Why you want BDSM in your sex life
(or might subconsciously want, without fully realizing ;)

If I wait until the essay is finished perfectly in my mind I'll never post this, so here is a February 2015 draft, prompted a blog post elsewhere "why isn't everyone into BDSM (a lot)?" I started to compose a comment:

Finally another page that asks this question and has some intelligent words to say about it. Why isn't everyone into it? Other than the obvious answer that we all carry some internalized repression, the other answer I've come to is the same: that to a large extent, "everybody" is indeed into BDSM on various levels.

In personal lives and BDSM, and in our society at large (a society with a focus on hierarchy and admiration of violence and conquest over empathy) there are negative sides, of course, but here I will focus on the positive or neutral, and with a heterosexual focus.

In the Essays section of my website LovingIntensity I peer into the individual and societal erotic psyche in vanilla and D/s, though so far just a handful of glimpses. We have to get over our "Fear of the NOT unknown" and probe our inner psycho-sexual landscapes. Benefits? More powerfully erotically charged sex lives for one, and that's perhaps the least. Avoiding damage to ourselves and others (and not just physical) is another. Without exaggeration, spiritual growth and sexual healing, are probably the most important reasons.

Long in the making is an essay "What do Dominants Really Want?" with a section or second part on what Submissives want. Your page here hints at some aspects that are beneath, but not far below the surface. Though this might be split off as a separate essay on "Why D/s?" some answers surely include:

Then I realized it was too long to be a comment so here are some of the components of my reply, which may or may not evolve into a full essay. So here goes.

Consider the following questions, as they apply to male Doms, male subs, female Doms, and female subs; where I turn around the question "why would you be into that?" into "how could anyone not be into that?" Consider:

In a society where men are conditioned from a very young age to sexually desire women, to sexually 'have' them (very strongly building upon and expanding the innate biological tendencies, no matter how large one judges them) while being constantly bombarded with sexually provocative images in media and in the dress of women around them in a "look but don't touch" context, how could any man not desire, at least somewhere in the back of his mind, to be Dominant and at last to not just "have" but be given control what is constantly dangled before him in society?

At the same time, how could any man so conditioned to worship the female body and female sexuality itself, not wish, at least in part of his psyche, at least some of the time, to worship adore -- perhaps after sinking to his knees -- and to completely give himself mind body and soul to pleasing her own body, mind and being; in other words, to be submissive?

In a world where men have to sexually repress their desires how could he not want to be a Dominant who doesn't need to constantly hide them, repress them, suppress them, or be shamed for his "dirty male horny nature" and for which he is not so subtly shamed in our culture?

In a world where women hide their own sexual lust often out of even stronger repressive social taboos, but also in coy "come get me, catch me if you can" games, how could he not want to have her emotionally naked and admitting her lust to him as a vulnerable submissive kneeling before him, wet, desirous, desperate -- and willing to be erotically "humiliated" or at least be laid exquisitely vulnerable?

And conversely, how could he not be tempted, in a safe context, to surrender before a female manifesting her Dominant side, so as to be able to experience, and taste in the most direct way -- and to feel the naked unmaskings of -- raw unbridled female desire and lust that is usually partly or entirely masked, and to directly feel what it (her body and her sexual psyche) wants, what it desires, what it demands; or else in a more subtle form: to have a safe environment in which to give himself permission to remove the armor society demands of him in its insistence he be the orchestra conductor and "responsible" at all times, and experience a supportive loving gentle but strong female that is caring but unmistakably fully in control of the situation-- and him?

In a society that tells everyone that sex is a shameful, dirty thing, but whose shaming hits women more painfully in so many ways, while telling women they are the desired fruit, how can a woman get a charge about of expressing an equally valid party of a human, not male but human need to be the mouth that lusts after the fruit, rather than always the fruit, and how can she resist being tempted by a scenarios in which her repressed sexuality can assert itself without any apology, without even any hesitation, with full personal control?

At the same time, how could she not have part of the very core of her soul hunger for expressing fully and deeply --again without any apology, but also with guilt washed away since it is He who is in control, not she, so she is cleansed of so many years of social shaming-- and bask fully and luxuriously in complete and utter surrender to naked (and equally often, usually masked) male Desire, male lust, and surrender fully be to "taken", possessed, to stop running away in the game of "The chase" and let him catch her, let him "have" her, let him, with fully burning fires of passion, completely and utterly consume her?

