How do I bring it up?

This is the step people spend years on. Not the spanking, the sentence before it. Here is the compressed practical version, for anyone who wants a script rather than a chapter.

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.

Pick a calm, ordinary moment, say it in one plain sentence, and then stop talking and let the other person react without owing you an answer. The common mistakes are waiting for a perfect opening that never arrives, and raising it in bed, which is the worst possible place.

That is the method, and it fits in a paragraph. The rest of this page is the detail, and there is a much longer version on asking a partner you already have if this one leaves you wanting more.

When

Daytime. Sober, or nearly. Not during sex, not immediately after it, and not at eleven at night when one of you is already half asleep and the conversation has to be finished before morning.

Side by side beats face to face. Walking, driving, washing up, anything that gives both of you somewhere to put your eyes. It sounds like a small thing and it is not: people say much harder sentences when they are not being looked at.

Do not stage it. A booked restaurant table and a serious expression tell your partner that something bad is coming, and by the time you get to the actual words they have already run through infidelity and illness.

What to say

Short. One sentence naming the thing, one saying what you want, one saying what you are not asking for. Something in the shape of:

"There is something I have wanted for a long time and never said. I would like you to spank me, properly, as a thing we do on purpose. I am not asking you to become someone else, and if the answer is no then it is no."

Then stop. The urge to keep going, to explain, to soften it with jokes, is enormous. Resist it. Silence for ten seconds is fine and the other person needs the room.

What to expect back

The first reaction is a reflex, not a verdict. People produce surprise, nervous laughter, a joke, or a flat "where has this come from" simply because they have had four seconds to process something you have had four years with.

So give it two days. Say, explicitly, that you do not need an answer now and you will not raise it again until the weekend. Then actually do not raise it again until the weekend. Following your own stated timescale does more for your credibility here than anything you say in the conversation itself.

In my experience the second conversation is where the real answer lives, and it is often considerably warmer than the first. The most common outcome is not rejection. It is curiosity buried under not knowing what to ask.

Writing it instead

Perfectly legitimate. A short message or a note left on the table lets you get the words right, and it lets them have their first reaction in private without performing anything at you.

Keep it to a few sentences. A three-page document reads as a demand and a list of grievances, whatever it says. End it with a line that takes the pressure off: no reply needed tonight, we can talk when you want to. Sending them a page of this site is a reasonable move if you would rather have the explanation done by somebody else.

What not to do

• Do not demonstrate. Nobody has ever improved this conversation by suddenly smacking their partner to show what they mean.
• Do not attach it to a complaint about your sex life. It becomes a criticism, and it will be remembered as one.
• Do not present it as an ultimatum, or as something you will find elsewhere if refused. That is coercion, however gently it is phrased.
• Do not ask them to read a whole website before they have said anything at all.

If the answer is no

Then it is no, and pushing a no into a yes produces a partner who is complying rather than participating, which is worse than nothing. What you can fairly ask for is whether it is a no to this, a no for now, or a no to ever discussing it. Those three are very different and most people can tell you which one they mean.

There is a fuller answer on what if my partner is not interested, including the versions of this that are survivable and the ones that are not.