Bob wrote:

What does the man do when it is time for his wife/girlfriend to be discplined and she refuses to to go to her man. (baring her from being sick) What then? Does he force her or does he wait for another day to try again?

The short answer is that every relationship is different, so it depends on the man's mode of dominance and/or what sort of treatment the woman has consented to (implicitly or explicitly).

Actually, the first point to be made is that Taken In Hand is not necessarily about "discipline" at all. It's about domination. Discipline can be part of a male dominated relationship, but there's no reason it has to be. That assumption seems to come out of thinking that domination is all about the wife's obedience, and "punishing" her when she disobeys. But for some of us, that's not it at all.

For one thing, the "obedience" model of male dominance seems to put all the burden on the wife to do the submitting, while the husband ordinarily doesn't have to do much actual dominating at all. It's only when something goes wrong -- when there's a perceived "problem" -- that the husband actively dominates her. But I prefer to be actively dominated on a regular basis, and I'm not really that much into "obedience." (And I'm definitely not into "service.")

When a man dominates me on a regular basis -- and for me that means he physically overpowers me and conquers me -- then that is what will keep me in the happy zone of submissive feminine bliss and fulfillment. I suppose it's also likely that if he commands me to do something, then I'll do it, because there will be that little frisson of fear there that compels me to obey him. But I don't see obedience as a major aspect of the relationship, and I doubt that I would be compatible with a man who needed to order me about all the time. (Ordering me around in sexual ways, however, is most welcome.) I'm a fully autonomous adult person, and I don't really need anyone to "guide" me in how to live my life, or make up rules for me to follow, or supervise my activities. What I need is for the man to demonstrate that he is capable of easily overpowering me and defeating me in a physical struggle, and that he enjoys doing that frequently.

But suppose my man did decide to punish me for disobeying him. I can see how that could be sexy, provided it's not some matter of principle on which I really feel that he's wrong. And suppose he decided to do that by spanking me. (I'm not a spanko myself, I much prefer other sorts of physical domination; but for the sake of argument, let's use that example.) Then suppose he ordered me to come over to him so he could whack my bottom. Me being me, I'm highly likely to just say no, or something much cheekier, and walk out the door. If he wants to spank me, then he will almost certainly have to physically force me to submit to the spanking. And in that case what I would actually enjoy would not be so much the spanking itself, but the physical coercion that he used in order to force me to submit.

However, if he has already demonstrated in the past that he is willing and able to force me into a spanking, and if he tells me that it will be much worse for me if I try to fight him, then I would probably submit to the spanking without a struggle, just to save myself the pain. (Because I'm not a masochist either, I don't really like pain.) But in that case it would probably not be enjoyable for me; it really would be just punishment, and not anything erotic. For me it's only sexy if there's physical struggle and conquest; my main thing is erotic combat with a much stronger man.

However, we're all different, and I'm sure you'll get very different answers from others at this website. But I liked your question, because it's something I've always wondered about myself -- not about me, but about other couples.

Every time I hear an account of how some man orders his wife to come over for a spanking, and she obediently trots over to get spanked, I find myself wondering: What in the world would the guy do with a woman like me? As long as I have a real choice as to whether or not to submit, my choice will be "no." He would either need to engage me in physical combat and subdue me, or else he would have to give up trying to dominate me, and admit defeat; because he can't really dominate me except by physical conquest.

That sort of "come here so I can spank you" interaction does not really seem to me to be about dominance at all. But to men and women in spanking relationships, it apparently is. So we must have very different ideas about just what male domination is, and what a man must do in order to achieve it. For me, being "Taken In Hand" necessarily involves direct physical coercion on the man's part.

Assuming that you are fairly new to this, her refusal may just be testing to see if you will follow through. I know in the beginning, I did that. Or once it started, I tried to get out of it to see if he would let me off, to see how serious he was.

For me, the question has two levels. Is she refusing mentally/emotionally or physically? This is an issue for me because I do not like spanking. I have a pretty low pain threshhold and spanking is one of the types of pain that I have an even lower tolerance to as my skin is really sensitive to stimulus. When I am being disciplined, my husband almost always goes beyond my pain threshhold and sometimes even when we are doing it erotically (we do that because he enjoys it, btw) So I might submit to it emotionally and I might know that it will bring us together and that it does great things for our relationship, however, sometimes I just can't get myself to lay down for it. I don't know if it is self preservation instinct or what but sometimes I just have to say to him, "I am not asking you not to do this. I am submitting to it, I just can't bring myself to lay down." He will usually put me literally OTK then, which is not a position we normally use. Or if my body changes its mind half way through(which happens), he will hold me down for the rest of the time.

This is different than when I think the punishment is unfair or I feel like it will make my mood worse. Then I voice my protests and he has the prerogative to over rule them and go ahead with his plan. In our relationship, whether or not I get spanked is totally up to him. He can spank me for any reason or no reason at all. It is perfectly acceptable to me for him to work out his frustrations at work on my bottom if he so chooses. He can spank me because some guy cut him off in traffic on the way home. He can spank me for something I didn't do or something that I did that I don't think is worthy of punishment. Sometimes he does it "just because he can", as he puts it. So, for us, it doesn't matter if I refuse, he can do whatever he feels necessary to get the job done, short of causing me permanent damage which I don't believe he would ever feel is necessary anyway.

This is how it works in our relationship and that is due, in large part, to the fact that spanking is not erotic to me, except as a sign of his domination. In fact, because of this, his overpowering my objection if he really wants to spank me is one of the things that begins to make it erotic for me because it is him dominating my will with his own to do something *to me* that I find fairly unpleasant but that he really enjoys and by which he is quite turned on.

This may not be the case for Bob's significant other. Actually, from the question, I am not even sure if this is an academic point or if he is looking for advice on a presenting situation. Either way, for me, if I refused to physically submit to a physical "punishment" that my husband felt needed to be done for whatever reason, I would fully expect him to do it anyway. Each woman is different and if a man is a really good HOH, he will be in touch with his woman enough to know what her preference is and if he should err, then presumably they can discuss it. I also know that for me, I would rather he err on the side of over dominating me rather than giving in to me. Again, that is just me and many people's mileage varies greatly. FWIW.

Otter*