There is an unspoken expectation in much of what I’ve seen of BDSM circles that dismisses the, “I don’t know.” As though everyone should know with certainty what they want and will/can take/dole out.

Which dismisses the entire fun spectrum of *exploration* of new things. “I don’t know” is a perfectly valid answer. “I haven’t tried x, y, and z” is a perfectly valid answer. How someone responds to those answers will tell you quite a bit about them. And will probably let you know if you want to play with them.

Most of my early explorations with hitty things and making men cry kind of things were at a young age with men who were also just beginning to explore *pain* and I think that gave me a good perspective on how fun exploration CAN be. And how levels of play can be fun, starting at nearly gentle levels of pain and working my way up and down the spectrum of sensations to see what responses I got allowed me to observe his responses.

I’m not dismissing the fun of going straight to brutal pain… that can be quite lovely… but going there with someone you don’t know seems wrongish.

Besides… I’d never believe someone’s answer fully about how much pain they can take! LOL I know people who call themselves pain sluts who crumble easily and masochists who claim they are pain wimps who can beautifully and nobly endure quite a bit.

So I go by exploration rather than an answer.

Rambling a bit off the point I wanted to make… don’t feel that you HAVE to know everything about yourself and every form of pain. And don’t feel you have to be in some sort of pain competition (maymay wrote beautifully about this a while back) … it may feel sometimes like you should take pain unflinchingly better than any sub ever ever.

But the reality is that different people respond differently and it isn’t a competition. And there are sadists out there who ENJOY the flinching!