Louise, this is a touching and fascinating story. It rings so true to me.

You have indicated that since you discovered Taken In Hand, things have improved considerably between you and your husband. As I understand it, your husband has taken to Taken In Hand like a duck to water and he has managed to keep calm and keep his temper much more than before. This calm control thrills and arouses you, and you have also indicated that you feel more like pleasing your husband, and actively do more to that end than you did before. Thus, the two of you have managed to create a virtuous circle in which by virtue of the Taken In Hand dynamics, you each please the other more, and thus feel more positive towards each other, and thus want to please each other more.

I was wondering about this crying episode you mention. I wonder if you would have felt that remorse and cried like that had this incident happened before you discovered Taken In Hand? I wonder if, perhaps, a similar incident before might have played out very differently. In the past, perhaps, your husband would have got angry, and you would have got angry too, and withdrawn, perhaps, and you would not have been feeling so much regret about not having tidied up. That is what happens when people fight: they each defend their corner and lash out or disengage and sulk instead of remaining close and thinking about whether or not they might have made a mistake or done something wrong.

But since you discovered Taken In Hand and the two of you have created this virtuous circle of good feelings, my guess is that you are now much more sensitive to your husband's displeasure, because you feel so warm towards him that you actively want to please him.

If you have done something regrettable or failed someone you love in some way, and the other person, instead of behaving badly, behaves admirably, it is no surprise that you might then feel bad about your regrettable conduct. It must feel as though that person doesn't deserve what you did. It might make you wish you had acted differently. It might well make you cry. And some of that crying might be love and gratitude and admiration, as well as shame and remorse in relation to what you see as your regrettable conduct.

It is so true that if the heart isn't there, no amount of spanking will lead to contrition. For example, if the man doing the spanking is the wrong man, in some cases he could severely injure the woman and she still wouldn't be able to cry. But those same women, with the right man, or in the right circumstances, can be flooded with remorse and contrition and cry even before the man lays a finger on them, and yes, even if he doesn't actually spank them at all.

This is why I get so exasperated with the constant focus on spanking instead of the underlying psychology and the relationship dynamics. Spanking per se does nothing. It all depends on the context.

But whilst you are completely correct, Louise, that it is not the spanking that does it, would you agree with me that the Taken In Hand dynamics between you may have made you more likely to cry in this situation – and more likely to want to make the effort to tidy up next time – than before Taken In Hand? It's not as though you did anything all that terrible, after all. Yet you seem to have felt real remorse. You must really, really love your husband and want to please him. That is very touching and special.

Yes, that's exactly how it has worked for us. Before, he would have come in and completely blown his top about the state of the house, and I would have been angry and defensive and sullen, and I would have felt as if I absolutely hated him and wished I'd never met him etc. I nver felt before as though I actively wanted to please him, whereas now I do.

Leaving the house in a mess isn't something that terrible, but it's something that drives him crazy, so having him keep his temper about it was painfully touching, having him being kind but slightly stern instead of yelling at me, added to the fact that I have been in a rather over-emotional state lately anyway, this combination led to the tears, and then to my husband's alarm that he might have upset me, whereas it was his not upsetting me that had upset me, as it were.

If I'd been in a state of sullen defiance like I used to be in the past when he had a go at me about something, and he'd grabbed me and started spanking me with the intention of making me feel remorse, it would simply not have worked. It was those words "we need to have a little talk when we get home" that produced that mixture of guilt and remorse and yes, also pleasurable excitement at the contemplation of the "little talk" (the after-effects of which I am still feeling).

Autumn, you wrote:

Seems like if you enjoy it so much it`s more like a reward. A punishment spanking is not a turn on for me, and if it were, I would do things wrong on purpose just to get it.

Please see the answer to this very point that I posted in the early days of this website:

Why you should not withhold spanking!
(and the preceding articles in that three-part series:
Why you shouldn't mention the ‘M’ word and
Being taken in hand is hot!)

I think I also need spanking to feel Taken In Hand. It's not that it helps me feel more submissive, though sometimes it does. It's not that it makes me feel contrite, though sometimes it does. It just makes me feel really possessed and taken by him.

It's not sexual, necessarily. Many times, I can be totally turned on and have sex with him. It will be very satisfying, but the next day, I still won't be right. I will still need that, sometimes I don't realize it till after we have made love and then he spanks me and then we have to make love again!

