Sensory deprivation sex, self-confidence and anxiety

Image by the brilliant Stuart F Taylor

As a general rule I don’t like blindfolds. I could try and bullshit you about how I like to look into someone’s eyes when they tip over the edge of a powerful orgasm, but while that’s true, it’s not the whole truth. My dislike of blindfolds comes from a meaner place. They’re a bit… tame, aren’t they? A bit … (whisper it) … 50 Shades? But laying my irrational snobbery to one side, the other day I cracked out one of my many airplane-branded blindfolds (they’re free, so I am literally allergic to not taking them home) to try some sensory deprivation sex.

Sensory deprivation sex is good for something other than pure horniness: it makes me a better dominant. Not good, obviously – I am still more likely to trip over a rope than successfully tie a dude up with it – but better.

Sensory deprivation gives me confidence, because it means he can’t see how nervous I am, or how clumsy. How bad at knots.

Beating anxiety through BDSM

I’d promised him a blow job. Not in a ‘you cook the dinner I’ll suck you off’ way, just… hmm. I’m not feeling massively horny at the moment – stress, as ever – and if I’m not horny sometimes the best way to get into it is to do something that is totally and utterly not about me.

If we’re fucking my brain’s racing through all the reasons why I might not come, and all the things I should be doing. It tells me I’m not wet enough and that I used to be better at this. So when he tried to fuck me I said no, but I’ll give you a decent blow job later. A proper one. One you have to lie down for. With lots of spit and choking.

So: time for a suck job. But in that atmosphere of stress, with me worried that I’ve lost my mojo forever, the idea of him staring down at me – watching every tiny movement – did not really appeal. So I told him to lie down on the bed, stick some good music on his noise cancelling headphones, and wear a blindfold.

Then I tied his wrists to the bed, just to make absolutely sure he knew to stay the fuck still and let me get the fuck on with it.

Sensory deprivation and self-confidence

When he’s deprived of sight and sound, there’s no forewarning about what I’m going to do with his cock. When I spit on the head, it pulses with surprise – a larger twitch than normal, which gives me the chance to admire the thickness of it, and wonder whether this erection is ever so slightly harder than normal. I squeeze it tight, spit again, and he moans.

Most of all I like that with his ears pumped full of something loud, he cannot gauge the sounds that are coming out of his own mouth. When he tells me “yes” or “that’s it” his voice is much louder than normal. When he pulls against the ropes that are binding him to the bed frame, the rattling doesn’t make him wince in the way he normally would.

I’m enjoying the fact that he can’t hear or see me – I like pinching his nipples at random intervals, and for different period of time. First long and hard and painful – nails digging in behind them just how he likes it. Then shorter pinches and nips. A bite. A long suck. Slaps to his chest. And all the while swapping out my mouth and hands on his prick. Sporadic and unpredictable, like my blow jobs rarely are – they’re usually strong and hard and sloppy, honed over a fair few years of knowing exactly how he wants them. Usually building speed, with pauses to edge him while I hold his dick still right at the back of my throat and gag on it hard so he can hear it.

But today he can’t hear it. Today he can neither hear or see – only moan and beg too loudly for what he wants. It’s delicious.

And more – it’s weirdly liberating. I’m not normally self-conscious or nervous, especially in front of him. But recently I’ve become more so, especially on a particularly anxious day. I think it took a bout of sensory deprivation sex to make me realise just how much my brain was getting in the way of my fun.

With his wrists tied up, his eyes behind a blindfold, and noise-cancelling headphones ensuring that he can’t hear what I’ll do next, I can let everything I worried about fall away, focusing instead on the blush of red spreading across his chest and the pulse of his blood in his dick.

He may not be able to see or hear me, but the most important thing to me right now is that I’ve lost that sixth sense that’s been killing my drive. The constant anxiety that ticks through my brain like clockwork, examining everything I do and spinning it into a catastrophic mistake.

