Trigger Warning: Mentions of self harm
I got into BDSM to satisfy my self-harm urges when I couldn’t hold back or keep my emotional pain in anymore after coming to India 5 years ago, when I was 17. It started from simple acts of fisting my hand and beating myself up in places where the bruises, if any, can’t be seen by anyone else, out of guilt and to stop feeling the way I did. Through that time till I turned 18, I scourged the internet for more explanations regarding these urges of mine. That’s how I came across the possibility of BDSM as such so that I can give up all that control involved in my efforts to keep my pain down and just cover it up with physical pain and get warmth from someone, if not loved, while not having to bother with planning and strategizing each step of the process.
As I got older into the end of my teens and started out on my 20s, I found myself enjoying different kinds of physical pain such as spanking, nipple clamps and fantasising about whips and wax play, and felt them sexually arousing me, even when I wasn’t in emotional pain. Of course, I was still concerned if it was all just about me and my emotional traumas. So, like any other person, I consulted the only known free consultation service around me, Google. I read a multitude of articles, journals, web comics, erotica and more.
Other than those common blog posts which tops the Google search results, I found a novel series called Special Agent by C. P. Mandara. It was incredibly enjoyable and arousing and gave me the insight that though I might not enjoy the extreme kind of portrayal in the series, I definitely enjoy BDSM/Kink and I'm excited for it. I also discovered a site called Mangago where I found comics featuring dom/sub arrangements, which opened my eyes to my underlying interest in queer relationships and their representation in media.
Of course, I wouldn’t advocate for all these as educational resources but these were the only options I had back then and this was about 2-3 years ago. Even though things haven’t improved much now when it comes to providing accredited sex education with a balanced pleasure and risk-based focus, still I have discovered a lot of experienced and/or licensed sex therapists, sexologists and people who lead the kink lifestyle providing better information on social media which is an impressive improvement.
It was this period of research that taught me about sadomasochism, about how one can be both sadistic and masochistic like me, be it at same or different times. Though I started out on this journey fantasizing about receiving pain and pleasure, as I slowly dealt with my traumas, I could also see that I wanted to pleasure my partner and even torture them, consensually, with too much pleasure and sensory deprivation.
All this taught me how those two sides of me don't need to be equal in amounts, or always stay the same way. It need not be the same kinks either when you are a sadist or a masochist. Further, I understood that an interest in BDSM isn’t always triggered by past traumas as shown in Fifty Shades of Grey or like in my case but it also taught me that trauma being the start of an interest in pain, impact play or kink doesn’t invalidate your interest in it, as long as you perform it consensually without permanent or lasting damage.
Through all this gravelling, once I had such understanding in place to give me assurance that I’m not doing something wrong, I got more interested in finding people with similar urges and interests. Of course, again, I didn’t know where to do that as I couldn’t go right into it with the people I meet in real life considering the social taboos surrounding sex and anything slightly far from the “seemingly normal” standards. So, I turned to my online consultant, Google, which guided me into the virtual world of BDSM Tests at bdsmtest.org and kinky dating apps such as Fetlife.com, OKCupid.com, etc. From those apps/sites, I started to find people at different stages of their kink life - beginners, explorers, experienced kinksters.
After much trial and error, online communication (chatting) and some help from the long list of kinks and percentages thanks to bdsmtest.org (100% Switch, 95% Masochist, 94% Rope bunny, 87% Submissive, 75% Experimentalist, 42% Vanilla, 83% Sadist, 76% Dominant, etc.), I started on my BDSM journey with a straight and mostly vanilla person whom I shared my mother tongue with and was into slightly integrating kink with vanilla sex rather than full-on dominance and submission, through Telegram. This online set-up of Friends with Benefits (FwB) went on for some time before that person suddenly ghosted me for “academic purposes and relocation”, as informed later.
That made it the right time to restart on my journey of exploration of full-on dominance and submission. After some time of repeating the same process as before, I was back to telegram with a new dominant/sadist (Dom). The only similarities I shared with this new online dom was that we lived in the same country and our overlapping interests in BDSM. Other than that, we had kilometres between us. Sometime of detailed communication about kinks, fetishes, consent, limits, safewords, aftercare and more, as detailed as it can be between FwBs, slowly progressed to late night sessions through video/audio calls, photos and chats. Those rendezvous helped us discover more about each other, our tastes, wants and likes such as anal, being addressed as ‘sir’, etc., though I wasn’t fully capable/confident yet to voice it all.
As enjoyable as it all was, I was at an exploratory stage of discovering my desires, interests and what bodily autonomy meant to me. At the same time, I could also feel something uncomfortable piling up after each of our late-night sessions but I didn’t know what exactly yet, especially since master wasn’t doing anything beyond what I consented to and neither did he force me to do anything, which meant that I didn’t talk about that to my master yet. Back then, I chose to ignore this unclear inner voice of mine and agree to master’s prompt to try out neglect play, without humiliation/degradation or pet play since those were/are absolute NOs to me. Though I hung on till that session ended, I absolutely broke down after that.
“But why? Everything seemed to be going well.” Well, it seemed that the neglect play had triggered some childhood traumas in me. It brought back memories from my childhood when I wanted to share my feelings of sadness due to being ostracised by the same classmates I studied with for 13 years, repeatedly. Contrary to my hope, it was a long and hard journey to navigate before and sometimes even after I had someone to share all those feelings with before becoming numb in some ways and taking advantage of it in other ways.
It brought back the extreme loneliness that threatened to break me, thanks to my mom working hard to make me independent as I’m now and dad being unavailable. It left me a crying mess which caused me to withdraw from my master and end things between us because back then, I still didn’t know how to handle such matters or situations rather than escaping. Now that I look back, I can see how wrong it was both to me and my master.
Taking some time off from the BDSM world and sexual/physical exploration gave me some insights on what that “uncomfortable” thing that had been piling up and how that might have subconsciously contributed to the unfortunate but very much needed ending.
Be it due to the influence of my traumas or because I’m a writer focused on words and communication, the aftercare I needed, be it the time, amount and/or kind, was different from that of my partner’s just like how people’s love languages or learning methods might be different. Further, I also understood that as much as I enjoy the main BDSM session, aftercare is a heavily important part of the process and has added importance for people like me with emotional scars. Moreover, it signified how a lot of the aftercare part meant detailed communication to me, no matter how long it takes and how later it is after the play session.
Additionally, it brought to me the significance of aftercare even in vanilla relationships and how I might prefer integration of kink/sadomasochism into vanilla relationships rather than full-on sir/ma’am/madam/master, i.e., structured dominance and submission. Another insight was how my first experience with the ghosting guy might have been a bit softcore for me like how the second one was slightly too hardcore for me which was both funny to know and enlightening.
Today, physical pain during sex/foreplay, in certain amounts in certain body parts while not in others, is something close to a fetish for me and rope play, blindfolding, edging, polyamory, etc., are more kinks to me. Of course, even among these and beyond, there's a lot more for me to explore and understand my likes and preferences.
But one thing I definitely understand is how important detailed communication and honesty towards myself and my partner before, after and later is to me and after the implementation of those insights into my ongoing relationships, be it sexual, romantic or platonic, I can see how positively it impacts them and lasts longer with transparency and practicality, if it works for all those involved. Ergo, exploring the BDSM arena has taught me both about the sexual and romantic life but also about my social life by better handling networking and making lasting and impactful connections and bagging opportunities.