Yet, beneath the surface, many of our erotic enthusiams are motivated by something very touching

and very sane: a desire for total closeness.

Take BDSM. There's huge pressure in our society to be independent and strong,

and yet inside us, some of us are deeply attracted to, and therefore also turned on by,

the counterbalancing thought of throrough passivity and submission,

as a form of escape from the over-strenuous demands of grown-up life.

The wish to be a ‘slave’ means that someone else will know exactly what you should do,

and take all choice away from you.

This could sound appalling because most slave owners we can imagine (indeed most authority figures) are pretty awful.

We so badly want to be independent,

in part because there doesn’t seem to be anyone around nice enough to deserve our weaker selves.

But the deeper hope, which can come out in sex, is that we would be with someone

who could be worthy of our complete loyalty and devotion.

As for the dominant partner, there's an analogous dynamic at work.

Modern life generally demands extreme politeness and restraint.

We have to keep our bossiness in check.

But in our hearts, we might think we know exactly what someone else really needs.

We might like to be quite bossy, and enforce absolute obedience.

We just lack the necessary authority and power in the real world.

So the exciting fantasy is that someone will at last acknowledge our strength and wisdom,

will recognize our talents and will put us wholly in charge of them.

No more need for skepticism about who we are,

and therefore no more restraint, no more need to hold our tongue.

The games of submission and domination offer opportunities to investigate wishes,

but are far from being simply peculiar, pointless or even slightly demented.

They offer brief utopian interludes in which we can, with a rare and real friend,

safely cast off our normal defenses,

and share and satisfy our longings for extreme closeness and mutual acceptance

which is the real, psychologically routed reason why these games are so exciting.