Ever notice how life sometimes kind of sneaks up and gets in the way of our relationships, even when we are trying not to let this happen? I know that Mike and I get busy often; we lead a fairly hectic life at times. Mike has been working very hard, and I have been carrying the home along as best I can. We spend time together as much as possible but still even when we are together we are not always connecting. When I look back on it I can always tell when it started happening because I start with a feeling of being slightly off balanced, yet not being quite able to put my finger on exactly what is making me feel this way.

Usually there is nothing “wrong”. We are going along happily but a distance starts to form up between us. It happened this week. Mike had his mind on his job, and a new development there. I understand how it can be difficult so I let him be, give him time and space to work it out. He had sort of stopped paying attention to the home front. He was there, but part of him I felt was elsewhere. Over a couple of days this distance starts to grow and a chill kind of descends on our relationship. That is the only way I can describe it. The heat and passion is the first thing to go.

One sure way to tell it is happening is by how we sleep. Normally we sleep a bit like cats, all curled up together. But when this starts to happen there is almost a wall between us. We sort of turn our backs on each other and go to sleep. This started to happen for the third night in a row last night and I said to Mike, “Is there something wrong?” He asked me what I meant. I told him that he was acting a bit like my brother rather than my husband! Normally he cannot keep his hands off me, but for the last few days he was kind of gently draping his arm over me, brotherly hugging me is the only way to describe it. The really funny thing is that he then said, “I have noticed that you have become a bit distant over the last couple of nights.” This was crazy because it was he who was distant right??! Well so I thought. Whatever it was, was happening between us both and we were giving each other space to work things out. Not really what either of us wanted or needed. This distance was creeping kind of like a dark chilly shadow between us, and we both saw it. What we both thought was that the other person was becoming distant.

So Mike says, “I know a sure way of taking out the chill.” I know what is coming, what I even want to come, but I resist. I say that he cannot very well spank me for him becoming distant! How is that supposed to work? He laughed at me, tilted up my chin looked into my eyes and said, “Hmmm, well do something bad quick, so that I have a good reason to spank you!” He said, “Come on you are just stalling, we both know what we need to happen right now.” That was that. The spanking was firm, but short. It was perfect for what we needed. It was enough to rekindle the fire, we ended with great sex and we both fell instantly asleep all curled up in each other's arms. In this instance, Mike's loving guidance was there in full force. He quickly saw what needed to be done, and did it. It was not really discipline, and although it ended in great sex the spanking was not purely erotic either. It fell somewhere in between. But what it did perfectly was close the gap between us and put us right back on track. In these moments I revel in what we are accomplishing and wonder why it took us so long to get here.

My partner, Nan, and I have been talking about how difficult it would be for me to spank her when I know it is "my" issues that made me feel distant as opposed to anything directly wrong that she did or did not do. What I learned from your post and also from Sarah’s posting of Why you should not withhold spanking!, is that spanking, at times, is not about punishment, and discipline, it is about reconnecting. The spanking act, during these times is not about who is right, and “putting one in one’s place,” it is an event that allows two people to cross from opposite sides of a bridge that has come to separate them. And since they cross from opposite sides, each has a different path to walk. The woman must submit, and the man must lead. Each individual remembers his or her separate path (independent role) that exists within his or her relationship. Through this remembrance transcendence occurs and the once distant individuals are back to an interdependent entity.

I loved you analogy of crossing bridges. It is how I see it exactly. Someone once described it as needing to build a bridge from both sides. We do have different paths. Mike and I worked on this idea of fairness for a while at the beginning. Frank Nelson wrote a great comment which says much the same thing at It's not about blame, so forget ‘fairness’!. It took a while for Mike to become comfortable spanking me when it is not fair. When I bring up fairness now I mostly just get rueful smile. Often he will say because you are the one who needs to be spanked, and I am the one who needs to spank you.

It was my issue, not his, but similar...I had done nothing to deserve "discipline". But I was all knotted up inside over a lot of stress, mostly work related, that I am under. We talked on the phone as he drove home and I wasn't my usual positive self, and I told him, "I'm not sure if I need a big hug or a good spanking." He said to me, "I think you probably need both." When he came home, he gave me a number of enormous hugs and kisses, and after dinner we went to bed. As he started to make love to me, I said, "I have been a really bad girl." "Why?" he said. "Well, I have been all knotted up inside and and feel like a little b****". He looked at me and said, "Then I am going to have to give you some correction." And he most certainly did. At the end of it all, those things that were bothering me so intensely were gone, and I felt calm and peaceful and so very much in love that those stresses of the corporate world really did not matter. We closed the gap, and reconnected, and the next day all the stress of the job and life just didn't seem to matter a bit.