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As I was processing a family situation with my (half) brother, what bothered me most was his belief that ‘life isn’t that serious’ means that (1) ‘not only is it okay for me to do whatever I think is funny at or to another person, but also (2) if they don’t participate and respond exactly the way I think they should, then they’re too sensitive and taking life too seriously’.

Which made me ask the question: what is the difference between fun and humiliation?

Joking around can certainly build connections, and it can be a way of building intimacy between people who – for whatever reason – are not in a position to be vulnerable with each other. I suspect that’s why we tend to see ‘pranking’ culture in masculine environments such as the military or sports. How do you build bonds and community with others when being emotionally vulnerable can potentially hand another person leverage against you? (Then there’s a point where that goes too far and becomes hazing.)

I also ended up zeroing in on the concept of ‘taking life too seriously’.

Because I think this pre-supposes two difference concepts: one, that ‘taking life seriously’ is bad somehow, and two, that finding pranks funny determines whether you do in fact take life seriously or not.

It would be very easy to say that someone who pranks around like this is immature, and that this mindset is indicative of immaturity.

But I don’t think drawing the line here makes sense because many people are lighthearted and play around with each in these ways, although I don’t think they make it a defining part of their identity or relationships with others. Or you might be playful in one moment, focused and intense in another, relaxing in another, et cetera, so ‘pranking’ organically occurs on occasion but isn’t the focus of who you are or how you are.

But then I remembered my brother’s Instagram – “I just want someone to love me for the asshole I am”

…where he is sticking his tongue out obnoxiously at the camera with his toddler in the backseat. And this isn’t a judgment on my part, his facial expression is making it clear that he is intending to be obnoxious.

(Sidenote: I actually don’t think assholes are automatically bad. I personally need a little distance, but if you get a high conflict person on your side and pointed in the right direction, they are gold. Basically, an ethical asshole. It works because they value you and what you value.)

So my ‘asshole’ brother wants to be loved for who he is…while he judges someone (like me) as ‘bad’, wrong, or deficient. And I have to be honest, that is what specifically pissed me off.

I see society, communities, and families full of individuals with deeply unique and different perspectives; and that the combination of those people and perspectives and approaches creates synthesis – something greater than the whole, and beautiful.

I think we lose something very precious when we expect everyone to be the same.

u/danokablamo defines “respect” as treating people and things that matter like they matter and “disrespect” as treating people and things that matter like they don’t matter. And it just reminds me of something I’ve said often on the subreddit, which is to watch out when people when people react in a way that is ‘upside down’ from what is normal. This is an indicator that the way they think is ‘off’ in some way, or they are following different rules.

Because the normal way to treat someone that you care about is to treat them well.

The normal way to treat someone who matters is like they matter.

I think my (other) brother nailed it when he originally said:

Guys like to say that with a guy friendship, you can mess with each other like that. But that only works when there’s trust. It’s a slippery slope to cruelty.

This only works when there’s trust.

‘Pranking’ as a relationship dynamic is a subversion of the standard.

The standard is to treat people you love well, therefore to subvert the standard is to treat them badly (within a specific set of constraints) and to do so because you can’t treat people that way regularly. Being able to treat a person ‘badly’ in this way is ‘proof’ and reinforcement of your closeness.

It’s like ‘relationship BDSM’.

I will treat you badly on purpose and you will let me because it proves how close we are and because it shows you trust me.

The problem is that the people running around doing this aren’t getting other people’s consent, and are being judgmental of someone’s normal response that they are being humiliated as if there is something deficient with that person, when literally the whole point of ‘pranking’ as a method of bonding is that it subverts normal relationship expectations.

There’s no trust if you non-consensually prank people, because they didn’t agree to the dynamic.

Or maybe it’s like ‘relationship tickling’:

I will do something to you and your body that provokes an involuntary response that I find funny.

Demanding someone participate in ‘pranking’ activity as if it is mutual when it isn’t is manipulative.

It is on the spectrum of abusive behaviors because this is essentially what abusers force or coerce the victim into doing: pretending as if the abusers version of reality is real and playing along with it. And that people are “too sensitive” or “take life too seriously” is part how the manipulation is exerted.

