Q: How Do You Process Mak­ing a Con­sen­sual, Will­ing Part­ner Really, Truly Suffer?

This FetLife ques­tion reads thusly: As a D-​type, how do you process mak­ing a con­sen­sual, will­ing part­ner really, truly suf­fer? Is there a point at which it becomes clear to you that your part­ner is in the “hate it zone?” Is this for you a sign to stop? Or is it more like a car­rot dan­gling that says, “Charge! Now’s when the fun really starts!” How do you feel after?

A: With me, there are no hard, fast rules about prac­ti­cally any­thing. It depends on my mood and her mood whether I con­sider the “hate it zone” a sign to stop or a sign that the warm-​up just ended and that she is fully recep­tive for the sadist in me to make love to her.

And that’s exactly what it is for us. The moments when Gen­tle­Spirit is in so much agony that she can’t even draw a breath to scream, or when her long, black hair is plas­tered to her face and she can’t even move her arms to cover her­self up, or when I muf­fle her screams with my hand and her lit­tle hands shoot up to cover her own mouth over my hand because she can­not stop scream­ing, that’s when the sadist in me is mak­ing love to her.

There are no times when we are more inti­mate, con­nected more deeply, and more com­plete than dur­ing (and after) those times. It is mak­ing love pri­mally, ele­men­tally, with our hearts and our souls, rather than with our minds.

So how do I process mak­ing a con­sen­sual, will­ing part­ner really, truly suffer?

Gen­er­ally, I rely on my sen­si­tiv­ity to her responses to me, on my empa­thy with her to guide me. I have no wish to harm her and it is not even really about hurt­ing her; in the end it is about con­nect­ing with her, of mak­ing love with her. And, yes, of pleas­ing her too in my own Safe, Sick, and Consen­sual way; her plea­sure may not be imme­di­ately obvi­ous while I touch her but it is most def­i­nitely there afterwards.

I once said this to a fel­low sadist:

I think that might be the golden rule of thumb in assess­ing suc­cess for the likes of us; the lady may ques­tion her san­ity at the time, but when every­thing is said and done, she should shyly, or not so shyly, ask when we can do it again. She may be glad that the ordeal is over, but the next day, or the next week, she should be think­ing about it, reliv­ing it, feel­ing her skin tin­gling for that par­tic­u­lar touch, feel­ing her heart tin­gling for that par­tic­u­lar emo­tion again.

She is the emo­tional engine in the rela­tion­ship. It is through her emo­tions and her responses and her accep­tance of me and my needs that we both draw strength from our rela­tion­ship. And, believe it or not, my burn­ing touch gives her emo­tional spa-​days vital for her peace of mind and well­be­ing.

Gen­tle­Spirit once told me:

I know you worry from time to time that I am just suf­fer­ing through pain, but dar­ling, oh how I crave it. I need it. When we make love, to me it is like a beau­ti­ful, deli­cious Indian spicy spicy curry. It burns, nose is run­ning, eyes water­ing, tongue on fire, but you can’t stop eat­ing it. You crave that burn. This is how it feels for me. I crave your burn.

But I don’t always process mak­ing this beau­ti­ful, mag­nif­i­cent woman suf­fer very well. On occa­sion after a more intense ses­sion I suf­fer top-​drop laced with guilt, for instance. Inter­est­ingly enough, it is actu­ally not guilt about what I have done but rather about what I could have done. A pre-​emptive guilt about what I learn that I am capa­ble of, if you will, even though I may never go there.

I’m not say­ing this to make myself sound gnarly; this is a truly fright­en­ing feel­ing for a think­ing man, a man who can’t bear the thought of shy­ing away from his own mirror-​image in the morning.

It is like the sink­ing feel­ing you may feel after avoid­ing a crash on the free­way more or less by pure luck, when you con­tinue dri­ving unscathed with a clump in your throat but your mind is left at the spot of that close-​call, shrink­ing in the rear view mir­ror behind you. You find your­self play­ing night­mare sce­nar­ios in your head of what could have been.

It is like being afforded a brief look behind the veil over Dorian Gray’s paint­ing; when I am in that place I feel like I get glimpses of what I truly am and what I really look like and it can be… disconcerting.

That is one of the things I strug­gle with, no mat­ter how much she assures me that she knows that I am a good man and that I would never harm her. After all, I am not a machine and I am not Super­man; when she suf­fers and spills her tears for me and on me, how can I pos­si­bly guar­an­tee that I won’t snap and feed deeper? How can I pos­si­bly promise that I will not feed more from her than she can afford to give?

Sigh. Nobody can.

After all, we are danc­ing on the edge of rea­son here; the deeper she sinks into the pri­mal and the ele­men­tal, the deeper she draws me in as well. Is it rea­son­able to remain calm and col­lected and com­pletely in my head while she loses her­self for the ben­e­fit of us both? Doesn’t she deserve me to make the jour­ney with her? To hold her hand in free-​fall rather than dis­pas­sion­ately watch­ing her descend from the safety of the ledge of reason?

I don’t want to push her off the ledge. I want to leap into the void and pull her along with me, hold­ing hands as we descend.

Together.