omen I interviewed describe a hunger for submission that blends the spiritual with the profane. They are careful to distinguish their lifestyle from BDSM, whose strictly sadomasochistic elements they reject. In her CDD handbook, Kelley admonishes husbands in order to reassure their wives: ‘You will never gain pleasure from causing her pain.’ Yet in the same guidebook, she writes how a typical CDD husband is nonetheless ‘aroused by her submissive and trusting gesture by placing herself into a position to receive discipline’. The rationale here is predictable: ‘It seems natural that we would be aroused by [gender] roles in their most basic form. There are probably few things that punctuate our most basic roles in marriage more than the dominance and submission of a discipline session.’

The CDD practitioner Nicole likewise characterises her disciplinary sessions as deeply erotic encounters: ‘When my husband whips me, I feel his love, his strength and his caring. When I submit to him, he feels my submission and my respect [and it] does increase his desire for me. When I am whipped, I lubricate and he often becomes erect. When I am whipped for maintenance, I usually perform oral sex on my husband. This is often followed by intercourse. When I am punished, we almost always have sex afterward. I don’t see this as BDSM but I will leave it to others to decide how to categorise it.’
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For Nicole, who grew up in a CDD household, suggesting CDD to her initially-reluctant husband was a natural manifestation of her own upbringing. ‘I was subject to maintenance [whippings by my father] every two weeks and I rebelled against it. I thought it was terribly unfair that I was being whipped for no apparent reason. Later— it did help me focus on being on the right path and learning to obey and submit— By time I was 15, a light came on in my head and I saw the value of CDD— I could feel that I craved to submit to a man and that I needed not only his love but his discipline.’