Why does the Head of Household not suffer consequences for his mistakes?

One of the common questions that people have about Domestic Discipline is why doesn’t the HOH suffer any consequences for his own mistakes or negative behavior? Why is it that the woman gets spanked but the HOH gets off without so much as a slap on the wrist? This seems inherently unfair to many women, even though they are instinctively attracted to the Domestic Discipline lifestyle and feel on a deep emotional level that it must be right for them.

This is a fairly long articles (4400 words, equals 4 pages on word). You should reserve at least half an hour for it.

Use these anchors to navigate:

The leader’s role

Leadership and punishment

Domestic Discipline’s effects

The lack of training

HOW CAN A MAN LEARN MORE ABOUT LEADERSHIP?

The solution: The Leadership Framework

Managing expectations

Final words

The leader’s role

A leader is not always subject to the same rules as those he leads. Leadership is a different role and therefore is judged by different criteria. The decisions that a leader makes are different to the decisions made by his followers. Normally, a soldier who murders another soldier in his own army will be held responsible under military law. But a general who orders some of his men to an almost certain death, in the knowledge that he will be saving many hundreds more lives by doing so, will not be prosecuted for that behavior, because he is fulfilling his leadership role, unpleasant as that may be. The military leader is not guilty of murder, although he knows that some of his men will surely die whenever he orders them to do battle. Leaders have to make those kind of tough decisions all the time, even if the results are not always so serious.

The same thing applies in a family where the man is the HOH and the woman submits to his leadership. The HOH may have to punish his woman for behavior that he himself has been guilty of too. That is not the point. It is not his behavior that is at question here – it is hers. His role as the leader of the relationship and of the family mean that he has to take decisions and act for the good of everyone, for the greater good. If a woman is misbehaving, she is hurting herself, she is hurting her husband, she is hurting their loving relationship, she is hurting her children and ultimately, she is hurting everyone with whom she comes in contact. So it makes a lot of sense that her HOH should punish her for that misbehavior. He shouldn’t be worrying about his own behavior at that point, because it is irrelevant to her problems. Being a leader means seeing the big picture and working out what is important and what is not. It means prioritizing and dealing with important matters first.

Leadership and punishment

When a man has to punish his wife for behavior that he has committed himself, that should make him reflect on his own behavior and fill him with the resolve to modify it in future. But it should not stop him from disciplining her for that same behavior, because she needs his discipline. He as the leader is subject to his own discipline. This is called “self-discipline” and it is an ability that he as leader and HOH is assumed to have. His woman has already seen this ability in him when she selected him as a mate, even if he was not aware of it himself. The whole Domestic Discipline process involves the male HOH using self-discipline to monitor and improve his own behavior and using physical discipline or corporal punishment to monitor and improve his woman’s behavior. That is how it works.

It is the same in the corporate world. The higher you go up the corporate ladder, the fewer the disciplinary measures that exist but the greater the responsibilities. A CEO cannot be disciplined (figuratively speaking) by his/her subordinates, yet he/she can discipline them. This is essentially unfair and unbalanced, yet we accept that without question. Neither the military nor the corporate world have any pretensions to democratic processes, because they are not democracies. They simply wouldn’t work properly if they were democracies.

Domestic Discipline is very similar in that the same rules basically apply to both people, but the consequences are different for each. A LDD relationship is not very democratic either, but it is definitely loving, which counts for a lot more at the end of the day. When push comes to shove, most women would exchange a democratic relationship for a loving relationship any day. People don’t get married to express their commitment to democracy. They do it to express their commitment to their spouse. They do it to express their commitment to love.

The main element in democracy is conflict – two main opposing parties constantly battle it out in elections, in Congress, in the Senate, in the media, wherever. We accept that state of constant conflict unthinkingly. But if we import that way of thinking into our marriages, we also end up with a state of constant conflict. That is not much fun, as millions of couples know.

The legal system is also based on conflict – the prosecutor fights it out verbally with the defense attorney in court. Whoever wins that fight determines whether the accused is guilty or innocent. We use conflict to arrive at what is hopefully a just outcome, in the legal system that America and other English-speaking countries use. That is fine for a court, but not so great for a marriage.

