One thing that bothers me, though, is the way she ties her love of anal sex to her past trauma and daddy issues. Almost like the only people who could enjoy having things put in their butts are wounded or broken in some way. Is this a prevalent view? It’s an old book, so maybe people used to view anal that way in 2004.
I don’t like classical music, I’m crazy about classical music. It’s the reason I live. Friends and acquaintances who don’t share the same taste usually see me as a weirdo, and movies and books don’t help either, as they portray classical music lovers as psychos (Hannibal Lecter), abusive husbands (Sleeping with the Enemy), ultra-violent delinquents (Clockwork Orange) or real crazy (Shine). As if the only people who could enjoy classical music were all bad or broken guys.
I think it is possible that a traumatic past, for example sexual abuse, can lead to the love for anal. This only if there was no anal abuse.
My theory is that her mouth and pussy are usual the parts that endured the abuse. So later in life, chosing to have anal sex is the way to have sex with the only part that didn’t got abused. Therefor it’s easier for her to fully go into the joy.
Don’t quote me on this, but I simply see a logic in this.
Interesting theory. In Bentley’s case, it’s not sexual abuse. But it does seem to be (she says) a symptom of her father not loving her enough and punishing her too much. She writes, “Being sodomized now, by choice, reconciles this injury with a scenario of the dominant male and the obedient little girl. Instead of rejection, I am too ‘Good girl, good girl.’ The nastier I am and the better I suck his cock, the better I am, until I’m the goodest little girl in the world. I am finally loved. The relief it brings me is profound.”
I think this is part of the ‘surrender’ the book is named after. It’s really making me questioning on my own relationship with my dad now. One difference between me and the author is that I’ve only had anal sex once (yes it finally happened over Thanksgiving break!!!) but I definitely still enjoy anal play, and find myself wondering if I’m unknowingly exploring the same ground as her.
My life work is actually with a particular type of items that can be up to 185 years old. I get questions from a lot of people that have a few these items and they say that they have “old” ones. Well it turns out that what they have is perhaps from the 1950s to the 1990s. I have to give them the bad news that the items are not old (and not valuable).
No triggering has been done. Just pleasant amusement.
I have! And that’s pretty much how it is for me. Vaginal is complicated AF because there is so much mixed emotions tied to it. Like, I’ve had great vaginal sex related experiences with my husband, but I’ve also got a ton of trauma and abuse tied to it that can surface at the weirdest and worst (sexually speaking) moments. It can be good, but it can also be horrible, triggering, and leave me wishing I could get drunk afterwards so I can forget things I didn’t want to remember.
Anal though - nothing but pleasure. Even when we’ve had a misstep and something has hurt, it’s been a net positive experience because we stopped, figured it out, and Mr. Firefly took excellent care of me. My abuser didn’t touch my anus. My abuser didn’t look at it twice. I have nothing sexually negative tied to anal and that fact alone has shot the pleasure of it into heights I didn’t think possible, beyond just the (substantial) physical pleasure.
I’m sorry to hear about your past experiences, thank you for sharing. I’m happy that you’ve found other ways of being intimate, this is a benefit of anal I’d not really thought about.
I’m sorry that happened to you. It makes sense you’d strongly prefer anal sex. You deserve to feel pleasure in the way you want. I’m glad you’re with a man who respects and loves you. Life is short. Enjoy it the way YOU want.
Because of the care and communication needed, it’s the most intimate form of sex. The only time vaginal was as intimate for us was when we had PIV to produce children, but for an entirely different purpose than pleasure.
It’s not a perspective I think most people have thought of. Like, I really wish the taboos around anal didn’t exist as strongly as they do, because I think a lot of SA victims might find liberation in (otherwise vanilla) anal if they could bring themselves to it.
I read the quote the OP posted about why the book author does anal, and I can see that as an emotional trauma response reason and whatever works for her, but my… I guess my mindset about anal is more or less the other end of the spectrum. I’m not doing it to be nasty or the “goodest" girl. I’m doing it because I was sexually abused and simultaneously sexually repressed/shamed and reached a point where I was sick of doing things or not doing things (sexual and non sexual) because of someone else. I got tired of having sex ruined by my abuser and feeling bad or guilty because of somebody else’s tightly wound opinions on sex and sexuality, so I set my own parameters of what I wanted to keep my sexual life in and put literally everything I could on the table to explore to find out what I actually like, zero consideration for anyone else. Including my husband, honestly. Like, I obviously wouldn’t force him to do anything he doesn’t want to, but I needed to figure out what my sexual tastes were and I couldn’t do that if I was busy worrying about him. What we do together we agree upon together, but I really needed to figure out what I myself wanted first. And amongst other things, I wanted anal. It isn’t nasty in my mind or to be naughty or good, it’s just pure pleasure with liberation and me just enjoying how my sexual nature manifests itself.
This is helping me to see that people are attracted to anal for all sorts of reasons. And just because one person feels one way about it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m secretly doing it for those reasons too.
Exactly. It’s kind of wild how you can arrive at the same destination as other people but take a radically different route and got radically different reasons. From what you’ve said, it sounds like you’ve arrived at anal out of sheer curiosity and then found it fun. The author of that book comes at it from a place of wanting to rebel against her youth and to find something she never got there. I arrived at anal through a really circuitous route and my reasons for even trying it are kinda muddled, but here I am!
