500 Posts!

Yes, indeed, this is our 500th post! But that's not all. In only a few hours' time we will hit the 2.5 million page views mark. And I am quite confident that with your help we will make it to 5,000 comments soon as well (we already have over 4,900 published comments right now).

Since we definitely won't make it to 1,000 posts before closing down this blog, we decided that 500 posts is a number worth mentioning and celebrating. And another chance to thank you for following us and making blogging worthwhile!

Looking back, it is exciting to see how the blog has changed over time. In 2008 Ludwig started out as a solo-blogger. In his second post, titled What's On the Menu?, he explained his approach as follows:

Actually, humour (the black comedy, politically incorrect, hopefully non-lame kind) will be one of the main themes here. If BDSM isn't fun and a little tongue-in-cheek, something is wrong. Mind you, I take our kink awfully seriously – it's dark, obsessive, edgy and highly erotic. But at the same time, all these delightful fantasies of ours (the sassy schoolgirls, military tribunals and damsels in distress) are also ripe for some good affectionate lampooning. So I hope to add my own contribution to that.

It will offset the lengthy theoretical ramblings somewhat, which I also aim to provide. To me, spanking goes beyond the mere immediate turn-on, it is utterly fascinating on a psychological and philosophical level. And it leads to all kinds of tantalizing questions about us as human beings, individuals and members of society. There is a danger for these explorations to get all analytical and lose sight of the eroticism. Avoiding that, though, and keeping it in balance, they can be just as much of a kick.

Above all, BDSM and erotic corporal punishment is an artform to me. Both the "performance" itself and the "artifacts" we make, the films, images and stories. I've always been particularly intrigued by movies because they are a sort of hybrid - "slice of life" and yet a "permanent item". Naturally, being a film buff makes me a spanking film buff as well. Notwithstanding the fact that the genre as a whole is inherently goofy (as it should be), I view the good spanking movies as genuine works of art. So that will be the third theme of the blog, reviews and armchair criticism.

These three themes indeed proved to be vital parts of this blog – as of today we have 36 posts labeled as spanking humour, 30 philosophical ramblings and 55 movie and website reviews.

In 2009 Ludwig's happy little world got turned upside down, though, because Kaelah turned up and we became a couple. In 2010, Kaelah started writing about her thoughts on this blog as well, at first only in her monthly personal guest column Kaelah's Corner. Today we have 69 posts under this label.

At the same time, Ludwig (and later Kaelah as well) started to venture into the world of kinky porn, with both amateur as well as the professional videos. And so there are 20 posts about making art on this blog, plus 18 posts about our videos. Since Kaelah also loves taking photos, there are 69 posts labeled as our pictures, too.

The main change that happened, though, is that as a couple we also started to write more about our own kinky play and our relationship. In other words, this blog almost turned into one of the lame couple blogs Ludwig always disliked. You can read about our boring adventures under the label which has the highest number of posts so far – the private exploits label with 89 posts. This way, a lot of our development as a couple over the past years is reflected in our posts.

But not only our life and our blog have changed, the kinky online and blogging community have changed as well. Yesterday Ludwig reminded me of the time when a rather big group of (British) spanking models had their own rather active blogs. There was a lot of back and forth between, for instance, Niki Flynn and Adele Haze, who had a very lively commentership as well. Those blogs are gone and so are many fellow bloggers and commenters we interacted with throughout the years. But of course new people have come, too, and it is still a great event for us when a new commenter shows up on our blog to say hello.

So, this post is in memory of all the fellow kinksters who have come and gone during our time here in the kinky community. Thank you for having shared your thoughts with us! We would also like to encourage those silent readers who are still unsure whether they should say hi. The spanking community is very welcoming and it is a lot of fun to participate. And don't be afraid of being the newbie – the online community changes rather fast. Today you may be the new commenter / blogger, in a few months you are already considered an experienced community member!

Oh, and how do you think should we celebrate? Maybe a 500 strokes spanking? I am not sure whether we have ever done such a long scene, since Ludwig prefers shorter, more intense ones. Any other ideas? You are very welcome to share them in the comment section!

