This is the most vulnerable, guilt-inducing, scary and uncomfortable writing I have shared openly to date. Yet these feelings are eclipsed by a recognition that this isn’t talked about, and I want there to be at least one more voice out there. Even though what I experienced is in a small minority, perhaps it’ll resonate with someone who needs to be validated in the way I never was.
When I was eleven, I started to desire being spanked. Not erotically, but as punishment, like my step-dad would do to me. In anger, with a hand, over the knee, with my pants pulled down for the worst offenses, and excruciating. I feared what I wanted: I was terrified of his blows, yet still wanted ones just like his.
The development of my desire for spankings was before I was sexually conscious, so at the time it was just something I really liked. I would look up the word “spanking” in the dictionary. I would invent stories where I was sent to facilities with spanking machines. I spanked my plush toys. I envied medieval whipping boys. I asked my best friend spank me in my parent’s basement, which he obliged. Meanwhile I was petrified of my step-dad actually hitting me.
The summer I turned thirteen my dad was dating an emotionally unstable woman. When she threatened a spanking in the car on a vacation, I egged her on to do it. Once we got to the hotel she ordered me on the bed and gave me a few light taps. I was disappointed. I had wanted it to hurt. Later in the summer, something else happened, and I asked her to spank me. She approached my dad, who then asked me if I had said that. I denied it. I ended up running away from there when she went to beat me with a horse whip at the end of the summer.
My step-dad last threatened a “spanking” when I was eleven, though when I was fifteen he gave a neighbour permission to spank me while he was on a vacation with my mom in Europe. My neighbour had an incredulous look reading the letter out loud that informed him of this; I just looked down and said “yeah”. At home my step-dad had replaced spankings with threats of kicking my ass, usually to silence my anger. I needed to let those emotions out and adapted at first by smiling, but that only made him worse. I finally took to hitting my head in my room. While his last threat to kick my ass was when I was sixteen, I didn’t stop fearing his anger until I was twenty.
At twenty-one, I had my first consensual spanking as an adult. In the same encounter, I was also sexually assaulted. I had been trained I couldn’t say no, and so when he fingered me without asking, I just took it. That began a realisation that I did not like sex. I would come to like the intimacy it gave me with my partner, and the satisfaction of giving myself to my partner, but not the sex itself. The only thing that got me off was thinking of spanking. Spanking was my sexual orientation. But it went beyond sexuality; I needed to be spanked as punishment for real errors. This differed from all other descriptions of adulthood spankings I had heard, in which it was for play and sexual intimacy. Even in D/s dynamics. This wasn’t play for me. It wasn’t sexual in this way. I craved real non-consensual spankings. If I did anything wrong, even if I had made amends and was forgiven, I had great difficulty tolerating myself. Physical punishment felt like the only release valve to make the world feel right again.
I came to figure that my desire for spankings was my body’s way of adapting to an environment in which a parent was inflicting incredible pain on me regularly. Had his spankings been more like my birth mom’s or my dad’s girlfriend – a few light taps more meant to register displeasure than to hurt me – I doubt this adaptation would have developed. It didn’t take a lot to get spanked by my step-dad: if I didn’t go to the bath with enough enthusiasm, if I asked him to help me find something and he found it first, etc. I have felt guilt for developing this spanking paraphilia when my experiences weren’t that bad compared to others. This shame is still there, but less so, with the assurances of my last therapist that such a profound reaction is not out of the ordinary for sensitive children.
At the end of my twenties, I dated a person who was spanked harshly growing up. She also developed a desire in childhood for pain, but inverted, as the person who inflicted it. We had a lot of kinky play sessions, where she gave me spankings in the style of my step-dad only amped up. She spanked me with a belt, overcoming my teenage fears of it. Later, at my request, she gave me two real spankings. These were for misdeeds in our relationship and were not for play. The anticipation, pain, and ensuing relief felt amazing for me, despite being a genuine moment of accountability. She, however, cried afterwards both times. She explained later that she felt like the spankings silenced her and prevented her from expressing the pain with my initial actions. It put her in a one-sided parental role. We talked more about it, and she made me realise that being spanked like this was incompatible with emotional growth of both partners. This is not what I wanted. I had worked very hard in my twenties to undo the effects of my upbringing in my relationships and diminished emotional regulation and wanted to keep progressing.
When the next person I dated, who also spanked me for play, ended the relationship citing she felt she had taken on a parental role, that made me question what had become my sexual orientation. There were other reasons why that relationship ended related to that comment, but this was nonetheless a remark that hit close to this mess of emotions and conflicted desires around spanking.
One of the therapists I saw suggested I could move on by masturbating to conventional porn. I tried. It was honestly like trying to get off to a piece of toast. I only get turned on from fantasies of being spanked. What will my life be if these desires persist, and remain unfulfilled for the sake of healthy relationships?
I’m still conflicted. Part of this is trauma reenactment, not trauma play, yet I have nothing else to replace it with to fulfill the sexual void. And moving forward in life, without physical punishment for my mistakes, is like moving forward with a big weight attached to me. Up until recently I didn’t think anyone else could relate. This was so unlike anything I had heard described online. Google searches yielded articles about the harms of childhood spankings, or porn, or taken in hand / domestic discipline blogs, but nothing like this.
That’s changed recently. I have found stories of other people like me. These make me feel less isolated by letting me know that I haven’t been the only one to experience this. While I’m not yet aware of a way to move forward with this affliction, this talk helps validate and process. Maybe one day I’ll be able to manage this in a way that is more satisfying to me. I’ve included passages from their stories below:
When my parents were kids, when they misbehaved they had to pick out their own switch. They weren’t quite so harsh with me, but I was spanked whenever I did something wrong.
It fucked me up. I always feel guilty for everything wrong I do, even if I apologize and whomever I wronged accepted the apology, I still feel like I need physical punishment or else it cannot be forgiven. In the real world that is really Not Fucking Normal, so I continually feel guilt over things that have happened literally six or more years ago, because I was conditioned as a child that true absolution of a wrong is receiving physical punishment.
Lynn in Hurts Me More Than You: Lynn’s Story:
I was very young when the fantasies began—no older than six or seven. It’s hard for me to remember a time when I wasn’t aroused by images, descriptions or fantasies of being spanked, hit, or beaten. However, it wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that the physical sensations I had been experiencing since I was a small child had anything to do with sex.
In the other fantasies, there was finally someone who punished me out of love, the way my pastor said they should—someone who genuinely hated causing me pain, but did it because they loved me so very deeply. This was always a man whom I admired, trusted, and desired to please (unlike my father). I always felt deeply ashamed of my need to be punished, but willingly subjected myself to his loving blows. In these fantasies I felt safer, happier, and more loved than I ever did in real life. This was the closest thing to emotional intimacy that fit into my worldview.
Real life spankings were terrifying, painful and humiliating. Why did I willingly relive them over and over and over again? Still, it never entered my mind to think that my physical reaction was not a normal response to fear, guilt and shame.
I became incredibly conflicted about sex. I loved the physical sensations and feeling so close to my husband, but the only way to climax was to allow the images of abuse to flood through my mind whenever I started to feel aroused.
I strongly believe that frequent spankings and the message that love requires causing pain to the object of one’s love—both of which are so prevalent in conservative homeschooling circles—played a significant role in the development of this disorder. After all, who could ever think that repeatedly hitting a child on an erogenous zone of the body would not have a sexual impact?
Janet in Hurts Me More Than You: Deborah and Janet’s Stories:
I began to imagine being spanked to arouse myself (though it’s weird to type the word “arouse” since I had no grasp of what was even happening). I pictured myself being forced to strip, doing things that I hated, that made me feel sick, vulnerable, and ashamed, feeling the burning hits on my bottom. I imagined it in vivid detail as I would touch my little five year old body. Yes, you read that right: five. Maybe I imagined it even earlier than that – I don’t remember. But it went on for years.
Before I knew the slightest thing about sexuality I’d already spent nearly ten years masturbating to the equivalent of BDSM fantasies — all inspired by the spankings I endured.
My parents really did love me and I know they were only spanking me because they thought that’s what God wanted them to do. Would they even believe me now if I told them? I don’t blame them as much as I blame the generally held belief among fundamentalist Christians that if you spank your children nothing will go wrong. Something went very wrong with me.
Deborah in Hurts Me More Than You: Deborah and Janet’s Stories:
The worst part of getting spanked was never the humiliation or the pain or the endless guilt and self-loathing or even the forced hugs and prayers. The worst part was that every single time I got spanked, I would get turned on. A lot of people hear this and say something along the lines of, “Well that is why you should never spank someone past puberty.” I have news for you. It didn’t start at puberty. If it had, I might have been able to understand that it was something sexual or weird. It started by my earliest memories of being spanked. I remember it every time I remember getting spanked. I just thought it was part of the deal. It wasn’t until I learned about sexual arousal as an adult that I understood it.
Polly in Hurts Me More Than You: Polly’s Story:
By 8 I was sneaking my mother’s parenting books, looking up the word spanking in the encyclopedia and dictionary. Anytime someone was spanked in a book I would read it over and over and over. I wanted to discuss spankings for hours with my friends, but they didn’t have the same response as me. I did not connect it as something sexual until my late teens/early 20’s.
Eventually, I found “Christian Domestic Discipline” sites where the husbands would spank and punish their wives in other ways. Again I felt relief and happiness that I was not alone, and there were not children involved, so maybe I wasn’t actually a pedophile — just a freak.
An anonymous Redditor in a relationship advice post:
I had incredibly strict parents and was spanked until I left for college (that’s a whole other subject that probably needs to be addressed). Now when I think back to some of those spankings, I get really turned on and would love to reenact them basically exactly as they happened with someone I love and trust. My husband gets along well with my parents and other than knowing that I was spanked growing up, he’s doesn’t know how often and how late I was spanked. … Nothing was abusive, per se, but it was definitely not normal and probably the reason I’ve sexualized it.
Jillian Keenan in Hey Christian Parents, Spanking Kids Is Sex Abuse:
My whole life, I’ve been obsessed with spanking. Spanking occupies the place in my life that sex occupies in the lives of most people: As a child, it’s what I was curious about; as an adult, it’s the only thing I fantasize about and the only thing that satisfies me.
Jillian Keenan in It’s Difficult To Admit That Childhood Spankings Can Be Sexual Assault:
Sex [to me], as I write in the book, is like masturbating to the thought of toothpaste. I just don’t care about sex. Spanking occupies that space in my life in every way.
The fact is, by the time I was 3 or 4 or 5, certainly by the age of 10, spanking was a sex act to me. My body and my mind experienced it as such, so when this happened to me non-consensually, something sexual was happening to me non-consensually. And that’s how I reacted.