One of the biggest misconceptions people have about masochism is that it is simply about liking pain. It isn't.
Pain is the easiest part to explain because it is tangible. You can point to a bruise. You can describe the sting of a cane or the ache left behind after impact. What is far more difficult to explain is everything that exists around the pain. The trust…intimacy…vulnerability… relief…surrender. The strange sense of peace that can exist in the middle of something that, from the outside, looks entirely contradictory.
For a long time, I was ashamed of that. Not that I was ashamed of BDSM itself, but because I could not reconcile the morality of wanting pain. I kept asking myself what kind of person wants someone they love to hurt them. Surely there had to be something broken about that. Surely healthy people did not crave pain or find comfort in it.
I spent so much time trying to justify it instead of simply accepting it. If I wanted pain, there had to be a reason.
I convinced myself that pain only made sense if it was connected to punishment. If I had done something wrong, then pain became my penance. It was my way of making things right again. Once I had endured enough, the guilt seemed quieter. The account felt settled. I could breathe again because, in my mind, accountability had been fulfilled. Pain made wrongdoing feel complete. It gave my mind a clear beginning and an equally clear ending.
But as time passed, something changed.
I realised there were moments when I wanted pain despite having done nothing wrong. There was no punishment waiting for me. No lesson to learn. No mistake to atone for. I simply wanted the experience of pain itself…and that was much harder to accept.
Accepting pain as punishment was easy because “we” understand punishment. It has a purpose. It has a justification. Accepting that I simply wanted pain because I wanted it forced me to confront something much bigger. I had to stop asking whether my desire was morally acceptable and start asking whether I was judging myself for something that was never immoral to begin with.
Psychologically, our relationship with pain is far more complicated than most people realise. Pain and pleasure are not complete opposites in the brain. They share neurological pathways, and under certain circumstances the body releases endorphins, dopamine and adrenaline in response to pain. For some people, that combination can create calm, emotional release, euphoria or an altered state of consciousness often referred to within BDSM as subspace.
Not everyone experiences pain this way, and there is no single explanation for why some people are masochists while others are not. Like many aspects of human sexuality, there is no universal cause. For some, it is sensation seeking. For others, it is emotional regulation, intimacy, trust or simply preference.
For me, it is all of those things.
One of the most profound things BDSM has given me is a completely different relationship with pain. I grew up in a home where pain was frightening. It represented unpredictability. It represented fear. It represented powerlessness. Those experiences cannot be erased, nor would I ever pretend they can.
What BDSM gave me was not the opportunity to forget my past. It allowed me to create new associations alongside it. For the first time in my life, pain existed inside trust.
The person delivering it was someone I had chosen. Someone who knew my limits because we had discussed them beforehand. Someone who would stop if I asked them to. Someone who cared about my wellbeing before, during and after the scene.
The pain may feel physically similar, but psychologically it exists in an entirely different world. Instead of fear, there is anticipation. Instead of helplessness, there is consent. Instead of surviving someone else's choices, I am participating in my own.
That agency transformed my relationship with pain. It stopped being something that only happened to me. It became something I chose. That is the greatest act of reclaiming I have ever experienced.
People often assume that because I am a masochist, what I enjoy most is being hurt. And that is true. I enjoy most is what the pain represents. Every strike reminds me that I trusted someone enough to be vulnerable with them. Each moment of discomfort is held inside care, communication and consent.
Pain has become another language of intimacy. It is difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced it because intimacy is usually imagined as something soft. Gentle touches. Warm embraces. Quiet affection.
Perhaps?... Intimacy is not defined by softness, but it may be defined by trust.
For me, pain has become one of the ways trust is spoken. Looking back, I don't think my journey was really about learning to love pain. I think it was about learning not to hate myself for loving it.
Today I no longer feel the need to justify my masochism with punishment, guilt or psychological explanations. I still find punishment meaningful within the right dynamic, and I still understand why it once felt connected to atonement. But my relationship with pain has grown beyond that.
Sometimes I seek pain because I need release…it quiets my mind…it brings me closer to my partner, and my body simply longs for it. None of those reasons requires me to have done something wrong.
So to all the masochist out there, there is nothing wrong with you and you are not broken for wanting and needing pain the way you do
Xoxo
Nirvana