This question has been on my mind now for awhile. Special thanks to Edward Dutton for his insight about this issue. I’m still kinda struggling to understand this. If they are seemingly dominant in real life aka in some positions of power like being your boss etc. Why would they ever wanna be submissive during sexual act? I believe that it has to do something with just
Let’s start with some hypothesizes:
Maybe they just enjoy switching roles time to time and it is exhausting to be dominant all the time. Personally I don’t think that this is very satisfying way of explaining this phenomenom
Attachment theory: Attachment theory is a theory of how we form attachments towards other people. How you react in relationships is based on your how caregivers (your parent usually) took care of you as a child. There are three main types:
insecure attachment style - basically these are the ones who ask for confirmation all the time that their partner loves them
secure attachment style - normal people, these people don’t struggle with attachment and they don’t keep asking do you love them etc and they are also stable
avoidant attachment style - basically these are the ones who don’t wanna get too attached to anyone and they fear it
So what do derive from these? Maybe they are the avoidant type and they try to detach reality from their relationships and act therefore opposite of what you would normally. Attachment theory is very interesting and I highly recommend you to read more about it
Maybe they pretend to be dominant when in reality they are submissive by nature. This would make the most sense personally
Also would make more sense if they also had bad relationship with their mother. I think mommy/daddy issues are real and I’ll make an article about them sometime in the future
Maybe they think that they are actually in charge when a woman is dominant towards them because it shows that they are for your enjoyment and they have to do the work.
Thanks to Edward Dutton for providing his insight about this phenomenom. But first we need to discuss r/k selection theory. In nature there are two strategies of how animals spread their genes.
Live fast die young – quantity over quality
Example of this: The reproduction of rats follows an r-selection strategy, with many offspring, short gestation, less parental care, and a short time until sexual maturity. The same applies to mice.
Live slowly die old – quality over quantity
Example of this: A bald eagle, an individual of a typical K-strategist species. K-strategists have longer life expectancies, produce fewer offspring and tend to be altricial, requiring extensive care by parents when young.
Of course there is still variation between and among species – even among humans. It is pretty evident in humans when you compare asians (live slowly die old) to blacks (live fast die young).
His ideas:
They are probably fast life history strategists (live fast die young) – dominant females would be good for the off-spring and you could just pump & dump her then and it would ensure that the off-spring is going to survive. So it follows that men should be aroused by this.
Another possibility is that men who could be dominated, without fighting back and getting killed, would be more likely to survive. It follows that, in certain circumstances, men should be aroused by being dominated.
Masculinized men are more autistic, they are more likely to develop fetishes and maybe could be caused by some weird interactions during the childhood with their mothers.
In real life, there are leading and dominant roles, and their opposites, led and subordinate (in the family, workplace, communities). If roles freeze on us, we cannot get out of them, they can also become a burden.
Other. Reliving traumas with positive emotions (safely, as an exciting experience, with pleasant emotions) also works as a kind of gestalt therapy experience. This is common in BDSM relationships.
This happens to both women and men. In grown-up games, flirting, cheating, and BDSM relationships, it is possible to experience the opposite of our everyday roles. Mental relaxation, personality protection... It can be virtuously, but it can also involve guilt. In many marriages, the solution is to play role reversals. (Sometimes this can even apply to gender roles.)
In real life, there are leading and dominant roles, and their opposites, led and subordinate (in the family, workplace, communities). If roles freeze on us, we cannot get out of them, they can also become a burden.
Other. Reliving traumas with positive emotions (safely, as an exciting experience, with pleasant emotions) also works as a kind of gestalt therapy experience. This is common in BDSM relationships.
This happens to both women and men. In grown-up games, flirting, cheating, and BDSM relationships, it is possible to experience the opposite of our everyday roles. Mental relaxation, personality protection... It can be virtuously, but it can also involve guilt. In many marriages, the solution is to play role reversals. (Sometimes this can even apply to gender roles.)