Questions in pertains to Master and Slave Relationships and punishment and etc...

[Numinosity]

At no point in your almost 1000 word post do you at any point mention trust or caring for your partner, which gives me the suspicion that you just look at the sex, and don’t care for the relationship due to your past experiences with other people. BDSM and especially the slave/master relationship is about trust and love. And when you write about sex in ways such as this:

The reason I bring this up is due to my curiousity with possible child hood experiences effecting our sexual attitude later in life, in my case I had not had sex until 26 but in the two years since I have been quite permiscuous in my sex behavior having 17 different partners, I am not sure if this is possibly due to prior abuse or just a high sex drive.

You give me the impression that sex and relationship are two different things in your mind. Trust is such a huge part of BDSM, that it (in my opinion) overshadows the sex. It is about giving up your body to another person/taking control of the body of another person. Unless people felt completely safe, they wouldn’t do this. These types of relationships are about bringing pleasure (and the most delicious forms of pain) to yourself and your partner. To be with a partner who you trust to such a degree is a beautiful thing, so when you write about it with words such as “self-destructive”, it comes off to me as condescending.

You give me the impression that this is really not about you wanting to learn more about the BDSM mindset, but rather is an attempt to rationalize and deal with your past trauma. I’m sorry that life has been tough on you and you seem to have a lot of things you need to get off your chest. This place is open and has a lot of caring and awesome people who I am sure is open for a chat should you want to talk to them. Thanks for taking the time to write this post and welcome to the site.

[Denzark]

But I was curious if there might be any correlation between BDSM and specific childhood experiences,

An abnormally high number of bdsm'ers I have met have experienced some form of serious sexual abuse. I wonder as well if there is correlation. A significant number of those claiming abuse in my opinion seem to be inventing or exagerating the abuse. I suspect the correlation (if any) may be an indirect one. I notice that many who have been abused have no problem talking about their nightmare experience and enjoy the sympathy they receive as a result.

Perhaps some people believe that saying their wicked stepfather used to cage them in the basement and cruelly whip them makes them more easily accepted in the "community" or that they will be higher on the totem pole. Perhaps ithey are attention seekers. Attempt to discuss this correlation seems to be met with a "how dare you". Perhaps its because it opens the lid on fibbing, deception and fraud, which is a road many do not want to go down.

There must be psychological research out there on the relation between abuse and bdsm.

I cannot for the life of me understand the idea of giving up complete agency to another person

Nor can I and I dont believe it exists as such. Much of bdsm is sexual fantasy and roleplay. Its easy to exagerate or pretend that the roleplay extends into everyday real life. In many cases a bdsm couple are a husband and wife who live a normal married life outside the bedroom but will refer to themselve within the bdsm community as master slave.

The slave does not give up complete agency to another. From time to time female slaves (sub) will post about how beastly the master was by doing this, expecting this or forgettting an anniversary. Nobody will say the master is well within his rights. All will offer sympathy to the sub and agree how beastly the master is.

The escape clause is the (supposed) masters obligation to love and care for the slave. Not sure of the origin of this obligation other than it being the same as for vanilla marital relationships. It is certainly not reflected in historical slavery. This fine print means in effect the slave not only retains control but can even exert it. Consider this dialogue.

Master: We are going out to eat Chinese tonight
Slave: But I dont feel like eating Chinese.
Master: Tough, I'm the master and I say we're eating Chinese.
Slave: But you are supposed to love and care for me. You must take my feelings into consideration and I dont feel like Chinese, i prefer Italian.
Master: Well if you feel that way we'll eat Italian,

Master Slave rarely exists in real life. It is poetic license. Forget any images of Romans or southern plantations. The closest it gets to slavery is marriage of yesteryear where the man was master of the house and whilst he may whip her with his crop she would lash him with her tongue such that a happy balance was achieved.

[CuriousPursuit]

Re: Questions in pertains to Master and Slave Relationships and punishment and etc...
But I was curious if there might be any correlation between BDSM and specific childhood experiences,

An abnormally high number of bdsm'ers I have met have experienced some form of serious sexual abuse. I wonder as well if there is correlation. A significant number of those claiming abuse in my opinion seem to be inventing or exagerating the abuse. I suspect the correlation (if any) may be an indirect one. I notice that many who have been abused have no problem talking about their nightmare experience and enjoy the sympathy they receive as a result.

Perhaps some people believe that saying their wicked stepfather used to cage them in the basement and cruelly whip them makes them more easily accepted in the "community" or that they will be higher on the totem pole. Perhaps ithey are attention seekers. Attempt to discuss this correlation seems to be met with a "how dare you". Perhaps its because it opens the lid on fibbing, deception and fraud, which is a road many do not want to go down.

There must be psychological research out there on the relation between abuse and bdsm.

I cannot for the life of me understand the idea of giving up complete agency to another person

Nor can I and I dont believe it exists as such. Much of bdsm is sexual fantasy and roleplay. Its easy to exagerate or pretend that the roleplay extends into everyday real life. In many cases a bdsm couple are a husband and wife who live a normal married life outside the bedroom but will refer to themselve within the bdsm community as master slave.

The slave does not give up complete agency to another. From time to time female slaves (sub) will post about how beastly the master was by doing this, expecting this or forgettting an anniversary. Nobody will say the master is well within his rights. All will offer sympathy to the sub and agree how beastly the master is.

The escape clause is the (supposed) masters obligation to love and care for the slave. Not sure of the origin of this obligation other than it being the same as for vanilla marital relationships. It is certainly not reflected in historical slavery. This fine print means in effect the slave not only retains control but can even exert it. Consider this dialogue.

