Boot Camp From The Women's Perspective

It's been awhile since I went through domestic discipline boot camp (like, well over a year). But, I got some requests for this entry, and so I thought I would write it anyway.



Boot camp, in one word, is rough. There's a lot of pros to it (which I will list in a second) but that doesn't mean it isn't still pretty challenging. However, I'm pretty sure it was meant to suck because the point is to learn lessons from it so that you never have to do boot camp again. And, I'm pretty proud to say that I haven't had to go through boot camp again and hopefully never will (although, I'm pretty sure with my latest stunt, I came pretty close).


If you haven't gone through DD boot camp yet, but you and your spouse are planning on it..here's my warning that it's pretty intense. For me, it was more emotionally intense I think, but for others I've heard that it's physically terrible. And, it is. Don't get me wrong. But emotionally, it makes you think a lot about yourself (which I hate doing) and the homework assignments within boot camp are pretty thought provoking and emotionally charged.


Despite the pretty intense spankings and the homework assignments (after just having been spanked..), I wouldn't take back the boot camp experience (I can't believe I just typed that, actually). But seriously, I wouldn't. It really added strength to my marriage, and improved my domestic discipline outlook and relationship as well. In addition to that, it built an unbreakable level of trust between my husband and I, and that, especially when using domestic discipline in your marriage, is key.


As strange as it sounds, I really didn't think I could love my husband any more..until we did boot camp. The side of him that I saw, although it was strict, was amazing. He took charge of situations where I'm pretty sure he didn't want to, he spanked me harder than I'm sure he wanted to (which taught me the ever so valuable lesson of "it could always be worse", which now makes me cooperate with every spanking I get to make it not get to that point..ever), and the list goes on.


So yeah, boot camp is rough. But, if you can get through a couple days (or, however long you do it for) of intense emotional and physical battles, it's so worth it in the end. It improves your marriage, even when you already think it's amazing, and it really changes your behavior (seriously, I'm pretty sure I didn't get in trouble, at all for like a good 4-6 months after boot camp. *sigh* those were the days..).


The best advice I have to someone getting ready to do boot camp within their marriage is the following..

• Trust your spouse.
• Find the positive in it. (It's there, you just have to look).
• Look at it as a learning experience.
• Look at it as a chance to not only strengthen your marriage, but also yourself. For both the husbands, and the wives, it pushes you to a lot of different levels..you're going to be amazed at the strength you have, and your spouse has.
• Just cooperate. Trust me, it's way easier that way.

If you've already done boot camp, hopefully you were able to see the same results that I have, or at least can look back on it and find the positive within it. I'd love to hear your views on how it went for you and your spouse. :)


As always, if you have any questions, feel free.
-Chelsea

The Surrendered Wife

Ever since my idea that was supposed to be great but wasn't ended up backfiring, it's been a struggle to get "back on track".

I found this book called The Surrendered Wife by Laura Doyle. It's essentially about this woman (the author) who was having issues in her marriage, and decided to "give up all the control" to her husband. Instead of trying to change all the things she didn't like about him, she decided to change herself.



Anyway, I'm about half-way through it now and it's really opened my eyes to a lot of things. I'm still struggling a little with letting my husband have all the control, but I just need to let go of that and trust that he makes the right decisions for our family. There's a lot of awesome points that the book brings up though, and it gives some great advice for submissive wives, and wives in a DD marriage. The bottom line is I highly suggest everyone read it (or, have your wives read it). It's a great book.

I wish I had more time to write, but my 2 month old is on this ridiculous schedule of literally not wanting to sleep AT ALL during the day (not even a little nap, lol). So, I better get going. But, if you get some time, check the book out. I plan to write more later, but until then.. have an awesome night everyone! :)

-Chels

United We Stand

September 11, 2001- Never Forget


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Giving Up Control to Gain Power

First, before I begin telling you about my awesome experiment that went horribly wrong, I should let everyone know that my laptop decided to crash a few days ago. So, between my husbands breaking last week and mine crashing the other day, we're pretty much screwed. Thankfully, his was still under warranty so he gets a new one. I, however, wasn't so lucky. And since getting me a new laptop really isn't high on anyones priority list right now, it'll probably be a long time before I get one. So, I've had to resort to blogging from my iPhone. I got this sweet blogging app for it, but still, I'm not sure how the formatting and all that will turn out, so bare with me. :)

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine got into an interesting discussion regarding control within a DD marriage. Prior to that conversation, I never really thought about it before. I don't really like the word control, because I think people often associate that with a controlling and possesive husband which often leads to them thinking abuse. But control is one of those things within a DD marriage that's actually really important that it function correctly, as I recently found out.

So, my friend essentially began telling me that she felt like her husband wasn't stepping up enough when it came to DD, and specifically punishing. She felt like she had to make all the decisions, even down to what punishment she thought was appropriate and she didn't like it. In a roundabout way, she felt her husband had given up all the control.

I, on the other hand, didn't have that problem. I never get to pick my punishments, and so when I heard that she did, little lightbulbs went off in my head. I talked to another friend about it who agreed- if we could essentially control our fate every time we broke the rules, that would be kind of cool! And thus, the great "what would happen if WE had control" experiment was born.

My friend and I recruited about 4 of our other friends who practiced DD and agreed to trying out this experiment with us. Our goal was not to intentionally get in trouble (Ever) but IF we did get in trouble for something over the course of our 30-day experiment, we would try to control (or essentially choose and leave no choice to our husbands, lol) how we got punished.

The problem with this, as some
of us soon discovered, was once one of our husbands decided to spank, we couldn't really do much. So we decided to change our experiment to not control the punishment but essentially the details of it (how many times, etc). The point was basically to see how many of our husbands would just freely relinquish the control. However, this didn't go as planned.

A week or so into our experiment, I got spanked for something (honestly, I can't remember what). About mid-way through the spanking, I'd decided I had enough and decided to just stand up and essentially stop the spanking. That didn't go so well. I pretty much always cooperate with whatever punishment he decides, so to just flat out stop cooperating like that I think really shocked him.

The way I handled that punishment essentially caused me to be punished again. You would have thought I learned that my control idea sucked by now, but I didn't. Actually, I think with every punishment I received last week as a result of him "cracking down on the rules" sent me deeper into my "need to control" mode.

The truth is, I don't really like having the control. I like having the power to make my own decisions but having control AND power isn't good for anyones marriage, including mine. Therefore, I've learned that I need to give up the control in order to gain power. When we first started DD I entrusted my husband to have "control" over the DD portion of our marriage. Obviously there are some behavioral things I need his help with to make me a better wife (and person) so for me to ask for his help (verbally or non verbally) then take that control of how he helps away from him doesn't make any sense, and is wrong.

My goal is to get back to that mindset where I have the power, he has the control. I have the power to choose the decisions I make and if they turn out badly, he then has the control to decide how he fixes them.

Last week sucked and I pretty much dont want a repeat of that. My control experiment was a nightmare and something I totally don't recommend any of you try. It's going to take some time (but hopefully not too long) for me to get back to where I was before I started this awful idea, but I'm hoping I can do so soon because being in trouble is no fun.

-Chelsea



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone