Rope gives meaning to my pain

Photo by A-Nicolas

I sometimes wonder, or get asked, why do I like to get tied. It is a difficult question to answer because I like it with different people for different reasons. I like to be under the power of dominant men and suffering in their ropes is a way to express my devotion to them. I like to feel helpless and abused and rope is a great tool for my partners to make me feel this way. I like to serve, to please people with my being. I like it when people enjoy me. 

I could go on and on about it. The reasons why I enjoy rope are ever-changing but they are always strong. Without a strong reason to be in ropes, I could not show up for my partners and this is one of the worst things, I believe, a model can do. To not show up for the scene. 

There is one reason, however, that is the strongest, deepest and most personal of all. It is so deeply ingrained in my being that I believe that, in some way, it always shows up, even if my partners use it in different ways. 

Rope bondage is my laboratory for investigating vulnerability. It is a place where I research my openness and where I look at how it behaves in case I get rejected, toyed with or when my vulnerability is used against me. Can I stay with my partner regardless? Can I bear it and keep on giving? 

It is quite easy to be open and vulnerable with the people who you know care about you. In the face of deep and honest love our hearts almost automatically open up. But what if you give yourself to someone and they take your gift, throw it to the ground and crush it with their feet? Will you retreat into yourself to start licking your wounds? Will you close yourself up to them? Or will you stay with your perpetrator, blood soaking from the wounds they gave you, but you still loving them with your entire aching heart? 

There are two ways in which one can approach hurting other people. One can hurt them because one stops seeing humans in them like it is in the case of torturers or soldiers during the war¹. They are trained to see the people they torture and kill as objects, as a means to a goal, a necessary damage. They don’t feel with those they hurt. They don’t empathize with them. They don’t feel the pain of their victims. One can also hurt someone while feeling with them. One can acknowledge they are in pain caused by oneself. One can see their pain, go through it with them and let it transform one as well. Akira Naka sensei once said that he is not a sadist, that when he hurts the model he feels with her, he feels her pain. I believe him and at the same time, I would not necessarily say that it means that he is not a sadist. I believe that many kinky sadists feel with the people they hurt. Just like masochists can be transformed through their own pain, sadists can be transformed through the pain of the other, the one who is suffering for them. But to be able to go through that, they need to see humans in the people they hurt.

When I am being hurt, I want to stay human for the one who gives me pain. I want to stay when they rage. I want to stay when they torture me. I don’t want to escape what they are doing to me. I don’t want to leave my body and go with my mind somewhere else. I want to stay for them just where they’ve put me. I want to hold space for them. I want to withstand their storm and meet them at the other end with my arms wide open. I want both of us to be transformed by what I am going through. They are making all that effort to hurt me, I don’t want it to be wasted on me hiding away. 

I can imagine that hurting people is not an easy thing to do. It must not be easy to allow oneself to act upon the dark urges that hide within oneself, to acknowledge them and let them be expressed. I appreciate it when my partners do. I appreciate their bravery in revealing who they are to me. And I want to show it to them by staying open to their actions, staying open to whatever process hurting me triggers in them, allowing them to explore the dark corners of their psyche, knowing that I am there with them, that I am receiving everything they have to give me and I will not leave them behind in their dark night. We will see the light at the end together. 

I have a history of being hurt by people whom I loved. I have been hurt by them over and over again and I was always coming back. Back then, because I didn’t have a choice. I had nowhere to go. But at the same time, I also didn’t want to leave them. I could see they were hurting as well. I could see how lost they were, unable to behave any different. I accepted that and I kept on loving them despite everything they did to me. Because the possibility of closing off and leaving them felt even more painful than whatever they were doing to me. 

Rope provides me with a contained ritual in which I can relieve those situations from my past. You could see it as unhealthy. You could say that I should learn how to get out of my unhealthy patterns and take better care of myself. But I think that its exactly what I am doing. In ropes, and in kink in general, I meet the most vulnerable, the most hidden parts of myself and I give them a voice so that I can finally see the beauty that hides inside of them. I can finally see the beauty that is in my pain. 

Kinbaku is a space where, instead of turning away from my uncomfortable experiences, I meet them with my attention and curiosity. Where I ‘see’ them and allow them to ‘play out’ without any censorship. So that I can learn how they operate. So that the most hidden aspects of me can finally see the daylight and become integrated into the image I have of myself. So that there is no part of me that I feel ashamed of.  A rope scene is a space where I meet my demons and where they invite the demons of my partners to dance. Through my pain. Through my suffering. Through my challenge, we both find peace with who we are. 

