Changing A Man

I saw a quote attributed to Natalie Wood yesterday and it got me thinking.

"The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he is a baby."

Well yes, and no.

Ah, dualities! Those wonderful things that make black white, white black and put that double edge on every sword; the thorn on the rose and the rose on the thorn...

But before I drift off across the universe in a fog of mystical revelations, I do want to address a recurring question in spanking relationships.

Many people believe that spanking is a type of cure-all, a spanked spouse is a well behaved spouse and so there is no domestic friction. Um, no. There are some things that not all the hairburshes, paddles, and straps in the world will fix. Not every man is meant to be spanked and some men just won't change no matter how often you blister their bottoms.

In the other camp you have folks who claim none of it's real, it's all just a fantasy game, spanking doesn't really change anything, etc. These people are full of elaborate theories about what's "really" going on emotionally and mentally, with long winded lectures about how it's the new emotional bonds that make a partner change, etc etc. These people make me scream faster than you can say "Occam's Razor". Yes, the emotional bonding spanking creates does have a effect, but no matter how you try you cannot quite completely disregard a little thing called classic conditioning, (nor operant conditioning).

The fact is a spanked man will change. Yes, if you spank for discipline some of his behavior will change, but regardless of the reason you spank he will learn and grow as a person. If you are the one spanking him, teaching him, guiding him, you will be helping to change him, so in that sense Ms. Wood was incorrect. However, while you may be helping he still has to choose to make the change. In that sense he is changing himself rather than you changing him, so in a way she is correct, too.

All change has to come from internal motivations. They have to want to do it for themselves as much as they want to do it for us. But that doesn't make us irrelevant. We're part of the process, too. We change him by inspiring him to change himself and giving him the opportunity to do so. He provides the desire, we provide the mechanics to make it happen.

But despite Ms. Woods observation, he does change, and we as women do cause that change.

Ms. Betty