Ludwig and Kaelah

The Sauna by the Lakeside

On our trip to Finland, Ludwig and I got the chance to spend some time in a small private outdoor sauna located at a beautiful lake. I love going to the public sauna for a day of relaxation, but I had never had the chance to use a private sauna like this one before. It was heated with fresh firewood and as you can see, it was quite steamy in there.

The best thing about the experience was the lake, though. The water temperature was about 12 degrees Celsius, rather cold in my view, quite cosy in the eyes of our Finnish host.

At first it was a real shock to go into the water after having spent time in the hot sauna. My feet hurt the most when touching the cold ground of the lake. But after a while I got used to the temperature and so Ludwig and I shot quite a few nude pictures of me in the lake at sunset surrounded by beautiful nature only.

I like how the lake reflects my image in the third picture. And I really love the second picture in this post which shows me walking into the lake, even though (or maybe right because?) it is a bit blurred.

(Russian Venus by Boris Kustodiev, picture taken from Wikipedia)

Unfortunately Ludwig and I didn't have any birch twigs like they are used in Russian saunas in order to improve the circulation (as they say). Has anyone of you tried that? But it was a wonderful experience nonetheless. And I hope you enjoy the resulting pictures!

Kaelah's Corner (Apr 2015): Breaking the Rules

I once needed clearly set rules to feel safe. Now I've decided to break them. Change them for one single new rule: "I will listen to my needs and act accordingly." Take off the corset that once straightened my back and allowed me to stand upright. Break free.

Originally, my plan was to quit my Kaelah's Corner posts after my review on my years as a kinky blogger. I felt that I had no more new personal thoughts to explore about my kink. That has changed. I have new insights to talk about. And so Kaelah's Corner will continue for a bit longer. Until this blog closes down.

When I was working on my issues concerning my commitment phobia, sexuality and kink were amongst the prominent topics to look at. In one of my dialogues I received a very intriguing analysis from a vanilla to whom I tried to explain my spanking fantasies. It goes like this: "Sex, like everything in life, is a game. It seems that you have chosen a form of sexuality where you have a clear set of rules. Obviously, this allows you to let go more easily, because you know what to expect and that your boundaries won't be crossed."

That analysis resonated very much with me. The main reason for my fear of commitment is that I am not very good at protecting my boundaries. I am scared of making a loved one sad and disappointing them. And I haven't learned to say "No!" in a polite yet determined manner - and not to feel bad about it. That's why I prefer to have a clear set of rules right from the beginning and to discuss my (anticipated) limits before I try something new. Because I don't trust myself to spontaneously say stop during the experience.

This clearly shows in my kinky fantasies. Take, for instance, my caring guidance fantasies. These fantasies are very formal, and they always involve guardians who have very high moral standards and who first and foremost care about their protégés' well-being. A guardian acting unfair, spanking in anger or maybe even crossing a line by letting things get sexual? No way! My sexual kinky fantasies are strictly separated from the caring ones, and they have their own set of rules. I will write more about the general protective function of fantasies in one of my next Kaelah's Corner posts.

My longing for protective rules doesn't only show in my kinky fantasies, though, it is also very evident in my way of living out my kink. When you read the story about how intensely Ludwig and I discussed my idea of receiving my first-ever erotic spanking, how painstakingly I planned and prepared our first scene together and how ritualised it all was, it becomes clear that I didn't just jump in.

Ludwig didn't know me all too well at the time, and he surely didn't know about my commitment phobia (I wasn't even aware of that myself yet). But he showed an extremely good sense for what I needed. First of all, his main focus was my well-being and that none of my boundaries was crossed. He allowed me to create most of the ceremony and only took over during a clearly defined period. And even then, he constantly encouraged me to tell him how I felt and what I needed. Furthermore, Ludwig made it very clear to me that he didn't have any expectations I had to meet. He told me that it was perfectly fine to stop any time I wanted - the fact that I had chosen to give adult spanking a try with him was already more than he could wish for. Looking back, I think that without Ludwig's very wise and perceptive approach, I would not have been able to take the plunge.

