Things I meant to say naked

Ghostface kink and why we love to be chased

Figs Season 1 Episode 4

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0:00 | 37:59

Maybe you love horror—or maybe you’ve even AI’d yourself into your favorite final girl. Or… you’ve got a thing for masked men. In this episode, Figs dives into the rising interest in predator/prey play and mask play (a.k.a. the “Ghostface kink”). Play hide and seek with figs as she tries to understand: why the chase can feel hot, how fear flips into desire, and what consent, context, and safety look like when you want to be caught.


Citation/references and other things I read for today’s episode:

 

Andersen, M. M., Schjoedt, U., Price, H., Rosas, F. E., Scrivner, C., & Clasen, M. (2020). Playing with fear: A field study in recreational horror. Psychological science, 31(12), 1497-1510.

 

Bloom, P. (2021). The paradox of pleasurable fear. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(2), 93-94.

 

Dutton, D. G., & Aron, A. P. (1974). Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of personality and social psychology, 30(4), 510.

 

Lin, J. H. T., Wu, D. Y., & Tao, C. C. (2018). So scary, yet so fun: The role of self-efficacy in enjoyment of a virtual reality horror game. New Media & Society, 20(9), 3223-3242.

 

Lorett, A. (2024). 'Sex Equals Death, Okay?': The Role of Fear on Individual Differences in Sexual Arousal (Doctoral dissertation, Wellesley College).

 

McKinney, K. (2011). The Effects of Adrenaline on Arousal and Attraction. Scholars: McKendree University Online Journal of Undergraduate Research, 17.

 

Savage, H. S., & Garfinkel, S. (2025). Making Sense of Sensation: A model of Interoceptive Attribution and Appraisal with Clinical applications. PsyArXiv. https://doi. org/10.31234/osf. io/bsma9_v1.

 

Schachter, S. (1964). The interaction of cognitive and physiological determinants of emotional state. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 49-80). Academic Press.

 

Sharifzadeh, B. (2009). The impact of anxiety on subjective and physiological sexual arousal (Doctoral dissertation, Concordia University).

 

Scrivner, C., Andersen, M. M., Schjødt, U., & Clasen, M. (2022). The psychological benefits of scary play in three types of horror fans. Journal of Media Psychology.

 

Zillmann D, Hay TA and Bryant J (1975) The effect of suspense and its resolution on the appreciation of dramatic presentations. Journal of Research in Personality 9(4): 307–323


cover art: bofenglin

I want to hear from you. What are things you meant to say naked— the truths, the questions, the unsent texts?