Pranking, to have utility as a method of bonding, has to be mutual.

And if it isn’t mutual, it’s just sparkling harassment.

I think ‘asshole’ pranksters fall into two categories:

One, being people who do genuinely enjoy humiliating others and violating their boundaries under the plausible deniability of ‘having fun’. The other group reminds me of toddlers and small children who do something once that people find funny, and then keep trying to replicate that by doing the same thing over and over, and then getting mad when the other person doesn’t respond the same way they did. Chasing that dopamine high, they keep pressing the same button.

The real irony is that genuine connection – the very thing these pranksters claim to seek – requires accepting and respecting others as they are.

A lot of victims of abuse describe how it felt ‘boring’ to be in a healthy relationship after experiencing an abuse dynamic.

I was watching, of all things, Fate: The Winx Saga on Netflix and one of the characters – a mind fairy and empath – senses a guy at the school and becomes immediately interested in him. She explains that he sounds like ‘the absence of chaos’.

Peace.

She is experiencing peace after being bombarded by the intensity of everyone’s emotional experience. He’s calm and grounded, and I had this moment of “OH. I get it.”

Because it isn’t that we need to ‘get acclimated’ to a ‘boring relationship’

..it’s that we have to change what we find attractive, what grabs our interest, in the first place. And that starts, not by tricking ourselves, but by re-framing our perspective.

Being triggered and inexplicably craving someone immediately is not “passion”.
Chaos is not “exciting”.
Peace is not “boring”.
It’s not the Most Epic Love Story, it’s “high school drama”.

We can prove whether someone loves us by how they treat us.

If we feel overwhelming desire and attachment and longing for someone, but they are not patient, they are not kind, and they are not honest? Then it isn’t love. People that actually love and care about us want to treat us right. If for some reason they can’t or are challenged in that, then they are going to do what they can to protect us, even from themselves.

Randomly, I knew I was growing when I was watching Stargate SG-1 and out of nowhere thought “Damn, Major General Hammond is sexy AF with those ethics”.

Old me would have gone straight to Daniel as the nerd, or to Jack as competent and masculine, so I was completely taken by surprise. When we change our paradigm, what grabs our interest is different. (And it’s humbling to realize that my former attraction matrices were shallow; for example, just because society values “intelligence” more than physical appearance, it doesn’t actually make it any less shallow. Because it’s what someone does with their intelligence that matters; an intelligent person is not automatically better by virtue of being intelligent.)

I do want to acknowledge that the desire for intensity may not ‘go away’, but you can still meet that need in a healthy way with a caring partner, whatever that looks like.

Reactive invalidation by others shows up a lot when someone experiences a sex act that makes them feel bad.

People are afraid of kink-shaming, others are afraid of being judged, sometimes everyone gets up in their feelings about something even if the situation has nothing to do with them.

And it’s because they feel attacked if someone is judging a sex act or dynamic that they themselves enjoy or appreciate.

This dynamic doesn’t only show up regarding sex acts either, I see it a lot whenever a discussion about age-gap relationships shows up.

Well, my age-difference relationship isn’t bad. You aren’t experiencing problems because of the age gap but because the other person is bad.

My parents met when my mom was 15 and my dad was 19, and they were happily married for 53 years!

Sex and attraction is where our subconscious reigns and can even reflect childhood triggers.

So it’s no wonder people get really protective about the things they like.

A lot of what people like, in some way, explores a power differential.

I remember reading an AMA from a necrophiliac and was blown away to discover that a lot of the appeal of it for him was subconsciously the idea that as a corpse, this ‘person’ wouldn’t reject him, that he had complete power and control, etc.

An extreme end of the power differential is degrading or objectifying one party in the dynamic.

There’s sex play that literally turns the submissive into a piece of furniture for the dominant to rest their feet on.

And this is why aftercare is so extremely important in the BDSM community

…because at the end of this ‘play’ is a time for connection where the submissive is assured that the dominant does actually see them as a person and cares for them, and the submissive reassures the dominant that they aren’t a ‘bad person’ because the submissive wanted to surrender in those ways.