Sometimes, my need to clarify my boundaries beforehand also surprised Ludwig. For instance, when we went to our first-ever spanking party. I was quite sure that I wasn't ready to play with anyone else but Ludwig at the time. But instead of simply going to the party, looking how it went and how I felt and then deciding what to do, I felt the need to inform Abel and the other party guests beforehand that I was not comfortable playing with others. The reason was that I wasn't really sure about the implicit conventions to initiate a scene. So I was scared that some comment on my behalf might make one of the tops think that I wanted to be spanked. I feared that I then would not be sure how to say "No" without insulting them and coming across as a spoil sport. My fear was of course unfounded, but without having established my limits beforehand I would have been even more nervous and scared than I was already about the prospect of visiting a spanking party with experienced players in a foreign country.

In my play with Ludwig and our sexuality, things went surprisingly smoothly. Of course, my fear of not being able to say "No" also came up in our sex life. But Ludwig always reassured me that just because I was willing to try out something new didn't mean that he expected me to be willing to do it more often. And so we discovered each other and our needs slowly and carefully, always asking for feedback. Of course, some spanking scenes along the way went wrong nonetheless. Sexuality and kink are very intimate activities, so old injuries can be reactivated easily. But that's a topic for yet another separate post.

Over time, we had established some sexual habits that worked for us, so explicit rules and the protection of limits didn't play such an important role anymore. Until things changed with the outbreak of my commitment phobia in 2013. Suddenly, our sex didn't work out the way it used to for me. Sometimes I felt overwhelmed and things that had always made me horny and were fun suddenly didn't feel as good anymore. Of course, that stirred up my fear of disappointing Ludwig and making him sad. All I wanted was to go back to what I considered being "normal" because I thought that our sex life had to work as before to prove that our relationship was okay.

I was wrong. The one important thing I hadn't considered was that our relationship had evolved. And that I had changed, too, as well as my needs. As I already explained in my post What is Love?, love and a loving relationship involve different aspects. Sexual passion, friendship and partnership. These three aspects have different preconditions, though. The erotic part is easy at the beginning of a relationship because everything is new, the partner is still to be explored and the relationship isn't stable, yet, which feeds one's erotic fantasies and increases the longing to be close to each other. In my opinion there is still a lot of projection involved as well. I think the sex in new relationships is the kind of sex and erotic love which is most commonly shown in the media as well. Sex must be wild and lustful and end in an ecstatic orgasm in order to be considered good.

But in a long-term relationship that is as deep as Ludwig's and mine, the urge to jump at each other and have wild sex all the time decreases a bit. Ludwig and I share our deepest thoughts, wishes and fears with each other, we have a very harmonic life and we spend lots of quality time together. So there is no need to reconnect or to overcome separation. Plus, everyday life and our daily responsibilities take their toll. As a result, my main need right now isn't the classical fantasy- and lust-driven sex. What I want is to have the kind of sex for which I am up to right at the moment. I want to be touched where it feels good and where I need it right at the time and I want sex to make me feel connected both within myself and with Ludwig. I want to enjoy the whole journey instead of just working up to a desired result and I want my body and soul to be in tune with each other.

I recently watched a documentary where a study was quoted which found out that while in long-term relationships the male sex-drive decreases slowly and constantly, the female sex-drive often crashes down rapidly after a few years. They had some biological explanations for that phenomenon which might explain some of it. In my opinion one main reason might be that the initial feeling of infatuation (which is linked to the fear of not being good enough and losing one's partner) has subsided and the "old" sex doesn't work that well anymore. Instead of openly talking about it, though, I think many women are silently ashamed and feeling guilty. So they either try to make themselves "work properly" again, for instance by playing out strong erotic fantasies in their head while having sex. Or they refrain from sex altogether because it doesn't feel as good anymore. By the way, I think quite a few men have the same issues in long-term relationships. Opening up the relationship, having affairs or choosing a new partner can of course also be ways to deal with that situation.

