BDSM for Everyone

The goals of BDSM aren't different than the goals of any other sort of relationship. The drives and dynamics of its practitioners, those that the practices draw upon and celebrate aren't unique to them. They're powerful components and mechanics at play inside all of us. That's why everyone, not only kinksters or fetish enthusiasts should have an interest in BDSM.

If you read what people have to say about their practices by investing a few minutes with Google, you'll find remarkable commonality. When you cut out all the specifics, regardless of the flavors or styles of the practitioners in question, they sound remarkably alike when describing the emotional results. Even doms and subs express feelings that, if you can get around the window dressing will sound as similar to each other as they do to perfectly vanilla people writing about romance.

This is because they're all talking about the same thing. They're talking about the feeling that comes from the fulfillment those drives that we as humans, social creatures that we are, all have in common. They're talking about intimacy.

So, what's all the hubbub? If what these people want is the same as what normal 'vanilla' folks, want, why do they have to be so freaky and weird?

Well, I can assure you from experience that many people do wish they could be more 'normal'. But the fact is, we're a diverse lot, we humans. We have many layers of individual variation between us and those deep, profound places of commonality that we share. Some of us simply require different routes to experiencing intimacy, just as we all, for example, have different ideas on a career that will fulfill us.

All of us require a certain level of emotional security in a situation before we can fulfill more complex aesthetic drives, like affection, arousal, attraction; the broad manifestations of intimacy. People who are starving are seldom preoccupied with music, and people being chased by bears are seldom distracted with chasing potential mates. Those basic needs are common. But as they grow more abstract they also grow more personalized.

People love to wax poetic on what being a dominant or being a submissive or any of a collection of more or less synonymous terms means to them. But the truth is, they all boil down to one very simple thing. They signify an requirement in the social environment that they need to meet to in order to achieve the prerequisite security to augment those more sublime feelings associated with intimacy.

Have you ever found yourself saying something like any of the following statements? "My boss is an idiot who couldn't lead his way out of a paper bag!" "It's my turn to decide where we go on date night." "I like a partner to be respectful and polite." "I like petite partners." "I find it attractive when women blush or behave demurely." "I wanna kick his ass." "I am so much better than him at this thing." "I'm the one telling this story, be quiet." "I'm not arguing, I'm just explaining." "Oh, no you didn't!" "This is so stupid." "I could never date a girl who was taller than me." "I insist on paying for a date." "I'm the bread-winner for this family."

How about any of these? "I respect this person so much I would follow them, anywhere." "Uhm. I'm fine with whatever you wanna do." "You pick out a movie for us to watch." "This makes me proud to be a part of this." "I want to be a part of something bigger than myself." "I like strong guys (or chicks) with big muscles! Especially big shoulders!" "I really just wish someone competent would tell me what to do, here!" "I like being treated like a lady." "Okay, but just for you." "I like older partners." "What are we gonna do, now?" "Help." "? (silently showing big puppydog eyes)" "Pleeeease!" "Okay, okay, you win."

If you recalled ever saying something reminiscent of a statement from the first list, then think back to those moments. Consider the situation that you were in. You were, at the time, reacting to a drive that could be called a dominant impulse. The moments that you recall saying things from the second list were reacting to a submissive impulse.

The point is that nearly everyone frequently experiences moments of both, because the submissive impulse and the dominant impulse are normal social mechanisms that every one of us have.

Used in the sexual context of BDSM, it means simply that a person draws a particular emotional security when one of those impulses is satisfied that augments or enhances their experience of trust, affection, arousal, attraction, or, as I prefer to call it, intimacy.

When this is polarized more or less acutely in an individual, we say they have a submissive or dominant nature, and we call that person a submissive or a dominant based on those traits. People often ascribe various aspects of personality to those natures. But it's useful to keep in mind that those behaviors simply stem from the exercise of nature where one feels good, secure, happy, or sexy. They're a manifestation, and can be misleading if one isn't careful to observe the underlying causes.

Just to make it clear, we don't choose these natures. They're the result of a combination of influences from genetics and role models through modeled behavior and formulative experience and successful social coping techniques, that all work together to define our individual comfort zones. None of these things are nearly ever consciously selected by any of us.

