Rough sex and aggression

I recently wrote that I thought my discomfort with rough sex has something to do with my ambivalent relationship toward aggression, with the difficulty I feel in accessing it, particularly in sexual interactions with women. (And, to confuse things a bit, I didn’t use the word “aggression,” but instead, used “anger.” I think the words are different, and “aggression” might have been a better word to capture my meaning.

A number of readers helpfully wrote in – some in the comments, some elsewhere – to point out that good rough sex need not be hostile, need not be aggressive. Instead, they suggested, the roughness might flow instead from urgency, from ardor:

Cande, whom I would love to fuck, wrote, “You should be so hard for me you push and pull me into positions without my permission, you take me and fuck me however you want. I want to be wanted so bad I’m used almost thoughtlessly.”

punkinπ (whom I might well love to fuck, but honestly don’t know much beyond her occasional thoughtful comments) wrote, “Primal play, for instance, can be raw, animalistic, even predatory, but is still driven by desire and passion, rather than anger.”

Ferns, a super-articulate domme who would chew me up and spit me out, wrote, “rough sex is about almost inexpressible lust and passion, not anger. I can’t get enough of him and I want to tear him to pieces and devour every morsel, and THAT translates to a desire to rip him apart, get inside him, strip him of his skin, hold his insides in my hands, to have him fall to pieces in front of me so I can touch all of him… that. There is no anger in it.”

Finally, curiousgeorge, whom I don’t know at all, wrote, “The appeal in being treated roughly is partly about loss of control, and more about feeling crazily desired. And having the ‘permission’ to lose self control in a sort of reciprocal abandon.”

This all points to a fact about the way my desire works that I’ve been doing some thinking about: my desire is rarely irrepressible in this way, so urgent, so crazy that it drives me to do these things. My desire is many things, but one thing that it is is fragile. It’s concerned about your well being, about your pleasure, about your pain.

This is the origin, I think, of my particular brand of dominance – it provides a sort of promise that you want what I want, no matter what.

If my desire were more urgent, I’m sure I would, could, be rougher. But the combination of my fragile desire and my concern for your well being leave me not being that rough.

This is, definitely, an area for further work and thought.

3 comments

  1. That… I totally get. I think a lot of men have difficulty overcoming their “fatherly” trait (for want of a better word). Men who are in any sort of meaningful relationship will tend to prefer kindness over roughness. There’s too much caring involved to override it to be rough. I recognize that in most men but the men who are rough still care… it’s like the roughness becomes the caring but beyond that I can’t specify how they manage.

  2. I have found few lovers who can find the right balance between respect and agression. I LOVE rough sex, for all the reasons your other readers have written. But I don’t like being disrespected. Some men, like you, seem challenged with the apparent discrepancy between the two.

    But if you can find the way to deliver both, then oh boy – I’m your gal.

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