And then there is the possibility of setting new rules to make the relationship and the sex more interesting again. Think of all the people who discover spanking and DD during a relationship crisis. I read about female subs (and there seem to be quite a few of them) who have a rule which states that their partner has the right to decide when he wants a certain sexual service from them and that they won't refrain from fulfilling that need right there and then. Obviously, that rule gives these women a clear orientation and in a way makes the act of fulfilling a requested sexual service attractive even when not being in the mood for it because it is then an act of submission.

That kind of solution would surely be absolutely wrong for me, though! Instead, Ludwig and I are now trying something completely different. No predefined rules and boundaries. No roles that have to be maintained. Instead, being together right in the here and now. Mindfully exploring what we want and need right in that moment. Telling each other what feels good and what doesn't. Not doing something because it felt good the last time, but because it feels good now.

I think that kind of exploration takes a lot of trust. Maybe even more than trying out spanking for the very first time. But with Ludwig, I have the right man at my side. And to me it sounds like an intriguing journey.  A journey without the protection of predefined rules and boundaries, but with the protection of being allowed to say "No" when something doesn't feel good. And with the possibility to try out new things. Or to enjoy old things like a good hard spanking and wild sex that leads to an ecstatic orgasm. Whatever feels right on a certain day.

Tough Times in the UK

(Picture courtesy of Dreams of Spanking.)

A while ago, Ludwig wrote this rant about a change of the UK law which now has lots of restrictions concerning what kind of content UK based porn producers are allowed to sell online. Forbidden are, amongst many other things, depictions of bondage and gags, age play, as well as spanking and caning which goes beyond "transient and trifling" (whatever that means).

In January, Pandora Blake and Nimue Allen started a campaign to raise money for Backlash in order to fight the new law and to build a legal defence fund, should any UK porn producer be targetted. As Backlash explains on their site: "Backlash is an umbrella organisation providing academic, legal, and campaigning resources defending freedom of sexual expression. We support the rights of adults to participate in all consensual sexual activities and to watch, read and create any fictional interpretation of such in any media."  

(Picture courtesy of Restrained Elegance.)

To raise money, other producers joined in and many models offered to take hard cane strokes for every £10 raised. £3.836 were raised and as a result, you can now watch a whole bunch of free severe caning clips online. You can watch Nimue's video here, Amelia Jane Rutherford's canings here and here and Alex Reynolds' caning here. And there is a whole bunch of free videos on Pandora's site Dreams Of Spanking.

Unfortunately it seems that the impending threat has become very real all too fast. As she explained in this post, Pandora has already received a letter from the ATVOD in February. No one can say how this story will end, but needless to say that Pandora fears to lose the business she has put so much passion, hard work and of course also money into.

(Picture courtesy of Nimues World.)

Of course a lot could be said about the stupidity of the new law and about what it tells us about our society and its view on sexuality and porn. But I think Ludwig already covered that part very well in his post. I have to admit that the cultural and social implications have ceased to shock me. What concerns me is that a lovely friend is having a very tough time now which has already affected her health.

If you like the free videos, you can support the producers by joining their sites. As Pandora wrote in her post: "We are living in interesting times. If you haven't yet joined the site, do it now, while you still can - time is running out, and legal fees are expensive." Of course you can also still make a donation to Backlash if you like.
 

(Picture courtesy of Northern Spanking.)

Maybe the lawyers will be able to prove that the law doesn't make any sense. Maybe Pandora can keep her business after all and continue to make videos which I and many others very much enjoy. For now, I just wish her to get well soon because health is much more important than everything else!

Pervertibles From Finland

A while ago, Ludwig and I visited a museum in Finland during our holidays. There I learned that housework and housework items don't necessarily have to be as boring as I always thought. Actually we found lots of traditional housework items which in my opinion would make beautiful paddles. For instance the rolling board which you can see in the picture above.

I am not sure, but I assume that these two specimen are shovels in their vanilla life. In the eye of a kinkster they mutate to rather huge paddles, though. I guess with those two a top could easily combine kinky fun with a proper workout.

Clothes beaters seem to be great pervertibles as well in my view. As you can see, they are available in different shapes and sizes.

These two seem to be very good to handle. I really like the heart on the lower one!

