body is in good shape -- when I'm well-rested and I've eaten healthy food. That, too, is a position of strength.
In some ways this can become murky. For example: I am rarely interested in one-night stands. There are a number of reasons for this, but one reason is that -- especially as a woman -- feeling like a "slut" can be scary, difficult cultural territory. And when I don't feel good about myself, my interest in one-night stands is even lower -- because I know that dealing with the difficult territory of "sluthood" will be harder with low self-esteem. If I'm feeling happy, strong, competent, valuable, and loved by the world... then one- night stands can easily be fun. If | doubt my worth, or if I doubt how much I deserve love... then one-night stands can be self-destructive.
The same goes for relationships with people who don't care about me. If I'm sure that a guy has no emotional interest in me, then having sex with that guy can be a dangerous emotional proposition for me, and one that I need to feel strong for. This doesn't always end up being true -- I've definitely had sexual encounters that left me emotionally unaffected -- but sometimes it's hard to predict whether I'll want more emotional investment from a given dude, so I try to keep it in mind for all encounters. (From a polyamorous perspective, I've noticed that less-emotional sex is often easier to handle when I'm already in a solid relationship with someone else.)
A couple I know in the local S&M community will sometimes have encounters that absolutely blow my mind, because they seem so difficult and so psychological. Here is an example: after the pair was married and child-free for many years, the wife realized that she might want children after all. This was a problem for her husband, who married her with the understanding that neither of them wanted kids. It became an ongoing discussion. Then the husband -- who is also the sadistic, dominant partner -- asked her if they could have an S&M encounter focused around the topic. She said it was okay.
So, as part of an S&M class that they taught together, the husband used her new feelings about children to rip into her: during the S&M encounter, he told her that she was probably too old to have children, that she'd waited too long. He added that she was too flighty for kids; that she'd be a bad mother. He added that he had always made it clear that he never wanted kids; that she was stupid for marrying someone who didn't want kids, and that this problem was her own fault.
I was not present during this class, but I heard about it from some attendees, and it sounds like it was really intense. He used a genuine and difficult sore spot to put his wife through a psychological S&M wringer, with her consent.
These days, I feel very tempted towards encounters like that: encounters that can tear me apart on a deep level, using important weaknesses and insecurities. I've also received email from other people who want to arrange encounters like that, and who ask my advice. An obvious problem is that such a relationship could easily slip into abusive territory.
So I've thought about this a lot, and here's my conclusion: those kind of intense psychological encounters obey the same maxim as other BDSM -- "Start from a position of strength, and seek strength in the end.”
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