What Is So Sexy About Spanking ?
( from " ON HEALTH WITH WEB MD " )
March 30,
2000
Q: Why do some people like spanking? Is there something wrong with them? Why do some people get sexually aroused just fantasizing about spanking and the accompanying role-playing games in office situations , parent/child or student/teacher scenarios ? What does this all mean?
A: Many people who like spanking as part of their sexual play have probably learned to enjoy it in response to experiences they had while growing up. There's really nothing wrong with them; it's just an activity that carries sexual charge for them. They usually find the buttocks (either their own or those of another) a sexually provocative area of the body.
The role playing that typically accompanies interest in spanking may be a re-enactment of an experience that actually occurred. That's why parent/child and student/teacher are commonly selected scenarios. The people who enjoy these roles may have actually been spanked by a parent or by a teacher (back when that was permitted).
But spanking
happened to many people. So why do only some desire to
include it in their sexual interactions? Sometimes when
a person feels he was unjustly punished with a spanking
(particularly one that occurred in front of others) and
he experienced embarrassment or shame from it, he will
associate sexual feelings with the experience in order
to lessen the negative impact. This association usually
occurs shortly after the spanking, but sometimes doesn't
kick in until the person is an adolescent or adult.
Of
course, this is not done consciously. Instead, people
link these experiences and feelings without planning, as
a means of coping with their situation.
But why, you might ask, would someone link his or her sexual feelings to something painful like spanking? Since sexual arousal feels good, it's a way of minimizing the physical pain of the spanking.
Sometimes this
connection between spanking and sexual arousal occurs in
response to a single traumatizing event. For others it's
built over time as they are repeatedly subjected to
spankings as punishment. There's no way of knowing or
predicting how any one person will be affected by
childhood spankings, nor even of definitively knowing
how any one person came to develop a sexual interest in
spanking.
Still others have eroticised
spanking (especially as the spanker) because
they witnessed a spanking and felt sexually aroused,
sometimes merely as a coincidence. For those people the
linkage is usually not a strategy for coping with
emotional pain.
Some people like to
have spanking included as part of every sexual
experience they have. Others just consider it an
occasional fun and arousing thing to do. How a
preference for spanking fits into a sexual relationship
depends on one's partner. If the partner likes
participating in the complementary role (i.e., being the
spankee for their spanker), then there's usually no
difficulty with that aspect of their sex together.
When
two people lack those complementary desires, however,
problems can easily occur .
This is usually in the form of one labelling the other's interest in spanking as somehow wrong. My hunch is that you have had some involvement with someone who likes some aspect of spanking, and that it just doesn't have any erotic charge for you.
If this is true, you
are faced with a challenge that everyone in couples
eventually faces -- how to participate in something that
isn't sexy to you. If you want to go through with it, my
main recommendation to you is: Focus on your partner's
arousal and enjoy it. Look at the expressions of
excitement that you see and run with those. Let the
activity be just a part of the sex, rather than the main
focus of your attention. If you really care for your
partner, you may find that spanking activities become
pleasurable for you in a way you didn't expect.