Domestic Discipline’s effects

One of the main effects of Domestic Discipline is to remove a lot of the conflict that afflicts a modern marriage and replace it not only with discipline, but with love. It is easy to focus on the disciplinary side of Domestic Discipline, since that is its main technique, but the huge reduction in conflict between the man and the woman means that there is a lot more space for love to come in. And it does come in. Nature abhors a vacuum, so when the conflict in a relationship is reduced, love naturally takes its place. Conflict can really fill up a space so much that there is no room for anything else. When the conflict is reduced or removed, love rushes in to fill up the space left by the departure of conflict. This is part of the mechanism by which Domestic Discipline creates love in a relationship. Domestic Discipline not only corrects feminine misbehavior and reduces domestic disharmony, it actually creates love by eliminating conflict in the marriage.

The man’s role in Domestic Discipline is to be the HOH or Head of Household. This means that he is the leader of his relationship with his woman and the leader of his family. It means much more than just having the power to discipline or correct his woman for misbehavior. It means that he will take responsibility for guiding her development as a woman, a wife and a mother. It means that he will take responsibility for leading the family forward, so that their love, happiness and prosperity can grow. There will inevitably be setbacks from time to time, but his role as a leader means that he must lead not only in good times, but also when the going gets tough. It is during the hard times that his leadership is most needed. Tough times can be almost anything. They can be where some kind of financial setback has occurred. They can be when a death of a close relative or friend has occurred. They can simply be when the woman is not behaving in a positive way and needs some physical correction to get her back on the right track. The role of a leader is to provide guidance during these tough times and challenges, whether they are major or minor in nature.

There are a number of different theories about leadership. Traditionally, many people believed that good leaders were born that way. Many people also believed that some people’s innate leadership skills were revealed by exceptional circumstances – namely, some kind of crisis. These days, most corporate, educational and military organizations are based on the idea that anyone can learn good leadership abilities.

The lack of training

Unfortunately, although there is a great deal of training for corporate, educational and military leaders, there is almost no training available for men who wish to lead their own households as the HOH. The whole concept is regarded as ridiculously outmoded, inherently sexist and desperately unfair. This is rather unfortunate for people who are committed to a Domestic Discipline lifestyle for the genuine and substantial benefits it offers a couple.

However, there are some very simple ways for a man to learn the leadership skills that he needs to lead his family as the HOH. One of the simplest is by being thrown in at the deep end. Imagine a teenage boy who doesn’t know how to drive a car. Imagine that he is given the keys to a brand new automobile as a present from his parents. You can be assured that he will learn how to drive as soon as possible, even if he cannot drive right now. Most men who take on the Domestic Discipline lifestyle suddenly find themselves at the head of the smallest but most powerful corporation on earth – the family. It is the only corporation with the power to create human life. It is the most amazing corporation in existence, yet we take it for granted and do very little to ensure good governance. The most significant change in recent times has been the removal of the CEO’s (i.e., the HOH’s) right to lead this powerful little mini-corporation, which is now characterized by constant conflict between the top management. If the corporate world followed the management model of the modern family, there would be very few companies in existence and massive unemployment would be rampant.

One of the easiest ways for a man to learn leadership skills is simply by being given the keys to the car. How does this happen? By his wife deciding to submit to his leadership, that’s how. When a woman gives the gift of her submission to her husband, she is giving him the keys to a new, powerful and very beautiful car. She is giving him the gift of leadership by her own submission to him. By submitting to her husband, she is giving him the chance to lead his family for the first time. She is allowing him to be the HOH and to fully realize himself as a man, a husband and a leader. She is saying to him, “I want you to be the CEO of the most important corporation in the world – our family.”

Unlike a large corporation, where bad governance by the CEO can be blamed on his employees or other people, bad leadership in a family is difficult to hide. Bad leadership by a CEO will sometimes pass unnoticed if it is covered up for publicity reasons, but an HOH’s bad leadership will have almost immediate implications for himself and for the people he loves most in the world – his wife and children. A man will feel his responsibilities to his wife and children far more keenly than many CEO’s acknowledge their responsibilities to their employees and shareholders. If the tiny Fijian subsidiary of a multi national corporation loses money, it is unlikely to affect the CEO’s salary or bonuses. But if a man, or his wife or child is suffering unnecessarily as a result of his own leadership, it will affect him quite deeply, because not only does he love them deeply, he also lives with them. This is the main check or balance that helps to keep the HOH on the right track – bad decisions affect him and his loved ones, not nameless, faceless employees in a far off country somewhere on the other side of the world.