And here is another wooden clothes beater with not only one but two hearts. Well, what is love if not two hearts beating together as one?

Finally we have the item of choice for the severity freaks among us. It comes with a practical handle.

Last but not least, another group of items which I wouldn't have thought of, but which in my opinion would make very exquisite implements – distaffs! I assume some of them would be too fragile to be used for a paddling. But the different forms and colours are beautiful, don't you agree?

Kaelah's Corner (Mar 2015): Bindungsangst

This is the last episode of my Kaelah's Corner posts about my years as a kinky blogger. And it is one of the most personal posts I have ever written. As some of you might have noticed, I skipped last month's corner post altogether because it was so difficult for me to write about this topic.

It all started in the summer 2013. By that time, my professional life became even more stressful than it had already been before. Simultaneously, Ludwig and I talked about our future, about moving in together, having children, the whole package. My father got ill and I even feared to lose him as I had lost my mother a few years before. And then it turned out that Ludwig struggled with some aspects of his (professional) life, too.

This all became too much for me and I started to worry that living together with a partner and raising a family maybe wasn't the right thing for me. I had the feeling that too much weight was on my shoulders and I couldn't carry it. As a result, my libido, which hadn't been very strong, anyway, faded completely.

As I already wrote in my last post, Ludwig and I hadn't had much sex the year before, either. That hadn't worried us, though. But this time it was different. Suddenly I had the feeling that something was wrong with us. If this was the right man, why didn't I want to have sex with him? If we were the perfect couple, why was I so worried about the future and felt like I had been caught in a trap?

Of course Ludwig was scared and disturbed as well. I didn't want to hurt him and I was ashamed of my feelings, especially because the insecurity set in at a time when he would have needed my support. So I tried to ignore the thoughts and feelings, not understanding what was going on. I tried to retain a normal sex life, but trying to convince my body that it should be up for something it wasn't up to made it all worse. Suddenly I started having panic attacks when Ludwig and I were physically close, even when we were just cuddling and not having sex.

I am not new to panic attacks, but I couldn't remember having had them in the context of physical closeness. Which was wrong. The occasions had been so rare, though, that I didn't realise at first that there had already been a pattern earlier. As you can imagine, this situation has had a tremendous (negative) influence on our life as a couple and of course we also thought about splitting up. But we didn't.

On our worst day, when we thought that we might not make it as a couple, we first cried a lot and then spent a long afternoon sitting in the sun talking about our relationship and what it meant to us. It was one of the days on which I realised that my mate is also my best friend. And that even in the darkest hour we deeply care for each other and treat each other with love and respect. So, instead of breaking up, we decided to fight and to work on our issues, as individuals and as a couple.

I've learned a lot of new things about myself during the last two years and about the meta-beliefs I have. To make it short, I have a commitment phobia. That's something which isn't uncommon in our society, but I think not many people who have this kind of anxiety realise it. Because often, it doesn't show in form of fear or panic, as in my case, but a simple feeling of uneasiness in a relationship.

There are two types of people with fear of commitment. The active types are the ones who when being in a relationship suddenly have the feeling of being trapped and of losing their freedom. Those people either insist on living in an open relationship or they push their partner away when the relationship becomes too close, start to look at all the things they don't like about their partner and finally decide that he or she (again) simply isn't Mr or Mrs Right and that they should continue their search for the perfect partner. The passive types usually wouldn't even guess that they are suffering from commitment phobia because they are deeply longing for a loving partner. For some reason, though, they always end up with a partner who can't give them the closeness they seek. The thing is, this has nothing to do with bad luck, it is a subconscious choice to protect them, because they couldn't deal with the closeness if they really found it.

As some of you might remember, Ludwig was my first real partner. I always thought that this was because I was picky and hadn't found Mr Right before. Today I am sure that this wasn't a coincidence. It was a protection mechanism. And choosing Ludwig wasn't a coincidence, either. Don't get me wrong, of course the main reason was our wonderful e-mail conversation and the chemistry we felt when we met each other in person. In addition to that we had quite a few interests in common, not only our kink which led to a great first-time spanking experience for me, and I felt that he was on a similar wave length. Plus of course Ludwig turned me on. But there were also a few more parameters which allowed me to take the risk of starting an adult love-relationship for the first time in my life.

