# Faith, guilt and wanting this > When the wanting itself feels like a fault. What religious guilt about this actually looks like, the distinction that does the work, and where to take it. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/faith-and-guilt/ - Section: Why we want this - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. This page is for people whose difficulty is not with a partner or a technique but with something considerably older and closer in. I am not a theologian and I have no interest in talking anybody out of a faith. I can only describe what I have seen. --- ## In short - Religious guilt here usually attaches to the wanting rather than to anything done, which is what makes it so difficult to put down. - Most traditions have more to say about conduct than about involuntary appetite. Collapsing the two is where the trouble starts. - Prayer and confession generally do not remove it, and that failure is not a measure of anybody's faith. - Christian domestic discipline is not disqualified by its theology, but the ordinary tests apply unchanged: revocable, bounded, and leaveable. Two adults, both over 18. Most of this site is practical. This page is not, and it comes with a caveat I want stated at the top rather than buried: I have no theological training whatsoever. I cannot tell you what your tradition teaches, I am not going to argue you out of believing it, and I would be suspicious of anybody in my position who tried. What follows is a description of a pattern I have watched a lot of people struggle with, and one distinction that seems to help. ## What this particular guilt is like It is different in shape from the ordinary embarrassment covered at [embarrassment](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/embarrassment/), and different again from the general worry about being strange that [am I normal](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/am-i-normal/) deals with. The first difference is where the verdict comes from. For a lot of people of faith the voice saying this is wrong is not a partner's or a friend's. It belongs to an authority they regard as final. Usually nothing has been done at all. It is simply something they want and understand they are not supposed to want, and it can be carried for years without a partner, a decision or an act ever coming into it. The second is what the guilt attaches to. Ordinary guilt about this attaches to an evening: something happened, and I feel odd about it. Religious guilt of this kind attaches to the appetite itself, which means there is nothing to stop doing and nothing to make amends for. You cannot apologise your way out of a preference. People describe it as a fault in the material rather than a mistake in the conduct, and that is a much harder thing to live beside. The third is that the usual remedies have been tried. Almost everybody who raises this with me has prayed about it, often for years. Many have confessed it, some repeatedly, and a number have had the experience of confessing something they could not name properly and being counselled about the wrong thing entirely. Then they have applied willpower, gone through long dry stretches, and found it waiting for them at the other end. That last part is what frightens people most, because it gets read as a verdict on the sincerity of their faith. I would offer a duller explanation. Preferences of this kind do not generally respond to disapproval, no matter how sincere the disapproval or how much is riding on it. The failure says something about the category of thing you are dealing with rather than about you. ## The distinction that does most of the work Here is the only thing on this page I would press, and I will put it carefully because it is not mine to settle. A religious objection to particular conduct is a coherent position. If your tradition holds that certain things belong inside a marriage, or that certain acts are wrong, that is a considered view held by serious people for a long time, and a person can hold it and order their life by it. Somebody who decides on that basis that they will not act on this, or will only do so with a spouse, has made a real decision and I have no argument with them. Guilt attached to the existence of the desire is a different animal. It is not a decision about conduct, because there is no conduct in it. And as far as I can tell, most traditions have a great deal more to say about what people choose to do than about what turns up uninvited in their heads. That is not me doing theology, which I am unqualified for. It is an observation that the two questions are separable, and that a great many people have never separated them, with the result that they are carrying a verdict about their character on the strength of something they never chose. Whether you act, and how, and with whom, is your question and your tradition may have a firm answer. Whether the wanting makes you a bad person is the question that actually keeps people awake, and it is a different one. Keep them apart before you answer either. ## The bind, when the community would react badly There is a practical cruelty in this situation that I think goes unrecognised. Most difficulties in life have somewhere to go. You take them to a partner, or you take them to your community, and one of the two holds some of the weight. Somebody in a faith community that would respond badly to this has both routes closed at once. The partner may be inside the same community. The minister, the elder, the group, the people who would ordinarily be the place you take a thing like this, are the people it cannot be taken to. And the shape of the problem means the guilt itself argues against seeking help, because seeking help requires saying it out loud to someone. So the isolation is doubled, and it lasts. I have talked to people who had carried this for thirty years without one conversation about it. That is not unusual, and a person in that position generally assumes they are the only one. ## Christian