Punishment (wink wink)

I had an interesting conversation with my therapist today.  Despite me explaining this dynamic multiple times over our years together, she has persisted in a misunderstanding of what a punishment dynamic means in my relationship.

I don’t blame her, it’s not something she has any experience with. It’s not something it’s easy to find information about in our culture.  In fact, and I blame this for her (and many people’s) confusion… In our culture, “punishment” between consenting adults tends to be “punishment” wink wink…  It’s a euphemism for sexy spanking or “naughty” bedroom games.  I’m not completely sure why “naughty” is associated with sexy… Holdover from Puritan rebellion?  Whatever.  It makes things damn confusing and irritating in my life.

So… in my household, we don’t really do euphemisms.  We’re pretty straight-meaning language.  So when I talk about punishment, I’m using the old, Skinnerian, behaviorist, rats and pigeons definition.  An undesirable consequence which contributes to extinguishing a behavior.  It is unpleasant, an aversion treatment. And the goal, ultimately, is not to have to repeat it.

Here’s where this gets complicated.  There are lots of people who have a KINK for punishment (the drama of it, the physical aspects of it, the roleplay of it, the dominance and submission…whatever it is).  They, deep down somewhere, WANT to have punishment and would be dissatisfied if it wasn’t a part of their relationship…  That’s not actually punishment. That’s… something else.  It’s kink.  It isn’t punishment.  And that’s fine.  But it’s very confusing when people convince themselves (and others) that it’s punishment.  It isn’t.

I asked Sir the other day, what would happen to our relationship if I stopped messing up at some point and didn’t earn any punishments…  He looked at me for a long time, then he said, “I don’t understand, what do you mean what would happen to our relationship?”

I had to explain to him that… past relationships… some of my partners… NEEDED me to mess up (or needed to mess up) because the punishment itself was vital to their happiness in the relationship.  If it became unnecessary, they wouldn’t get anything out of the relationship anymore.

Sir, apparently, doesn’t know people like that.  He found that concept foreign and disturbing.

And it IS disturbing.  Because unless you’re honest about what it is (we’re playing a punishment game, we both get our giggles out of it), then what you’re doing is setting up one person to be a failure in order to fulfill both people in the relationship.  That’s fucked up!

Me failing my own expectations of myself is not a necessary component for my relationship to work.

It has been in past relationships.

I’ve even been… actively set up for failure to justify punishment in past relationships… because… people confuse kink with real punishment.  They think that to make it “realistic” you have to punish for real failings, so when someone’s horny, someone has to fail in some way.

And that is a fucked up way to live your life.

My therapist was still confused about this, though.  Because our culture doesn’t have any model of adult punishment that isn’t, on some level, the “punishment – wink wink” kind of punishment.  She still believed that, deep down, I get pleasure from punishment, some kind of sexual pleasure.

Sigh.

So I explained again.

This morning I kicked the side of the tub getting into the shower.  It was very painful.  It was not remotely erotic.

Punishment isn’t erotic, either.

Yes, I’m a sadist (sexually) and a masochist (sexually), but just like vanilla people can see a naked body (I assume they can do this) and not find it erotic in every context (seriously, I did cadaver lab!) The same for us kinky people.  Life is contextual.  Even sex itself can be without eroticism.  Literal fucking can be non-erotic (anyone ever been in a terrible relationship?)  Rape, for god’s sake, is fucking that is the ultimate in not-pleasurable sexual (physically) interaction.

No, punishment isn’t rape.  It isn’t violence.  It differs because we act with mutual consent.  But it also isn’t FUN!  We might engage in the exact same physical actions – but with two different contexts and THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING!

I choose to have a punishment dynamic maybe for similar reasons that people have workout buddies… it makes me more able to reach my goals.

And yes, I do actively work to avoid punishment. It’s a better deterrent, often, than the natural consequence of just being miserable.

Example. My morning routine has sucked for a while now.  I’ve been really struggling to get up on time.  I hit the snooze for… 20 – 30 minutes, have to race through my shower and getting dressed, and shove breakfast into my face while running down the stairs.  I arrive at work… on time (or a few minutes late) and barely have time to get stuff set up for the day before kids arrive.

It just sucks.

And I used to get to work 15 minutes early every day.  I used to sit down at the table for breakfast every morning.  It was better.  I don’t like my life this way.  It sucks.

But I’m not accomplishing change on my own.  It just keeps sucking.  I berate myself for not changing it.  Feel more miserable, and get more depressed, and do even worse at improving it.

Sir suggested he helps me with my morning routine.  There’s now a rule that I can’t hit the snooze.

So now, it’s an official rule.  If I break it, there will be an unpleasant consequence. I will not, intentionally, break that rule in order to get “punished” (wink wink) because that’s not how we do punishment.  If I screw up tomorrow morning… I will get a pit in my stomach, I will feel sad and anxious, I will be miserable with the punishment, and I will be extra motivated on Monday not to repeat the process.

Maybe the threat of punishment will be enough and I’ll get my routine reset without any other help.  Maybe I’ll get punished once or five times… but eventually… it won’t be necessary anymore, at least not with any frequency unless I have a big slide again in the future…  Because the point of punishment is to extinguish the unwanted behavior.  If I was getting off on the punishment – it wouldn’t do shit to stop my behavior!

Sometimes punishment isn’t pre-emptive like that example.  Sometimes it’s… reparation.  At that point it isn’t the true definition of punishment anymore, but it’s still not sexual.  This is much more often what sub brother gets – I tend to struggle more with daily expectations, but usually have better control over my big emotions than sub brother who is stronger in daily routines, but weaker in managing large issues.

So…a while back… sub brother told Sir to fuck off, in the heat of an argument (he should’t have been arguing anyway, but was struggling to obey something Sir told him to do). Sir could have brushed this off. He would brush it off (they’d have talked about it later) if they didn’t have a punishment dynamic.  But… sub brother can’t brush it off.  He would have…destroyed himself with guilt. His anxiety would have gone beyond the reach of his medication… it would have damaged their relationship deeply.  Not because Sir couldn’t forgive it, but because sub brother couldn’t. So punishment was not a deterrent, it was a reparation that sub brother could, in time, accept and allow himself to let go of his guilt.

It’s still not sexual.

At all.

For Sir or sub brother.

Because context matters.

And that matters because a relationship that depends on someone failing for the relationship to succeed is inherently unhealthy.

It’s fine to have a kink for roleplay. It’s fine to get off (even just a little) on a punishment scenario.  I really don’t care how people get their kinks.  At all!  And I even appreciate, to an extent, the overt  wink wink sexuality that mainstream culture gives it, because, at least it’s clear that it’s not real…  But… people who refuse to acknowledge, who build a relationship on punishment because it is tied into their sexuality, but they tie it to real-life success and failure and call it “real” punishment.  Claim to be “helping” the sub to “be a better person” when really, it’s about getting their rocks off, they just won’t admit it.  Then it’s sick.

It’s sick.

And I hate that I let myself fall for people like that.  I hate that I let them destroy me.

And… I love you, Sir… so… fucking much.  Thank you for saving me.  Sub brother… you are… the gentle salve on the wounds others left on me and I love you.