I like to liken it to someone with food allergies or lactose intolerance, or inability to digest eggs. They have all the same systems as the rest of us. They simply need to find a slightly different diet to meet the same basic nutritional needs.

Many people may at this point may be saying something like, "That's all fine for them. But I'm an old fashioned, meat and potatoes kind of person. I don't need anything fancy or weird." Which is of course, fair enough. If you were dissatisfied I'm sure you'd know it, and I'm certainly not here to tell anyone what they should or should not want.

But the thing that I'd ask you to consider, though, is simply this. Contrary to popular belief, most of the people that you find in various forms of BDSM lifestyle didn't seek it out because they necessarily were unsatisfied, bored, or perceived any distinct lack in their lives. Some do, but not the majority.

In my experience, most are attracted to it by a kind of curiosity that is spurred by something they see that thrills them in some inexplicable way. It could be something as simple as an image; a picture or photograph. It could be a video or a story. It could even be a glimpse of people behaving a certain way. But whatever it is, they see, it brings with it a thrill, a powerful feeling of attraction and excitement.

They may not know why. They may even be in many ways equally repulsed by that thing they saw, as well. But some aspect of it or other spoke to them on some level in way that was more emotionally charged than the other relationships that they were accustomed to experiencing. Often they've never found themselves even remotely attracted to kink or fetish of any sort.

Then they're confronted with an intimidating proposition. That is, to look at this weird new aspect of themselves and to consider what it might say about them, being attracted to what had been until that moment a comfortably distant taboo. One has to consider how it might alter their present self image, with all that emotional security bound up in it. They also have to consider how it effects what they had perceived as the spectrum of their wants and resulting fulfillment, and how what they had considered satisfaction prior to this, might in fact have been more akin to tolerance, or 'getting by'. And in turn, how would that effect the things they may want or crave in the future?

Often it's not the depth of these tendencies that determines who will explore this. Rather, the deciding factor is the depth of their aversion to what exploring this might entail, and how well they can manage to suppress and forget their moment of curiosity.

What they don't realize is that exploring this aspect doesn't have to be a strange journey into a dangerous and seedy world of iniquity. As we've said, the tendencies that these practices draw upon exist in all of us and can manifest in relatively innocuous and mundane ways that we witness every day and never give a second thought.

If those every day occurrences can satisfy these dominant or submissive impulses to some greater or lesser degree, why does one need to mess with all that strangeness? The simple answer is, they don't.

Let me make it clear, there is nothing wrong with kink or fetish. In my experience, for every bracing experience that one confronts in pursuing these things, as real as those torments may be, they pale in comparison to the long term, chronic effects of year after unsatisfied year in relationships that are 'good enough'. For some people these strange arrangements and toys and methods are the easiest, most comfortable way of finding fulfillment.

For others, other approaches are required. Neither inclination is more to be preferred than to have a dominant, submissive, masochistic, or sadistic tendency is, or tendency at all. For many, a profoundly D/s (domination and submission) oriented relationship can look completely vanilla. As a matter of fact, many 'old fashioned' traditions that look perfectly conservative are profoundly oriented in this direction. For example, one of my favorite protocols involves a fetish for Victorian styled aesthetics, which is pretty blatantly male-dom. The same is true of various traditional or religious marriages, for example, of those who embrace Christian 'head of the house' views.

With some insight, it can even help those in these relationships ease some of the stress that the arrangement places on a couple by modifying the power exchange dynamics in small but potent and deliberate ways.

This is one of the groups of people that I would most like my writing to address: those that have this nature and inclination, whose consideration of these methods could help really improve their relationships. Those who are also held at bay by the alienating imagery that often surrounds the lifestyles where they might learn these things healthily. Or those who are merely unsure of how it might impact a lifestyle that they are largely happy with.

And this is why I say that everyone should be interested in BDSM. I think many would be surprised at just what a broad percentage of the population could be positively impacted in these ways. Many of them are probably the role models and protectors of the status quo that make each other leery of experimenting.