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BDSM relationships are rational and adaptive for (some? many?) modern women
[Epimistic Status: Might just be the girls I date]
Oh boy! Another post on gender and romantic dynamics. Discussions on this topic here tend to go in a few predictable ways, and unfortunately there's a frequent vibe of posters here just not liking women. Leaving aside the whole hypergamy bit, there's frequent sneers about girls being attracted to partners that will mistreat them. This attraction is attributed to two evo psych explanations:
Men with aggressive and dark triad traits are more likely to succeed in gathering resources and accruing power. This makes them valuable mates, but also makes them high risks for physical abuse, infidelity, etc. There's something good correlated with something bad.
Females evolutionarily were frequently coerced by mates. They often didn't get to even choose their mates at all. This goes back all the way to chimps and monkeys. The ones that tolerated the abuse better were more likely to survive and reproduce. One of the pathways to tolerate abuse better is to enjoy it at some level. If you can't really control whether you get hit or not, it's more adaptive to get off on it than have a mental breakdown. The same goes for submissive behavior. Once you're wired deep down to enjoy something, you're going to start seeking it out.
I broadly think these two points are true, and I still like women. I think given submissive and masochistic impulses are wired in, the rational move is satify them while minimizing damage. BDSM relationships (which I'm using here as a catchall for everything from hard power dynamics to good 'ole slapping and choking in bed) are a social technology that fills that role.
Women want things in a partner. They also have different reproductive strategies that don't always neatly coincide. Pretty boys will make pretty daughters. Kind and caring partners are more likely to invest in you and your offspring. Dark triad partners are more likely to be disproportionately successful, but they might hurt you in the process. Straight up abusive partners just need to be survived, and some level of massochism helps.
Some of these reproductive strategies clearly work out a lot better than others. It's much better to end up with a pretty boy than an abusive one, but instincts were evolved when mate choice was much more constrained. Leaving a bad partner is much more of an option now, rendering some of the survival instincts counter produtive. So what's a gal to do with that masochistic drive? Get with a decent partner than have them do BDSM. Much better to be choked by the pretty boy that loves you than the dark triad guy that will actually kill you.
Backdoor on Feminism?
So here's my fringe, underdeveloped thought. Feminism and "womens liberation" broadly decreased the amount women had to submit to their partners. A lot of women liked that change. Some more reactionary ones didn't and explicitly volunteer for more trad lifestyles. I think a lot of women have mixed feelings. They really value the practical gains in freedom in some areas. But in others they didn't really want to stop being submissive. Western blue tribe women are seeped in the idea that feminism is good, and wanting to roll things back is bad. BDSM offers a figleaf for that. It's culture is soaked in the language of consent, so it doesn't contradict feminism. Yep, wearing a collar and being your man's slave is empowering. BDSM offers a framework for picking and choosing what bits of power to keep and return. You can still have your own job, but do everything you husband says at home.
My anecdotes
I had an ex who I was keeping on a leash. She really liked being given orders. One day I asked her to fetch me food a few too many times and she said "I wanted to be your girlfriend, not your servant!" I learned then when girls want to be submissive it's more like they want to be your pet than your maid.
I had two separate exes who ran away from abusive partners and then ended up with me. They were sensible enough to flee at the first sign of trouble. They liked me a fair amount at first, but when I introduced them to BDSM they became enthralled with me. I think early in the relationship were satisfying the Pretty/Caring strategy. Once BDSM hit the mix they felt like they were satisfying Pretty/Caring/Dominant. I think the BDSM community downplays the relationship with domestic violence for PR reasons. There's definitely something there.
I think this is focusing too hard on the BDSM element. As others have mentioned, very few women want an erotic master 24/7, especially if it involves menial labor. OTOH, most women appreciate a man who is confident and commanding most of the time - especially if he can escalate that in a darker direction during sex.
It's a difficult line to walk, and I think most advice for men leans way too hard in one direction or the other. Somewhat ironically, I think the meme trad Christian approach might work best, but only if you never acknowledge that that's what you're doing. Act like you're the captain of the relationship, with her as your trusted first mate (and tolerate her lack of a Riker beard), but never make that explicit.
And kindly insert a bunch of tedious throat-clearing about spectrums and Not All Women, etc, etc. Thanks.
I've got some personal experience with the kink community. I had an ex-girlfriend who ultimately had tastes way more hardcore than my own, but we dabbled a bit with the Feelds of the world whilst we were together and I've kept up socially with her since and she's been pretty open about what she's getting up to.