Regardless of what we said to each other, you’re a human being and I see and care about you.

This is about to be an unpopular opinion, but I think BSDM can be a trap for child victims of abuse.

When you were raised and conditioned to associate “love” with someone who was selfish, someone who reduced your in your own humanity to serve their needs, someone who powered over you over and over, it is hard to psychologically untangle that wiring.

Finding someone who does that can light up your limbic system like you’ve won a jackpot at a casino, and tie that to our sexual system, means that ‘you in danger, girl’.

BDSM promises a way to have your cake and eat it, too. To meet the desires of your subconscious, the dark cravings it is hard to bring to the light and admit exist, but in a safe way.

But the trap here is that the people who are most desirous of these dynamics are often the people least able to assert themselves and communicate/set boundaries with a partner.

Because they’ve learned that love is to erase themselves.

Codependency is the chronic neglect of self in order to gain approval, love, validation, or self-identity through another person.

So people with bad boundaries get involved with something that is the psychological equivalent of a loaded gun, and they have no idea how to engage the safety, nor the capacity to do so. So they engage in acts of degradation, objectification, of training, of bearing physical and emotional pain, not only because it mirrors what they have learned love is, but they are (usually subconsciously) attempting to gain love through their submission.

The more I participate in my own degradation, the more I ‘prove’ to you that I belong to you, that I ‘love’ you.

Child victims of abuse haven’t learned that ACTUAL love is patient, kind, supportive, centers them as a seen and whole human being. What they’ve learned about is ownership and possession and submission to what diminishes their soul as love.

And so re-creating this dynamic soothes their psychological conditioning, but can leave them feeling empty and hollow, depending on who they are ‘playing’ with.

It’s no secret that abusive people are attracted to BDSM and kink communities, because they can satisfy themselves in plain sight. A truly abusive person is powering over someone else at that person’s expense and for their own benefit. What makes it tricky in the BDSM community is how often the person in a position of power-down wants this, but subconsciously can harbor the idea that their submission is beautiful and will be cherished by the other, and therefore they themselves will be seen as beautiful and cherished by the other.

In a ‘true’ BDSM dynamic, the submissive actually holds the power.

To stop the other person when things get too much, when it’s outside their boundaries, when they need assurance that they are actually valued and seen by the other person as a whole human being.

But if you don’t know your boundaries?

If you’ve disconnected from your feelings in order to tolerate the abuse dynamic in which you grew up? If you don’t even know what it is like to be seen and valued as a whole human being?

This person is at the mercy of a dominant who may or may not care about them as a person, who may or may not solely be focused on getting what they want from another person.

The longer I’ve done research, the more I see how so many of the ways we harm each other are based in reducing someone else in their humanity so that we can get or do what we want instead of feeling badly about it.

BDSM centers this and plays with it, and taboos are often where our cravings exist.

I think instead of acting as if the BDSM framework is neutral, and invalidating people who struggle with their experiences with it, it’s important to recognize that the very nature of it is to get as close as possible to the worst ways humans treat each other without actually harming each other.

And also to recognize that many people will not be able to ‘play’ in this construct, because it takes a whole recognition of self and another.

The conversation around it shouldn’t be that it’s ‘only a kink’, it should be ‘this is balancing on the edge of a psychological knife in pursuit of intensity and exploring darkness, and isn’t for most people’.

Most people cannot handle power.

…because most people are selfish and will pursue their desires at the expense of others. Most people will reduce others in their humanity and will justify their ‘desires’ as needs.

Someone struggling with a BDSM experience doesn’t need to be told ‘it wasn’t BDSM, you just had a bad dominant’, they need to be reaffirmed that they were harmed.

They don’t need #notallBDSM. They don’t need to be made to feel that they were deficient in some way because they ‘chose’ the wrong person or didn’t stop it or whatever.

This is victim-blaming, even if unintentionally, and it doesn’t respect the reality of the dynamic.

That BDSM is dangerous.

