//rough cut//
Seen elsewhere: "if my command is my submissive's orgasm trigger and they're otherwise on full-time orgasm denial, will they *never be able to cum again* if we break up?"
Mate, I can see that "it's hot if I ruin them for anyone else" subtext you have in there, and think you should integrate this into your scenes because it sounds like you'll have fun with that, but holy fucking crap, *that is not how this works*.
I've done kink themed behaviour modification from both directions, I *understand* how to condition you for shit, and getting to make *me* cum more or less when you like is a gift I'll sometimes give a person (it's for me, too). The mechanics of this shit have been on my mind because someone and I have very much got a lock on this lately.
I've also had and undone a bunch of trauma conditioning in myself, helped others with that shit, and indeed used voluntary conditioning to help soothe the latter. And just given in and embraced the fact that I'm hot for a few things that fucked me up, and that's okay now that they're in my hands.
The fundamental difference:
Erotic conditioning : voluntary, selective
Trauma conditioning : involuntary, defensive
And yes, the nature of abusive relationships means that sometimes there will be crossovers between what appears to be erotic conditioning and genuine trauma conditioning, because people are awful to each other sometimes. (Go on, make me beg for [REDACTED]. See what happens.)
Returning to our Confused Dom's scenario :
- The dominant is training their submissive to only come when instructed to.
- The dominant is “concerned”/horny about how this might make their submissive unable to ever reach orgasm without them again.
- *But* the dominant is not the actor upon the situation here.
- “The sub is in charge” might be a reasonably tired trope, but for this to work outside of a context of profound abuse, they really do have to be down for this shit.
- Erotic conditioning of this kind is *primarily* an act of self-hypnosis (note: all hypnosis is self-hypnosis), even if you're attaching the trappings of operant conditioning (reward/punishment based behaviour modification) to it.
- Confused Dom is providing the instructions and the context (this is valuable! Setting is vital to most people getting into an appropriate state to take and imprint hypnotic instructions! If you don't suck at your roleplay/BDSM/ritual scenes, you're already doing this.
- Confused Dom's submissive is doing the work - they are opting into the state and choosing to fixate on the instruction, the voice, the words, the person, the intent.
- They will similarly be opting in when they act on the suggestion. If you want easy reproducibility for your on-demand orgasm machine, make sure you're *also* reproducing the conditions when you started working on imprinting it.
- With repetition, you can pare down the state-inducing conditions.
- But Confused Dom's trigger isn't going to work if their submissive is in a condition that won't allow them to return to the state of mind associated with the response. Hypnotic states are highly contextual. If the sub is mid anxiety attack or hyperfocused on writing their dissertation, they're going to have a much harder time getting into the mental place that allows them to respond to their orgasm trigger.
A conditioned trauma response, by comparison, can fully and immediately catapult the person experiencing it into the mental space in which it exists. They do not need to opt-in, find their mood, or anything else that implies choice. The involuntary nature of trauma responses is a large part of what defines them.
It's not that you can't USE this shit in your scenes, carefully, and with consent for the psychological shit you're about to fuck with as well as the activities themselves, because it can interact dangerously with everything under discussion.
But erotic conditioning is not trauma conditioning. [large number of caveats]
And while you can use operant conditioning to erotic ends - please be aware that all of this *should be* positive reinforcement conditioning, because if you try to use S/M punishments for negative reinforcement conditioning on someone WHO HAS TURNED UP WANTING TO BE PUNISHED, you'll easily wander into either being abusive or rewarding behaviours you don't want to see.
Classical conditioning also counts for something, has its uses - Pavlov's dogboy, who gets hard when you show him his leash.
But if you go in thinking that your training is more about what you're doing than what your submissive is thinking, experiencing and consenting to do/have done to their mental states, then you are not going to have a handle on what you're actually playing with.
Merc
Everyday Cosmic Horror