Frenzy

What is frenzy?

Frenzy (Dutch: frenzy; in the scene usually sub frenzy) is the rush that grips someone just starting out in BDSM to want everything at once: a partner now, everything to try now, all of it right now. Frenzy is not a practice but a state of mind, and the haste that comes with it is the risk. It also hits people who start again after years.

What frenzy looks like in practice

You recognize frenzy by the pace, not by the content.

The usual course runs like this. Someone reads for weeks, sets up a profile, and within a few days has three conversations going. The questionnaire she filled in so carefully goes unused, because the talk is already about meeting up. A date at someone’s home, this very week, does not feel like a risk but like finally. Anyone looking from the outside sees something else: everything that normally takes weeks happens in four days.

Frenzy is not the same as wanting a lot. The difference is in what drops away: the checking, and that second conversation. Exactly the things that take time and hold nothing exciting.

Why frenzy hits beginners hardest

Because a lid sat on it for years and comes off all at once.

The name comes from the scene itself, not from a dictionary or a study. There is no one to credit with it, and there is no scientific paper to be found that describes the phenomenon under this name. What does exist is about the mechanism beneath it.

What is not beneath it is a disorder. Wismeijer and Van Assen compared 902 BDSM practitioners with 434 others in The Journal of Sexual Medicine and found a healthier profile: less neurotic, more open to new experiences, higher well-being. Their conclusion is that BDSM is more a form of leisure than the expression of anything pathological. So the hunger under frenzy is just hunger. The pace is the problem, not the wish.

What frenzy gives, and what it costs

The rush also does something good, and that is why no one wants to slow it down right away.

Frenzy gives courage. People who for years did not dare say anything, in those weeks say out loud what they want, write it down and go somewhere. That energy is useful, and without that push it stays at reading.

• For someone just starting out, frenzy delivers the push that makes the difference between knowing what you want and saying it.
• For a partner reading along, frenzy makes visible all at once what sat underneath for years, which brings a conversation that otherwise would not have come.
• For someone coming back after a breakup, the energy is familiar and the blind spot is bigger, because the experience from before feels like protection.

What it costs is in the numbers. In the NCSF survey of 4,598 BDSM practitioners, summarized by Dunkley and Brotto in Sexual Abuse, 24 percent reported that limits agreed in advance had been crossed during a session and 13 percent that their safeword had not been respected. Of that group, one in four said it happened before they were involved with the BDSM community. That is exactly the window frenzy falls in.

How frenzy usually plays out

In waves, and rarely in one straight line.

1. The discovery. Reading, watching, recognizing. Nothing outside your head yet.
2. The acceleration. Profile created, conversations open, an address somewhere. This is where it goes from weeks to days, and where the preparation drops away.
3. The collision or the landing. Either something happens that is off, or someone slows it down. In the first case there often follows a period when nothing needs to happen at all.

Anyone who gets through it unscathed usually looks back on it with secondhand embarrassment. That is a shame, because the wish was fine.

What frenzy is not

“I’m just enthusiastic.” That can be true, and there is a way to tell. Enthusiasm survives a delay; frenzy does not. Anyone who still wants a date two weeks later was not in the rush.

“Experienced people don’t get it.” Frenzy also comes after a break, a breakup or a long stretch when an existing relationship offered nothing.

“If I know the rules, I’m safe.” Rules move with whoever is across from you. Tarleton, Mackenzie and Sagarin asked 202 BDSM practitioners how consent conversations should go, and found that the norms are widely endorsed but may be looser in existing relationships than with people who have just met. So for a beginner the strictest version applies: talk everything through, and no alcohol during that talk. Dunkley and Brotto establish the same thing from the other side, that the size of the pre-talk moves with how well players know each other and how risky the activity is.

“Frenzy is the same as a dip.” No. Drop is the setback afterward. Frenzy sits before it, and in the same person the two often alternate.

What I see of it myself

I am Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. Frenzy is the pattern I see most often and the one women least often know by name. The message I get is rarely “I want to try this” but almost always “I want this now”.

It is almost never about sex. It is about years in which someone did not talk about it, and those years come out in two weeks.

What works is not braking but slowing down with a reason. I suggest talking once first, just talking. Anyone who finds that a waste is in the rush; anyone who finds it a relief is already out of it.

What you can do yourself

• Put a week between the decision and the date. If you still want it then, it is your wish and not your pace.
• Have the pre-talk sober and separately, so not on the night itself and not with a drink in hand.
• Tell one person where you are going and with whom, and agree on a time when you will let them know you are home.
• Start with the lightest thing you can think of, even if it feels like wasted time. What you skip at the start, you meet again later.
• Be wary of haste from the other person. Anyone unwilling to make time for a pre-talk is giving you the most important information you will get.

More reading on frenzy

On this site, check-in covers how you test along the way, and the article on BDSM for beginners is about a first time without haste.

Beyond this site, the overview by Dunkley and Brotto gives the best description of what goes wrong and why, and the study by Wismeijer and Van Assen shows that the curiosity underneath is nothing to be ashamed of.

Where this fits on this site

If you are in this pattern and want a first time that does not hang on a stranger in a hurry, a conversation is the logical first step. The page on the BDSM date covers how such an evening is prepared and what is talked through beforehand.

Sources

• The Role of Consent in the Context of BDSM. Cara R. Dunkley & Lori A. Brotto, Sexual Abuse 32(6), 657–678, 2020. Provides the NCSF survey of 4,598 BDSM practitioners with 24 percent crossed limits and 13 percent ignored safewords, the finding that one in four of that group experienced it before involvement with the community, and that the size of the pre-talk moves with familiarity between players and with the risk of the activity.
• Consent Norms in the BDSM Community: Strong But Not Inflexible. Tarleton, Mackenzie & Sagarin, Archives of Sexual Behavior 54(2), 549–559, 2025. Provides the 202 participants, the broad endorsement of strict consent norms, the greater flexibility in longer-running relationships than with people who have just met, and that a drink during such a talk is found more acceptable in an existing relationship than with a new contact.
• Psychological characteristics of BDSM practitioners. Wismeijer & Van Assen, The Journal of Sexual Medicine 10(8), 1943–1952, 2013. Provides the comparison of 902 BDSM practitioners with 434 others, their lower neuroticism, greater openness to new experiences and higher well-being, and the conclusion that BDSM is more recreational leisure than psychopathology.

Related terms

• Consent. The agreement that falls first when the pace wins.
• Check-in. The tool that can still adjust a date made too fast.
• Drop. The setback afterward, which hits people in frenzy harder because nothing was built up.
• Aftercare. The part that gets skipped first in the haste.
• NRE. The same haste, but aimed at one new person, and with hormone measurements to go with it.
• Subdrop. The dip afterward, which gets confused with the rush before.
• Subspace. The state during the scene, which also gets confused with it.
• Topdrop. The setback on the performing side, with the comparison from sport to go with it.