Recognizing the Animal in the Human: An Exploration of Kink, Safety, and Aliveness

Lately I’ve been thinking about human attraction and its different layers. Not just romantic, not just sexual. Biological too, and spiritual. It feels like all those layers are necessary and I don’t want to reduce kink to just something gratuitous.

Specifically I have been thinking about the dychotomy of structure and instinct. When something alive and authentic breaks through the societal structure of roles, politeness and control.

Roles and pretence is how most people live. At work and even at home, there might not be any space for the authentic self, to just be who you are. In society, we are teachers, students, therapists, clients, strangers at an art gallery, commuters on a train… Always these roles. Always expectations. They are safe and predictable but they also trap the real us. Underneath, we are alive, buried under. Sometimes something flashes through. A moment of desire, humor, play, curiosity, instinct, emotional reaction.
Those moments are windows to the person underneath.

In many erotic narratives, there is a turning point in a relationship when something cracks in the composure. There is a look, or it’s something they say, a tone, a word… Something real and charged slips through and two people meet through that crack, searching, silently asking. Would you want this? I might want this. In Heated Rivalry, it’s the moment in the hotel gym when Ilya hands Shane the water bottle, silently mouthing ”more” to see if Shane obeys or not. Maybe it’s half subconscious, maybe more calculated. Real, nonetheless.

This is where we talk about safety. The raw moments that I’m talking about can technically happen anytime and anywhere, but they are only exciting if they happen within the context of what feels uniquely safe to the individual. To feel desire, to be devoured, to let go and give in, we need the containment of safety that holds us there. The level of safety varies from person to person. For some people, they want to feel like a wild horse being tamed. The other person is a steady presence, and I am the horse, choosing to trust or not to trust, to approach or withdraw, to meet or avoid. To take the time needed to process and then decide what to do next. We need to let out the primal, the ”animal” inside, and that’s brave and it’s hard. We need someone’s steadiness, gentleness, patience and calm, with the permission to do whatever we feel like in the moment.

I have an issue with the word ”kink” as well. The definition of the word is that a kink is somehow unusual, as opposed to the ”typical” or ”vanilla” stuff. But we all have a nervous system. We all have a unique attachment pattern. Every single person has a unique sexual preference, and it’s first and foremost emotional. Almost everyone has a deep need that they’re ashamed of, so almost anyone has a kink in that sense. For example, everyone falls somewhere on the spectrum of how much responsibility and choice they have had in their life. The more responsibility, the stronger desire to be dominated. The more powerlessness, the stronger desire to dominate. If domination and submission are kinks (are they?), then everyone has it. I am not talking about ropes and chains here. I’m talking about the emotional experience that the ropes and chains might help us achieve. 

A person might be burdened by always having to be good, composed, reliable, patient, calm. And so they might fantasize about the permission to express their emotions, to be sensitive, playful, reactive, like a kitten. They might fantasize about being held like one too. By someone big and strong, yet gentle and caring. Someone who isn’t fazed by their little claws, tiny teeth and soft meows, that in reality, might not be little at all.

Something needs to be said about the other person in this dynamic, the steady one. The other person needs someone to hold, someone to care for. The other person in this scenario might enjoy taming the horse. Maybe they enjoy the fierceness and wildness of the horse, enjoy working hard for the horse’s trust, building the connection, the relationship. And when they succeed, it feels that much more gratifying. It makes them feel so strong and good, to be trusted by this wild being that most people couldn’t even touch.

Inside a dynamic, there are two people with nervous systems, looking to relax and release. When the match is compatible, both parties get what they need. Inside the societal roles, we are all nervous systems looking for regulation. We meet each other, have the bravery to show something, to look at the other. To ask the silent question. To be answered.