Bondage and Helplessness

Something I wrote a while ago, on the subject of bondage and how it relates to helplessness, which for some reason I was thinking about today. I can’t remember the context in which I wrote this, but it doesn’t matter too much. Bondage isn’t really a centre of gravity for my kink, but it does overlap with something that’s always been an interesting quirk: my attraction towards physical injury and physical hardship, because of the physical bravery and/or vulnerability that it implies. I could write a lot more, but this will do for now.

Helplessness on its own doesn’t do it, I think — at least not for me. I mean, tying someone up and then leaving them in the middle of nowhere overnight would make them pretty helpless, but that’s not the same thing.

Maybe (for me at least) it’s helplessness for a specific purpose, which is the looking after that has to come afterwards. Someone who is so helpless can’t help but need to be looked after. I’m not sure how much the fact that I might have put them in that situation myself is a necessary part of it. And of course I’m including walloping them bright red under the general umbrella entitled ‘looking after’.

Something I’ve never really written about — mostly because it’s only a footnote to the rest of my kink, rather than because I’m at all self-conscious about it — is how attractive I find it when someone I’m otherwise attracted to is sick or injured in some way. It’s obviously just an extension of the looking after thing in the same way that bondage would be. Perhaps their needing to be looked after naturally, because of something that happened to them, feels more comfortable to me than their needing it because I’d put them in that situation. I’m not sure. I know it’s not usually easy for me to find enjoyment in my own desires to be mean. Too much insecurity.

But it doesn’t seem to need them to need to be looked after, as such. The sense of them being brave, of being in pain or (just as much) having undergone pain, even if (especially if, maybe) I know they’ve borne it with fortitude, goes very deep with me for some reason.

And here’s a short afterthought I wrote following a reply.

I don’t have anything remotely like a cast fetish, but (for example) the idea of someone I’m attracted to going through the pain of a broken limb (or having gone through the pain), which the cast would be a clear visible marker of, is very appealing.

It wouldn’t necessarily make them helpless, or even mean they needed to be looked after. The appeal is in their bravery and fortitude in the face of physical pain. It’s a potent mixture of vulnerability and strength. Greater strength when there’s greater vulnerability, maybe.

See, I told you that this wasn’t going to turn weird.