Why SUBMITTING?

Why someone would like to be bossed or bullied by someone else? Some questions by Saint posted in the Realm Forum offer a good chance to discuss about submission, and to try to see the reasons for such behaviour from different viewpoints.

Why SUBMITTING?

Saint wrote: (..) I find it very hard to think that a person would "WANT" to be " bossed "or "bullied" or whatever you want to call it, around. Surly its in our nature to defend ourselves against aggression. I would never let anybody tell me to do anything...whether in bed or at work. Ok work is a bad example...but I stick up for myself...and I'm not afraid to tell the boss what I think. This is in fact a hard question to write...I hope you know where I'm getting at. Another example would be....In a game.. whether playing chess or snakes and ladders...you play to win...because loosing is crap. Which means you play to Dominate the other players...Why would my wife or your girlfriendsoyfriends...want to be a sub in the first place.

I wrote many essays about pain and pleasure, and how I consider them fully exchangeable both in a biological and mental viewpoint. Of course they are just my opinion - but maybe they can give some hints about why people may find their pleasure in the pain. Here I will just follow the question and let some of the answers come out freely.

Why someone would like to submit? Why someone would enjoy to be humiliated, to bent, why would someone be eager to suffer - especially at the hands of the beloved one?

This is a question we can approach on some different viewpoints: one may be the plain "sensation" approach: people do so because they find pleasure in it. There is, at least for some people, a intense pleasure in sufferance and/or humiliation. A pleasure directly linked to sexuality and arousal.

A matter of tastes

If you want to go deeper you may ask again why some people may like that. Then we may see things from a more "philosophical" viewpoint, and ask back why they should not? Who said its exciting to kiss the lips and is not to kiss a toe? Who said its exciting to be kissed and licked and is not to be slapped and pissed on? Who stated is "normal" to desire to be cherished and cuddled and is not normal to desire to be insulted and derided? Desires and arousal are something we feel, not something we rule - so once again we fall in the first answer - and submission is a sensation some people enjoys as a special taste - like some people like lemon ice-cream and others vanilla.

It's a pleasure

But there are many others viewpoint you may consider facing such attitude. For instance the fact itself that arousal and sexual gratification is a sophisticated feeling - something we moved from the plain "natural" meaning which was definitely linked to reproduction. We evolved - some may say "we corrupted" - such activity converting - some may say "perverting" - it in a pleasure search. And we explore such search with kisses, caresses, licks and sometimes we may want to explore it by spankings, whippings, humiliations.

Exploring

Again, the term exploration gives another very interesting viewpoint to consider this fact. We may simply want to know better who we are. We may simply want to explore something about us. We spend our lives all the time trying to win, trying to succeed, trying to dominate and be the one in charge. Why not trying to see the other side of things? How would it feel to surrender? How would it feel to beg, and feel the pain and beg again? How would it be to be pushed so far to cry like a baby? Will I be strong enough to get into it and still be someone? For many people crawling in the dirt is a way to purify themselves, a way to test and explore their inner sides and face them.

Who's Strong?

And here comes another viewpoint: where is the strength? Where is the real power? Is so powerful to whip someone as he kiss your shoes? Or maybe it's a subtle but clear manifestation of power the fact to surrender, the fact to accept to debase ourselves to this point and still accept it? There are monks who stop eating for weeks, others who deprived themselves from eating, others who whip themselves to blood: isn't more fun to explore the same notions of power on ourselves with a partner, and with the plus of a sexual situation?

Asking back

There are many other viewpoints we may consider to answer the question, and surely they all may cast some lights on the matter. But in any case, the main point remains the same: we all do in life what we tend to consider worthy of our time and energies. If so many people, maybe even all human beings even if they don't know or accept it, are attracted from domination and submission games, and are able to find a sexual arousing feeling in it, then the question may be reverted: why so many people are so reluctant to admit BDSM as a exciting game?

Maybe because accepting this simple fact would force all of us to reconsider what it means to "win" or "lose", what it means to "have power" and what means the term "responsibility". But this is far worthy another article itself...