SPEAKER_00

I know today's episode is gonna be a fan favorite. If it's not for the topic, it's going to be for the story I'm about to tell you. For a little bit of context, I love spooky. I love the macabre. I love creepy. Halloween is my favorite holiday, but I can't do scary. I can't watch horror movies. I can't even watch the commercials. I can't even do jump scares on TikTok. I will run out of the room. This is something I've struggled with my whole life. The people around me know this and just don't get it. I don't even get it. I've tried many things to just try to be able to watch scary, but I can't. The scariest thing I have ever watched, it's still James and the Giant Peach. Let me defend myself. James and the Giant Peach is scary, okay? You're gonna tell me those bugs weren't creepy. You're gonna tell me that scene when they go underwater and they're doing that little rescue, that wasn't scary. That terrified me for ages. I am still scared of James and the Giant Peach. And when I was 17, my my best friend Paula thought it was a wonderful idea to do some kind of exposure therapy. Looking back, this is probably my first experience with the field of psychology, but she thought it would be a wonderful idea for us to go to Hollow Screen, which is in Busch Gardens when in the month of October they fill the park with scare houses and scare zones. Terrible fucking idea, Paula. I know she's gonna listen to this and I know she's gonna laugh. I just know it because I I don't remember most of it because quite frankly, I fainted three times. I fainted three times. Yeah, I woke up in people's arms. I did. I usually like with my friends flanked over me, dragging me across the park, and they're like, keep going. And I try to really like push through like what like how they say white knuckle through it. I really tried, but you know, I was like an opossum. I I was I was playing dead. And after the third time, I guess the exposure therapy was working a bit because I stopped fainting. But rather than the flight or freeze response, my response became fight. The way I fought back was completely unconventional and quite frankly embarrassing. I started threatening the actors with my ass. Dead ass, chasing them, facing them with my ass. And you know what I would say? I would say, get back. I had dairy and I'm lactose intolerant. It's really fucking embarrassing. But really, it's really funny. That was what I thought would work to keep zombies with chainsaws away with my ass. When you're 17. We were outdoors, like it it wasn't even a good threat. It wasn't, but you had to make do with what you got. So and and what I have is an ass. So that's what I did. And it it's just always been like that for you know, for the last more than a decade. I just I can't do scary. And you can imagine the surprise in myself when that changed a bit two years ago. Two years ago, I was going through a breakup, and just like any girly, I started reading books on romance because I needed some hope and love. And I got really into book talk. And the book that was circulating at the time was haunting Adeline. Yeah, that book. I didn't I didn't even read the triggers. I I didn't even read the back. I just I just set saw people's reactions. I'm like, and my curious brain, because curiosity kills a cat, especially my cat. I was like, you know what? Let's see what this is about. It it didn't kill the cat. It did something else to my cat. It unlocked a kink. It did. It made the person who can't even watch James and the giant peach now very seriously consider with the right partner in context. I would totally be down to be chased through a forest by a masked stranger and totally get ruined. I yeah, it did something for me, it really did. And I saw I was not alone. This this is actually the reason why I'm coming up with this topic is when I was recording these episodes, I was seeing a lot of women using AI, in which it's an image of them with cute little hair clip answering the phone, and right behind them was ghost face. And I was just seeing like how masked strangers and masked men were like really blowing up on TikTok. And I'm just like, you know what? I don't think I'm not the only one here. What is going on with the collective conscious? What is going on with the collective erotic? So, today's episode, I am going to dive into what is now called ghost face kink, which is a combination of masked play and predator and play play kink. So this is this is something relatively new. And why we eroticize danger, what is the thrill of the chase, what horror can teach us about ourselves, and how horror play is a form of the erotic. How this erotic play can teach us about ourselves. I'm really excited about today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the story, and we're gonna get right into it. Welcome to Things I'm Meant to Say Naked, a podcast about mental health, desire, intimacy, and the truths that we carry in our bodies. I'm Figgs, a certified sex therapist, a licensed mental health counselor, a lover, and someone who has spent way too much time overthinking and turned that into her career. This show is pretty education, part commentary, and a part love letter to the versions of us who don't know what the hell we're doing. They want to feel really good doing it. Some episodes will be just me offering insights, stories, and spicy tastes in the erotic. Others will feature guests, lovers, and maybe a little bit of chaos. So get comfy and let's get into things that we were meant to say naked. Although this podcast explores themes of mental health, relationships, and sexuality, it's for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care. If you find yourself struggling, please reach out to a licensed provider in your area. A big part why I don't like horror movies or horror elements is because I have chronic nightmares. I call it a Stephen King disease. I dub him as my predecessor because I learned that most of his books actually come from his own nightmares. So I wonder if he struggles what I do, which is every time I sleep, anytime I have a dream, it's a vivid, grotesque nightmare. I am a different character every time, just different endings. The characters all have backstories. The most common theme, unfortunately, which is