The Boot Camp Basics

Disclaimer: Boot camp is not for every relationship. It's actually really difficult (in my opinion) to tell whether boot camp is for you and your spouse, or not. It's something that you both need to agree to and something that I wouldn't recommend for those just beginning domestic discipline.


This is a topic that, for whatever reason, seems to cause a lot of controversy. I'm not sure why it is, but it seems like almost everyone who practices DD can fall into one of these 3 categories: completely agrees with boot camp, completely disagrees with boot camp, or is completely in the dark. There doesn't seem to be a lot of "middle ground".


For those of you who fall into the "completely in the dark" category, I'm providing a little "boot camp" outline for you. Obviously this doesn't include every single boot camp detail (because that would take me forever) but hopefully this helps.


I'd also like to say that there are many different ways to do boot camp. This is just one of them, but because it's the way that my husband and I did, it's obviously the only one I have personal experience with.


So, what is boot camp?


Boot camp is basically a multiple day (the HoH determines the length. I've heard of some couples doing it for 1 day, and some for as long as a week. My husband and I did it for 2 days.) "training" so to speak. The HoH determines the rules and punishments (which often times are more severe or more "out of the ordinary" than the typical rules/punishments the wife would have) and, in addition to the rules and punishments, there are homework assignments and random punishments (that don't necessarily have an offense tied to them) with "lessons" behind each one.


What is the reason a couple would want to do boot camp?


The goal is hopefully that at the end of boot camp you and your spouse feel closer together and have more defined roles. In addition, it helps the wife to be more respectful of both her spouse and the rules, and to increase trust. These outcomes often convince a couple who already has domestic discipline in their marriage to try and improve it.


How does boot camp work?


Boot camp is comprised of the following..

• Punishments (for breaking the rules set forth during boot camp, and a seperate set of punishments with "lessons" behind each of them).
• Homework assignments.
• Communication building exercises (usually this comes from the couple discussing the homework assignments after they're completed, etc.)

Boot camp typically starts with the HoH removing all of the wifes privileges for the duration of boot camp.


Each day of boot camp contains 4 spankings. These spankings range from mild to severe, and each one has a lesson behind it (no complaining, hold still, no reaching your hand back/kicking/making it more difficult on your husband, and understanding that it could always be worse).


Each day also consists of 4 homework assignments. Some of these are individual ones that just the wife does, and some are ones that both the wife and husband do together. There is a pretty long list of homework assignments that the HoH can choose from prior to boot camp beginning, but some examples of them are listing qualities you love about your spouse, listing ways that DD has helped to improve your marriage, etc. These are always written assignments (usually 1-2 pages long).


In addition to the homework assignments and spankings, each day the wife is supposed to "practice obeying" by not responding "no" to any of her husbands requests. Failure to do so would result in immediate punishment of whatever the HoH chooses.




So, that pretty much sums it up. Obviously there is more in depth details that go along with this, but there's a basic overview of what boot camp is.


If you have any questions, feel free to contact me and we can discuss it further.


Chelsea

Opening Up The Boot Camp Can Of Worms

It's a pretty well known fact that I suck with can openers (I think there's a video floating around somewhere of when my husband taped me trying to use our electric can opener. It isn't as easy as it sounds!) so..maybe that's why the "boot camp can of worms" has stayed pretty tightly shut. Well, up until last week when I started to open it just a little bit. I didn't really think the "boot camp" curiosity would explode like it has. Between the comments, emails (that both my husband and I have gotten), text messages, etc. people are definitely curious.

Image from http://www.cartoonstock.com/



I guess I should have known, when I wrote that last entry regarding boot camp, that people who hadn't heard of it yet would ask, which is fine. I should have been prepared to do a "here's boot camp 101" entry, but I wasn't and I'm still not.


I don't want boot camp to sound like some kind of super-secretive operation that only those with "insider knowledge" get to do. It's not like that. My main reason for not putting "boot camp 101" out there is because I really believe it's something that would create a giant firestorm of opinions and a huge uproar for some people. The other reason is I believe that boot camp is pretty much something that should either be recommended to you on a case by case basis, or something that you and your spouse mutually agree may be best for your marriage. It's also something that you need to tailor specifically to your marriage. There are many ways to do boot camp, and many "custom forms" and so writing a "boot camp 101" type thing really wouldn't even be benenficial because it can be changed, and should be changed, in many different ways depending on the couple and numerous other factors.


The reason I wrote that last entry on boot camp was really geared towards those who had already done boot camp (because it had been a rather "hot button" topic lately, and I'd seen boot camp posts on numerous other blogs). But the more I think about it, the more I think that wasn't really fair.


I'm still not comfortable doing a extremely detailed outline of boot camp because it's going to be different for every couple. However, I've decided I'll go ahead and do a basic outline of boot camp, for those who are thinking about trying it. I'll be posting that within the next few days, so stay tuned.


Before I sign off, I want to apologize if I made people feel left out about the whole boot camp thing. My reasons for not being so open about it are above, but still, I think it's a good idea to at least give people some information on it which they can then use (or not) to make a determination on whether or not boot camp would be right for them.


If anyone has any specific questions regarding boot camp that they want to see covered in that entry, please email them to me (my email is found on the contact me page at the top) or leave them in the comments below. Thanks!


-Chelsea

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

Vacation!

Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm still alive! We're on vacation right now and are expecting to be home this coming weekend, so I'll resume blogging then. I hope everyone is doing well. :)

-Chelsea