Afterwards, when he’s come in my mouth and I’ve released him from my amateur bondage, I realise something else about sensory deprivation: if someone you love can’t see what you’re doing, they usually assume the best. The blanks he’s filling in with his mind make his dick twitch and his heart race. When he’s deprived of the ability to see or hear me, he doesn’t picture me stumbling clumsily around the bed with lubed-up hands and nowhere to wipe them: he imagines me deliberately not touching him for a while to build suspense. He doesn’t see that the knickers I’m wearing have holes in and knackered elastic: he remembers what my naked arse looks like, and pictures the way it curves when I’m in my most flattering pose.

I see every tiny detail of myself through a prism of horror and panic. So I only ever see the worst, and that magnified until it fills my mind and blocks out everything else.

He assumes the best, even when he can’t see it.

8 Comments

  • Mrs Fever says:

    Love this. :)

    Blindfolds are an issue for me, but only if I’m the one expected to wear it.

    Tangential: I often have a hard time listing hard limits because by saying something like “Blindfolds are a hard NO,” I am saying that *everything* to do with blindfolds is a hard no. And that’s not really accurate. Because I’ll use a blindfold on a partner, won’t I? And just because it’s called a blindfold doesn’t mean I have to use it on the eyes, does it? And what if my body is taken over by an alien or something and all of a sudden I’m not a clawing claustrophobic maniac when anything covers my eyes or touches my face? What then? I can’t very well be like, “NOPE! Changed my mind!” (Well, I *could* say that, but I try very hard to not be wishy-washy about kinky shit.) And I realize that blindfolds are a rather mild example, but the whole ‘stating explicit hard limits’ thing applies to a little more hard-core things for me as well, like knives and blood and meeting people’s family members and such.

    Just, y’know… Thinking out loud.

  • Dubhlann says:

    I love blindfolds for the reason you stated… with the absence of data, your mind fills in the missing data from its own imagination, and its imagination is often a lot better than what is real.

    Well done ma’am.

  • SpaceCaptainSmith says:

    Aww. That was a sweet one (and makes a great case for sensory deprivation!), but it’s sad as well. Maybe you’re the one who would benefit more from the blindfold and headphones if you’re having such trouble letting go (although that might make the blowjobs a bit awkward…).

    One wonders how much potentially great sex is missed because of one or both partners’ anxiety and self-consciousness about their bodies. There’s a reason why a lot of people prefer to fuck in the dark.

    • Dubhlann says:

      I dunno I’ve had women give me blowjobs blindfolded. I can totally see how that’d be good. Without sight all she can do is feel his penis, feel it harden, feel it twitch… feel him tense… anyway, she rather liked it.

  • techreader says:

    “I see every tiny detail of myself through a prism of horror and panic. So I only ever see the worst, and that magnified until it fills my mind and blocks out everything else.”

    This, I think, is the primary difference between men and women. Women seem to be hyper-self-critical. Men, not so much. If we could only relax a little. This isn’t even a new concept:

    O wad some Power the giftie gie us
    To see oursels as ithers see us!
    It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
    An’ foolish notion:
    http://www.robertburns.org/works/97.shtml

    SpaceCaptainSmith sez: “One wonders how much potentially great sex is missed because of one or both partners’ anxiety and self-consciousness about their bodies. There’s a reason why a lot of people prefer to fuck in the dark.”

    Yup.

    http://www.newslinq.com/men-vs-women/

    Image #19 especially.

    • SpaceCaptainSmith says:

      You know, I deliberately wrote that comment in a gender-neutral way because it’s not just an issue for women, but thanks for going straight to the sexual stereotypes anyway… OK, there is some truth in that cartoon though.

      • techreader says:

        Yes; every stereotype is based in truth, but is rarely more than half-true. And many stereotypes are less than a quarter true.

        But “men see themselves as better than they are, while women see themselves as worse than they are” is, from my experience, MOSTLY true. There are a few men who obsess over every flaw or wrinkle, and there are women who don’t – but they aren’t the majority.

  • oxyfromsg says:

    This is such a good post anyway, but the audio really lifts it and gives it a new dimension

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