Hopefully this makes sense. I’ve avoided the topic for many years because I wasn’t quite able to articulate where the gap was between concept and practice, and because many victims of childhood abuse truly want to engage in BDSM,

but there are so many people who experience damage on a soul level with it and have no idea why.

…meaning they may believe something while angry which they wouldn’t necessarily believe when they are happy, for example. Certain memories, beliefs, and learning are linked to the physiological and emotional state in which they were formed (and may only be accessible when in a similar state).

State-specific beliefs might explain why abusers access certain hostile beliefs only when triggered.

• obedience test/’training’
• belittling/humiliation ritual/emotional abuse
• pathological ‘need’ to be the center of attention
• competitive instead of cooperative or supportive
• sadism
• status/hierarchy enforcement
• condescension
• contempt
• they don’t actually like or respect you as a person
• unreasonable entitlement

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“I dated someone like this, it took me a while to realize the pattern of them constantly humiliating me publicly. You realize it boosts their ego or they get a weird dopamine high from it. It’s awful.”
– u/TheBulkyModel, comment

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‘It feels like this person is just constantly putting their significant other through a humiliation ritual to see if they’ll stay.’
– u/neuroticdreamgirI, comment

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‘…this person is doing this to put them ‘in their place’, it’s like they can’t stand to see their ‘partner’ succeed…’
– u/Taigac, comment

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‘…stealing another person’s thunder and shifting focus to themselves. As always.’
– u/realitea1234, comment

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“It’s contempt.”
– u/Boom_chaka_laka, comment

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“May their love NEVER find me.”
– u/Professional_Sand192, comment

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‘With a ‘partner’ like this, who needs enemies?’
– u/MyNamesChakkaoofka, comment

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“My dad LOVED humiliating my mom and I swear he liked it even more when people noticed. He got to act all sweet like he was ‘just joking’ and it was all a laugh.”
– u/SharkGirl666, comment

And then the shame the victim feels reinforces the abuser’s power, the fact that the victim ‘gave’ it to them or agreed to it, creating a self-sustaining cycle.

The corruption of the victim is as important as the control itself.

The abuser coerces or forces the victim into participating in their own degradation and humiliation, or also engaging in abuse, so they are no longer innocent.

And it gives the abuser plausible deniability: the victim ‘chose’ it, participated in it, is responsible for their own abuse….which makes no one come to the victim’s rescue.

The victim is isolated physically and psychologically, in a prison of their own shame, and social reinforcement of it.

Before the victim humiliates themselves, the abuser tells them it is no big deal, everybody does it, it’s just a joke – but after?

They prosecute the victim with their own actions, and use it to prove their ‘badness’ to themselves.

A ‘humiliation ritual’ is more than just humiliation

humiliated: (v.) “make (someone) feel ashamed and foolish by injuring their dignity and self-respect, especially publicly”

It requires the target or victim to participate.

Hazing, for example, is a humiliation ritual – a ‘loyalty test’ where you make yourself vulnerable to blackmail as ‘proof’ of your commitment or loyalty to joining a high control group. You participate in debasing and degrading yourself.

That then leads to ‘moral injury’ when you try to leave the group: because you violated your own (or society’s) morals in order to pledge allegiance to a person, a group, or higher value

…and doing so injured you on a soul-level. A target feels that they ‘chose’ what happened to them, and therefore are de-motivated from leaving, even when it harms them on an existential level to stay. They may even feel they deserve to be ‘punished’ or that they are shameful, bad, or unworthy, and therefore what good is it to leave?

When we participate, we unintentionally ‘agree’, and that’s why people like this spring it on you.

They pressure you into committing, performing, participating – especially during a period of high emotion – and then later use it against you if you try to stand up for yourself or push back. You wouldn’t have chosen to even engage with the person or group had you even known that this is the direction it would go in.

And each step of debasement and shame erodes your moral line before doing the next one.

Like in “Training Day” when Denzel Washington’s corrupt cop character insists the protagonist do something illegal so he can ‘train’ him…when in reality this just gave him power and leverage over the newbie officer.

It’s why gangs require you do something horrendous to join the gang, like theft or murder

…something that erodes your own moral code and sense of integrity, so that you (1) can never go back, and (2) it begins the process of changing who you are.

