• Exploring kinks, however, is never a bad thing. To do so, it’s important to understand how a kink you come across, including yours, may have arisen. There are typically five theories on the matter: adjacent brain theory, Pavlovian conditioning, pain, gross-out theory, and subjective normal theory.

• Yet, knowing your kinks and how they formed is of no use if you don’t feel comfortable enough in bringing them up. You may find it easier to bring it up as a side topic purely to gauge reactions and create a safe space to talk about them.

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Fifty Shades of Grey. There, I mentioned it.

The infamous book was important for introducing the concept of kinky and abnormal sexual practices into the general population who might never have given it a second thought. It shone a flashlight into the dark depths of the kink world and gave it a name—Christian Grey. It gave people an outlet to explore and provided some kind of framework into things they vaguely enjoyed but had no way of articulating.

Kinky sex has always been a point of captivation for people because it involves sex, a topic usually greeted with blushes, giggles, and knowing glances. Fascination ensues when people realize they could be having much more fulfilling, more adventurous sex than they are currently having.

Kink arrived loudly and is here to stay, but it is not without its critics. The critics are largely a factor of judgments and a misunderstanding of the simple fact that people have different tastes.

It’s such a simple analogy that I’ve used it time and time again; some people love football and some people love baseball. If you ask them to articulate the reason for their preference, most people will say, “I don’t know, just because I do.” Now substitute any number of fetishes for football and vanilla sex with baseball. What’s the real difference here? Would you prevent someone from watching football just as you would purport to prevent empowering someone to seize their own pleasure? Would you say that baseball is boring and that the only way to enjoy sports is to go for the real stuff (i.e., football)?

But the science of kink and how it relates to attraction is fascinating and indicates that it might go deeper than a simple preference for football or leather whips.

It turns out that some of us might actually be biologically predisposed to some sexual kinks and couldn’t help it if we tried. Neural mapping, the literal physical configuration of our brains, might explain our proclivity for some sexual kinks. If not the brain structure, then the neurotransmitters might explain it. At least, those are two of the theories I will explore shortly.

What is the science of kink and the cause behind some of our deepest and darkest desires? There are five distinct theories that have been set forth that attempt to explain why we like what we do (Justin Lehmiller, Harvard University).

Adjacent brain theory. This is a theory put forth by Dr. V.S. Ramachandran of the University of California, San Diego, and utilizes an understanding of the brain’s physical structure to explain kinky interests.

Different parts of the brain govern different body parts and bodily functions. This has been proven extensively, to the point where we now understand exactly where in the brain speech, personality, and anger occur. There are also specific parts of the brain that govern sexual impulses.

Now, it’s not as if there are walls in the brain to keep these parts from interacting, talking, and physically overlapping with each other. The adjacent brain theory states that adjacent regions of the brain do in fact show associated activity, which means that the brain region that controls sexual impulse may very well be adjacent to the brain region that controls anger or specific body parts.

For example, the adjacent brain theory easily explains the common foot fetish because the brain regions responsible for sexual impulses, the genitalia, and the feet are close to each other and interact. When there is brain activity in one region, there is some brain activity in all adjacent regions.

The adjacent brain theory explains many aspects of kink, specifically ones that involve sexual infatuations with nonsexual body parts. But that is only a sliver of the range of kinks that exist, and the following theories can address most of them.

Pavlovian conditioning theory. Even if you don’t have any interest in psychology, you are probably familiar with Ivan Pavlov and his dog.

Pavlov conducted experiments on his dog to test the subconscious routines that are created in response to predictable stimuli. He began serving dinner to his dog and accompanied dinner with ringing a bell. The dog salivated in anticipation of the food. Soon, Pavlov removed the dinner entirely and only rang the bell. The dog still salivated as if the food were present.

It showed that when people were conditioned to respond to two stimuli, the same response will come with only one stimulus present.

This study proved that it’s possible to form sexual associations with just about anything if the requisite amount of conditioning (voluntary or not) has occurred.

If you have sex or are aroused in the presence of a green teddy bear, all subsequent teddy bears or green furry objects might be enough to trigger your libido. Some might call that a kink, while some might call that a normal Saturday night. The key to this theory is that there is repeated exposure during periods of sexual arousal—it can even be certain smells, locations, or articles of clothing.

Gross-out theory. The gross-out theory was put forth by Lehmiller, and it essentially states that when people are sexually aroused, they care much less about anything else, including things that would detract from their sense of arousal. Notably, their disgust impulse is reduced.

In other words, when you are highly sexually aroused, you just want to get off or have an orgasm, and nothing besides pending bodily harm will throw you off that goal. Sounds about right to me. Sometimes you might inadvertently play with or stumble into things that would normally disgust you, such as feces, bodily fluids, or anal play. But then you realize that you didn’t mind it, or even liked it, so you continue to integrate it into your sex life.

I recall a story from a friend I won’t name who had recently broken his leg that epitomizes exactly how the gross-out theory works in real life. He was also newly single and had a hot date that he had to struggle to get to in his crutches. The date went well, and matters got hot and heavy back at her apartment later that night. I received a call at 7:00 a.m. the next morning from my friend begging me to come pick him up because he thought he had broken his leg again during vigorous sex.

Clearly, the gross-out theory applies in a wider sense as well.

Pain theory. It hurts so good.

Decades of research in neuroscience have shown that neurotransmitters, the chemicals in our brain that help us process our external world, are used for multiple purposes. There are only so many neurotransmitters, and they are released in certain combinations and batches to influence how good or bad we feel.

