My husband and I had dinner with friends. After coffee they were about to leave, and suddenly the owners invited us to stay ... to make love to the four of us. We were terribly awkward: we had no idea that they were engaged in perversions! Why did this proposal seem so shocking? On perversions there is no question: "Sexual communication between adults by mutual agreement can be very diverse. Julia and her husband were offered group sex. When such sex is not anonymous and based on friendly feelings, it is called swinging. In this case, there was a misunderstanding: the inviters, apparently, were beginning swingers. They either made a mistake, or hurried with their proposal. Sexual fantasies and perversions: where is the border and how can it not be crossed?
The frame of decency
What shocks some, for others - a common practice. It's time to get confused: so what is normal for sexual relations between two adults? Confusion is largely due to the fact that our understanding of the permissible rapidly changing. Condoms, which were once sold only in some pharmacies, now lie at the box office of any supermarket. Intimate lubricants and vaginal balls have only recently been found in sex shops, and now they have moved to pharmacies. Conventionality of the concept of "norm": it varies depending on time and place. What is recognized as immoral in one society or regarded as a manifestation of the disease, in the other is considered an acceptable deviation. What seems to have been recently considered immoral, can become a trend prevailing in society. The boundaries are gradually expanding. Several years ago it was generally accepted that man is a heterosexual being. Now we believe that a person has three possible sexual orientations: hetero-, homo- and bisexual. And these are all normal options. Just people with a heterosexual orientation more than others. Perhaps someday sadomasochism will also be considered a variant of sexual preference. There is also a reverse trend: what is considered natural for the majority, is forever a thing of the past. For example, the system of family installation of a house-building (implying full subordination of a woman to a man, the permissibility of physical punishment against her) was a social norm for several centuries. Today, the "housekeeping" reminds, perhaps, "submissions" (submission) - one of the sections of BDSM. We no longer choose, receive information of a sexual nature or not - the space around us is saturated with it. Advertising explicitly or implicitly exploits erotic images. Looking through news portals, we inevitably come across banners of porn sites. We are under pressure from an environment that encourages sexual activity. Determine what we want and what we like is not easy. But the choice is always ours. The 30-year-old Marina made this choice spontaneously, although under different circumstances, she might have acted differently: "We've known Alexei for several months, when he left a box on the bed once, leaving me in the morning. I opened it: inside were black and red stockings, high-heeled shoes, panties with slits and leather mens thongs. I still remember this with shudder. From underwear it smelled of sweat - he was already put on. I sent him this box with a courier without a word. He did not even call me back. " Alexei in this way told Marina that he has his own non-standard needs. In this case we are talking about fetishism, the cult of objects (for Alexei - clothing items) associated with sex. The fact that they put on linen is just natural, otherwise it can not become a fetish. Probably, he was waiting for Marina to take a step towards him, ask him, and then he would explain to her what was wrong.
Who does it attract?
Sexual life is a zone of greatest openness and, therefore, of our vulnerability. Here one should not hurry with judgment and even more condemnation. There is no general rule for all: After all, we are dealing with a huge variety of properties and qualities of character. To understand whether the behavior is a perversion, the sexologist also pays attention to the state of the human psyche, the work of his brain, the history of his first sexual experience, the family atmosphere in which he is the discoverer of the world of perversions. It may seem that the idea of ​​perversion exists as much as sex itself. But in fact, we know about sexual perversions thanks to Baron Kraft-Ebingu. Baron Richard von Kraft-Ebing is an Austrian psychiatrist, sexologist, director of the Feldhof hospice for the mentally ill. No one before him dared to speak so openly about human sexuality. He owns the widely used terms "sadism", "masochism", "zoophilia". At the end of the XIX century, he first described also necrophilia, and fetishism. The society first had a notion of perversion. However, let's not forget that the popular book "Krafft-Ebinga" "Sexual psychopathy" has a subtitle "Forensic medical essay for doctors and lawyers." Kraft-Ebing was a forensic psychiatrist, and to him for examination came the then chikatilo - people with serious pathology. From his point of view, perversion is a disease, a deviation, an ugliness. Since then, morals have softened: for example, no one already considers homosexuality a disease. Perverted is considered sexual behavior, in which a person cares only about the satisfaction of their own sexual desires and uses a partner, not paying attention to his feelings and state of mind. In addition, perversion takes place when a person can satisfy his sexual desire in only one way and the attraction is directed to an object whose main purpose is not related to sex. The rest of the sexual practices are only deviations from the usual, traditional. Do we have a chance to see in the beginning of dating that the prospective partner has some special preferences in sex? No, because what is being blamed in society is usually concealed at first. It remains only to pay attention to the indirect signs: what pleases a person or upsets; from which it becomes fun or sad; what he likes to do, what his hobby is; whether there are mood swings for no apparent reason.
