Quote Originally Posted by kalitat View Post
I'd also like to add my story. I was born with a hip deformity. Treatment began when I was approximately 18 months old. I remember distinctly my abuse starting at this time. The reason I remember it so distinctly is the treatment consisted of sleeping with a bar with your shoes bolted to it (like a spreader bar). The abuse continued until age 14. It involved everything from inappropriate touching to anal rape. The emotional scars continue to this day in the form of PTSD and flashbacks.

I was introduced to BDSM by a wonderful, experienced Dom who realized what I was (submissive) and how to push me yet stay within my comfort zone. I experienced only 1 flashback which he immediatly recognized and treated lovingly.

I want to open a can of worms to ponder a question I have asked myself for a long time and probably will never have an answer to.

My first experience of sexual pleasure was while I was restrained. I have often wondered if somehow I became "wired" at that time to BDSM. A nature vs nurture sort of thing.

DISCLAIMER: I know there are MANY abuse survivors that are vanilla. That being abused does not necessarily predispose one to BDSM. My thoughts and questions are specifically my own. However, I would appreciate others thoughts and opinions.


It takes a lot of courage to write in this thread, throwing your privacy out the window and sharing your hurt and grief with a great many others. I admire you for doing so, and I think the thing that you are asking could be true, yes I think I was wired. If something is done to you as a child, and you are told that it was the correct thing to be done, you automatically think others go through the same experience. Like all learning as a child it stays with you for the rest of your life, logged in, and saved in your computer brain. Example: - eating, knives and forks, toilet training, walking, talking, etc. You know as you get older that things were not right, but your brain is telling you that it is the correct way to go, and one more example, the abused sometimes becomes the abuser, and that is a real but sad fact of life.

I think you could go back through the whole of this thread, and all the posts ask the same question. You are correct in saying that there are a lot of people in vanilla relationships that were abused as a child, and in one way or another. But some of the posts in this thread are written by people that are or have been in vanilla relationships, but I will say that most of the marriages have not worked out, and I feel that there must have been a connection with all of them. I was in a vanilla relationship that turned into a peaceful BDSM relationship for thirty years. It started subtly, but it was because I let it go further was the reason we stayed together so long, others are not so lucky, but I knew my limits and my wife respected my safe word, it was not a safe word as such, it was a un threatening statement.

As I wrote in my earlier post, it is strange that the things that hurt me so much as a child, are now the things that draw me into BDSM and feed my imagination. Also the things that I feared as a child turn me on the most now, as my signature says, I am still seeking knowledge. I don’t know all the answers but I do know all the questions, and I am only relating to you my personnel thoughts and deductions.

Regards ian 2411