Fear play

What is fear play?

Fear play (Dutch: angstspel) is play in which the real fears of the person receiving are the material: a knife, a threat, being locked up, or a surprise. Fear play works with what someone genuinely fears and not with a role that is acted out. That is why it asks that the people involved know each other well, and it falls under edgeplay.

What fear play is in practice

A threat carried out on the fantasy and not on the body.

The most common example is a knife that never cuts. It lies visible on the table, gets picked up, drawn along the skin with the blunt side, and goes away again. Physically nothing happens. In the head everything happens. Other forms work the same way: an announced punishment that has not come yet, a door that locks, a sound behind you in an unfamiliar room.

What those forms share: the fear has nowhere to go. With a blow you know where it hurts and then it is over. With fear play the tension stays as long as the threat stays, and that is exactly why people seek it out and why it quickly becomes too much.

Why fear can be arousing

Because there is an optimum in it, and that optimum has been measured. Andersen and colleagues fitted heart-rate monitors on 110 visitors to a haunted house, between 12 and 57 years old, for Psychological Science, and asked them along the way, repeatedly, how scared and how satisfied they were. The link between fear and pleasure turned out to be an inverted U: there is a point where the pleasure is at its peak, and above and below that point it drops off. The authors call that a sweet spot, and it sits in a different place for each person.

Why that works, Rozin describes in Judgment and Decision Making as benign masochism: enjoying initially negative experiences that the body wrongly reads as threatening. Fear is one of the eight categories in which that reversal occurs, alongside sadness, pain, and sharp taste. With fear there is something extra: people also enjoy their own body’s defensive responses. The pleasure comes from “mind over body”, from the awareness that your head knows what your body does not yet believe.

Together those two findings give the core of fear play: the body on alert, and the head that knows nothing is happening.

Why people do fear play

For the rush without the consequences.

The pull is in the gap between knowing and feeling. Someone tied up who sees a knife knows nothing will happen and flinches anyway. That gap is the whole experience.

What it can give each person involved:

• For the person receiving, fear play gives intensity without a bruise. That makes it appealing for people who want little pain and a lot of tension.
• For the person shaping the threat, the task lies in timing and not in force. Fear play is the only kind of play where doing nothing is the strongest move.
• For two people together, fear play lays bare how well you know each other. You cannot use someone’s fears if you do not know them.

None of these payoffs has been measured in fear play itself. Andersen and Rozin studied haunted houses and everyday preferences, not BDSM. And the most important limit is not practical but a matter of principle, and it is below.

How people do fear play for real

By borrowing the fear and not building it. People mostly use what is already there: someone who cannot stand sharp objects, someone who is claustrophobic, someone who does not want to be surprised. Those three make very different scenes and are not interchangeable.

Careful separates from careless at the buildup and the ending. Careful: one fear at a time, short, and with a clear moment where the threat is lifted instead of the scene running dead. Careless: stacking, or going on as long as there is a reaction. The sweet spot from the haunted-house study sits in a different place for each person and cannot be worked out in advance; working up toward it from below can.

Misconceptions about fear play

“The more scared, the better.” Exactly the opposite above a certain point. The link between fear and pleasure in Andersen and colleagues’ research is an inverted U, so past the sweet spot the pleasure drops instead of rising.

“Real fear is the goal.” This is the most dangerous misconception of this term. Dunkley and Brotto, in Sexual Abuse, sum up Jozifkova’s criteria that tell healthy BDSM from abuse, and the first is this: real fear in the receiving party points to abuse, feelings of safety to consensual BDSM. So fear play works with the body’s startle response on top of a feeling of safety, and not with fear in place of it.

“Fear play is the same as CNC.” Two different things. With CNC the unwillingness is acted and the rest is agreed; with fear play the reaction itself is real and the scenario is the means.

“Fear play is knifeplay.” A knife is one form. Being locked up, being chased, and a threat work without an object, and those forms leave the least behind.

What I see of it myself

I am Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. Fear play is the category I talk about the longest before anything happens, and that conversation is usually already half of what someone was after. On a bdsm date that conversation therefore comes first, and only then do we look together at whether this is something for you.

People misjudge their own fear. Someone who asks for a knife often means the idea of a knife. And someone who says being locked up is no problem sometimes goes off the rails hardest after two minutes in a dark room.

The second thing: the dip afterward is heavier here than with pain play. Fear leaves something behind for longer than a bruise, and you notice that only the next day. So I count on an after-talk that is not done the same evening, and I check in again later. Same reason as with drop: the bill does not come during.

What you can do yourself

• Say beforehand which fear may be used and which may not, because fear play with a wrongly chosen fear is not a failed scene but damage.
• Agree on how the threat gets lifted and do that explicitly, instead of letting the scene fade out.
• Build up from below and stop the first time it is enough, because the sweet spot sits in a different place for each person and cannot be worked out in advance.
• Use one fear at a time and do not stack, not even when it is going well.
• Check whether the feeling underneath is safety: if the receiving person feels real fear instead of a startle on top of trust, the scene should stop.
• Count on an after-talk the next day and not only right after it ends, because fear leaves something behind for longer than pain does, and do not do fear play with someone you do not yet know.

More reading about fear play

On this site the category fear play falls under is at edgeplay, the form in which unwillingness is acted is at CNC, and what happens after an intense scene is at drop and aftercare.

Beyond this site, the haunted-house study by Andersen and colleagues shows why there is an upper limit to usable fear, and the freely readable article by Rozin and colleagues explains why people seek out negative feelings.

Sources

• Playing With Fear: A Field Study in Recreational Horror. Andersen, Schjoedt, Price, Rosas, Scrivner & Clasen, Psychological Science 31(12), 1497–1510, 2020. Shows that 110 visitors aged 12 to 57 in a haunted house were tracked with heart-rate monitors, and that pleasure has an inverted-U relationship with fear: there is an optimal fear level, a sweet spot, where the pleasure is at its peak.
• Glad to be sad, and other examples of benign masochism. Rozin, Guillot, Fincher, Rozin & Tsukayama, Judgment and Decision Making 8(4), 439–447, 2013. Gives the description of benign masochism as enjoying initially negative experiences that the body wrongly reads as threatening, fear as one of the eight factors in which that reversal occurs, that with fear people also enjoy their own body’s defensive responses, and the pleasure from “mind over body”.
• The Role of Consent in the Context of BDSM. Dunkley & Brotto, Sexual Abuse, 2019 (DOI 10.1177/1079063219842847). Gives the criteria drawn up by Jozifkova that tell healthy BDSM from abuse, the first of which is that real fear in the receiving party points to abuse and feelings of safety to consensual BDSM.

Related terms

• Kidnapping scene. The scenario where real fear and a real article of law meet.

• Edgeplay. The category fear play falls under, with the rules of thumb that hold for that whole corner.

• CNC. Acted unwillingness, which fear play is most often confused with.

• Adrenaline. The hormone that comes up in every explanation of fear, with what has been measured of it.

• Drop. The backlash that hits harder after fear play than after pain play.

• Consent. The agreement that, in this category, is the only thing separating it from abuse.

• Fireplay. A startle with a real risk behind it, where fear play keeps it to suggestion.

• Interrogation. The interrogation scenario, where fear is not a goal but a means within a story.

• Knifeplay. The variant where the object carries the threat instead of the scenario.

• Primal play. The neighboring form where the chase runs on instinct instead of on a real fear.

• Roleplay. The umbrella that fear play is almost always played within.