Agreed; the first time I ever made a man ‘quiver with pleasure’ involuntarily it was both very arousing and empowering, even though we just making out and not engaged in coitus.
Since then, it’s always been a source of titillation for me.
That actually makes a LOT of sense; as a course of habit models spend so much time focused on how they look and how their image is being perceived. Losing control and not caring about looking ‘just so’ is probably a big obstacle for many people who make their living off of their looks.
I’ve never dated a model, but I’ve dated an ultra-stylish fashion photographer and an ultra swishy fashionista hairdresser, and both dates were hilariously, bizarrely awful experiences. Agreed with @Melizmatic that their obsession with image and perception makes them difficult to relate to as humans.
Even on the scale of everyday life. You can tell when someone doesn’t share your dark sense of humor because they’re looking at you like ‘how can you think this is funny?’ and you want to tell them ‘I don’t think any of this is funny but this is the only way of coping that I know of’.
Turning this into an art form where like minds will listen to you for an hour is the stuff of some of the greatest careers in standup comedy.
One of the most amazing standup specials I’ve seen is Maria Bamford’s Special Special Special. Her standup often revolves around her real-life mental illness (she’s bipolar) and painful issues she had growing up, which is already brave stuff, but that special is recorded in her living room to an audience of two: her mom and dad. It’s breathtaking catharsis and painfully awkward.
In my experience excessive self-consciousness is the natural enemy of intimacy. Fortunately it’s usually pretty easy to quickly tell if someone is that way.
@GulliverFoyle’s answer is the most accurate you could get. For me, yes, watching the pleasure derived is a large part of it. I had never considered an orgasm fetish, but the two tie neatly into each other and make a lot of sense in my life. As was said the defining characteristic is control; for me that takes the form of guiding my partner through the experience, and when done well delivers us each to where we need to be. There are others for whom the sub exists to be disregarded; the act of their invalidation, and as follows their needs, serves as the basis of the control.
That kind of sex work is not entirely unlike what I am getting at, but not quite. That would make one into a “specialist” for something that is supposedly an aspect of most everybodys daily lives already. And without a larger social context still plays into that sexual experience becoming another commodity, instead of liberating from it. Phrasing it as “free of charge” makes it sound like the caller is getting away with something, gaming a transaction of some kind.
The psychology of sex as transaction could be a topic in itself. What strikes me as foolish about “sex as commodity” is that just about everybody can be said to have a sexual identity of some sort. When you engage in sexual activity with someone, are you providing something to them that they should compensate you for? Or are they? If everybody involved are equal participants, then isn’t everybody already “paid”? And ultimately, isn’t it more accurate to say that you are sex? Rather than that it is a thing being exchanged? A lot of sexual talk I hear involves hints of tranasctionality, but it makes no sense to me.
What my idea of social consent versus interpersonal consent involves is mostly that I do not trust feelings of personal attraction. That simply seems like a blueprint for applying self-centered criteria to people. If I can consent to an event, or a system then I can move beyond whatever preferences I might have. For instance having a match made by an algorithm, or even a lottery. I consent to help whichever person sexually as determined by X process. My consent is to the process, not to an individual person.
We know. And you generally come across as sincere. Don’t stress out about it. What we grok of each other we grok. What we don’t, perhaps another day. At least you’re not a jerk about the crossed signals. Can’t speak for others, but I’m happy to have a nice person around even though I don’t always understand you.
Any one person has a finite set of experience, so I do not intend to generalize. Most of my experiences have included someone trying to get their rocks off, and I’m either an impediment or an assistance to their process. My process is just a coincidence happening in parallel. That’s lead me to be less and less interested. Even a good relationship doesn’t prevent sex from being transactional. My world feels impoverished compared to yours, on this score.