my least favorite one, it ends with a zombie apocalypse. I hate it. I don't want to give my brain any more ideas, so I figure like staying away from horror movies does that. It saves myself from my worst nightmare. So you can imagine how I just don't get why a good friend of mine tells me he loves zombie shows. He loves The Walking Dead. He loves The Last of Us, and I don't get it until he told me that he likes to imagine himself surviving those scenarios. And I look at him and I look at me. I'm 4'11. I'm a therapist. And I'm indoorsy. What am I gonna do? Talk to a zombie? Like, I won't survive. Don't try to save me. I'm not gonna make it. Him, on the other hand, he's six foot, he likes to hike for fun. If anyone's gonna survive a zombie apocalypse, it's him, not me. It reminded me of this term that we have in psychotherapy, which is called self-efficacy. Self-efficacy means the belief of you being able to overcome challenges. He is much more able to, or I'm sure he has much more belief of overcoming the challenge of a zombie apocalypse than I do. When I was thinking about that, I that's what kind of got me into this rabbit hole of this topic because I discovered there's something called horror self-efficacy. Yeah, which is the belief of you being able to overcome or survive the horror elements. In this case, zombie apocalypse. I found a study that was done in 2018 by the National Cheng Chi University in Taiwan. Yeah. And they were testing how self-efficacy, horror self-efficacy, your ability to survive something, how that plays in with fear and how that makes you want to enjoy or play a horror video game. So they got 145 students, and what they did, they gave them VR goggles, and they had to be just willing to play. What is it called again? I want to make sure I get it right. The Brookhaven experiment, which is a zombie apocalypse, and you have a flashlight and a limited number of bullets. The playtime was about two minutes, and all players die in the end. Because prior to the study, there was multiple studies suggesting that the reason people like horror is because there's a satisfying ending. They're more likely to enjoy a horror movie if there's a satisfying ending. If your favorite character survives and the tension is released. And one of the studies that they cite was there's another one that was done in the 1970s where they showed this animated adventure film to kids. Yeah. The 1970s ethics board was like practically non-existent. You can get away with anything. What a time to be a psychologist. But they showed this animated adventure film to these children that had different degrees of suspense and it had a satisfying and unsatisfying ending. And the kids actually enjoyed the more suspense film if it had a satisfying ending. And this had to do a lot with kind of like this tension and release. And I even wonder if that was like a form of self-efficacy, seeing someone survive a scenario. I wonder if that makes us feel like we can survive the scenario. And so they challenged that because people still enjoy horror movies that have cliffhangers or where nobody survives. So, how do you make sense of that? And how do you make sense of video games that are becoming more popular? During the time I was recording this episode, uh, this video game, I was seeing it all over TikTok. Silent Hill F was like really big. Like, like I'm seeing horror games becoming popular. They were trying to justify that because it's no longer self-efficacy vicariously through someone else. Now it's yours, and you can die and will die. So, what makes that enjoyable? With the study, what they found was that it didn't really necessarily matter how scared the participants were. Like they can experience so much fear. But as long as they reported having some whore self-efficacy, they actually reported enjoying it more than someone who didn't really experience that fear. They didn't weren't that scared to begin with, but they didn't really have that self-efficacy. There wasn't that satisfaction when it came to that arousal. I bring up the study in in regards to today's topic, because this brought up a couple things for me as a sex therapist. One was the definition of an orgasm. I define it as a release of sexual tension, not necessarily how your genitals respond or how your body reacts because it's different for each person. And like I was thinking of that in terms of like the prior study before this Taiwan study, where you make sense of like all that sexual tension building up. And I was thinking of that, and then when it has that satisfying ending, like it feels good. And I wonder if predator and prey plays kind of like that, like there's so much anxiety and fear being chased by someone in the mask. And when it gets to that oh so good ending at the end, was is that part of the tension that was mentioned? Or is it more like the Taiwanese study where quite frankly, ghost face kink, you are gonna get caught. There is no winning in that situation. And knowing that there's not really room for self-efficacy. But I was thinking in terms of kink, what if a healthy dom and sub-relationship, it's what builds and creates that whore self-efficacy? Hear me out. If you are in a situation, like if you were tied up in a basement by a stranger you didn't trust, you experienced nothing but fear. I imagine there is actually zero sexual arousal. I mean, you're fearing for your life, versus if you are in that same situation by a DOM that you know that if you tap out or if you save the safe word, they will let you down. So I wonder if that healthy Dom and sub relationship kind of leads or lends itself to self-efficacy, that if it becomes too much, there's that safeguard that you will survive. I wonder. I love how I'm walking you guys through the rabbit hole while I was like researching this topic. But it's interesting. So it started with horror self-efficacy, and that horror self-efficacy led me to look and examine a little bit more a BDSM relationship, a DOM and sub-relationship in the context of ghost face kink. And that led me into neuroscience. So yeah, I'm gonna get into neuroscience in a bit. And the way I look at it in a BDSM relationship in relation to ghost face kink, it made me look into Shaster's model of emotional states. This, what