story. To say the she is inwardly renewed is to give a much more realistic description.

Is this not the same experience of an addict when she gets a hit of her “substance”? Your wife (/anyone’s woman) is “gratified” by the release of dopamine from the combination of pain, reassurance, and sexual pleasure -- however, as seems likely from Theresa Crenshaw’s book (and others: Helen Fisher, for example), it only works for a time; and then the... desire or need... (the change/drop in dopamine in the brain) builds again and so she has to again be “gratified” by the same experience to release more dopamine. Over time, will she need a more -- or more drastic - - experience to release a effective dose of dopamine?

I don’t know if most folks into “domestic discipline” (or bondage and discipline, or just plain spanking) do over time, need to “up” their dosages... My impression of the “BDSM world” is that, yes -- both the beater and the beaten come to/seem to need more, and more drastic, “scenes” and implements and application of physical pain to achieve the same release.

I’m not a doctor -- merely an interested observer of the medical research into brain chemistry and relationships... As I said in my message that I’m hoping the boss will repost, I THINK it’s dopamine, but which brain neurotransmitters do what is not (yet) fully known, and my reading and studying is ongoing...

Mike and I have been discussing this too -- he asks if it’s like most “drug” use. That the majority of users never have any particularly negative life effects from their habit; they “spank” and never go beyond. It remains a totally satisfactory gratification for both parties, with no need to escalate. {shrug} I don’t know either. My impression from my previous research into the BDSM world is that it seems to escalate -- but that may be akin to the people whom drugs destroy. That is, they are the minority; the majority (?) are able to use drugs successfully their whole lives without adverse effects. (But I don’t know if there IS a majority of drug users who don’t, over time, need to escalate -- which side can you trust for their stats and recommendations?!) I don’t know if most spankers just do that and never escalate.

Mike’s Girl

The *up the dosage* analysis is actually quite amusing. The real question is whether the same analysis makes sense in other areas of human activity - or, is spanking just special.

For example, I have been eating food for about sixty years. While at times I did *up the dosage*, I have not always done so over extended time. If I had, I would have made it into Guinness by now! (I would have also made it to the morgue - in a wide-load transfer truck!)

Likewise, my wife and I have been married for almost forty years. During that time we have had sex a few times - and still do. However, while I never kept records, I do not believe that we *upped the dosage* over time. Nevertheless, there have been times when we have had more sex than at other times. (If we had *upped the dosage* in that arena, we would be X-rated Siamese twins by now!)

The comparison of a fairly normal human activity like spanking to BDSM - which very much an artificial contrivance - is equally amusing. It is like saying that because I wear clothes, I must eventually wear a formal attire cummerbund each time that I dress. Moreover, because I get all dressed up every time I get dressed, I must put on more clothes than I did last time. (Tonight, when I go to bed, should I wear a cummerbund and top hat?)

Apart from the humor, one of the curious things that my wife and I discovered over the years is that, even through menopause and the various problems of post-modern life, those all-important little numbers from her various physical exams and lab tests have remained in the normal range. She and I both believe that the usual tensions of daily life are not allowed to accumulate for long periods of time in her system before being purged.

Probably our biggest secret has been that we never really made a big deal out of spanking - we just did it and went on with our lives. Meanwhile, it seems, those who make a big deal out of spanking are those who do not practice it - especially if they suspect they should be.

Various researchers have attempted to reduce life activities to chemical reactions. This includes women falling in love as well as feeling better after a spanking. The important thing to remember is that, even if true, the chemistry does not negate the positive implications of both examples offered above.

In the end, the *up the dosage* analysis is little more than the old *slippery slope* argument that the politically correct attempted to use in connecting spanking - via domestic violence - to murder. The illicit drug analysis is little more than a red herring.

Finally, if someone really does have a problem with my holding my wife's hand in public, opening car doors for her, seating her at a restaurant, or spooning with her in bed at night after almost forty years of marriage, I feel sorry for them. Really, I do.

I find this to be completely absurd to tell you the truth.

I think that some of you people are attempting to make excuses for your own behavior that seem biologically correct. I don't think it's true. To me it seems as if you are attempting to justify your own previous inability to think for yourself or you are of the male species attempting to convince females that they are intended to be submissive.

I see it a bullsh*t and frankly because of the general superiority of physical strength of the male gender the male species is more suited to be the slave to the dictating female.

I'm just saying if it has to be one way or another I can see myself owning a man. I can see having him automatically inclined to perform functions that I simply am incapable of due to my feminity. Therefore the man should be on the leash and should be commanded how to function.

LOL well I'm simply stating if dominance were absolute one way or another. The male species is more like the wild animal.

Sorry for the late comment but I just read this today.
I've been thinking about this subject for a long time now and it instinctively seems like the logical path.

However the way some women are with power, they are worse then men. Everything the woman does is almost always underhanded and subversive. So, when it comes down to it, I'd rather have a master because I lack trust in most of my female counterparts and I would trust a man before most women.

This is just a bs rant I guess.

Mike's Girl, that's one of the best descriptions I've read. Perhaps I only think that because you're similar to how I am. I suppose there is wide variety of how women and men are in these kinds of relationships that what may be right for you (and me) may not work for everyone. I'm not into punishment in relationships between adults. I disagree on equality simply on the moral basis that all people are created equal - although some are cleverer, stronger, better looking etc than others so that's just semantics.

I always want and need someone "better" otherwise how can I, a patently alpha female wolf, using your terms, feel I could cede control to my man? It's the only way it works for me. I am not identical to you in that although I'm certainly elitist and successful in career terms I'm fairly submissive generally.

Various parts of your post were useful to me and familiar. The last man I was seeing was a bit like you describe - there would never be any dumping of his feelings/difficulties on me and I respected him for that and wanted him to keep his privacy, almost and only share what he wanted to share. It was protective of me.

Also you wrote "If you want an alpha male/Yang mate, you're not going to get a sweetness-and-light wimp; you're gonna get a guy who likes weapons and women! A man who is intent on his status and his ranking against other men – because women's rankings of him don't count! Real uncomfortable stuff, that, for most “modern” women." Absolutely right. Competitive men who love women and can sometimes be hard to live with but well worth that price....

The only serious problem in this otherwise thoughtful post is that the author thinks it's okay that women's "rankings" of the guy don't make any difference to him. That's not "uncomfortable" (what a derisive, snarky little turn of phrase, btw), it's unacceptable. Women inherently deserve equal status to men - a voice, a vote, and full standing. And that should be recognized by all men, regardless of how "masculine" they are.

Furthermore, only if women recognize that we inherently possess - and always demand recognition of - these things of value, will our individual choices to surrender them to the individual men we love be worth a hill of beans.