# Does everyone take more than me? > Almost every number you have read is somebody's better night with the count rounded up. A stroke is not a unit of anything, and comparison gets people hurt. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/does-everyone-take-more-than-me/ - Section: Questions - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. Somebody online took sixty with the cane and you found twelve with a hairbrush quite enough. Before you conclude anything about yourself, I want to explain where numbers like that come from and why a stroke is not a unit of anything. --- ## In short - The comparison is built almost entirely on written accounts and video. Numbers in accounts get rounded up, and footage is edited work with the warm-up cut out. - A stroke is not a unit. Implement, force, placement, warm-up, spacing and position all change what a count means, so there is no exchange rate between one count and another. - Comparison is a safety problem. People accept more than they want in order to measure up, then avoid the safe word because using it would prove the thing they were afraid of. - A top who asks within the first few messages how much you can take is weighing you against people who are not in the room. Treat it as a warning. You read that a woman took sixty with a heavy cane. You watched a clip of a strapping that would have finished you inside a minute. And you, who found twelve with a hairbrush quite enough, closed the tab feeling as though you had failed an exam nobody set. Everything below concerns consenting adults over 18. When people ask me this, it is worded the same way every time. Everyone manages more than me and I am not built for this. Wrong in about four separate places. ## Where the comparison comes from Almost nobody has watched another person's session. You have written accounts and you have footage, and each misleads in a way that can be explained. Numbers in written accounts drift upward, mostly without dishonesty in it. Somebody who took eighteen, lost count in the middle and remembers it as enormous will write twenty-four, because twenty-four is what it felt like. Accounts get edited too, and stories drop the four minutes of standing about while somebody went to find the hairbrush. The larger distortion is selection. People post about the night it went well. An evening that got to twelve and stopped because she went quiet never gets written up, because it feels like an admission. Fifteen years of reading this material and I have never seen a post headed the night I tapped out early. ## Footage is a different problem Video misleads harder, because it looks like evidence. Nearly all of it is made by people who do this professionally or several times a week, filmed on a good day and cut. The warm-up is not in it, since twenty minutes of increasing hand work makes poor viewing, so the clip opens where the strokes are already heavy. The far end has gone as well, along with the following morning. You are measuring your whole evening against somebody else's edited middle. ## A stroke is not a unit Here is the technical objection, which is the part that actually helps. A count tells you nothing on its own, because a stroke has no fixed size. Think what moves underneath the number. The implement, where the gap between a hand and a heavy cane is a difference of kind. How hard the arm swings, which varies by a factor of several between one top and the next. Where it lands. [Warm-up](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/warm-up/), which shifts the ceiling further than anything else here. Spacing, since twelve in four minutes and twelve in twenty seconds are different events. Position. How she slept, and where she is in [her cycle](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/periods-and-menopause/). So twelve from me is not twelve from anybody else. If a woman writes that she takes thirty-six with a tawse, I cannot tell you whether that beats the eighteen you had last Tuesday, and nor can she. Why force measures so badly is set out at [does it hurt](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/does-it-hurt/) and [how hard is too hard](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/how-hard-is-too-hard/). > **What I do not know.** I have no data on this and no way of getting any. My own sessions and what people have told me make a badly skewed sample of people willing to talk about it at all. What proportion of people take a great deal, I cannot tell you. Nobody can. ## Tolerance is not a virtue Underneath the comparing sits an assumption that taking more is better, and that assumption does the damage. Nobody receives a prize. A high tolerance is closer to a nuisance than a talent, and mostly means longer sessions and heavier implements. The woman who takes a great deal and feels very little has had a worse evening than the one who took a handful and was undone by them. A low threshold is dealt with at [am I too sensitive for this](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/am-i-too-sensitive-for-this/). ## Why I bother writing this down Because comparison gets people hurt. That is the actual danger here. The sequence is reliable. Somebody decides they ought to manage what they have read about, and asks for more than they want, because what they actually want now feels embarrassing. Having asked, they will not then use the safe word, since using it would prove the thing they were frightened of. So they hold still through strokes they stopped being present for minutes ago. A safe word only works when it costs nothing to say, and comparison makes it cost something. More at [safe words](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/safe-words/) and [confidence, worth and settling for less](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/confidence-and-settling/). I have been on the wrong side of it. A woman I had played with twice asked me for twenty-four with the cane and was insistent about the number. I never asked where it came from, which was the failure. I warmed her up properly, gave her twenty-four, and she took them in silence and left forty minutes early. She messaged the next day to say she had cried in the car. Nothing was injured, but I had handed somebody a number instead of an evening. Now I ask where a figure came from before I agree to it. > ## If somebody has used this against you > > > > Being told what other people take, as a way of moving you past what you agreed, is coercion wearing a hobby vocabulary. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline is **0808 2000 247**, free, 24 hours. The Men's Advice Line is **0808 8010 327**. Samaritans, **116 123**, any hour. See also [red flags](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/red-flags/). ## The side of this nobody writes about Tops compare too. He has read the same accounts and drawn conclusions about what a capable man delivers, and wanting to be seen that way is dangerous in a way an anxious beginner never is, because he does not absorb the error. You can hear it before you meet him. He mentions what previous partners took. He asks in the second message how much you can take, then goes slightly flat when the answer is modest. You are being weighed against people who are not in the room. ## Keep your own record, if you want one Some people want a number and no argument removes that, so keep one and make it yours. Write down after each session what was used, roughly how long, roughly how much, and a line about how you felt the next day. The only comparison it supports is against yourself in March. Then look at which entries you wrote most about. In mine, the evenings that take up half a page are the ones where somebody stopped earlier than I wanted, or said one thing at the start that I turned over for a fortnight afterwards. The heaviest sessions get a line and a half. ## If you are reading a forum thread in bed right now Which is roughly who this page was written for. Nothing you have read tonight is a standard. The proportion of people who take a great deal is smaller than it looks from where you are sitting, because everyone who cannot is staying quiet. A decent partner wants something else established at a first meeting: what you have already tried, and what he is to do when you say stop. If the wanting itself is what worries you, that is answered at [am I normal](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/am-i-normal/). So take the number out of it. Ask for what you would want if you were the only person on earth doing this, and if somebody asks within three messages how much you can take, you have learned something useful about him for the price of one reply. ## Read next - [Am I too sensitive for this?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/am-i-too-sensitive-for-this/) - [How hard is too hard?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/how-hard-is-too-hard/) - [Warm-up: the part everyone skips](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/warm-up/) - [Confidence, worth and settling for less](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/confidence-and-settling/) - [Agreeing how hard](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/agreeing-how-hard/) ## Common questions ### How many strokes can the average person take? There is no such number and anybody who offers you one is guessing. A stroke has no fixed size: the implement, the force behind it, where it lands, how much warm-up came first and how far apart the strokes are spaced all change what a count means. Twelve from one person is not twelve from another, and there is no exchange rate between them. ### Am I a wimp if I can only take a few strokes? No, and the material you are comparing yourself against is unreliable. Written accounts are usually somebody's better session with the number rounded up, and video is edited work by people who do this professionally, with the warm-up cut out and the aftermath missing. Endurance is not a skill and nobody is scoring it. ### Do people exaggerate how much they can take? Frequently, and usually without meaning to. People lose count halfway through, remember a session as heavier than it was, and write up the evenings that went well rather than the ones that ended early. The public record is therefore made almost entirely of best performances by the people most inclined to describe them.