suffer, bitch. an analysis.

[from a lovely correspondence i'm having on fetlife regarding emotional masochism.]

"What is it about this suffering that makes you fulfilled? It turns you on, so what's hot about it?"

a friend of mine who has some of the same inclinations asked me the same question just yesterday. the best i could come up with was that we (i) have eroticized victimization, on some level. i could go through my life experiences and psychology to detail why i think that's the case for me personally, but that's what it amounts to. i don't know that there's a reason for it, as much as the fact that i know when i am victimized in some fashion, my body's wiring interprets that as arousal. on a physical level, things like my heartrate increases, i start to sweat, endorphins kick off (probably an instinctive survival mode, even for difficult emotions). my body interprets those physical changes as the same thing as arousal, so i get wet. and there you have it.

my owner calls this a version of modern-day alchemy - turning a "bad" emotion (like anger or jealousy) into "good" one (arousal, or service via submission). i tend to agree. i'm not a very angry person, so i'm impressed with my own ability to transmute the badstuff into goodstuff.

i guess that also answers the "why is it healthy for you," question also. any time i can turn a negative experience into one that is at minimum a learning one, i'm all for it. the fact that it's sexually arousing is kind of icing.

...when D and i started discussing and reviewing my fantasies, especially the ones i'd held since i was a very little girl, it became obvious that suffering was a Huge Deal, a center-piece of most of them. it got to the point where it was the great white elephant in the middle of the room i refused to discuss (figuratively), until i just - acknowledged it. once i was able to say it out loud, it transmuted as well - from something shameful and bizarre to spiritualized and (this is going to sound odd) almost normalized. so yes - it does have a higher purpose - it's deeply, deeply satisfying to suffer. for both of us.