To be continued.

I may either expand and finish this as a separate "Why YOU want (or secretly want) BDSM" essay, or as the first section of "What Do Dominants (and Submissive) Want?" Essay.

Here are some of the "paradoxes" in the "what do they want?" second section (or separate essay). For a Dom relating to a sub:

Similar dynamics enter into the relationship between the female Dom (or Domme) and the male sub. This is still far from the whole picture, but it does capture some of the key elements, and some of the key 'contradictions' inherent in D/s and in BDSM more generally:

At his core the male Dom desires to make you, the female sub, do things you don't want to do and are uncomfortable with and are not turned on by, all for him - and at the same time, he wants you to do very similar thins and sometimes these exact same things, but where he has led you and taught you to want them, to enjoy them, to be turned on by them.

That is one important tension (in the sense of being pulled in opposite directions, as well as the erotic tension that is one of the fortes of D/s). Another as we've seen, is that when he wants you to do things you are not fully (or at all) comfortable with, it may be a delicious erotic humiliation that feeds his lust, or it may be the 'opposite', something that melts his heart and makes him equally if not more vulnerable than you with a tear in his eye: that your love for him runs so deep, that you would do this for him. Sometimes, it is both the lust and the heart melting. It's not just women who sometimes don't understand themselves or their desires. Men's sexuality is not "simple" as we are taught, to the detriment of men and women alike.

So why isn't everyone into BDSM? As we've seen, beyond social repression, there is under the surface, plenty of BDSM in vanilla sexuality in modern society (outline in more detail in future versions, including the "come hither" and "the chase" of traditional relationships and courtship or the more modern liberated version which equally touches on both Femdom and female submission, albeit indirectly).

Why isn't everyone fully into BDSM though? (What does "fully" mean anyway? Does it violate the YKINMK, "but your kink is ok"?) And don't the above examples beg the question: why isn't everyone a switch? For that matter, why isn't everyone bisexual? Why isn't everyone into polyamory or non-monogamy in general?

Without writing another essay about it here, we see that obviously it's neither wise nor ethical to pressure people who are not comfortable with non-monogamy into it, or to try to pressure a lesbian (or straight man) into sexuality with a man. Or to pressure a straight woman or gay man, into being sexual with a woman. The same goes for being a switch. The same goes for entering "more fully" into BDSM on 'just' one side, Dom or sub. Though it may shock readers to hear, even those who think and write about sexuality and kink and have websites devoted to it, may not personally embrace or practice more than a limited part of these specrums. Sorry to burst the bubbles of this website's fans, however few their numbers may be ;-)

Yes I know the plural should be 'spectra'...even I have my limits of how "intellectual" sounding I want my essays to get..sometimes it's too much for my ears so I try to speak more everyday English)

Then again, isn't everyone "limited"? If you live to be 100 you'll still experience only a tiny fraction of what can be experienced. Except, of course, for the deeply universal where one can experience through limited activities, a broad part of what is universal in humanity, including in human sexuality, in one's short lifetime. We are more likely to learn and grow in our understanding of ourselves if we do so in an open way, at least, open with ourselves. With introspection. As I wrote at the opening the benefits of doing so include not just:

More powerfully erotically charged sex lives for one, and that's perhaps the least [but also] avoiding damage to ourselves and others (and not just physical).. Without exaggeration, spiritual growth and sexual healing, are probably the most important reasons.

Draft February 2015, A loving intensity essay by Panaeros / Carpe Eros. Intelligent, civil, humanistic input always welcome (click image to see my email address)

[Link] A version of this essay with erotic photos and drawings (email me "carpe.eros" at gmail for url...Yes I've included both M/F and also F/M images in that one. Oh will my old fans and readers freak out now? :-)

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© Copyright Panaeros / Carpe Eros
Draft February 2015, A loving intensity essay by Panaeros / Carpe Eros. Intelligent, civil, humanistic input always welcome, here or by my personal website, or CM or by Alt Message. Not seeking sexual or romantic contact, since people evidently, simply cannot be trusted, but friendship or just correspondence welcome. Or don't write, I hope my collection of essays and erotica make a few happy or a few find them interesting, a few other souls on earth.