Growing up I always saw the collection of Beauty and the Beast books on my mothers shelf, watched all the different movie versions we could find, and even had a little plastic doll of Belle. I remember my favourite version was the Japanese version one of my moms old boyfriends had given her. The pages were a creamy white and filled with illustrations of the young woman in a beautiful elaborate kimono as the gnarled beast watched her. I always loved these (I’ve even joked her will should say I get her collection).
Then when I got into obsessively watching youtube videos in my late teens I ended up watching a couple of videos with the scandalizing titles “Beauty and the Beast: STOCKHOLM SYNDROME” or “Is Beauty and the Beast Abuse?!” While okay yes some of the things they point out in the movie can be considered abuse if you scrutinize it that closely after that I never felt bothered by it. If anything I liked the movie more and I really did start romanticizing that relationship. The idea of being codependent on someone who is mean to me appealed greatly.
All of these thoughts came from the class Devyn taught, Tell it Who’s Boss, and then the subsequent conversation about how one would even negotiate stockholm syndrome. I had already been curious about stockholm syndrome being used in a dynamic, the class today just brought the thoughts around it back up. It got me thinking about how I had seen those things and how the appealed to me. I mean I had always been very much into codependency and one of the fetishes on my FetLife profile is “violent displays of affection.”
Then we really sat down and talked about it. Through the explanation he gave me, essentially creating a dynamic with stockholm syndrome is creating co-dependence while consciously creating a cycle of abuse. The biggest part of this is while negotiating you acknowledge that you probably will leave with some kind of trauma or triggers around certain things. That those are things that you will live with whether or not you continue that relationship. It’s up to those involved to decide if that is worth the risk, and for a lot of people it isn’t.
After that conversation it made me realize that the idea of stockholm syndrome was really hot but I don’t think that’s 100% what I want. I would be willing to risk up to a certain point, even perhaps where a risk of new trauma, but I don’t think I could or would want to go through with that full risk. I enjoy the codependency of it but I don’t like the aspect of never knowing when someone will be mean to me. Like if my partner hits me I want it to be because they know I like being hit, not because I did something wrong or upset them.
Devyn seems to agree with that as well. Because creating that kind of relationship there’s some kind of manufactured aspect due to having to pick and choose what to be upset over. You pick whether you’re acting nice or acting mean about something. It’s not all genuine. I know he is a very genuine person and doesn’t like that. I very much don’t enjoy doing things with folks if there isn’t a genuine emotion behind it. I would also not at all enjoy getting yelled at or hit because I upset him because one of the last things I want to do is upset him.
I think, if Devyn is up to it of course, I might consider doing a “faux” stockholm syndrome with just co-dependence and violent displays of affection. To those outside of kink or may not be edge players it looks dangerous, but in reality he very much cares for me (and hits me because I ask him to). The beautiful girl isn’t captive, she’s just found her prince.
In love and leather
Magic
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