What BDSM does for me_SM

SM - These letters I can only talk about as my feelings about and responses to pain. I simply don't have the experience or knowledge to try to talk about sadism or even masochism.

There are ideas I found, and find, very arousing; reading descriptions of pain induced for erotic ends, some things that I never would have imagined, fascinate me in a very arousing way. I think there must be a connection, something in my wiring. How could reading about something with which I had no actual experience whatsoever, and which on the face of it should have been off-putting at the least, have produced such profound physical responses? I imagine someone somewhere has looked into this. I don't think it is just the pairing of the pleasurable with the painful in the writings; other stories which pair pleasure with certain other activities don't produce any response in me at all. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe what turns us on in our heads is not so directly related to what will in real life. In any case, the fascination eventually became strong enough for me to overcome all the reasons to keep it to myself - and I asked my husband to try this route.

My actuality is that, as a prelude, some pain does arouse. Maybe not enough to "count," who knows? The physiology of pain was a big part of what I had to study in school, so I know that the perception, experience, and tolerance of pain is an unbelievably individual thing. Comparisons are odious and all that... Maybe it is arousing to me because of the added attention or expectations - sort of an operant conditioning. I can't answer that, and in the end, maybe it's better not being answered. It works, whether through unusually arranged synapses or some sort of conditioning (ultimately synapses in any case). So let's not mess with it.

There is a more concrete effect during though. Pain focuses me. I had used to be very detached during sex. My mind would wander - not "what shade of white should I paint the ceiling?" wander - but thinking about myself thinking about the experience, almost viewing it from the third person. His control and restraint help bring me back, but also the well placed and timed pain keeps me in the moment and in the place. My focus shifts from myself in the third person to myself in the first person - what I am perceiving and feeling. I am able to experience the sensations - not my analysis of the sensations. More intensity and more pain bring me to 2nd person - to him. My mind reaches out to where he is, what he is doing, how he is moving, what he is communicating to me, what he is feeling. That alone is enough to keep me coming back for more.


I think my relationship with pain is in flux right now. I've had a growing restlessness or craving over the past few weeks. In thinking about it, part of what my mind keeps bringing me back around to is pain. My rational self didn't want to face that until I was helped to say it out loud. Now it resonates more loudly, even though my rational self would still prefer to run the other direction. Of course, I may be dead wrong and regret that I didn't follow reason after all.