One more thing that should help newbie perverts a lot.

Look at what various kink resources are near you, and at the very least google for whatever munches happen to be local. (Fetlife can be handy for this. It's only so-so for meeting people, but quite good for helping you find communities and events.) It's a lot easier to stop feeling like you're broken when you see plenty of other people, who happen to have full lives and loving partners, who also happen to enjoy getting their dirty freak on.

As a bonus, someone you meet at one of these events is much more likely to be open to relationship permutations where you make outside humiliation plans.

LW. I see your conflict and I write before reading Dan's response.
You say you are doing therapy, do you talk thru this kink with them, saying you don't want it overwhelming your prospects of a future relationship and family. Work it thru, while still owning it.
Once you meet a woman with whom a future together seems possible, after a several dates, you need to tell her. Hopefully by then, thru the therapy, it won't be such a driven kink.

Great advice Dan. It was very interesting to see the back and forth between you and the LW.

@1 I agree. Getting involved in the local scene should help the LW feel more comfortable with his kink. Being part of a community that accepts him for who he is, and shares his kinks, should do him a world of good.

There was one part of the letter that I didn't make much sense to me.

Although it's mainly been an online thing, I have had two meets with dominant guys, and I'm not even entirely sure if i enjoyed it or not. Partly because I'm not particularly attracted to men, so I found any act that wasn't entirely humiliating or sexual to be quite gross.

What sort of acts could the LW be talking about? Wouldn't the whole 'play date' be humiliating or sexual? Is he talking about pre scene negotiations? Pre or post scene pleasantries?
I'm stumped.

Basically the nanosecond that I come I feel pretty grossed out with myself.

This is basic male hormone stuff. I forget the name, but once a man ejaculates, his sex drive hits zero, then slowly begins to rebuild. So.... have you thought of a chastity device? For your one-on-one sessions? Forgo that whole aspect and just enjoy the experience. Something to think about.

A few thoughts. I know Dan is suggesting that the LW find a way to come to terms with his kink that doesn't involve being ashamed of it and that doesn't involve hiding it or being deceitful.

What if it is those very things—the shame and the skulking about—that are giving LW this kink's piquancy? In other words, it may not be the people he's with (he actually says he feels no attraction to the men degrading him; I think that's key) nor the acts themselves that are drawing him to these scenes. It's the feelings he gets from them. Both the scenes and the way he goes about acting them out are designed to make himself feel like a piece of shit.

So the big question is: why, LW, do you want to feel like a piece of shit?

I think you're wise to abstain from getting into this kink any more until you can figure out the answer to the problem. I absolutely agree that therapy can be a huge help here and I strongly urge you to be completely open with your therapist about this.

Once you decide that you're really not a piece of shit (and you most definitely aren't), I predict one of two things will happen. You may find it possible to enjoy your kink freely, which would be great. On the other hand, you may find that you simply lose interest in it altogether. Of the two, my hunch is that the latter is more likely.

BTW, I strongly urge you not to pursue a LTR until you sort this out. If you go looking for a significant other now, you're likely to end up with someone who won't treat you well. Deep seated feelings like these often turn up in all kinds of places.

Disclaimer: armchair, amateur psychologist; take everything with a pillar of salt.

@5 There's a difference between feeling spent and feeling "grossed out with yourself".

I've come out of sexual encounters feeling both ways. In general, whenever I've felt kind of squicky afterwards, I've usually found its because I've tried to use sex as a band-aid for something else going on inside me that hurts. In other words, I've used sex addictively.

On the other hand, when it's been a really positive experience with someone I really enjoy being with, I can get into all kinds of kinky shit and all I feel at the end of the night is afterglow. And exhaustion.

I find that a pretty good barometer of how healthy my own psyche is, actually.

Is your therapist an openly kink-aware and kink-friendly therapist? If they aren't, you should probably find one and switch. Some therapists who are anti-kink hide their own beliefs about it, and act on those anti-kink beliefs to lead you in directions which will cause you much more trouble.

@4 maybe one of his dates kissed him afterwards, or stroked his leg, or something like that - some straight-identified men have extremely narrow definitions of what constitutes sexual activity, and are freaked out by normal casual physicalness during sex with other men.

LW, you say you are convinced the negative words might be adversely effecting you, and yes isn't that the point? You want to feel those sorts of feelings. As Corydon @6 has already asked, why?
A kink is a kink is a kink. Unlike Dan, I believe kinks, the deep driven ones, do need to be looked at with a critical and an analytical eye. Especially as in your case, LW, you want the intensity and driven quality to lessen.
This is where your accepting therapist can help you look at why these feelings are wound up in your erotic life.
Understanding won't necessarily see your kink go, it may help you become more playful with it.

"have used sex as a way of anaesthetising myself from difficult feelings ever since I was around 10."

You seem pretty sure of the age. Is that because that's when puberty started and you started feeling insecure? Or are your "difficult feelings" tied to something unpleasant that was going on for you around then? I hope you find your therapist helpful -- or can get a new one. Seems like accepting those difficult feelings rather than running away from them might be important to your growth and development.

