Someone on FetLife asked an interesting question recently: how can we keep humiliation fresh over time?
This is a kinky cousin to the age-old question of keeping sex exciting or keeping the spark in a marriage. What’s thrilling at first becomes routine without variation, and if left to grow stale, it can lead to one or both partners losing interest altogether. But erotic humiliation is quite nuanced as an experience.
In a 2013 study published in Social Neuroscience, Elison and Harter measured responses in the brain when participants considered humiliating situations. This was more the kind of real-world humiliation that can cause great damage and lasting consequences than the controlled, tailored erotic humiliation kinksters tend to play with. They found that the humiliation examples in their study caused much more intense neurological responses than, say, anger or happiness, and that this “self-conscious” emotion was hugely dependent on context and status relationship to others witnessing the humiliation:
“To experience self-conscious emotions individuals need to have reached a relatively sophisticated level of intellectual development. In the case of humiliation, one needs to have a sense of self, an internalized knowledge of societal standards, the capacity to evaluate one’s own behaviour, and the ability to project and predict how others perceive you and your actions (Lewis, 1995). It thus seems that experiencing humiliation, like other self-conscious emotions, requires a complex interplay of self- and other-referential cognitive processes.”
(Elison & Harter, 2007; Fontaine, Luyten, De Boeck, & Corveleyn, 2001)
Ask any humiliation fan and they’ll tell you how physically they feel a well-delivered blow to their sense of self. From sexual arousal to blushing to shivering to all manner of seemingly unrelated responses, it’s a full-body experience. Indeed, some studies have shown that social pain (humiliation being one variety) activates the same parts of the brain as physical pain. So if a dressing-down feels like a spanking, we shouldn’t be surprised.
Given that humiliation triggers such intense physical responses in the brain and body, it’s hardly surprising a) that so many people find it erotic to give and receive, and b) that if we go full-tilt every time, we can rapidly ‘short out’ our capacity for humiliation in play. I think of it in terms of playing with a high-frequency toy. If you routinely go to town on a sensitive area like the clitoris or the head of the penis with a jackhammer toy, the area rapidly becomes numb and needs to be left fallow to recover its sensitivity. Likewise, if you’re stripped and spanked every day in the same way, it will quickly go from thrilling to monotonous.
I am particularly prone to familiarity breeding contempt – since I operate with a dopamine deficit, I need a balance of stable pivot points and varied stimuli in most aspects of my life. I’ve experienced a lot of shame and guilt in the past over loving a partner deeply and enjoying our exclusive romantic life, while fantasising endlessly about sex with/attention from other men. I have been lucky enough to eventually meet a partner who is happy for me to “go off and be a little slut”, provided I return to reconnect with him through humiliation and punishment for said slutting.
Boredom is a problem for all couples, vanilla or otherwise – particularly monogamous ones.
A major move (if you’ve not already done so) is to open things up and play with other people. This carries emotional risk, but if you can protect a good, trusting base, agree limits and determine whether it’s a spill-the-beans or don’t-ask-don’t-tell arrangement, this can reinvigorate a tired relationship. Playing with another person gives you all those yummy new-relationship endorphins, and in terms of humiliation, you’re exposing yourself to someone who’s never seen you in humiliating positions before, so it’s freshly embarrassing. The new person might have lots of fun ideas that you can take home and share with your primary partner, or you might just carry the sexy feeling of shame home and pour that energy into your partner. If it’s DADT, the secret knowledge of things you’ve done or had done to you can shake clean your mental Etch-A-Sketch and leave you refreshed to play with your partner in new guises. And of course, if one partner is into cuckold/cuckquean play, that’s an extra treat for you both.
In addition, I often leave an encounter with a friend feeling loving and grateful to my partner for giving me the green light to have fun, and this translates into tons of cuddles and affection on my return, along with enthusiasm for mischief.
But beyond simply opening things up, what ideas are there for refreshing the shame-play you already have?
Role-play is the obvious thing – pretending you are new to each other by adopting different roles. But if this is a big part of your shared play already, your go-to characters might already feel a bit bobbled and worn. New toys are also a common suggestion, but they can be expensive, often need to be discussed, and may go unused if it’s hard to get into that headspace. A Magic Wand is not a magic wand.
In chasing former excitement, it’s tempting to push playtime further and further toward the edge of what’s comfortable, and this definitely ticks the risk-thrill box that makes humiliation so hot. You might go from belittling to degrading, extend the intensity, danger, duration or challenge of a scene, or deliberately explore something that frightens you. Assuming you both agree to stop if either one needs to, and assuming aftercare is guaranteed, the main downside to this approach is an arms-race effect. Once you’ve pushed a little in one direction – particularly if it’s more toward one person’s kink than the other – it’s hard to resist continuing down that rabbithole. At this point one partner could feel stuck in a mode that doesn’t really rock them, one or both of you might experience an overall kinky fatigue or burnout and feel unable to return to gentler play, or you might cross the Squick Event Horizon and feel unable to look at each other without bad associations. In a worst-case scenario, despite all safeguards, one or both partners might be traumatised by the experience. It’s a tricky balance to strike.
Spontaneity is a common advice columnist recommendation, and can be both hot as hell and difficult to achieve. Changing the timing or context of play, rather than the components itself, is a subtle shift that can breathe fresh life into well-loved games. The difficulty lies in guaranteeing that the other person will be in the mood when you’ve not pre-arranged it, or that life won’t get in the way. My partner’s kink lies in the planning, anticipation and preparation of a scene, while I enjoy surprise and wrong-footing, and often psych myself out ahead of planned scenes. I want them to feel just as fulfilled as I do, but it’s been tricky to balance the books, and fear of failure has often contributed to unhappy feedback loops. Not encouraging.
The best workaround we’ve found is for him to plan a scene and enjoy having that knowledge to himself, then spring it on me. This is a gamble – my physical and mental health have been somewhat unpredictable and it may be that it all dies on the vine that day – but when it works, it’s exciting and energising, and I feel just as shy and blushy (or pouty and indignant) as if we’d just begun playing together.
Small acts of spontaneity are perhaps the most workable. Embarrassing texts sent to a subby partner while they’re at work, for example, reminding them of their past predicaments, or warning them what might be in store. The contrast in formal, polite environment and a pocket full of filthy secrets can feel incredibly exposing and humiliating with no real-world threat to livelihood or wellbeing. Threats also have that stripping, sensitising effect, whether these are likely to be carried out or completely in the realms of fantasy, such as the threat to email mortifying pictures to a boss, or to make a partner wear a sex toy, keep evidence of their humiliation in their bag, or secretly wear an embarrassing garment to work. Sat quietly at their desk, hearing the coffee-maker rumble and the air con unit sigh, the partner receiving the text gets a nice reminder that they’re desired, wanted and in for a world of trouble when they get home.
Usual caveats apply: it’s got to be discreet enough not to involve anyone who has not already opted in. But in my experience, the subtler acts of control or embarrassment, and the high cards fanned and flicked but not played, are a thousand times hotter than anything more risky.
And it’s not just up to the top to initiate. These little prods and tickles should be mutual. Doms, daddies and masters need to feel desired as well. A bratty partner might send an impudent message to stoke their partner’s fire and essentially let them know they want to be punished or controlled. They might write their partner a story or draw them a picture, or just share something they’ve found and talk about how AWFUL it would be to experience this thing. Laying little charges throughout the day might just mean you come home to a blaze.