domestic discipline It exists, some couples run it, and a few of them describe it as the most settled arrangement of their lives. The site's position on it is not altered by the theology in either direction, and I would not sneer at it. What does not change are the tests, and they are the same tests applied at [domestic discipline](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/domestic-discipline/) to every other arrangement. The person receiving has to be able to stop any individual session, and to end the whole arrangement, at any moment, without penalty and without a negotiation about whether she is permitted to. It cannot reach money, movement, contact with family and friends, medical care, or the practical ability to leave. Both people have to be able to walk away with their lives intact. A framework in which a wife is taught that she may not withdraw her consent, or that leaving is not available to her, is describing controlling or coercive behaviour, whatever is cited in support of it. Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015, which applies in England and Wales, does not have a religious exemption. That is set out properly at [consent and coercive control](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/consent-and-coercive-control/), and I would read it before entering an arrangement of that kind, not after. ## Where to take it Two practical things, because the rest of this page is description and description only gets you so far. Therapists exist who will treat neither your faith nor your kink as the presenting problem, and you are entitled to one. The failure mode in both directions is real: some counsellors hear the faith and set about liberating you from it, and some hear the interest and set about curing you of it, and both are a waste of your money and your nerve. It is a fair question to ask at the first appointment, or before booking, and a good practitioner will answer it without being offended. A GP can refer you without the religious dimension ever being the subject of the conversation. You do not have to explain the whole architecture to get a referral for anxiety or low mood, and plenty of people start there. > ## If this is heavier than a private worry > > > > Guilt that has become constant, that is affecting your sleep or your ability to function, or that has started attaching itself to whether you deserve anything at all, is worth taking to somebody qualified rather than working out alone. Mind has a directory at [mind.org.uk](https://www.mind.org.uk), and the Samaritans are on **116 123**, free, at any hour, and they will not require you to explain any of the background. More at [get help](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/support/). ## What I have actually seen I will not offer you a resolution, because it is not mine to give and the people I have watched come through this did not get one from a website. What I have noticed is that the ones who make peace with it generally do so by pulling the two questions apart and answering them separately. They decide what they believe about conduct, and they order their behaviour accordingly, and some of those decisions are quite restrictive. Then they stop treating the appetite as an item of evidence about their worth. Those are different operations and doing the first does not require the second. And some people never resolve it. They hold the tension for decades, find it uncomfortable, and live entirely good lives anyway. That is a legitimate outcome too, and if it is yours, I would rather say so than pretend there is a straightforward exit that you have somehow failed to find. ## Read next - [Am I normal?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/am-i-normal/) - [Does wanting this mean I was abused?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/does-wanting-this-mean-i-was-abused/) - [Consent and coercive control](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/consent-and-coercive-control/) - [What it is actually for](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/what-it-is-for/) - [Fiction: what I was taught](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/fiction/what-i-was-taught/) > **Not legal advice.** Where this page mentions the law, it is general information written from an England and Wales position unless it says otherwise, and it is not legal advice. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own law. If your own legal position matters, speak to a solicitor. ## Common questions ### Is it a sin to want to be spanked? I am not a theologian and cannot answer that for your tradition. What I can say is that most traditions have a great deal to say about what people do and much less about what involuntary appetites arrive unbidden in a person's head. Whether you act on something, and how, is a question your faith may well have a firm answer to. Whether the wanting itself makes you culpable is a different question, and it is the one people usually collapse into the first. ### Why has praying about it not made it go away? Because it is a preference rather than a habit, and preferences of this kind generally do not respond to being disapproved of, however sincerely. Most people who raise this with me have tried prayer, confession, willpower and long stretches of not thinking about it, and are frightened by the fact that none of it worked. The failure is not evidence of insufficient faith. It is evidence that the thing was never that sort of thing. ### Is Christian domestic discipline the same as an abusive marriage? Not automatically, and some couples find it meaningful. The tests do not change because scripture is involved: it has to be revocable at any moment by the person receiving, it cannot reach money, movement or contact with other people, and both people have to be able to end the whole arrangement without penalty. A framework in which a wife is told she may not withdraw her consent is describing coercive control whatever is cited in support of it.