If a woman feels that she cannot submit to her HOH because she does not trust him, she needs to ask herself why this is so. If she has a problem with trusting anyone, that is something that she can work on to improve, because it usually stems from an inability to trust herself. If she has no inner problem with trust, she probably has a problem trusting her HOH. If she cannot bring herself to trust him, she needs to seriously question whether she has married the right man or not. She was the one who chose him, after all. Unless hers is an arranged marriage, she was the one who chose to marry her husband. If she can’t trust him, ultimately it is her own responsibility, because she married him as a free choice. She must either leave him or decide to learn to trust him. If she won’t accept his leadership, she can’t enjoy the benefits of a Domestic Discipline lifestyle. She can’t enjoy the intimacy, love and connection that are the common results of Domestic Discipline.

An HOH can learn leadership skills simply by being given the gift of submission and of trust by his woman. She is the one who needs to allow him to lead. Many women subconsciously expect their husband to lead, yet will not allow him to do so. Then they get frustrated at his apparent lack of leadership. This gets expressed as negative feminine behavior that disrupts the love, peace and harmony of the family home. But it originally began as the woman’s inability to trust her man’s leadership. She needs to decide whether she is going to let him lead or not. There is no point in her getting angry about his lack of leadership if she won’t allow him to lead and if she won’t allow herself to submit.

HOW CAN A MAN LEARN MORE ABOUT LEADERSHIP?

There are many books available on leadership. There are also many web sites which discuss leadership from a corporate, educational or military perspective. Here is a brief summary of basic leadership principles as taught in the US Army and the corporate world. It is not absolutely necessary for an HOH to immerse himself in leadership theory. Why? Because most men automatically have a strong desire to do what is best for their families and themselves. This natural desire and instinct helps them to lead their families as an effective and loving HOH. This natural instinct forms the basis of any successful HOH’s leadership. The theory of leadership outlined below is simply a means by which an HOH can gain a greater understanding of what he should do in his role as the Head of Household.

The solution: The Leadership Framework

The Leadership Framework is based on the principles of Be, Know and Do.

BE: A man should seek responsibility and take responsibility for his actions. He should search for ways to guide his family to new heights. And when things go wrong, as they will eventually, he should not blame others. Instead he should analyze the situation, take corrective action, and move on to the next challenge. An HOH should possess good character traits. He should develop good traits within himself, such as honesty, competence, candor, commitment, integrity, courage, straightforwardness and imagination. He should also seek to develop good character traits in his wife and children. Domestic Discipline is a primary tool for teaching his wife these positive behaviors.

KNOW: An HOH should know himself. He should know himself and seek self-improvement. In order to know himself, he must understand his Be, Know, and Do attributes. Seeking self-improvement means continually strengthening his attributes. An HOH should know human nature and the importance of sincerely caring for his family. This is fairly instinctive for most men. An HOH should also know his job and what his role involves. Again, this is a fairly simple and straightforward issue. He needs to be familiar with his wife’s role as a woman, wife and mother. He doesn’t need to be able to do her job too, but he does need to know what she does in the home. The HOH should develop the team spirit of his family, without turning it into a military or sporting group. This means fostering a sense of the family’s shared goals and purpose, rather than being a collection of separate individuals who do not care about each other.

DO: An HOH should provide direction. He needs to make sound and timely decisions. He should keep his family informed of his decisions and of events that may affect them. He should know how to communicate with his wife and children. An HOH should develop a sense of responsibility in his family. With his wife in particular, he needs to ensure that tasks are understood, supervised, and accomplished. Communication is the key to this responsibility. An HOH should motivate his wife and children. He should set the example and be a good role model for his family. They must not only hear what they are expected to do, but also see. He should know his family and look out for their well being – which most men do automatically, anyway.

As you can see, most of the principles of leadership are quite simple and straightforward. Most men unconsciously seek to realize such goals, because they naturally want the best for their wife and children. When a family is united in love and in purpose, its leader will always see his family’s interests and his own interests as being essentially inseparable. The woman can contribute to this by submitting to her HOH. Children follow not only their father’s example, but also their mother’s. If their mother is constantly fighting with their father, they are unlikely to do the opposite themselves. Women who fight and argue constantly with their husbands are basically telling their children to disrespect authority, because by their own behavior they are doing the same.

