Note to family members and others who don’t want to read about my personal sex life: This post discusses my personal sex life, extensively, and in quite a bit of detail. If that’s the sort of thing you don’t want to read, then you really, really don’t want to read this one. Trust me on this.
This piece originally appeared in the Blowfish Blog.
Why, for some people, under some conditions, do certain kinds of stimuli that my body would normally process as unpleasant get processed as pleasant instead? Not just pleasant, but hot and dirty and intensely desirable?
I’ve been a practicing masochist (and sadist) for so long that I sometimes forget what an odd thing this is. Pain is pretty much by definition the body saying No. Why is it that in certain conditions, with certain kinds of pain, my body says Yes instead?
Not just Yes, but More, Harder, Please Don’t Stop?
It’s a little odd. What is it about?
First, let me state for the record: I’m just talking about myself here. I’m not proposing a Unified Field Theory of Sexual Masochism. I’m trying to figure out what’s true for me, on the assumption that it might be true for some other people as well.
Okay. So what’s this about?
But for me at least, the fantasy isn’t necessary. I can get off on a spanking in a completely egalitarian, “this is the two of us doing things together that we both get off on” context, with no power games even in my head. The context does need to be sexual — if someone hit me across the ass with a cane out of nowhere, I’d experience it as purely unpleasant badness, and I’d be pissed — but it doesn’t need to be about subservience or power or any of that. It can be about two (or more) equal people having sexy fun.
Of course you’ve got your endorphins, the natural feel-good opiates produced by your brain when you’re in pain, etc. etc. But that doesn’t completely explain it, either. Endorphins are why a spanking or whipping will generally make me high and happy over the course of a scene. They don’t explain why the moment of pain itself — the instant the lash hits my skin — gets translated into ecstasy.
I think there’s something else going on as well, something that works both in my body and my heart.
It’s that pain gets through.
Even during sex. I love vanilla sex too, and once I get lost in the moment of my tongue on a clit or of fingers on mine, I can get well and truly lost. But it takes more concentration for me to get there, more conscious effort to stay in the moment and not space out or get distracted by some weird mental tangent.
Which brings me back to pain.
Interesting..
Would you please pass by my blog and give us your input on this subject. I just posted about it.
I read this post and immediately decided you were my soul sister- and that is not something said lightly. Thank you for putting in words something I had been thinking about, and somehow encapsulating my experience by describing your own.
I have been wondering this very question for a while. When people ask me why I like BDSM, I give the standard answers like “flogging doesn’t feel like it looks like it feels” and “endorphins make it feel good”, etc. Because the real answer is “I don’t know why, it just does”. The pain hurts. It doesn’t hurt any less, really, than when someone smacks me on accident at work. But I like it. And I don’t know why.
Now I have an inkling why. Your words rang a bell in my head. I have more processing to do, but there is at least now a direction to go in.
Thank you.
I think you should pass your comments along to these people:
http://christiandomesticdiscipline.com/articlesintroducingspouse.html
They could benefit from your insights.
I like this piece a lot, but it leaves me unsatisfied. I read it and think “Nope, that’s not why I like pain (in the context of SM, that is).” And then I think, “Then why DO I like it?” And I just don’t know. And that’s irritating. I like it. And I like that I like it. But I don’t know why. Grr argh.
There’s a LOT of truth to what you say. I liken the experience to being tossed in the rapids; my higher brain functions can take a break and I can stop thinking and just EXPERIENCE.
There’s some trust involved. Just like fear is fun in a roller coaster where you know you’re not REALLY going to die, so the pain can be fun when you know you’re not REALLY getting maimed.
It’s not like other “fun” sports don’t involve pain. Heck, *exercise* hurts, if you’re doing it right.
There are also learned experiencesâI’ve flown higher on endorphins than any external intoxicants I’ve tried.
I don’t fully understand it myself, but it’s similar to the way that people learn to enjoy deep massages.