I could be bitter about the fact that it is always me who is hurt but I am not because it makes perfect sense. I’ve spent so much time in my life experiencing pain, investigating it, toying with it and turning it around that I am ideally positioned to be its receiver. Pain is my old friend. 

You could say that I am doomed but I would rather say that I am blessed. I get to explore the parts of human experience that not many people have entered and left sane. I get to be the gate for my partners to places they would never otherwise have reached. 

I am a necessary piece of a puzzle. A rarely visited but wildly beautiful garden. It might be scary to enter at first but I will guide through it the ones who have dared to visit it. Finally, there is meaning in my pain. 

¹ Scarry, Ellain. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of The World. Oxford UP, 1987.

Mindsets in which I love to receive pain

I think that I am a weird masochist. If I can be called one at all (to hell with the labels anyway).

I haven’t always been like that. In general, what I like a function of what my partners enjoy. Recently, however, I began to realize that I do also have my own taste for certain things.

My first kinky experience was quite painful and violent and the fact that I enjoyed it left me deeply disturbed and confused (a ‘decent’ girl should not enjoy being spanked and fucked until her ass turns completely blue and she can’t sit for a week). Then, my first dominant boyfriend was all about humiliation and degradation and we didn’t explore physical pain much. I didn’t feel the need to, either. Enough was going on already. After that, I entered the kink scene and that was the first time when someone pointed out to me that I am masochistic. And it was true, I enjoyed physical pain enormously at that point in time. It was a way of easy release and achieving the intensity that I craved for without investing much emotionally.

That fountain dried up for me though when I started discovering how much pleasure emotional suffering gives me. When I realized the depth, complexity, intensity and ease with which the emotional pain can be given to me by some people, my interest in physical pain deteriorated significantly. I even felt like I am not masochistic anymore. A bruised butt or other parts of my body lost their appeal to me. A bruised soul was what I was looking for.

Recently, I began to appreciate physical pain again, only not in the way that I used to. I am not so much interested in the pure sensual experience of pain anymore, but what its combination with emotional suffering can bring. The circumstances that I enjoy when being hurt are the ones that take away any possible physical pleasure that I could be experiencing from it. They take away the context of pain being a different tool of giving pleasure to a masochist and interchange it with actually being physically and mentally hurt.

Being an object

Receiving pain when you are objectified has a special flavour to it because you can be sure that it is not about you. There are coldness and carelessness to it. You're hurting, but it's not relevant. You could as well not be. Your pain doesn't matter. You're just a toy and you're used for someone's amusement, but your pain is not part of the amusement. It is just your body that is being used for someone else's purposes as if you were a puppet. And if it hurts then too bad for you. Do puppets even feel anyways?

Somehow I love this state because it makes me let go of my own experiences. Let go of myself. Yes, I am being hurt and yes I am in pain, but there is no way to prevent it, as the person who is hurting me doesn't even seem to see what I am experiencing. So better stop fighting against it and just accept it.

I love the mental challenge that accepting it requires of me. Since I don't have the usual supporting power of doing it for my partner to help me go through it, I really have to use all my resources to carry on. Being able to cope with pain like that is a very powerful experience.

A punishment

Punishment is another situation in which pain is not pleasurable to me. The same strokes of the whip can feel very different when they're purely sadistic entertainment and when they are a source of punishment.
When I'm being punished, my head automatically tries to help the person who is punishing me by putting me in a mindset of atonement, making everything more painful and reminding me with every stroke that what I am currently experiencing is an expression of someone's disappointment. And being a disappointment is one of the worst crimes in my eyes.

Since I always want to please, being punished is a painful experience in itself for me. Adding pain to it only intensifies it. That's because at that moment all I dream of is being forgiven and embraced and told that everything is fine and they're not going to leave me behind because of what I did. Receiving pain, when you're waiting to be told that everything is going to be ok, can be quite devastating.

Being not cared about

Pain can also be an expression of someone not caring about me. And I love to feel not being cared about. There are little things hurt more than that.

Being objectified can also be a sign of not caring, but that's not what I'm talking about here. Here, I want my partners to see and recognize what I feel, but not care about it. For example, when they beat me way harder than I might find enjoyable, just because they feel like it, knowing that they are causing me a lot of pain and showing me that their entertainment is more important than my suffering. Again, it's a sign that what they're doing to me is not about me, which is exactly what I want.

