Like Eddie, I sat on the sidelines for awhile with this thread, expecting many insights into NS's emotional reactions to spew forth from my fellow Perbites, and lead to wonderous self-reflections for me. And indeed some have. However I feel the real cause of NS's emotional releases remains somewhat mysterious. I have experienced a number of unexpected emotional responses before, during, and after a session, although not to the depth NS describes. Nevertheless, there may be similar processes at work, for us and for other players and purveyors that I fondly call my fine fetish friends. I must admit to having read and studied sadomasochism, fetish, and power exchange from both a sociological and psychological perspective. There are a few schools of thought. But here a few predominating ones.
1. Pent Up Emotion. NS may experience huge emotional releases during sessions because he has huge pent-up emotions. Now before you say D'oh! and smack your palm to your forehead in my general direction, consider that adult fixated behaviour often stems from deep childhood and teen development circumstances. Don't worry, I am not about to go all Oprah on you! I said circumstances, not trauma. Perhaps NS was shy and introverted in his earlier years, or perhaps he grew up where siblings or parents, through their own extroversion, left NS with relatively little opportunity to express himself. There are also genetic tendancies unrelated to nurture. Either way, NS may have internalized his thoughts, feelings, desires, and emotion from an early age, for a variety of reasons. His newly discovered kink may have triggered release of long standing pent up desire for expression. Reconnection with one's inner child often happens at the extremes of life experience, and has the capacity to swing us to great joy or sadness.
2. Physiological reaction. Endorphins are a powerful beastie. Part of the "BDSM high" is achieved through a good old endorphin rush. There can be cumulative effects. Testosterone triggered desire + pain triggered neuological sensation + sympathetic connection through trust = one helluva lot of mojo juice hitting the happy centre of the brain. Emotional outburst.
3. Freedom through Slavery. Why are so many sub's male and so many pro-domme's female? Why do we crave this role-reversal from the typical alpha male model we men are wired to follow? Although submissive males come in all shapes and sized, there appears to be a frequently occurring pattern. Men who are strong in their professional lives often crave surrender in their sexual lives. Especially those that started out as introverts, and migrated to strong performers, success, accomplishment, and ultimately power. Some very highly accomplished people are closet kinksters. They were not usually the football jocks or outgoing party pals, but they were driven and smart, and ended up running significant chunks of the world economy, social, or political system. The responsibilities are tremendous, they are good at it, but there is no freedom in the power they hold. There is only freedom when they give it up. And they can only truly give it up by being dominated by a woman. As a sub, they can cast their responsibilties aside for a few fleeting hours, and re-experience the freedom that they had in simpler times. You see, these alpha/beta males don't get to let their beta side out very much. Their beta side may have been awkward and even scared of girls when they were younger, and this transitioned into fear of rejection by women as they grew older. By being dominated, there may be pain, there may be punishment, there may be total surrender, but there is no rejection. Surrender to a domminant women means that she accepts him as worthy to punish. Her attention is a sure thing. There is nothing to fail at. He can only experience her attention, whatever it may be. And suddenly the inner peace and satisfaction of holding no responsibility comes welling up as emotion. Powerful, powerful emotion of which there is no equal.
These are just ravings and speculations of a deranged mind of course. But does any of it resonate?
-Punt.
