Recently I was spanking Partner 1 and I realized something: I wasn’t spanking her as hard as I used to. I mean, toward the end of the spanking I was intentionally going hard, but for most of it? Just “firm”.

So I thought about a lot of the spankings I’ve given recently. With a couple of exceptions, they’ve all been firm with some hard toward the end.

I used to consider myself a hard spanker. I used to put my entire arm into swinging through the bottom’s bottom. But I think that after going to as many spanking parties as I have I’ve realized that I don’t have to be a hard spanker to satisfy people. In fact, there are plenty of people who enjoy a firm spanking without hard swats. When I do Spanky Hawkins events I usually go at a firm pace with two hard swats at the end, and that seems to make people relatively happy with things.

Now, this isn’t to say that I can’t give hard spankings, and when I get into the implements things are usually going to be pretty hard. But if I’m just using my hand, I tend to stick to firm these days. Maybe I’m lazy; maybe I’m maturing; maybe I’m growing and changing; maybe I’m observing the other spankers around me and trying to emulate them. I really don’t know.

I still like giving hard spankings, but I’m thinking back to when I used to run a spanking tumblr and always talked about how hard I could spank — and I’m also thinking back to when I first learned that you don’t have to spank hard in order to get your point across. I’m still perfectly capable of doing consensual damage with my hand and nothing else, and the night in question (from paragraph 1) left Partner 1 with a pleasantly-red backside.

I think I know what it is.

I think I no longer have anything to prove.

When I was younger (over the past 10-12 years or so) I felt that I needed to prove myself as a capable spanker, and to do that I needed to give hard spankings all the time. But now that I know how consensual adult spanking really works, I understand that, while hard spankings have their place, most people don’t usually default to that intensity. Of course, I’m still going to have some characters who do (Mason and Zach are my hardest-handed spankers in the SCU), but I’ve found that, as time has gone on, I’ve been less focused on my characters giving exceptionally-hard spankings and more on them giving spankings that the other person enjoys.

These days, I think I want to give people spankings that they enjoy. If they enjoy it, I enjoy it too, and if they only need me to give firm spankings to enjoy themselves, then I’m perfectly happy with that.