How submissive is submissive?

[sarah thorne]

[QUOTE=Adelina;4801]

In the interest of clarification:

[QUOTE=sarah thorne ] ... - and then discipline me for breaking that. I have no willpower, and view it as him "helping" me. I want to avoid that discipline, like I want to avoid a ticket.

Here's me being super picky! I felt a need to point out that, in an earlier post sarah, you noted appropriately that discipline and punishment are not the same thing... but here, you are using the words interchangeably. It's an important distinction, one which I have struggled to understand. As best I can tell, discipline is more of an ongoing atmosphere or undercurrent of structure, whereas punishment is a specific event with a distinct beginning and end. Does that sound right?

Actually, yes.

However, like many words, they can be used separately in contexts and interchangeably to mean the same thing. For instance, I can say, "I was disciplined last night for an infraction." and you are going to know that, technically, I was punished. Discipline seems to be a word that can be used, as you say, in regard to an ongoing atmosphere of guidance, or it can be used in the context of being an actual act, such as one of punishment. The words punishment, however, doesn't seem to me to be used in the dual sense.

I prefer to use the word 'discipline' rather than 'punish' because the word 'punish' sounds so...I don't know....harsh.

Does that make sense?

sarah