Let's remember what we've proposed about the core of a submissive child's nature: an intense, preferential attention and sensitivity to social cues that develops into a special sensitivity to the influence of others, and an eventual "external locus of control." This child, in a reasonably suitable environment free of excessive trauma will develop as follows: when she senses her parents having even a small degree of distress from the normal tensions of life, she will try very hard to "be good" for them. She will try not to irritate them, make demands on them, she will try to be helpful, while at the same time putting her needs to the side. Because she is still a child, she will while wholeheartedly trying to "be real good" feel some resentment and anxiety for having (in response to her own internal demands) to be good. Now even good and loving parents will encourage this, praise this response: "Honey, thank you for being such a good girl while Mommy has to take care of your baby sister. You are so good to your little sister, and to me." So the submissive child experiences first, the impulse to take care of others, to soothe them, to not be difficult, leading her to put aside her needs, and also the resentment for not having her needs recognized and met. She suffers on some level, to some degree, from the putting aside of her needs, and from stuffing the angers and resentments. She suffers.
Yet at the same time that she suffers, she is being praised, and that feels exceptionally good, exceptionally meaningful to the submissive child. She learns that to suffer in service to another brings pleasure.
If we look at the core of submissive sexuality, we see that the essence is a mirror, a concrete embodiment of her entire personality as formed by early interpersonal relations. To express love, one serves. To feel loved, one serves. When she is an adult this imperative is expressed in her sexuality. Her fantasies are nearly universal amongst submissives: sexual pleasure in suffering as the captured slave, the harem girl, the maiden stolen by the pirates, the whore for use by a roomful of men under the watchful eye of her pimp.
Her adult sexuality is elaborated upon this psychic core: she is receptive, she is open, she is giving, and what touches her most powerfully in sexual intimacy is to be commanded, taken, used, even forced to suffer because even in suffering she is loved. She learns the equation of suffering = pleasure in those very early interchanges in which she experienced the flush of pleasure in being of service to her family. The more she had to suffer, the more she had to put aside her own needs in order to "be good", the greater perhaps is this connection, and the more overtly masochistic the submissive may be. This construct may account for the spectrum of masochism amongst submissives: the more challenging or difficult or overtly painful her early experiences are, the more likely she may be to learn that loving for her, involves some degree of suffering. Pure service without physical masochism defines one end of this spectrum, and intense masochistic needs in a submissive woman defines the other.
Please note that we are still talking about the healthy submissive here. Such a woman will have minimal conflicts about being constituted the way she is, whether or not she is intensely masochistic. It just is the way she loves, different loving, so to speak. It never stops feeling loving to her, as long as she is in service to, and "suffering" for, a loving Dominant. Once she has unraveled the knots of her culture's values, she will not be seriously conflicted about her sexual nature or desires. She will have an intense, expressive, emotionally intimate and meaningful sex life within the safety of the hold of her keeper.
Let us not then mistake the submissive need to follow for weakness. Let us not mistake the submissive's capacity for relatedness to inability to be alone. Let us not mistake the submissive's vital, joyous sexuality for self-destructive masochistic equivalents: self-mutilation undertaken out of rage or despair.
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