When I take pain, it’s to find release.  When I took a singletail whip to the navel and nipples, it was more a process of breaking down and rebuilding.  That was the furthest I’ve been pushed yet, and ironically it was also the first time that I felt like I couldn’t take “enough.”  Not as much as I wanted to be able to take, not as much as I felt the one holding the whip wanted to give.

My own bottom has been expressing lately that she doesn’t feel like she can take as much as she used to be able to, or as much as she wants to.  I get the feeling that she doesn’t believe she’s fulfilling me in that way, though I do my best to reassure her that’s not the case.  Would it be fun to play with someone who could take everything I could possibly dish out?  Well, the idea seems exciting, but realistically speaking, such a person doesn’t exist.  And even if they did… would it make me feel any more fulfilled as a sadist?  I can’t answer that for sure one way or the other.

But I think that pleasing one’s top/dominant is only part of the equation.  A big part of masochism is pushing one’s self.  Expanding their limits, reaching those plateaus and overcoming them.  I can only speak for myself, but I am my own greatest critic, and I think the same is true of many — we hold ourselves to higher expectations than others do.  I don’t ever expect to be satisfied with my progression in BDSM or anything in life.  For me, self-satisfaction breeds complacence, which is poison to self-progression and evolution.  I want to grow, to learn, to evolve, to get better every day of my life.

So in that sense, I think it’s healthy to want more.  And I love that she wants to give more, but I don’t want her to feel that I need more — that she isn’t enough.  I feel very completed by what she gives to me, and by what I give to her.  So sadists, let your bottoms know what they mean to you.  Without them, many of us would be expressing these urges in unhealthy ways.