Commitment phobia doesn't come up as long as one doesn't have the feeling that the partner wants more closeness than oneself. That was easy for me with Ludwig. First of all, Ludwig was the one who wrote a public blog and wanted to make kinky videos with others when we met. Secondly, we live far away from each other and I constantly had the feeling of seeing him not as often as I wanted to. Plus, Ludwig is a person who needs a lot of personal freedom, too. And he isn't the kind of guy who hastily starts a relationship or insists on a fast progression, which made it easy for me to take one step after another because it all happened on my conditions and in my speed.

In the summer 2013, the conditions had changed. Ludwig talked about moving in together and raising children while I suddenly started to get scared of the prospect. I wasn't in the mood for sex and kink but Ludwig of course still wanted to be close to me, at least from time to time. Ludwig had made almost every experience he longed for kink-wise and was ready to close down the blog and stop making videos, maybe even to stop making any kinky experiences with anyone else but me. But suddenly I longed for more openness and was scared of missing out on important experiences. That was why my fear of commitment broke through at that point.

We even thought about opening up our relationship to solve the problem, but we didn't do it. Because we both felt that it wouldn't have solved the root cause of the problem. It would just have been a way of reducing the symptoms and running away from the real issue.

Instead, we started to learn more about ourselves, each other and us as a couple. We gave each other time and tried to find a way that works for us. I know where my anxiety comes from and that I need to be more closely connected to myself and my needs in order to deal with it. I have also realised that I've made some negative experiences with physical closeness when I was younger and that this is reflected by my kinky fantasies (I'll write a separate post about this topic). I know the triggers and I can communicate them to Ludwig.

Still, the issue isn't solved completely, yet. Physical closeness still is a difficult topic, not to mention kink and sex. As you can imagine, it has been difficult to keep up a kinky blog during the last two years and it still is. Sometimes reading about kinky fantasies makes me very sad because they seem so far away for me. Sometimes kink even scares me.

But the most important thing is that Ludwig and I don't run away from the situation and each other. Ludwig is making good progress with his issues, too. We will soon move in together. Kink and blogging definitely isn't our most important issue right now. But we still have a few more posts to write and videos to post. And I want to write a bit more about commitment phobia, negative (physical) experiences and how that shows in my kinky fantasies. Because I am sure that I am not the only one out there who has made experiences like that and maybe my writing helps others to understand what is going on.

Right now, Ludwig and I are spending some holidays together. My inner struggling is still there but we are having a good time. It's nothing I take for granted. And it is something I am very grateful for.

A Bedtime Caning

As some of you might have realised, I didn't publish my monthly Kaelah's Corner post in February. The reason is that it is about a difficult topic, so I need some time to think about it and to write it. But I think I've got a compensation which you are going to enjoy! Instead of Kaelah's Corner, I present you the final of the three clips you could vote for on last year's Love Our Lurker's Day.

It is called A Bedtime Caning and the title already says pretty much everything you need to know. Still here are a few words about the clip: A Bedtime Caning is a rather intimate video. At stressful times it can be difficult to fall asleep at night. So we thought that a bedtime caning might help to release some of the tension and make it easier to sleep well. A short OTK-cane seemed to be the most suitable implement for this endeavour. 

Downunder Don, thelongbean and Katie voted for the clip. I hope others will like it, too! By the way, in case some of you ask yourself whether the caning worked. Well, Ludwig slept like a baby afterwards! I still had some trouble to go to sleep, though. But making this clip was fun nonetheless. Maybe a long hand spanking is more suitable when it comes to sleeplessness?

Anyhow, here is the file for you to download:
WMV format, resolution 720 x 576, 86 MB:
Uploaded.net link

(Click on "Free Download", wait for the counter to count down, then solve the captcha and download the file using the button beneath the captcha.)

Have fun, and please leave us a note in the comment section if you like the clip!