THE ORIGINS OF KINK

I knew I had to write that last post immediately. My newly discovered sense of compassion for myself was a fish that had often been glimpsed in the water, but had never previously been landed, and then suddenly, last Friday, there it was, flapping about in the bottom of the boat, sure to jump over the side unless I wrangled it into the keep net

In truth, it’s still a fleeting thing, often swamped by more familiar feelings of criticism and disdain. It will take a while before I’m properly comfortable with it.

I said that the post had left me with a head full of questions, and here is one of them: “Are my kinks also, somehow, a response to my upbringing?”

I’ve always believed, indeed argued vehemently, that portrayals of kink as something to do with emotional damage (think Christian Grey in Fifty Shades – or don’t if that’s just too annoying) are societal tropes. They exist because society finds it easier to classify people as ‘normal’ or ‘not normal’ where ‘normal’ really means ‘like me.’ I’ve fought hard against this idea; sexual tastes are diverse and acceptance of that is important. My first masochistic thoughts and actions were at eight years old and I’ve believed this shows my kinks must be congenital: Nature rather than Nurture.

However, I have finally accepted that parts of me are, in some way, damaged by my upbringing. I also have 300 blog posts that evidence my kinks, so might I have to accept that these two aspects of my character are related?

Perhaps, comparing myself with my brothers might be worthwhile here; after all, we shared a gene pool, a family environment and a boarding school. Barring differences born of our relative ages (only one of us could experience being the oldest, middleist or youngest) we clearly have heavily overlapping Nature AND Nurture. I haven’t shared my kinks with my middle brother, but I have with the younger, the one to whom I’m closest. Reading a selection of my blog posts, he winced a lot and pronounced himself determinedly vanilla.

No help there then.

Or is there?

In the Internal Family Systems model, which I’ve added below, firefighters are those parts of us that distract from the damaged feelings of our exiles, like my little boy from the previous post. Different versions of the model list firefighter behaviours in different ways, but many involve addictions, and both gambling and sex are often included (‘inappropriate sex’ in one version. I feel seen!) . I can’t share too much of it here, but for many years my youngest brother suffered a gambling addiction and it cost him his marriage and almost destroyed his life, as he obsessively threw money away until there wasn’t any left. Perhaps he shares with me a “little boy that needed to be loved” part of himself, and perhaps his gambling and my kinky sex are just our respective firefighters trying to distract us from the pain of that little boy.

That’s it then! I’m really Christian Grey, minus Dakota Johnson and the helicopter; our upbringings, being light on displays of affection, have led Grey and I  to indulge in kinky sex in later life!

No.

All the No!

A huge cake made out of No, with No icing, and candles spelling out “No” on the top.

Did I say No?

I almost entirely reject this notion.

As I described in the earlier post, I went through much of my life shutting myself off from feelings because I didn’t really know how to feel. Kink provided my route out of that incessant, stultifying numbness.

And not just through the physical feelings that came from being caned; intensely physical experiences became intensely emotional experiences as, in the hands of my beautiful Dominatrix and others, I experienced joy, fear, lust, anguish, need, desire and, eventually, love. I have come to realise that, in the language I have been given to describe these things, this is not some isolated part of me that needs to be managed; neither an exile expressing his hurt, nor a firefighter offering distraction. My kinks were, are, part of my core, part of my Self; they sit right at the centre of me. They are part of the active, compassionate, leader I need to be, in order to heal my more damaged or damaging parts; they are part of the active, compassionate self that I want to present to the outside world and have others engage with, in loving, open relationships.

I accept that, a few years ago, I was showing addictive tendencies as I over-indulged in paid-for, kinky sex, but I believe that the addiction was the true response to the difficulty, my kinks just the chosen vehicle, as gambling was the chosen vehicle for my brother.

My kinks were always at my core and I needed you, my beautiful twitter and blogging friends, to show me that that was OK.