Am I hurting someone I love?

This one is for the person who did the spanking and is now awake in the dark wondering what kind of person that makes them. I switch, so I have been on both sides of it, and I have been awake at four with this myself. Here is what I have worked out since, including the parts that are not reassuring.

Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.

Written from first-hand experience or extensive research by the editor.

You agreed to it. You did it. She asked for it, she enjoyed it, she sent a cheerful message from the train, and it is now ten past three and you are lying in the dark working out what kind of person hits somebody they are fond of.

Everything here is between consenting adults over 18.

There is a page on whether spanking is abuse, which answers that generally. This is the version that turns up two days later with your name on it, and almost nothing speaks to the person who held the implement.

The shape of it

During, nothing was wrong. She was fine and you were fine. It starts afterwards and small: at the sink, or in the car, a flicker of something off that you dismiss inside ten seconds.

Then it waits. It comes back on Sunday evening, and by three in the morning it is no longer a question about one stroke but a finding about what you are.

The timing catches people out. The bad evenings do not produce this. The good ones do, and part of what sets it off is having enjoyed yourself.

I have sat on the edge of a bath at four after an evening that could not have gone better, with a woman asleep twelve feet away who had thanked me twice.

The fact that you are asking

People who hurt others deliberately are characteristically untroubled by it. The men I have known about who did real damage were not the ones awake at three. Self-suspicion of this kind turns up in decent people and is missing from the other sort.

It proves nothing on its own, and I would rather say so than let you sleep on a technicality. Somebody can be worried, fond of her, and still doing damage by drift. Guilt is a poor detector: no access to the facts, and it convicts on mood. So check things instead.

Six things to check

Did she ask?

Who raised it first, and who raises it now? Somebody has to propose, usually the top, so doing most of the asking is no fault (dominance is a service). If she has never initiated and never asked for anything specific, you are in a different arrangement from the one you think.

Can she stop it, and have you proved that?

Not whether she could in principle. Whether she has, and what you did in the second afterwards. A safe word nobody has used is untested equipment. Fix that on purpose: in a light session, ask her to use it whenever she likes, and stop dead.

Is she better afterwards, or worse?

An hour later and a week later. A session that has done its job leaves somebody talkative and slow to get dressed. The other kind leaves somebody flat, dressed quickly, gone. More at when it stops being play.

Would she tell you, and have you made that easy?

Everybody believes their partner would say. Fewer have built anything that makes saying it cheap. Asking whether that was alright while she is still face down gets a yes from somebody being kind. A message on Tuesday asking for one thing to do differently gets an answer.

Does it survive her saying no?

Has she ever turned a session down, and what was the week after like? If she has not declined once in a year, either she wanted it every time or it costs something. You will know which, because you know how you behaved the last time somebody said not tonight.

Could a sensible friend of hers know the details?

Not her mother, not a forum. One reasonable adult who likes her and has no stake in this. If that makes you flinch, work out which detail does it.

Asked-for pain and harm are different things

One distinction sits underneath all six. Pain somebody asked for, inside limits she set, endable in one word at any second, is a different category of thing from harm. Take consent away and nothing holds the two apart, which is why this site is so exacting about it.

One legal note, and I am not a lawyer, so this is not legal advice. In England and Wales, R v Brown [1993] UKHL 19 means consent is not a defence to actual bodily harm, so her asking does not protect you if you injure her. More at is it legal in the UK.

Where the worry is right

Some people reading this should act, and a page that reassured everybody would be worthless. Treat these as a stop rather than a think.

• She has gone quiet and compliant where she used to be responsive. Somebody who stopped arguing about small things has usually stopped reporting large ones.
• You prefer it when she is upset. The sessions after a bad week feel like the real ones.
• You have stopped checking. You used to ask afterwards and watch her face.
• You are the only thing holding her week together. Go away for a fortnight and something goes wrong.
• You continued past something you noticed at the time and decided about on your own.

That last one is mine. Ten strokes into a caning we had agreed would be twelve, her breathing changed. I registered it, told myself she was settling into it, and gave her the other two. She said afterwards that it had been fine. It still counts as a mistake: I had the information, decided alone, and it came out well by luck.

If two or three of those landed, read when it stops being play. If the worry is the arrangement itself, and her money or friendships have narrowed, read consent and coercive control, an offence that requires nobody to be hit.

Or it is drop, in costume

Top drop is the comedown that arrives a day or two later for whoever ran the session, and this feeling is very often that, wearing an argument as a disguise. It arrives as a finding of fact about your character instead of as a mood, which is what makes it persuasive: a verdict seems to demand action.

Your verdict on your own character at three in the morning is evidence about three in the morning and about nothing else. It says nothing about whether she is safe with you. Put the phone down until it is light.

Ask her, and ask properly

Ask the next day, or two days later, never in the moment. Use a message if that makes an honest reply easier, and ask for a criticism rather than reassurance.

That presumes there is something and gives her permission to name it. If she names a thing, thank her and change it. A twenty-minute apology turns her honesty into work. If she says there was nothing, believe her the first time.

The unreassuring part

Some people should not do this. If the appeal survives her unwillingness, or if the moment you keep returning to is the one where she could not have stopped you, the answer at the top of this page is yes. Recognising that is decent rather than a failure.

Stopping is available too, at any point and with no case to argue. "I do not want to do this any more" is a complete sentence.

None of it can be settled at three in the morning. Get up, drink a glass of water, go back to bed. Ask her on Tuesday.