The original quote contextualizing this in the realm of relationships stopped me in my tracks.

Because isn’t it what unhealthy people do? Encourage – even insist – you to violate your own boundaries, because if you don’t, you don’t love them, or you aren’t good enough, or they are manipulating you and putting you in panic by removing their love or presence.

It’s a way of training a victim:

Do what I want, and I will respond to you positively; do something I don’t want, and I will respond to you negatively.

And the victim gets so confused between their love for this person, the actions they themselves are doing, and what this means about them as a person.

This is why healthy relationships are built on respect.

Because relationships built on disrespect of the victim are relationships that are built on debasing the victim, and getting the victim to eventually, actively choose that.

Sometimes abusers engage in humiliation as an intermediate form of abuse because of the rage and contempt they feel toward the victim, and yet they do not want to engage in physical or ‘real’ abuse.

Serial killers and many abusers often end up having to work themselves up to their ultimate actions.

Before a serial killer kills the first time, for example, they may engage in stalking or ‘peeping’ at individuals that would later be considered potential victims.

Abusers start with using their soft influence and intelligence to convince a victim to change their thoughts/mind/actions/feelings before demonstrating (and escalating into) outright violence.

The Gottman Institute identifies “contempt” as one of the predictors of divorce, but it is also a bellwether of abusive behavior

…contempt for the victim being a kind of ‘permission’ they give themselves to ‘punish’ the victim or escalate their own behaviors. Safe people divorce when they start to despise the person they are with, but an unsafe person may begin to engage in humiliation of the victim, both in public and private.

…this humiliation being driven by the abuser’s contempt (and possible rage) but they haven’t worked themselves up yet to actual physical abuse yet.

So you see humiliation of the victim by the abuser as they start to identify the victim as someone who they are ‘allowed’ to physically abuse.

This degradation is used as an intermediate form of abuse as their psychological barriers of harming the victim are eroded.

Before we can even speak, we can still communicate with our caregivers, and our caregivers communicate with us.

The earliest ‘language’ is emotion. (This is the foundation of the attachment bond.)

Imagine if this language is disgust, anger, sadness, abandonment, instead of love, joy, and connection?

And how does a caregiver express this? Does a caregiver cooperate with an infant, or dictate? Is a caregiver engaging in reciprocal communication or uni-directional communication?

One reason I believe the toddler stage is considered to be so challenging, is that it is the transition between non-verbal and verbal communication.

Toddlers are learning how to articulate their needs, their wants, their emotions; they are learning the idea that everything has a name, and that name is important to connect to others, to communicate from inside themselves so that another understands.

What happens when this language, these attempts to communicate, is not nurtured, appreciated, and shut down?

Parents who physically abuse their young children are more likely to engage in non-cooperative communication. They issue commands and expect obedience, then act physically when they don’t get it. They often lack a fundamental understanding of child development, such as thinking the purpose of ‘testing’ is defiance when in fact, at the very early stages, it is actual methodical testing to determine the ‘rules’ of their environment under different permutations.

Many of these parents are ‘position oriented’.

“Because I’m your mother/father.”

But what does that mean? Our ability to conceptualize the world, to conceptualize and understand ourselves, to process our emotions is rooted in language. What is a mother? Why is ‘mother’ so important? Can you even ask these questions if you don’t have the language to do so?

How much abuse is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a child understands or is capable of?

Or a fundamental inability to communicate your expectations to them?

So much of therapy is “I feel ____ and would like ____.”

How can you set boundaries, boundaries which provide protection and self-care, if you can’t articulate your needs, if you don’t feel you have the right to speak up?

We think of love as the foundation between a parent and a child when, in fact, it is respect

…nurtured through a framework of cooperative communication, that is the foundation for the house that love builds.

