:1784789187,439648, I think for some people (myself included), knowing the "why" helps with personal acceptance. I know for me, it was difficult overcoming some common mental conflicts revolving around common societal programming (eg: "päin is bad and to be avoided", "protect Read more… the ones you love", "men don't hit women", etc) versus the raging and ravenous desire of sadism to express our love and intimacy with intense sensations like päin and hümiliation. Feelings of guilt, shame, and negative self image can easily become overwhelming if one doesn't know why they do the things we do - and let's face it, the difficult truth is by accepting our sadistic nature and expressing it, we separate ourselves from the greater masses: partly as they ignorantly *** sadists based on the negative connotation, and partly to protect ourselves from the torches and pitchforks.
Being able to understand our "why" also helps in communicating our need/wants/expectations to others, I find. This helps when explaining an unusual (or scary) desire as it can help shape the shared understanding for intent, which I feel is a vital aspect of the s/m dynamic and forming trust for these activities. Of course, the "why" may not matter to everyone, and that's okay, too!

Knowing the "why"... I am trying to find material on this for my beloved, who wants to explore into his sadism but has those natural (probably healthy) feelings of conflict around it. And he has asked me the "why" of my masochism, which I can articulate up to a point- but searches for thoughtful blog posts, articles etc are just throwing up the standard vague psychology today stuff and annoying listicles from sites that have clearly mastered the SEO but little else!

So I've joined this site to see what the forum is like - doesn't seem like an abundant resource as yet, but people themselves are often abundant resources. Open to discussion with anyone joining this thread, but particularly looking for good sources of learning.