GeniesLoki

For what it's worth, I do think it's generally not that hard to understand why any given thing is fun, and it's usually not that complicated and for reasons that generalise. Individual variation is usually more down to whether you can / it's worth it to get into it.

On specific examples: * Pain is fun because it increases pleasure sensitivity and grounds you in your body. * Degradation I'm less clear on, but I think it's a total surrender thing - it forces you to fully immerse yourself in and engage with your enjoyment of the experience.

Aren't these similar to the trauma theories, though? E.g. "if you generally feel like you can't take care of yourself, then a submissive fantasy is fun because that being someone else's responsibility lets you more fully immerse yourself in an experience without worrying".

I think they're similar in the sense that trauma can dial up or block aspects of what causes them to be fun, but my point is that that because they are fun the trauma is not needed as an explanation for why people are into them.

That would seem to predict that they would remain fun even after the trauma was healed, but I ~completely lost interest in some of them after processing some relevant trauma.

Fantasy or reality though? Because yeah I *would* predict that they generally remain fun after the trauma was healed (though possibly less so), but I'd predict that for the actual act rather than the fantasies around them.

There's a weirdly strong level of disconnect between sexual reality and sexual fantasy that I don't claim to understand yet.

I think both? Seem hard to disentangle, since determining whether an act seems appealing involves a fantasy of it. If you mean a distinction between "wouldn't actually want it to happen in real life" vs. "actually do want it in real life", then both were affected in the same way.