"How can you possibly enjoy hurting someone you love?"

[ciphergoth]

Sparkyrie says...
Re: don't be scared

You mean you were there? I certainly haven't been in any kind of similar situation, so maybe that's why I find it so hard to understand. But - *why* do people enjoy being hurt? What is it about pain that has this incredible effect, and how can pain lead to love and happiness? If someone wants to hurt the people they love physically, does that mean they'd enjoy hurting them emotionally as well? How can you possibly enjoy hurting someone you love?

Face to face, I know how to do this explanation, I've done it many, many times. To the blinking cursor in the "reply" box... I'm at a loss.

gothslut? You write about these things so beautifully, maybe you could explain?

Comments

[sparkyrie.livejournal.com]

So it's the intensity of the pain which makes the love even more intense? Intensity leading to intensity on all levels, and even apparently opposite ones (love and pain) can intensify each other? I guess I sort of...almost...see what you mean. At least, I can see how tragedy or adversity in a film or whatever makes the positive side all the more triumphant(my favourite film is Life Is Beautiful). Thank you everyone for shedding the first few tentative rays of light on this for me!

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's certainly part of it.

For me, another part is stripping away the shield. It can be difficult to be yourself sometimes, even if you want to be. Pain, humiliation and other BDSM activities help us strip away the face we present to the world every day and get through to something deeper. There's nothing measured about screaming in pain.


It was very clear to me that you asked the question honestly and I thought you deserved a decent answer!

What you asked was "why do people want to hurt their lovers?", and what we've answered is "why do people want their lovers to hurt them?". I hope it's clear how answering the second goes some way towards answering the first!

Re:

[sparkyrie.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess it's a short step from the S to the M, so to speak (or rather vice versa) because if you know that your lover enjoys being hurt, then I guess you wouldn't find it so difficult to hurt them.

The idea of stripping pretences is very interesting too. Actually I've now thought of another idea. I've often thought that many "normal" relationships are about a kind of sadism on an emotional level: say one person adores the other, but the adoration is returned only half-heartedly. In that case, the second person possesses complete power over the first - they know their partner will never leave them, and they enjoy that security, but they also enjoy the dominance of being independent of their partner, whilst he/she is completely dependent on them. And in a way, they get off on their partner's insecurity and jealousy/possessiveness, whilst their partner somehow revels in the opportunity to be hurt, to receive less than what they give, to be strung around the other person's finger...I've actually had a relationship like that, where I was the weak, dependent one, and although it was horrible, somehow a part of me almost *wanted* to find out that my partner had done another hurtful thing, cheated on me, or whatever...

So maybe all of us have some kind of instinct that attracts us towards pain in some way.

Are you at Cambridge by the way? From reading Elise's journal, it sounds like I'm going to have some pretty unbelievable experiences when I get there!! (*If* I get there, that is, 'cause I'm not too confident about how my A-levels are going, but...)

[djm4]

I was going to reply to this, but the reply turned into a bit of a monster and led to some slightly unexpected tangents, and so I put it up on a web page here instead. Read if you're interested.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I'm in Edinburgh. The party was in London.

[djm4]

Fun things do happen in Cambridge occasionally, though...