What Do I Do With the Parts of Me That Get Off on Being Hated?
Content Note: This piece explores themes of degradation kink, erotic shame, trauma recovery, and emotional complexity in submission. Mentions of objectification, self-abandonment, and survivor patterns. Please read with care.
There are cravings I still hesitate to name. Not the sweet ones. Not the ones about surrender or touch or even pain. I mean the ones that live deeperācoiled tight with shame. The ones that whisper, I want you to hate me. I want you to ruin me. I want you to spit in my mouth and call me a thing, not a person. And I want to come undone from it.
Sometimes I want to be stripped of power, pressed into silence, and treated like a toy. Not just usedābut discarded. It turns me on in a way I donāt entirely understand. And sometimes it terrifies me.
In recovery, Iāve been taught to listen to the signal behind the craving. To slow down and ask: Is this coming from a place of needāor from a place of pain? And the truth is, sometimes Iām not sure. Sometimes it feels like both.
For context:
What Iām describing is often called a degradation kinkāa form of consensual play where being insulted, humiliated, or stripped of dignity becomes part of the turn-on. It can look like name-calling, being objectified, spit on, ignored, mocked, broken down emotionally or physically. Itās intense. Itās taboo. And itās far more common than most people admit. Psychologist and kink researcher Dr. Brad Sagarin notes that ādegradation and humiliation kinks often allow individuals to explore deep emotional vulnerabilities in a structured, consensual context.ā
But what if that vulnerability isn't just roleplay? What if part of me believes I deserve to be hated? Thatās where the shame creeps in. And itās where I start to question: is this just a new language for an old wound?
Before I ever called myself submissive, I was already performing for men. I let them treat me however they wanted, because I thought love looked like endurance. I thought being wanted meant being small. Being silent. Being good.
Now, I give permission. Now, I ask for things. I tell men I want to be degraded, made powerless, called a slut or a thing. Sometimes I even mean it literally: āUse me like a toy. I want to be nothing but function.ā And I do feel powerful, in a twisted way, when I orchestrate that. When I control my own objectification. When I say, āRuin me,ā and I donāt flinch.
But I still wonder: am I healingāor am I reenacting the same self-hatred, just with better lighting?
Author and trauma educator Melissa Febos writes in Girlhood that āerotic desire is shaped by shame as much as it is by pleasureāand often, the two become indistinguishable.ā That line haunts me. Because it makes sense. The same part of me that learned to be desirable through self-abandonment is now scripting scenes where that abandonment becomes sexy. Empowering, even. But does that mean itās safe?
When I hand someone the scriptāCall me a whore. Spit on me. Donāt ask me if Iām okay until itās overāthat feels like agency. That feels like Iām in control of the degradation. I choose it. I orchestrate it. But not always. Sometimes I get off because I donāt have to make a decision. Because being hated is easier than being loved. Because it quiets the part of me thatās always trying to be good. And thatās when I start to feel scared. Because the part of me that gets off on being hated doesnāt always care if I feel okay afterward.
As trauma therapist Dr. Jamie Marich puts it, āSurvivors often return to what is familiar. Sometimes, that includes being treated in ways that replicate harmānot because they like it, but because the nervous system confuses it with home.ā
So I check in with myself: Am I choosing this now, or am I being pulled into a pattern I havenāt healed yet? Do I feel seen afterwardāor just used? Can I talk about the scene with my partnerāor do I feel embarrassed, ashamed, afraid itāll make them stop wanting me?
The truth is, thereās no clear answer. Sometimes I crave degradation because it brings me into my body. Sometimes it helps me rewrite old scripts. And sometimes I just like itāand thatās okay too. But I keep asking the questions. I keep grounding myself in partners who can handle the weight of what Iām asking for. I talk. I write. I donāt just chase the cravingāI try to listen to it.
And maybe thatās the most honest thing I can do.
Because yes, there are parts of me that get off on being hated.
And yes, sometimes I worry that Iām still trying to hurt myself in prettier ways.
But Iām here. Iām awake inside it. And that means something.