Master: We are going out to eat Chinese tonight
Slave: But I dont feel like eating Chinese.
Master: Tough, I'm the master and I say we're eating Chinese.
Slave: But you are supposed to love and care for me. You must take my feelings into consideration and I dont feel like Chinese, i prefer Italian.
Master: Well if you feel that way we'll eat Italian,

Master Slave rarely exists in real life. It is poetic license. Forget any images of Romans or southern plantations. The closest it gets to slavery is marriage of yesteryear where the man was master of the house and whilst he may whip her with his crop she would lash him with her tongue such that a happy balance was achieved.

In repsonse (sorry quote response was kind of glitchy for some reason)

Ok thank you very much this explains a lot more to me. I was always under the assumption from what I have seen and heard that the whole concept entailed complete loss of agency and any form of control. and this runs incredibly counter to my path in life and my views on the importance of individual freedoms and self determinance. But from what you are saying it sounds more like just a different form of relationship structure, that still has its power struggles and challenges but with a more defined set of roles and rules that govern the relationship, which makes a lot more sense. And I think I understand where Numinosity was coming from now. My apologies if my post offended anyone, I honestly am still pretty ignorant to all of this and I believe my past experiences have skewed a great deal of my perception on this community, and per my response to Numinosity I seem to hold a possible prediliction to being a bit of a submissive, and that has scared me quite a bit as I do not want my freedom impeded. Ironically for years my ideal man has been someone who could subtly but firmly control me but not impede my freedom or autonomy. I crave love and stability as I've never had it until recently and have always if I'm being honest longed to be lovingly owned by someone, to be protected and cared about like I was their treasure, and on the flipside work to make sure I can see their smile everyday. It has always been an emotional longing of mine and one that I cannot seem to allow myself to embrace, as the part of me that has been tempered by the world, and is proud of my achievements in life views this as vulnerability and weakness and thinks it will take away my intellectual edge, personal drive and will, should I allow myself to give in to it. This is more or less one of the biggest paradoxes of my life,and one that even with therapy I have not been able to broach effectively. Im sorry to bring such personal matters to a public forum such as this but I am really kind of at a loss as to how to tackle this, and I have tried multiple avenues ranging from the application of buddhist and Toaist meditation and principles, to intense psychological and scientific research, to asking friends and family about this issue. None of which could help me address the issue, so I thought I would go to the source of my discomfort and ask those who have experience in the community for possible advice. Again my apologies if this comes off as too self serving.

[CuriousPursuit]

At no point in your almost 1000 word post do you at any point mention trust or caring for your partner, which gives me the suspicion that you just look at the sex, and don’t care for the relationship due to your past experiences with other people. BDSM and especially the slave/master relationship is about trust and love. And when you write about sex in ways such as this:

You give me the impression that sex and relationship are two different things in your mind. Trust is such a huge part of BDSM, that it (in my opinion) overshadows the sex. It is about giving up your body to another person/taking control of the body of another person. Unless people felt completely safe, they wouldn’t do this. These types of relationships are about bringing pleasure (and the most delicious forms of pain) to yourself and your partner. To be with a partner who you trust to such a degree is a beautiful thing, so when you write about it with words such as “self-destructive”, it comes off to me as condescending.

You give me the impression that this is really not about you wanting to learn more about the BDSM mindset, but rather is an attempt to rationalize and deal with your past trauma. I’m sorry that life has been tough on you and you seem to have a lot of things you need to get off your chest. This place is open and has a lot of caring and awesome people who I am sure is open for a chat should you want to talk to them. Thanks for taking the time to write this post and welcome to the site.

I'll be honest I think you hit the nail on the head to a good extent, my apologies if this came off as condesending, it wasn't meant to be. As result of my past I think i have compartmentalized the both sex and relationships out of a lack of trust. My other reason for asking these now evidently emotionally skewed questions is I have had an on going fwb with a dominant who has been very kind and gentle in his treatment of me, yet firmly dominant in most things. He has helped me immensely to deal with my trauma. And has been a great mentor to me in a lot of things. He wanted to start a dom/sub relationship with me and I kind of freaked internally and I think he could tell even though I tried to approach it calmly and respectfully, he hasn't brought it up since. The thing that scared me is that I loved the idea of being watched over and to a certain extent controlled by him it put me at peace and calmed my mind immensely, it put me at ease in a way I couldn't understand nor comprehend. That scared the ever loving hell out of me, as everyone who has ever had any control over me has used it for their own satisfaction to the detriment of my own happiness and well being, as such I have built up my freedoms in rebellion against that, as i see most people as inherently self serving with only a few exceptions. So the fact that being controlled by someone could make me happy scared the shit out of me and shook my perception of self in a way only confronting my trauma has done. I'm not entirely sure how to handle the situation and due to the fact I am transitioning he has made it clear that he will not continue our FWB sexually but would still like to have a normal friendship, which is fine with me at the current point. I guess my major question is should I take any further action on these newly realized feelings, and also how can I reconcile that with my burning desire for complete freedom (or atleast as close an approximation to it as this world allows), that if I get down to brass tacks that is the real question I am trying to answer. I also fear losing my edge as a person and I take my intellectual pursuits and career plans very seriously as intellectual freedom and personal success are very important to me, as I desperately crave stability, as I have never had it until recently. I am sorry if this thread has come off as a bit too self serving and I probably should have spoken with more candor from the get go, but it is exceedingly hard for me to truly trust people.

Sincerely
Fenea