it does, it looks like the cognitive processes of how we make sense of a sensation. And the way that we make sense of a sensation is that we go through three cognitive processes. It's attention, attribution, and appraisal. Attention is just being aware of the sensation. And this is actually pretty context and um personal history dependent. For example, you are gonna be much more aware and paying attention more to your heart rate if you're running or you're watching a horror movie versus if you're in a lecture. You're probably not gonna pay attention to your heart rate too much in a lecture. And this also plays in with actually mental illness and particularly panic attacks. So I'm actually gonna talk about panic attacks a little bit today. If you have a history of panic attacks, you're gonna be much more aware of changes in your heart rate than someone who doesn't, because typically an increased heart rate is what starts a panic attack. It's usually the onset, and that's what I hear in my office of like, what's the first thing they notice when they're about to get a panic attack is my heart starts racing. So after the attention aspect, which is now attribution, the attribution is why this is happening. When we're talking about like an increased heart rate, if we're watching a horror movie again and we're having that increased heart rate, the attribution is like, I'm having an increased heart rate because I'm watching a horror movie, and then appraisal, which is like, um, what does this mean to me? Then the appraisal will be that must mean I am scared. For people who have a history of panic attacks, and this is the issue when there's a lot of like uncertainty involved, where there's more factors involved, when you can't pin it to one thing, it leads to something which is called misattribution error. So when you attribute a sensation to other causes than what the actual cause may be. So people who have an like history of panic attacks, and this is what you hear often in canceling office, so they experience an increased heart rate. It can be because they're happy, it can be because they're excited, maybe they're watching a horror movie. But if you have a history of panic attacks, your first thought can be like, my heart's racing. This must mean I'm about to have a panic attack, therefore I'm having a panic attack. And it's kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It does, in fact, trigger a panic attack. And us therapists, what we typically do in those situations, we do CBT, which is cognitive behavioral therapy. Normally, what therapists do is that we help clients in their cognitions and identifying other appraisals and attributions of why similar sensations can mean different things. I bring this up, this misattribution error, because one of the misattribution errors that can exist and can happen is called excitation transfer. And this is where it gets really cool and really interesting, and we go into psychological studies that happened primarily in the 1970s, where they were really testing Shaster's model. The 1970s was such a fun time to be a psychologist. The ethics board was like practically non-existent. We did a lot of unethical stuff, but we learned a lot. But I'm going to look into the study, it was done in the 1970s by this uh psychologist named by Dutton Aaron in Canada. I love how my studies are also pretty international. And what they did was they got a group of men between the ages of 18 and 35, and they split these men into a control group and an experimental group. And these two groups did is that they crossed a bridge, and at the end of the bridge, there was a woman who asked them to do a survey, and they were seeing how willing these men were willing to do the survey after they crossed the bridge. The difference between the two groups is that one bridge was steady, safe, scenic, right? There's no increased heart rate, there's no fear involved. The other bridge was a suspension bridge. It was wobbly, it tilted, it felt like you were gonna be, you're gonna capsize over. What they saw was that the men who crossed the suspension bridge were much more likely to fill out the survey and call the surveyor back. They're saying that that must mean that this woman, they found this woman attractive, that they misattributed the fear and the increased heart rate of the suspension bridge with attraction to this woman. You can see what was wrong with the study in a sex therapy sense. They completely ignored the fact that not all men are straight. And they didn't actually ask if these men were attracted to this woman afterwards. So they actually replicated the study, sort of, in 2011, because they can't do the bridge anymore, ethics board. But what they did is that they got, I believe, 70 college students. They first asked these 70 college student men if they were attracted to women. Great. We know now everybody's straight. Thank you guys. What they did was that these 70 men were split into a control group and an experimental group, just much like the bridge. The control group was just given a survey afterwards, after they were asked if they were attracted to women, where they were shown images of women and they said, you know, how attracted they were. The experimental group, on the other hand, what they did was that they asked these men to do some form of physical activity. I'm not sure what they did. I think they made them run. It was for 15 minutes. I have that. They measured their heart rate, and what they saw was the more aroused, physically aroused by physical activity that they were, the more likely they were actually to identify the images as attractive. They were able to show how we may do an excitation transfer of adrenaline fear into something that we find sexually arousing or attractive. So I bring this these studies up. I bring the neuroscience into all of this because this is where a healthy dom and sub relationship really plays into ghost face kink. Just imagine you're going through a forest and you're getting Being chased by a stranger in a mask. Maybe that guy has a fake knife. You are going to experience an increased heart rate. You're gonna run. Maybe there's booby traps. I keep thinking there's booby traps for some reason. I've read a lot of fiction. The