Not looking for advice, just sharing some recent thoughts and connections I’d been making recently while trying to help my current partner work through some challenges likely more deeply ingrained than she’d realized. (And no, I’m not playing psychologist, just supportive partner. We leave the formal therapy to the licensed professionals, though some are certainly better than others.)

Nearly every woman I’ve met in the last five years was sadly a SA victim when younger. Many more women are silent victims than most realize, I think…myself probably included. Society (at least in the US) has a real self-inflicted blind spot here.

At least 70% of those I know got satisfaction out of -consensual- r*pe play / CNC. Not sure on the rest; we just didn’t have the nature of the relationships in those cases for me to be able to know.

It’s highly likely that out of those partners in the more distant past who had an interest in CNC, there was likely some form of past abuse and I just hadn’t realized at the time; not all necessarily sexual, also potentially other mental / physical / psychological. I mean, probably I could just generalize and say more people I knew were victims than I realized and just leave it at that…also almost certainly true.

For the sub / “victim” in CNC, I feel like there is the potential of some form of healing in having an experience with the illusion of lack of choice, while objectively knowing there IS a choice in this situation; at least it has often felt to me from partners that this was one of the draws. Or to be able to replay some elements of past abuse with a -caring- partner who can be trusted to respect boundaries (knowing limits, communicating, agreeing on and using safewords, etc.)

Of course there is also the appeal of being able to get what you want while pretending you don’t want it, since (again, US at least) society is so judgy about women wanting to exercise their sexuality.

For the dom / “r*pist” in CNC, the satisfaction can come solely from watching the pleasure / satisfaction the partner is getting, as long as it can be absolutely certain the sub / “victim” is actually enjoying it and/or getting satisfaction from it (not just perception of such, one has to be very careful). Certain of us get as much (if not more) pleasure out of the partner’s pleasure than our own.

Communication is of course huge, and this requires constant verbal and non-verbal cues, strict adherence to limits, explicit check-ins on whether there is the green light to continue, etc. With all of those present it can be immensely rewarding to provide the satisfaction (regardless of one’s own personal / individual / selfish satisfaction) to someone who has not been able to find any outlet and for whom finding a willing, knowledgeable, caring, careful, but eager to please partner is hard or seems nearly impossible.

Of course, the other satisfaction comes to those doms with the savior complex, those who want to help everyone and save everyone and prove that despite negative past experiences, there are those out there who can provide positive ones, even if they need to be kinky for the person to get off or to get full satisfaction.

None of this to say of course that these are the ONLY reason people like CNC…of course there are others as well.

And to those out there looking for doms… just be careful of the fake “doms”, the self-serving assholes in disguise looking for easy victims and giving actual doms a bad name. The ones who don’t communicate or care, the ones who won’t respect boundaries or safewords, the ones who know a submissive is an easier victim, and a previous victim can be manipulated more easily. There are unfortunately many out there who will use this to their own advantage without regard to or care for the damage they will cause.

Be safe out there!