Most of what I've got from here is a bit of a weird mess of things where there's explicitly a bunch of subcategories of doms that a lot of women are interested in trying out for an experiential thing but they'd generally not be 'boyfriend material' or kinda in their own category where the same woman who's consenting to do shibari or whatever would also swipe left on them for a casual hookup since they're not hot enough. Shibari guys being a common thread of this where it's something a lot of women are into, but the sort of personality that actually puts enough effort into learning the skillset tends to be kinda neurotic and annoying. This kinda thing is generally the best shot of 'single unaccompanied hetero guy getting to dom women he doesn't know', and even that tends to require a ton of social proof since there's countless stories of 'random guy claims to be able to do X, Y & Z on feeld since he watched 2 videos on it on pornhub but doesn't know the artisan skillset required'.
Which is massively digressing, but nonetheless I do hear that a lot of girls feel that guys are unwilling to match their desired level of take-control in sex.
Were you unicorn hunting, or was this a "we're just looking around" kind of a thing?
I will say that the idea of a "BDSM hookup" is pretty ridiculous to me, much moreso even than normal hookups. I'd want to know a person pretty seriously before engaging in anything on this side of the asteroid belt of risky sexual behavior, let alone power exchange.
Unicorn hunting a bit though that was its own tiresome thing and the relationship was prettymuch already over when we decided to go more FWBish.
Oof. Unicorn hunting is its own bit of insanity, and it sounds like she's the one who pushed for it.
Do you feel regret when you see what she's up to, or is this an "I'm glad I dodged a bullet there" kind of a thing?
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Looking at the history of it, I believe BDSM as an edifice is some kind of ersatz replacement for roles that naturally exist in straight relationships but not outside of them, and which progressivism has been doing its best to stomp out. You don't need to figure out who's the dom and who's the sub in 99% of straight relationships, that's been sorting itself out for thousands of years. All the wacky Red Pill stuff and most war-of-the-sexes discourse is clumsily rediscovering what every boomer knew but didn't teach their kids: guys being confident and capable and taking charge is hot, being a doormat/simp/whatever, even for your girlfriend/wife, is not. That applies in daily interactions and in bed, without needing a bunch of crazy roleplay. YMMV, NAWALT, NAMALT, etc, etc, etc.
I mean I agree to a degree though also the more elaborate 'kink' side of the spectrum kinda exists as performance art in its own right. Stuff like 'I want a daddydom to fill my breeding kink uwu' is pretty clearly 'I want a socially-sanctioned way to express desire for normative gender roles' but 'I wanna go in the latex fart chamber' is just being a normal German.
Yeah, though I think it's not really a spectrum and more two separate things divided by a gulf, with a bunch of confusing language layered over top of it to make it seem like they're a spectrum. (complicated by all the sort of "orientation-washing" going on with bdsm/kink stuff as a way to launder straight relationships as queer or to launder really out there fetishes as identity which actively benefits from those two things looking like ends of a spectrum)
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Louise Perry, who I find it impossible not to quote when it comes to gender discourse, suggests that the increasing popularity of BDSM is from couples who crave the natural gender polarity you would see in most societies (from hunter gatherers up to 1950s suburbia) but which has been lost in the age of the email job.
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In the mixed-sex PMC circles I've been in, if a guy articulates that while he is personally dominant and works best with a partner that gives him deference but states he doesn't think this applies to all men or women, he generally doesn't get messed with much. Part of it was probably the guys who I've heard articulate this were pretty socially adroit/attractive, but framing things as "this is a me thing" vs. "this is a sex thing in general" seems to be pretty effective in avoiding criticism.
This is speculation, but I think a guy saying "this is a me thing" lets feminists who may be insecure about what type of relationship they like keep distance from it, while them saying "this is a sex thing" makes them feel a need to dispute it since by definition, "sex things" have to do with all members of a sex.
What's PMC? Private military corporation? Didn't realize there were so many insecure feminists in blackwater these days.
Professional Managerial Class. People who work in jobs that require advanced degrees, or hold high level positions, considered as a class in the Marxist sense.
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Step 1 and Step 2 with a fig leaf.
The close friend who went furthest in the PMC is extremely controlling in his relationships, to a point that even seen from a remove it would be hard to defend him from the "abuse" tag. That's one of the reasons I'm not too sad that friendship dried up with time and distance.
But his charisma and attractiveness were a meme even in high school. And when you're a tall, handsome executive living in a swanky DC suburb, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy in front of their friends. You can do anything.
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