Language and communication of our inner experience

• Emotions do not define us, they are a form of internal communication that help us to understand ourselves. (source)
• Emotions are not ‘good’ or ‘bad’. (source)
• When we recognize improper behavior as improper communication, we can use language as the tool to correct it. (source) (parenting perspective)

Patterns in communication

• “I knew I had to get out and break the cycle.” What cycle? “The cycle of people taking their feelings out on their family.” (source)
• The parent-child coercive cycle
• Misbehaving children and their parents (and teachers) can get into a pattern where the bulk of any communication to that child is corrective. (source)
• How do I break this cycle with my son, where I am too critical of him and he then is more defensive and argues with me? (source)
• The addiction cycle of abuse
• The communicative cycle of employee emotional abuse

Abuse depends on language

• The link between child abuse and the role of communication
• The “I love you” defense

When “I love you” is deployed as a defense, an invoked reminder, it functions to communicate the idea “I can’t hurt you, because I love you.”

In refusing to apologize, and to be accountable, and to listen to someone who is articulating a boundary, and instead “reminding” them that you love them, that you have always loved them and always will, you are effectively, even if unintentionally, communicating these things:

1. That love and harm are mutually exclusive capacities.
2. That love is static, and does not require the active work of negotiating boundaries.
3. That the person is saying they don’t feel loved, rather than saying they don’t feel respected.

Skills for dealing with narcissism

Reinforcing the abuser’s perspective through language

One of the biggest sources of victim blaming is the way we talk about it; language surrounding abuse and sexual assault immediately puts our attention on the victim instead of the perpetrator. This is a demonstration developed by Julia Penelope and frequently used by Jackson Katz to show how language can be victim blaming:

• Alex beat Jordan; This sentence is written in active voice. It is clear who is committing the violence.
• Jordan was beaten by Alex; The sentence has been changed to passive voice, so Jordan comes first.
• Jordan was beaten; Notice that Alex is removed from the sentence completely.
• Jordan is a battered (wo)man; Being a battered person is now part of Jordan’s identity, and Alex is not a part of the statement.

As you can see, the focus has shifted entirely to Jordan instead of Alex, encouraging the audience to focus on the victim’s actions instead of the perpetrator’s actions. (source)

Passive voice and distancing language

• The connection between abusers and passive voice
• The Language of Gender Violence
• Josh Duggar’s apology that contains no actual apology
• PostSecret where ‘someone got shot’
• Analysis of distancing and passive language to deny responsibility in /r/TIFU
• How men who’ve murdered women ‘see themselves as acted upon, and rarely the actor’.
• Hungarian camera operator ‘apologizes’ for kicking refugees.
• Fraudulent studies contain more ‘linguistic obfuscation’.
• The Politics of Euphemism: Cop-talk for shooting a suspect
• /u/floodlitworld explains it’s extremely manipulative language to make the officer seem less responsible
• When people don’t believe their behavior is abusive: passive voice and distancing language (male perpetrators, female victims perspectives)
• Jimmy Swaggart’s heartfelt non-apology
• Passive phrases and impersonal chains of nouns are a common way to obscure relationships behind text and shirk responsibility
• Actor who “copped to being thoughtless and insensitive” insists he has “never treated women with willful, malicious intent”, goes on to offer a non-apology for sexual harrassment
• Brock Turner’s statement to the court regarding his rape/sexual assault of a woman where he admits to his actions while side-stepping responsibility for them.
• Dan Turner’s letter to the judge about how his son, a rapist, is a tragic victim of events.
• Ryan Lochte, Olympic swimmer, lies about lying
• I “get violent”
• I’m sorry if you feel hurt, but…

Verbal abuse: Verbal abuse attempts to limit or bring down your consciousness or ability to act. It defines you in a negative way, threatens you, silences you, or even defines you as non-existent by means of giving you the silent treatment. If someone tells you that you are too sensitive, crazy, stupid, or something similar, they are saying something verbally abusive. They are defining you as something other than what you are. – Patricia Evans

Healthy Communication

• Honest Communication (video) However, honest communication is dangerous in an abusive environment.
• Using conscious awareness to re-calibrate my perceptions to reality could prevent me from a negative thought feedback loop which leads to abusive behavior. -source
• What healthy communication actually looks like. (She’s responding to my comment on the bottom in context of the article.)
• Signs of maturity
• The Power of Language in Conceptualizing Reality