Twenty Lashes: The New Borderline Between Pain and Pleasure

2/19/2006





Heartbreak. What a great time. Who doesn’t love sitting home alone on Friday nights, spending ungodly amounts of money on eBay?

Do we somehow desire the sting that comes at the demise of a relationship? Are the women looking for bad boys really looking for agony? When we know things will go sour, we trudge ahead anyways. Are we that naïve, or are we just hopeful? Do we like the challenge, or do we like the pain when we fail?

Women (and men to a lesser extent) deceive themselves into believing almost anything regarding love. I’ll admit to my friends how horrible a guy treats me, but it doesn’t stop me from waiting on him, cooking for him, and generally taking care of him. “He needs me” or the more common “he just needs time” are usually my excuses. Strangely, none of those relationships have worked out for me. So why do I stick it out for a few years? Do I subconsciously like feeling like shit when the relationship falls completely apart? Maybe I enjoy picking up the shards of my life and Scotch-taping them back together.

The line between what feels good and what doesn’t has become so blurred that S&M has become outrageously popular. Sex- what is supposed to be emotionally binding- now just binds our wrists to the bedposts. Whips and handcuffs (and not just physically speaking) now mar yet another aspect of our love lives. We’re losing sight of our own boundaries. When do you say enough is enough? How many lashes are too many?

The threshold between pain and pleasure is surprisingly porous, and I think Heathcliff and Cathy would agree. Few would argue the realness (not necessarily the functionality or rationality) of their love. But is their love real because pain and pleasure are so synonymous? Perhaps it’s real because they don’t guard themselves from pain, but rather submerge themselves in it. Today, we take just enough caution to barely impair our vision- just enough to let it hurt.

Have we been cultured into believing something that doesn’t hurt is a lie? Since when did simple pleasure become extinct?

Maybe simple pleasure just never existed.

Perhaps it’s human nature to want to feel the burn. Adam and Eve had it too good- she had to taste the fruit because even before Christ, having pleasure with no pain wasn’t natural. It’s programmed into us. Maybe wanting pain is the true primeval sin.