awareness, the appraisal, and the attribution will look like my heart's racing. I'm running, I'm out of breath because this man is chasing me through a forest with a knife. So that must mean I am scared, I am terrified, I am going to die. Versus in a BDSM relationship. If you are before the scene even happens, you're negotiating the booby traps that are gonna happen. I keep thinking there's gonna be booby traps. The punishment that happens at the end, the elements involved, the safe word, the limits of this play, and you feel trusting that everything's gonna be okay, that when the actual the actual scene starts, again, you are being chased through a forest by a masked stranger, stranger, with a fake knife. You're gonna notice your heart's racing, you're gonna be feeling fearful, you're falling for booby traps. I keep thinking of booby traps. But rather than it being like, I was I'm in danger, I'm gonna die, the attribution and the appraisal probably look like because my partner's chasing me. And my partner's chasing me because I want this, therefore I like this. I thought that was really interesting. I love that I'm walking you all through my thought process while I'm going through the literature. So after hearing about excitation transfer, right? How we may associate fear with sexual attraction, you probably are still thinking, or this is what I was thinking, figs, but this doesn't make sense. See, I know that anxiety and fear can be a huge inhibitor. I've talked about before in my episode one how lack of privacy, it can be it can be exciting for some, right? It can turn us on for some, but for a lot of us, it slows us down or completely turns us off. And that also applies to anxiety and fear. So I started looking into like what makes fear not a complete turn off? Why do people enjoy being afraid? And how can this possibly relate to BDSM? How can someone like me, who can't even watch James and the giant peach, consider being chased by a trusted stranger or trusted partner in the forest? So here's where I insert the horror paradox. Yeah, this is so cool. So this actually really started being studied in 2020. So this is all relatively new. And I found this researcher. Well, it's actually more of like a group, Anderson et al. in Denmark. I love mentioning researchers because you really get to see someone in their niche. I I again I love this part of, I love this part of academia is that when we find our niche, we really dive into it. And so this group of researchers, Anderson et all, they did a couple studies on horror, and they were trying to figure out why do people seek out fear? Why do they run towards the feeling that was designed for us to run away? They what they did was in 2020, they involved 110 subjects between the ages of 12 to 57. I actually like that they included children in this study because we rarely see that in research studies. And um it also opened like a bunch of questions for me. Is like, is Denmark known for horror? I I'm so new to the game. Like, what countries are known for being horror aversive versus really into it? And I wonder if Denmark is just one of them. Because I say that because they they include kids in this. So I'm I'm wondering, is like, is this like a normal thing? Yeah, I guess kids do like horror movies. I I just can't relate. I just can't relate. So, what they did with this 110 subjects is that they recorded their heart rates, they video recorded them with like um these monitors. While they go to this dystopian house and their three scare zones in particular, they looked at one of them included like this pig man, and I saw the picture. The the study actually included the picture of the three scare zones, and one had pig man, and there was one that had zombies under the table. I forgot what the third one was, but I I had to you have to understand, I had to skim through those images because even the images still scared me. I am such a scaredy cat. So after they went through the scare houses, the scare house, they asked, we were asked to complete a questionnaire where they were asked, like, you know, how scared were you during this three points? And how much did you enjoy and how willing are you to go back? The findings were consistent, and one part that, of course, increased heart rate was associated with more fear. So it kind of supported the Shafter's model is that we associate certain sensations with certain feelings. But what they noticed was there was this you-shaped relationship, and it was so interesting. What they found is that the ones who enjoyed going through the scare house more was in this when they weren't too scared and they were just scared enough. It was like just right. It was the just the right amount of uncertainty and surprise, and they associated that with also with like lay. With the right context and the right negotiations, kind of like BDSM, fear can be moderated. This you kind of think, think about it like this. There's folks that can go to a horror movie by themselves in a movie in a dark movie theater, and there's people who can watch a horror movie as long as the sun is out, or they watch Mulan afterwards. You know what I mean? There's certain contexts that in which the fear is feels moderated, it's under control, and that has a lot to do with play. That play is actually designed for us to challenge ourselves. And this really is where I get into the erotic. It's when we challenge ourselves to think outside the box, outside the mundane. And then when you look at a horror context, especially like a like um a ghost face kink, when you're just being scared just enough, this can be really fun. I I found that. And I also saw that again, these group of researchers from Denmark, they did another study where they reviewed that last study. This included a survey with American horror fans. And what they saw that there are three types of horror fans. There are the adrenaline junkies, the white knucklers, and the dark coppers. You guessed it. Adrenaline junkies actually enjoy the intensive experience of fear. They were more likely to get immediate gratification from the scary movies and experiences. The white knucklers, unlike the adrenaline junkies, didn't like being scared. Instead, they tended to get secondary benefits that help them