Are we sick? What does this all mean?
It's easy to think it's sick if your girlfriend, boyfriend, or spouse has told you that these desires are sick and that you are sick.
It's easy to feel sick if someone you care about, and who cares about you, tells you tearfully that these are the desires of a monster.
It's easy to grieve when you see spanking depicted as an incurable illness in movies, TV, or books (I'm thinking about Nine and a Half Weeks).
Don't fall for these easy assumptions. The short answer to the question is, no, spanking is not a sickness. Many people who love spankings--either the thought of them, or the reality--enjoy enviable mental health. Who knows--you might also be sane!
The long answer unfolds in these web pages. I have given this section a lot of thought and welcome your comments and suggestions. I want to keep improving it.
I begin this section with a painful description of a spanking that went very wrong, in Betrayal and Death. In this narrative, the man wants to spank, the woman wants to be spanked, but their interaction becomes a nightmare. That nightmare does not result from mental illness on the part of either one of these people, and their spanking desires are not sick, either. He makes a mistake--a big one--and things spiral downward from there to tragedy.
The remaining sections (Is Spanking a Sickness, Why Am I This Way, etc.) are more descriptive and a lot less depressing. They balance the tragedy and provide an opportunity to reflect on the role of spanking in our mental lives, our emotional functioning.