Corydon @7 said it well: "whenever I've felt kind of squicky afterwards... its because I've tried to use sex as a band-aid for something else going on inside me that hurts."

Some Old Nobodaddy Logged In also had good advice @5, to try a chastity device if you think you might prefer to get through the session without coming.

Just adding on that instead of step one: find love of my life with which to start a family. Step two: introduce kink non destructively. You might want to reverse the order. Step one: find someone who I can enjoy my kinks with. Step two: fall in love and start a family. Kinky girls can be mothers, women who want to be mothers, or women who might change their mind about wanting to be mothers.

Lava @2: Once you meet a woman with whom a future together seems possible, after a several dates, you need to tell her.

I disagree, and agree with @12. Instead of going through the repeated cycle of, meet girl, get vested enough in girl to believe there is a future, confess kinks that would be dealbreakers for 95% of girls, lose promising relationship, LW should take Dan's and Honeybunny's advice and look for girls in all the kinky places. Step one, is girl tolerant of kinks? Step two, is she compatible in the other ways he wants? Munches, Fetlife, fetish clubs, even OKCupid would allow LW to screen for kink before date one.

LW seems to be experiencing the classic cycle of arousal and shame that many men who engage in humiliation play experience. Haven't we read letters from men who enjoy cuckolding that find form of play intensely arousing, but right after their orgasm they feel a deep sense of personal revulsion. Yet as they ramp up sexually again, the need for that form of sex play is as strong as ever. And like so many people with intense kinks, there is almost no way to exorcise them.

LW has some concerns about how much time his kinks consume, yet he really hasn't pointed to any concrete problem caused by his kinks. Everyone texts partners, lovers, littles, doms, etc. at work, so LW is no different, and would LW feel as conflicted if he spent is evenings watching reruns on t.v., rather than exploring his kinks? Spending two hours on your kink is only worse than spending two hours watching t.v. if you start with the assumption that your kinks are inherently wrong.

It seems that what LW needs from his therapy and from Dan is permission to spend time exploring his kinks, and that doing so won't render him defective.

Once he's ready to continue exploring his kink from a healthy perspective, LW should follow the advice already given to get on Fetlife meet like-minded kinky people, and find a woman who thinks his kinky life is exciting, or at least something she is willing to allow him to indulge.

@7, I was speaking specifically from the kinky perspective. I find my own reactions to be very different in kinky & non-kinky encounters. The latter is as you describe. The former is... more complicated. And I've certainly identified with LW's reactions, where I've felt the same way in kinky encounters. Yes, the participant has something to do with it, but there are many other things going on as well.

One of the things that I've come to appreciate with kinky stuff is that the orgasm becomes far less important. I figured an extra piece of advice for LW would be to take the orgasm completely off the table during his sessions.

What an interesting, soul-baring letter. Brave guy.

shame is is opt-in
I disagree with this. Feelings are involuntary reflexes. People are held responsible for, or choose, their actions.

Shame seems to be a feeling that indicates either a) you are hurting yourself or b) your behavior is likely to be punished by others. So I thought the approach was perfect. This guy doesn't seem to be harming himself with his kink. But he does seem to be harming his relationships with the associated deceit. That's the part to work on. Some people may disparage him for being weird and kinky. But that kind of person is best avoided anyway, if they want to punish him although he isn't harming anyone else. (in case he's been told his kink was bad or yelled at or otherwise shamed for it.. best he got away from those people)

I also think that the experience of meeting a woman who can accommodate his kink, managing how to cooperate with her and accommodate the weird parts of her sexuality, would do wonders for his sexual self esteem. And with online dating, where he can disclose his kinks anonymously up-front, I think this should be entirely possible. Women aren't delicate flowers who crumple if things are not very normal and traditional and vanilla. There are some really bad ass women who can handle crazy shit like single motherhood well and come out on the other side smelling like roses. Some do crumple. Whatever, some men are oversensitive prickly wimps too.

Mr Savage should have changed "Christian" to "religious". I have been unable to decide whether that's just a Grade of Execution deduction or a deliberate attempt to sneak through something worse.

No further objections. LW does sound a bit unlucky. I'm not sure, though, that I'd advise a friend to be his obliging male provider of humiliation.

Sounds like something I could've write sans the therapy and humiliation stuff.
Good luck on finding a cool girlfriend that will be down for all of that.
I've since found that fantasy and porn is much better than the invariably squicky reality...

Well said, Dan, and I second the advice from @1. If I can offer some encouragement to the LW, straight/bi women who like seeing their men degraded definitely exist. I know at least 3, including myself (it's something I've had to give up and that's fine, since I understand it's a lot to ask of a guy who doesn't like dick). At one point I dated a straight guy who was into being sexually used by other men. Useful hint: I met him at a munch. If you actively seek out other perverts, included pervy women, you may start to feel better about your kink.

Your problem seems to be a compulsion that has become powerful partly because you've pathologized it. You're not to blame for this: as someone with unusual desires, you're bound to have received some unwittingly fucked-up messages about masculinity and male sexuality. So try meeting real people with real kinks--not necessarily for sex--and you'll recognize that people exist who are a hell of a lot messier and grosser than you.

Good luck!

Hi