What to do?
Faced an obvious, really perverted attitude to sex? Only one thing is to run away from such a person, our experts say. It is impossible to re-educate a partner, to convince him. This is a seductive illusion. Sexual preferences are formed in adolescence, when sexual energy is so great that it is directed "in all directions" and can move in any direction. Later, sex preferences are no longer amenable to change. Cure sexual perversion, violation, curvature of sexual orientation is impossible. - The sexologist can teach you how to realize unusual desires, without interfering with culture and law.
Depends on us
The limits of the norm are vague today, which means that the zone of our personal responsibility is expanding. If earlier we asked the question "Is this normal?", Now we ask ourselves: "Do I want this? Will it be pleasant for me or will it hurt me? "What if we feel that our desires are unusual? Is it worth talking about this partner? "I like being tied up. Or when my husband flips me slightly before making love to me. After I told him about it, we sometimes practice such entertainments. Talking about their desires, it is worth weighing the pros and cons. Try to understand if the partner is ready to hear what you are going to tell him. For your frankness, he can answer with frankness, but he may not accept it. The story of secret desires is an intimate communication. Confessing in the innermost, we reveal our inner world and feel very vulnerable. But, when we do not do this, we show disbelief in our partner or even deceive him. And the experience of Marina confirms this: "If Alex asked me to change clothes, maybe this would seduce me. But the clothes that they already used ... It was too rough, I felt used myself. " Perhaps Marina took this act as offensive, because she knew her friend too little.
Principle of consent
It is extremely important that any sexual desires be discussed in advance and be voluntary for all participants. Each of us decides for himself whether he should try it or not. And this decision depends on our emotional and personal maturity, readiness to experiment, to try, to receive sensual pleasure. But it is necessary to be able to evaluate the proposal soberly and clearly understand that violence is absolutely unacceptable. As for another person, and over himself. So, BDSM has a triple principle: voluntariness - security - intelligence (which, however, it is useful to remember and ordinary couples). One of the partners can try to force the other to accept something by manipulating the guilt, blaming them for squeezing or threatening to find on the side the enjoyment they do not get with him. Another partner can agree to this proposal for fear of being ridiculed or abandoned. However, such relations can not develop normally. And what if we ourselves think that sex is not enough uninhibited? "Serfdom says that a person is not confident in their abilities, in their sexual attractiveness. And first of all it is necessary to solve the problem of low self-esteem, but not at the expense of sexual experiments. Then he can afford much, taking responsibility for his choice. Can one of the partners, at will, stop the experiment without fear of being rejected? If so, then the principle of voluntarism has been respected. 29-year-old Alexander heard a refusal, which made him think: I liked to shoot my partners during oral sex. Not to show the video to others, but because it strengthened my desire. And then we met with Zhenya. When in the midst of a sexual scene I took out my mobile phone, she simply put me out the door in the middle of the night. The next day I brought her flowers to apologize. We've been living together for a year now. I threw the thought of the video out of my head. But this does not stop us from showing ingenuity! Sometimes having sex with a loved one means abandoning some of your desires. This is the price of closeness - both sexual and human.