The most important part of leadership is the woman’s submission to her HOH. The woman is the pivotal person in the family. Although she is not the leader, she is the fulcrum or axis of the family. If she can allow herself to submit to her HOH and allow him to lead, then the family can grow in love, harmony and happiness. If she constantly fights the authority of her husband, her family will become like a car without axles – the wheels will soon fall off.

Managing expectations

It is unrealistic to expect that a leader will never make mistakes. Many women find excuses to avoid submitting to their husband because they will not allow themselves to trust someone whom they know can make mistakes. In their minds they expect some kind of Godlike or robotic perfection from their man. This is totally unrealistic, because everyone makes mistakes. The only difference for a leader is that he takes responsibility for those mistakes, learns from them and moves on. No one is so naive as to imagine that a leader will never make mistakes. Most people accept that everyone is human. Why is it so hard for a woman to accept that her husband will sometimes make mistakes? If she cannot accept that he will make a mistake from time to time, she must face up to the reality that perhaps she herself has made the ultimate mistake by marrying the wrong person. She must choose to love him or leave him. If she chooses to love him, she needs to accept him as her HOH, whom she will trust to make the right decisions for his wife and family.

No one pretends that a leader does not need advice. Most successful leaders rely heavily on their subordinates for information and advice. The idea of a leader who makes decisions in total isolation is misplaced and unrealistic, because a leader who operates in that manner does not remain a leader for very long. In the family, an HOH can seek advice from his woman, because she is an intelligent person whose views deserve to be heard. But he is not obliged to follow every piece of advice he receives. Often a leader will receive several pieces of conflicting advice. Using his own intellect and intuition, he needs to sort through these disparate counsels and make his own decision. His own decision may be based on a single piece of advice, or it may be an amalgam of several different solutions.

A wife who gives her HOH advice should not always expect that he will follow her advice to the letter. This does not mean that he does not respect her or value her advice. It simply means that he has weighed things up and has arrived at his own conclusions, based on the advice of his wife and various other factors that he has taken into account. There is no point in a woman thinking that she is submitting to her HOH, provided that he follows her advice exactly. That is not submission at all. That is a conditional form of submission. And conditional submission is not real submission. A woman must give her advice to her HOH freely. She must not give advice with conditions, because that is not only dishonest and manipulative, but it is also disrespectful of her HOH’s own ability to lead. Yet a surprising number of women offer advice to their husband on the tacit condition that it must be accepted and implemented without variation. That is a hidden yet clear message to their husband that his own abilities count for nothing, that his wife does not believe that he can be trusted to make a decision and that he is most definitely not a leader.

People submit to each other all the time. Submission is not just something that happens in Domestic Discipline or practices like BDSM. Submission is a part of everyday life, just as leadership is too. People submit to the decisions of their boss at work all the time. They may not like it, but ultimately they are obliged to submit because their job depends on it. Why is it so easy for a woman to submit to her boss, who may not even care about his own employees that much, yet so difficult to submit to her own husband, who loves her more than anyone else in the world? Why would she submit to people who don’t even care about her, yet not submit to the person who cares about her most of all?

Some of you reading this may think, “Aha! But I am self-employed. I am a totally independent woman who answers to no one. I submit to nobody.” That is also a mistake. Even self-employed, self-made and self-sufficient people submit all the time. To whom do they submit? To their clients, of course. No self-employed person can do whatever they like. They may think that they do, but in reality, they are subject to the needs and demands of their clients. Any self-employed person who refuses to submit to the needs of their clients will soon find that they have very few clients left and that submission is rapidly becoming an economic imperative. So it is a mistake for a woman to imagine that she does not submit to anyone if she is self-employed. She submits to the needs of her clients all the time.

Final words

Leadership is the flip side of submission. Leadership is facilitated by the woman’s submission, but it has its own set of responsibilities and rewards, just as submission has for the woman. Both leadership and submission are noble, loving roles that a man and a woman in a relationship must eventually fill. They are different but equal roles. If a man and woman are not willing to accept these differing roles and prefer to conduct their relationship in a purely conflict-based way, they will eventually end up in a place dedicated to conflict – a divorce court, where conflict is played out to its bitter end. Many couples end up there, because many couples have devoted their entire relationship to conflict, not love. The leadership of the HOH and the submission of the woman in Domestic Discipline are the simplest and most effective methods of reducing conflict and allowing love to re-enter the relationship.