Outside of kink the fact that someone gives another pain is often a sign of them not caring about the other person unless it is a necessary evil for your own good. Within the realm of kink, this reasoning is twisted as giving pain to a masochist can actually be a sign of love, of recognizing and catering to someone's needs. But since for me, the last thing that I want from my partners is for my needs to be recognized and catered for (at least in play), I often bring myself to the 'real world' mindset, where I don't want to experience pain and the fact that they are still giving it to me is a sign of not caring, of doing what they want without considering how I feel about it. At least, I want to believe that this is the case.

Being a recipient of anger

Being hurt by someone who appears to be angry is yet another flavour that I love. It makes one feel so panicky and abused. There is some carelessness there, but it's mixed with fear and violence. They might be careless, but not because they don't care whether they hurt you or how you feel. Here they actually actively want to hurt you. Their carelessness comes from a deliberate loss of control (or at least it looks like it).

I love how terrified it makes me feel to think that not only am I out of control but my torturer as well. It gives me a feeling of being in the power of an uncontrolled natural force, unstoppable and deadly. It awakens lots of primal fears and makes me freeze with terror.

An additional aspect is added to it if the person who is angry and violent with me is someone who I care about. Someone who I wish would be kind and loving but instead is using me as their punching bag. It makes me feel lost, confused, and hurt, and wishing it all to stop. It gives me a feeling of betrayal because I thought that I knew them but I find out that they are not who I thought they were (especially when it's something unexpected and played really well).

Humiliation

Physical pain can also be a great tool for humiliation. In general, if you are equal to someone, they will not cross the boundary of physically hurting you (in normal circumstances I mean, not in kink). If someone feels entitled to hurt you and you let them do that, it might be a sign of lowering your status. Especially if it is done in a humiliating way.

To me for example, being spanked with a bare hand or beaten with a belt is somewhat humiliating, as it makes me feel like an insubordinate child. In such a case, the humiliation is often bigger than the pain. Especially if other people are watching it. Having my nipples twisted is also often an act of humiliation to me. It makes me feel so vulnerable and exposed. Another obvious painful form of humiliation is face slapping.

I love the combination of pain and humiliation because the pain somewhat intensifies the humiliation (and to me usually is absorbed by it). It always makes me think about the fact that I am so subdued to the person doing it that I'll allow them to do anything to me. I'll go as low as they want me to. Pain makes me realize that and at the same time makes me feel more helpless in it.

Denial of loving touch

This is a circumstance that I love to go to in my head. Even a slight sign of denial (conscious one and not because of carelessness) of touch or softness makes my mind tremble from a feeling of lack. I start to desperately want what I can't get. Longing for the thing that they're denying me more and more, showing them how much I want it. And giving them more opportunities to deny it even more painfully.

And when someone makes you hungry for their kindness and care and love and then feed you with pain… It hurts. On so many levels. When you long for their touch and the only touch you get is mixed with pain. It makes you so confused and helpless and trapped. You become their prisoner. You begin to long for the pain that they are giving you because it's the only way that you can be close to them. And despite the hurt, you want to be close to them. It is so tragically romantic that I can't get enough of it.

Bein in someone else’s control

Finally, I love when someone is using pain to show me how much I am under their control. Not as a tool of gaining control (in general when I play with people I am under their control already), but rather of executing it. Of showing me how much they can do to me and that I am not going to stop them.

I am not a fighting kind of person, you don't need to use force to overpower me. If I'm there playing with you, I'm already yours. The fact that even though that is the case, you will still hurt me just because you can, makes me truly feel the power that you have over me. It makes me realize that you know exactly how much I have given up and that you are going to use it.

It's both exciting and terrifying. On the one hand, you're fulfilling my desires. Being entirely under the control of someone else is one of the states that I long for. On the other hand though, knowing how much I'm letting my guard down and seeing someone who might actually use it to the limit is scary. Can I really take as much as I think I can?

Being hurt by someone who has complete power over me is so thrilling, again, because the pain that they are giving me is not about me. They are hurting me because that's the experience that they want to give me. And I know that because it's for them, I will suck it up and go way further than I find pleasurable. I won't say stop when it gets hard to take. I will let them bring me just on the brink of breaking. And that's the place where I love to be.

So I guess that what I actually want is to be hurt in a way that my partners want to hurt me and not on my terms. I don't want them to use the pain for my pleasure. I want them to really use it to hurt me. I can also recognize how much physical pain can enhance and alter emotional suffering. How it can add to the intensity and bring me to a state of terror or nervous breakdown that is hard to achieve otherwise.

So please, do hurt me. Use the pain against me. Just don't make me feel for a moment that what you are doing is about me.