learn about themselves, what they're capable, and how they respond to situations. Dark coppers are people who feel like horror is a way of coping with existential problems. Dark coppers agree with the statements such as horror movies remind me of how violent the world is today, and watching horror movies helps me control feelings of anxiety or depression. Interestingly, dark coppers appear to both get immediate pleasure and more like the secondary benefits similar to the white knucklers, and I didn't stop there. I was able to find one study about how horror of Pax sexual arousal. Last year, there was this undergrad student. I am going to give a shout out because this was an undergrad thesis. Can you you know, whenever I read a thesis, I read the whole thing and I always hope that they get their degree. I went on LinkedIn and I saw that they did get their degree. I'm using they pronouns because I couldn't find their actual pronouns. And I don't like to assume someone's gender. It's just out of respect out of this researcher. Arlie Laurette from Wesley College, this was their bachelor's honors college thesis. What they did to see the associations with sexual arousal and horror, they had this online survey where 101 adults responded to questionnaires that measured, I think, every axiom you can think of, which is so cool. What they did is that they asked participants what's their general attitude towards fear-inducing stimulus. Like, do you like reading scary or not? Right? It's just baseline. And then they asked the participants to read a short horror story and then rate it from in a liker scale, how sexually aroused they got through the stimuli and how fearful they were. And then afterwards, they filled out questionnaires assessing personality characteristics, emotionality, sensation seeking, behavior activation, behavior inhibition, empathy, relational interdependence, and the big five personality scale. They looked at everything. I mean, I this was so well done. And then they also asked, what are their proclivities towards BDSM? This is where it gets really interesting. There were folks that were sexually aroused after reading something scary. And those that were tended to be more sensation-seeking, prone to boredom, disinhibited, and more adventure and thrill seeking. They also found that those participants tend to be not just into vanilla sex, but into domination, submission, and switching. They also found that those who experienced more sexual arousal were the ones that were moderately afraid. This was supporting Anderson et al. study that those in that U-shaped curve were more likely to be sexually aroused if it was just enough. And very similar to the results of that other Anderson study was that these are people that wanted a new sensation, they were bored, and they're adventure-seeking. So this was kind of reminding me of the dark coppers and the white knucklers of that Anderson study. Because these are folks that were creating new meaning, making sense, was self-wasing fearful stimulation as a what form of self-discovery. And I can't help but think that's part of the erotic. See, the erotic is like this creative force, this playfulness, this part of us that seeks to understand ourselves, this part of us that wants to expand and grow. It's nothing but, if anything, curious. I like to identify and even characterize myself as someone as who is erotic because I'm just a curious person. So I love this study. Reading all this together, I again, I'm so impressed by all these studies. I can't help but think of self-expansive theory. Self-expansive theory is one of the more common theories to explain passion, romantic passion. In short, I think I'm gonna definitely go into self-expansive theory another episode. I love talking about it. I love talking about how it applies to BDSM. And I guess I will, I will talk about it a little bit now. But self-expansive theory is when you watch yourself overcome challenges, you gain some form of resiliency and a bit and feeling that you can overcome more challenges. And this relates to BDSM. And I talk about this with my kinky couples because we try out a new scene, we try out a new kink. We see that this was something that we planned together, we negotiated together. This is something that made me feel safe. And after we did it and all those feelings came out, there's this feeling of, okay, now what's next? I can't help but think of self-expansive theory when we're talking about ghost faced kink. Hear me out. This is what I think of when I think of myself, someone who can't handle horror, or maybe someone who does handle horror, who's interested in ghost face kink. Part of what makes this so passionate is that you are challenging feelings, adversive feelings, even uncomfortable feelings, to experience something that's pleasurable. You're doing it in a moderated way. This is moderated fear with negotiations, boundaries, safe words, and the BDSM relationship. After you have your negotiations, after you go through the scene, you make sense of the experience, and you can't help but feel more passionate for that person because now you are thinking of what's next. And I can't help but think how Ghostface Kink teaches us how we manage fear, how to manage fear. It teaches us what we need in a trusting relationship, what we need to experience things that are very anxiety-provoking. I that's what I'm also thinking of. I can't help but wonder if like if I go through something like that, like that, what else can I handle in my mundane life? It's so wonderful how the erotic can teach us so much about ourselves in a non-erotic space. I challenge my listeners. What is something like what is a kink? What is a fantasy that you have thought of? That's a little scary. Maybe not so much scary in its the scene itself, but scary to tell your partner. What can you learn from that fantasy? What do you think you will learn from yourself from that fantasy? And I also challenge you because this is the beauty of relationships, is that when our partner challenges us, encourages us to explore ourselves, we experience passion. So, what are ways in which passion can grow and flourish in our relationships? And maybe, like me, it can be a man chasing me in the forest with a mask. Who knows?