Pain play

What is pain play?

Pain play is erotic play in which pain is administered and sought out with consent, as a stimulus and not as punishment. It is the everyday name for the pain half of sadomasochism. What the pain does depends on the circumstances in which it is felt, and far less on how hard the pinch is.

What pain play looks like in practice

It almost always starts softer than people expect and lasts longer than they think.

A usual build-up: first warm up with the flat hand, ten minutes long, until the skin is warm and red. Only then something with an edge to it, a clamp or a whip, and after each series a moment of nothing. That “moment of nothing” is where the feeling tips over; anyone who pushes on misses it.

In this list the play is split up by what gets struck: breast torture, CBT, clit torture, ballbusting, biting, abrasion. Not separate disciplines, but each spot has its own risk.

Why the same pain lands differently

Because pain is no measurement of what is happening to your skin, but the result of a lot of things at once.

Cara R. Dunkley, Craig D. Henshaw, Saira K. Henshaw, and Lori A. Brotto set the literature on pain alongside the literature on BDSM in The Journal of Sex Research, built a theory from it, and tested that against BDSM practitioners themselves. Their conclusion: the emotional, physiological, and psychological components of pain act on each other and together make the stimulus come in as pleasure. Their list of factors runs from neural networks, neurotransmitters, the body’s own opioids and endocannabinoids, to what you see, where you are, your mood, whether you want it yourself and have it in your own hands, the bond with the other person, arousal, and memories. Pain here can, according to them, evoke altered states of consciousness that resemble what happens in mindfulness meditation.

Note what that says: whether you want it yourself and have it in your own hands weighs as heavily in that list as the substance you produce. So the negotiation beforehand is no formality, it is part of how it feels.

What the measurements show

One study measured the threshold itself, and it lies higher in players.

R. Defrin, M. Arad, M.P. Ben-Sasson, and K. Ginzburg set seventeen people who play masochistically on a routine basis alongside seventeen controls in the European Journal of Pain. Those who played regularly held out longer under the pressure gauge, and that effect grew stronger the more often someone played. Two other outcomes are more interesting for pain play than that number. They scored lower on pain catastrophizing, and their pleasure during a session was linked to the intensity and to the number of body parts involved. A session that runs over five spots is thus something other than that same force on one spot. What that threshold exactly is, how it is measured, and why it shifts by the day, is on pain threshold.

Why people seek out pain play

The appeal is in how narrow your attention becomes.

Under a stimulus that fills your whole head, tomorrow’s agenda no longer fits alongside it. That is the reason I hear most often, and it is also what Dunkley and colleagues base their comparison with meditation on.

• For the one receiving the pain, the payoff is that nothing has to be thought up. The body takes over.
• For the one administering it, the return is in the reading. Breathing, skin, and posture say where the limit is, and that asks your full attention.
• For a couple together, the build-up becomes a conversation without words.

Tension that comes from somewhere else stays standing. A fight that was never talked out or grief that was never touched is simply there again the next day.

Misconceptions about pain play

“Harder is better.” No. Spread over more spots counts as heavily in the measurements as force, and the build-up does more than the maximum ever does.

“Pain play is punishment.” No, and the word itself explains why that confusion exists. The Dutch word pijn, according to the Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands, was borrowed as a Christian term from Late Latin pena, from poena ‘punishment’, and in Middle Dutch first meant ‘hard effort’ and ‘punishment, penalty’. Only because punishments were often corporal did the word come to mean bodily pain. The English pain traces the same Latin root, through Old French, from poena. Punishment is something else in the scene: there the pain is a consequence of something, here it is the goal.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, more than twenty-five years into BDSM and with a background as a psychotherapist. Pain play is something I do gladly and often, from taps to needles and electro, and I like it when someone struggles against it.

It most often goes wrong at the start, not at the end. Anyone who reaches for the heavy tools too soon misses the phase where the body goes along, and then everything just keeps hurting.

And I watch breathing instead of sound. Sound mostly says something about how someone is used to reacting. If the breath goes high and short, I stop, even if nothing has been said.

What you can do yourself

• Agree on how you stop before anything happens. A safeword works only if you have both practiced it out loud.
• Take at least ten minutes to warm up, with the hand, before any tool comes in.
• Start at the buttocks and the thighs. Kidneys, spine, joints, and neck are no training ground.
• Ask for a number, not for a confirmation. “Where are you now, from 1 to 10” gets you more than “are you okay”.
• Plan aftercare as part of the session. The rebound often comes only the next day.
• Stop at the point where it was still good. Records have no place here.

More reading on pain play

The blog section on pain goes into it in most depth, with the difference between hard and soft pain and between sharp and dull pain. Pain threshold and subspace explain what happens on the receiving side.

Beyond this list, the review article by Dunkley and colleagues is the best starting point for the theory behind it.

Where this fits on this site

If you’re up for this but don’t feel like arranging the build-up, the tools, and the safety yourself, that is exactly what happens during a BDSM date. What we discuss beforehand is on that page.

Sources

• Physical Pain as Pleasure. A Theoretical Perspective. Cara R. Dunkley, Craig D. Henshaw, Saira K. Henshaw & Lori A. Brotto, The Journal of Sex Research 57(4), 421-437, 2020 (online 2 May 2019; DOI and author names checked against Crossref, PMID 31044619; a different article from the consent review by Dunkley and Brotto cited elsewhere in this list). Theoretical review article that sets the literature on pain alongside the literature on BDSM and tests the outcome against BDSM practitioners. Gives that the emotional, physiological, and psychological components of pain together make the stimulus be experienced as pleasure; the list of factors including neural networks, neurotransmitters, the body’s own opioids and endocannabinoids, what there is to see, the surroundings, the mood, one’s own will and control, the bond with the other person, sexual arousal, and memories; and the finding that this can evoke altered states of consciousness resembling those in mindfulness meditation.
• Attitudes and emotions towards pain and sensitivity to painful stimuli among people routinely engaging in masochistic behaviour. R. Defrin, M. Arad, M.P. Ben-Sasson & K. Ginzburg, European Journal of Pain 19(9), 1321-1330, 2015 (PMID 25690315). Comparative study of 34 healthy participants, 17 with routine masochistic behavior and 17 controls. Gives the higher pressure-pain threshold that runs with the frequency of the sessions, the lower scores for pain catastrophizing, and the link between pleasure and both pain intensity and the number of body parts involved. The same study carries the measurement part on /en/term/pain-threshold; what they found about everyday pain is there. Crossref gives only initials for these authors, and those are taken over here unchanged rather than filled out.
• pijn. M. Philippa, F. Debrabandere, A. Quak, T. Schoonheim & N. van der Sijs, Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands, 2003-2009, via the Etymologiebank. Gives the Middle Dutch meanings ‘hard effort’ (1201-1225) and ‘punishment, penalty’ (1240), the borrowing as a Christian term from Late Latin pena, poena ‘punishment’ and before that Greek poinḗ, and the explanation that the word came to mean bodily pain because punishments were often corporal.

Related terms

• Sadomasochism. The collective name above it, under which humiliation falls alongside pain.
• Sensation play. The neighboring category in which the stimulus is the goal and pain need not be part of it.
• Impact play. The largest branch of pain play, everything that strikes.
• Pain threshold. Where it ends, and why that limit shifts by the day.
• Masochism. The enjoyment of the receiving side, as a disposition instead of an act.
• Subspace. The state that can arise on the receiving side, and what Dunkley and colleagues base their meditation comparison on.
• Aftercare. What should happen afterward, and why that counts more heavily with pain play.