It's not necessarily about making me feel obedient. I can feel very obedient and still need a spanking.

Sometimes I just need him to take posession of my body and do something to it that I don't entirely like and nothing does that as well as spanking. Yes, he can demonstrate his authority without ever touching me. He can do it with a look across the table or across the room. Is he dominating in bed? Oh, you betcha! But, for some reason, nothing works quite like spanking for making me feel feminine, owned, protected. Maybe it is just an endorphin reaction. I don't know if our relationship would work quite so well if we did not have the DD part.

I get frustrated with both all the talk of spanking as well as the discounting of the importance of spanking. I only like to talk about spanking to a certain extent. I mean, no matter how important it is to our relationship, it is still just spanking and mostly a physical thing. I can only read discussions of the mechanics of it for so long and I have almost no interest in spanking stories as erotica (which is what some DD sites come off as, really) except when I am in the very specific mood. On the other hand, I don't think you necessarily have to discount the spanking component to talk about the emotional aspects of being Taken In Hand. You just don't necessarily have to talk about spanking. I also think it is very interesting to talk about the emotional aspects of spanking, but, again, only to a certain extent or magnitude, rather.

Anyway, Tev, I just wanted to let you know that you are not the only odd person on this site. Spanking changes my feelings and behavior as well and it is very important to our relationship.

Otter*

PS If we are *both* odd persons, does that actually make us *even* ? LOL

"The moment that I looked into your eyes, you owned me."
-Kenny Chesney

reading these posts is just great. i enjoy it very much to read women's thoughts on this matter which show me i haven't been so wrong all these years in my own relationships..
it seems that the female butt and psyche in form and condition (respectively) are just perfect for firm spankings (from her husband) in order to make her step into submission which is described here as a peaceful, happy state of mind. nature or just let's say god knew what he was doing when he made a woman for the first man....

perhaps the spanking might increase the submissiveness a little bit, then.
of course i wasn't going to generalize. that almost never works. but didn't you say (somewhere else) the announcement of spanking, i.e the exertion of authority upon you might already make you feel submissive? well, i think we shouldn't separate the act of spanking completely from its own meaning. you can't just have the submissive effect entirely without the exercise of discipline. spanking brings that to the point so specifically as only few other sanctions might do. try to think of something else what incorporates the whole idea of taken-in-hand correction so well as spanking does. so, isn't thinking of the exertion of authority (through correction) beforehand anything else as some kind of remembering and isn't imagination anything else as making something theoretically real?

i completely agree with you (then again) that submissive yearnings don't rise in every woman and spanking might as well not work for every woman eighter. ;-)
in ones life though one is being attracted by persons who correspond with your own needs and viceversa. that is why i generalize for the women i relate with..

Well, as you are new to the site you wouldn't know that the main bone of conetntion between my husband and I has always been my lack of interest in housekeeping, and the fact that I really couldn't care less whether the house is tidy or not(regular readers of this site will be only too familiar with this fact). when we started trying to have a Taken In Hand relationship, I agreed to try harder with things like keeping the house tidy, if he would try harder to keep his temper with me and not shout at me when things annoyed him. Once the first flush of enthusiasm had worn off, I found myself as bored by housework as i had always been, though I have continued (most of the time) to try harder than I used to.

This particular incident occured during a very stressful period in our lives. We had recently moved house and I was suffering quite violently from homesickness. I kept taking the children to stay with frineds in our old neighbourhood, and invariably did not wish to come back here at all. I could have tidied the house up, I just didn't bother, because I was bogged down in self-pity and homesickness and resentment at having to come back here. What made me feel so guilty and remorseful was the fact that my husband was nice about it, instead of delivering the strongly-worded rebuke I had been expecting.

He does do a lot of tidying up around the house, he doesn't expect me to do everything, even though he has a demanding full-time job. But our agreement was that I would try to keep the house reasonably clean and tidy, and this weekend I just hadn't bothered. Under the terms of our agreement (which was initially suggested by me) I would have expected to get spanked for this. It was the kindness that threw me, I actually prefer him being stern with me when I have done something that displeases him, I find that much easier to cope with than kindness. I tend to respond best to the iron hand in the iron glove.

Louise