It’s likely impossible to ever experience how a particular emotion feels like in another person. Instead, we have attempted to categorise emotions as well as study and theorise them. For example, I remember reading about the seven universal emotions by Paul Ekman, a doctor and clinical psychologist who in the 1970s studied non-verbal behaviour in native tribes and how it operates in modern pathology. He argued that it’s possible to detect emotions in facial expressions and to make behavioural predictions based on it.

Emotions are a process, a particular kind of automatic appraisal influenced by our evolutionary and personal past. We sense that something essential to our welfare is occurring, and a set of psychological changes and emotional behaviours begins to deal with the situation.

Paul Ekman

In more recent studies, Lisa Feldman Barrett, another distinguished professor of psychology, argues that culture creates emotions instead of them being universal.  

Emotions are not reactions to the world. You are not a passive receiver of sensory input but an active constructor of your emotions. From sensory input and past experience, your brain constructs meaning and prescribes action. If you didn’t have concepts that represent your past experience, all your sensory inputs would just be noise. You wouldn’t know what the sensations are, what caused them, nor how to behave to deal with them.

Lisa Feldman Barrett

Are There Negative Emotions?

Here, I’ll limit discussing differences to these specific emotions: joy, anger, contempt, disgust, surprise, sadness and fear. Most of them have a more negative connotation, but I guess dealing with the challenging aspects of life proved more relevant through the evolution of both the individual and the larger culture. I could also add trust, anticipation and curiosity to the list, as they are also commonly named by some researchers, while others argue that contempt and disgust are the same emotion. Ultimately there is no one, final list, just as Feldman argued. The question occupying my mind is what emotions are welcomed in a sadomasochistic play?

Most beginners seek enjoyment, orienting towards a fun, leisure activity. They are drawn to the physical intimacy, the feeling of ropes on their body, and pleasure oscillating between freedom and restriction, tension and release. However, enjoyment is an already readily available emotion in modern life. In fact, our society is hooked on it—the instant gratification of our needs. Rope bondage, in particular, and sadomasochism, in general, offer much more. It’s a way of accessing emotions we usually try to repress because there is no space for them in happy-happy joy-joy lala land.

Sadness and Acceptance

For me, the negative emotion most common in sadomasochism is sadness. I often describe my sessions as sad love stories, and my soundtrack almost always plays in minor scales. There is a sense of longing; longing for belonging, and longing for freedom. One remains in this state of eternal longing for a love that can never be captured, and this settles into a sweet sadness of surrender knowing that only the longing can be eternal, never the love itself. When diving deeply into a power dynamic, sometimes even climaxing, there is always a return to equality, balance, and status quo. This intensity cannot be maintained forever. 

Being immersed in dominance, control, submission, and surrender for too long is unhealthy. It’s like we, at some point, need to raise our head above the water, if just for a single breath, or open the parachute in the middle of a free fall, no matter how mesmerising the moment is. Leaving this state brings sadness, and so does knowing that it’s not for real and not forever. However, there is great potential in learning to let go and say goodbye. People often ask me if it doesn’t hurt to part ways, and sure, it does, but it hurts because it meant something. Meaning increases as we share something held by conscious, consensual agreement.

I remember leaving Montreal and my first ‘real’ sadomasochistic relationship behind me. The expiry date was written in the sand long before our eyes first met. I had a busy career with a limited contract due to still being employed in Sweden, and she was deeply entangled in her university studies. During that summer, we had been adopted by this older leather couple, who would often take us on Sunday drives to a nudist beach north of Montreal. Falling in love, we would lazily frolic on a woollen blanket in the sun and play in the waves. As autumn neared with its cooling winds, the leaves changing colours from green to yellow-brown-red, we kept returning to that beach. If only to have American hot dogs from a nearby diner and watch the grey foaming waves, now huddled close under the same woollen blanket. One afternoon at the beach, walking away from our little family, I saw a heart drawn in the sand, ‘V hearts A’, being washed away by the waves. It was painful. It was painful because it meant something. She was my first young mistress.

If one is not tying primarily for sensory pleasure, then every twist of the rope can intensify the experience and take you both deeper. Therefore the pain, suffering, exposure and humiliation are lived examples of this depth. One gets to the point where everything vibrates with delicious tension and pathos, for every breath, heartbeat or quiver towards a rumbling orgasm carries with it the whisper of an inevitable return to normality. From the top of the roller coaster there can only be one direction to go, for every mounting peak, only a valley can follow. This exact feeling is often what I most crave in my bondage.

What About Fear And Anger

What about the other so-called negative emotions? Surprise and fear also interest me, as they heighten the senses and remind us of the vulnerability of losing control. They also release adrenaline rather than endorphins to alert the mind and enhance presence. I enjoy this feeling as a contrast or an exclamation mark in the sadomasochistic play. Anger, contempt, and disgust are also more adrenaline-related emotions, and playing with them gives the opportunity to rebel. Fighting and losing gives a sense of being overpowered by an experience, and this makes it feel all the more real, within the frame of a shared narrative. 

When faced with hardship, there are two ways to go: surrender or confront. Fear, surprise, and sadness are more linked to surrendering, as an attempt to accept what happens or grieve it, so the change happens inside oneself instead of outside. Anger, contempt and disgust, on the other hand, are more connected with confronting, an attempt to change or challenge something outside of oneself in an attempt to (re)establish control. In other words, domination. Everyone has different ways of dealing with hardship. And when neither confronting nor surrendering works, then only apathy remains.

I see a parallel here with trauma awareness. In the aftermath following trauma, one might try to conquer the experience by recreating it internally through dominance, submission, and surrender. Surrendering can be interpreted as fawning in the ‘fight/flight/freeze/fawn’ model, whereas fighting, fleeing, or taking action to escape corresponds to confronting, crusading against, or running away. Finally, death, apathy, or freeze remains when nothing else is possible. It can be difficult to know if the behaviour is re-traumatising, healing, or just sadomasochistic. Being stuck in an endless battle is just as unpleasant as being in endless submission, even if our society often teaches us to always be strong. Again, experience, consciousness and consent can help navigate all this. 

In this chapter, I have discussed the idea of trauma-aware simulations as opportunities to explore ‘negative’ emotions. I discovered that by embarking on this more emotional journey, I gained a deeper understanding of my sadomasochistic play and started connecting with the underlying concepts touched upon by esoteric eroticism. To travel more safely, remember to share your emotions; vulnerability can be powerful. As a submissive, sharing your emotions can help you relinquish more control, and as a dominant, it can help you express more.