Submission itself feels dangerous, so, they really feel like the same thing to me.

Trust is so vital. I have a husband who I sometimes trust enough to act these sorts of things out, always with a safe word. But it’s not like, “Oh, now I have someone I can trust, so we can just play that way whenever.”

Usually, little escalations without verbal consent (like, suddenly going to suck my breast when we were just kissing) can trigger me to feel completely terrified and powerless. And then that trust needs to be rebuilt over time (like, weeks) with lots of slow, verbal consent. Like, if I stop him, and his response is, “Sorry, I couldn’t help myself,” my head goes, “So, if I really, really ask you to stop, you might not, because you couldn’t help yourself?”

The line “I couldn’t help myself” can be very sexy (in fantasy or) in a context where you feel total trust in the moment, and believe that, yes, actually they can help themselves, because they’re an adult who respects your personhood. But there’s nothing sexy about it when you actually want them to stop and they say that.

So that sort of “I can’t control myself” talk/action only feels sexy to me if I’m feeling extremely safe, we’ve talked beforehand about it, and we have a safe word that I believe will work.

Anyway, for those who have read this far, I touch on this in a piece for Human Parts, Working Through My Trauma, One Fetish at a Time.

Great piece, Octavia Morrison! Great questions, Marcel Milkthistle!