It just so happens that most of the neurotransmitters involved in sexual pleasure and pain are the same, such as serotonin, dopamine, and adrenaline.

It’s as if the external signals are processed and sent to the brain on the same highway. So if pain and sexual pleasure both independently release similar combinations of neurotransmitters in our brains, then it makes too much sense to just combine the two.

This would explain the origin of many aspects of kink, such as physical dominance, whips, chains, choking, spanking, and even autoerotic asphyxiation. People don’t realize they are doing it not just for the direct physical pleasure, but also the release of sweet dopamine and serotonin in their brains.

One might suppose that the ever-popular rape fantasy also slots into this category. Rape play similarly releases adrenaline, dopamine, and serotonin. This means that the pain in the pain theory doesn’t have to be actual physical pain. As long as there is the element of threat and anticipation of pain, it’s enough of a threat for the proper neurotransmitters to be released and work toward sexual arousal.

The pain theory and the gross-out theory explain many of the kinks that are beyond the realm of many people’s understanding.

She gathered an all-female group of subjects and split them based on whether they were interested in BDSM (whips, chains, leather, and such) or not. Both groups watched two types of pornography: kinky and vanilla.

The women that were interested in BDSM had the same rate of vaginal blood flow as the non-kinky women who watched vanilla pornography. Likewise, when the kinky women watched vanilla porn, their blood flow did not increase at all. This was a predictable result in some ways. People were aroused by what they indicated their preference was, but people were not aroused by what they were not interested in.

People just have different desires and concepts of what an arousing sexual encounter looks like, and they aren’t interested in other people’s concepts. This study suggests that there is nothing neurologically abnormal about people that have kinkier sexual desires than others.

Some people enjoy sour foods and some people love salty foods. In theory, we are biologically the same, but we all have slight variations, and these variations don’t mean our tongues are defective. Everyone has their subjective version of what’s normal and vanilla, even though it might be shocking and extreme to someone else.

So the fifth and final theory of what causes kink? It completely reframes what kink is—it’s just a preference, not an indication of anything suspicious or unbalanced. Nothing out of the ordinary had to occur for it to arise.

Naturally, you might assume that having the same tastes in sexual kinks would ensure sexual compatibility or at least overcome a huge hurdle to that, being that sexual incompatibility lists as a major and prevalent reason for broken relationships.

Surprisingly, similarity and sharing the same kinks was not the largest predictor of sexual satisfaction in a couple.

Instead, the only consistent predictor was how complementary the sexual preferences were for a couple. In other words, there is more sexual satisfaction to be had if one person likes being tied up and the other enjoys doing the tying—complementary—than if both people enjoy being tied up—similarity.

It seems obvious when you lay it out as such, but it’s not so clear in practice. People categorize kink into large, general areas that don’t accurately portray what someone actually enjoys sexually.

For example, if you show a sexual interest in feet, you might just want to worship someone else’s feet but never have anyone touch yours. There is a distinct difference between the two. Sexual compatibility is about having complementary kinks, not similar ones, which means that you should seek out a partner who can give you what you want and vice versa, not necessarily a partner who wants exactly what you want.

Sometimes the two might overlap, and those are the most fortunate of circumstances.

Kink at some point should probably be downgraded into a mere sexual preference instead of evidence of a traumatic childhood. The science supports this in the way that some people like cilantro, while others can’t stand it. Neither are defective, and both deserve to live their lives the way they want.

Engineer attraction and feelings of love through understanding how kinks work, and seek to complement others in bed to keep them coming back for more. What keeps us from exploring them more freely?

Perhaps you saw some porn that seemed really up your alley in all sorts of surprising ways. But none of that matters if you can’t bring it up with your partner and have it done to you! Why are we afraid of approaching our partners, and why are we shy in a way that we normally wouldn’t be?

Because we are afraid of them judging us. Rather than attempt to convince you away from this fear, I’ll just say this: they’ve seen you naked and know what your orgasm face looks like. They’ve already judged you and are still having sex with you. They know that people like different things and that vanilla missionary sex isn’t ideal for everyone.

If you’re with a good partner, you won’t be judged for wanting to try something new. They should actually encourage openness, expressiveness, and hearing your true feelings and preferences. And that should run both ways. Remind thеm thаt уоu аrеn’t thеrе tо judgе thеm аnd you might even want to reveal something vulnerable about yourself to set the open and nonjudgmental tone.

You can bring up the topic of kinks in two ways. The first is the direct way, and you already know it and want to avoid it. Therefore, the second method is a bit more incidental and spontaneous in nature. There is a big difference between, “Hey, sit down. We need to talk about something,” versus a casual, “Hey, I just heard about this. What do you think?”

If you want to be slightly more indirect and feel safer doing this, you can concoct a story about the kink or spice that you want to introduce into your sex life.

“I just read about this kink . . . what do you think?” or “My friend just told me he did this . . . what do you think?”

Thаt way, you aren’t making a direct ѕuggеѕtiоn; you are simply bringing the topic up and gauging a reaction. When introducing your ideas, however you do it, the key is to not be aggressive or one hundred percent excited and forward about it. This might make them feel obligated to do it, even if they know they would hate it, if they see how strongly you want something. Don’t push too hard, because then it will cause one party to be happy and the other party be to silent and resentful.

That’s another reason why bringing it up spontaneously and not as a sit-down topic is better. Just put it out there and see how they feel about it without any pressure or expectation from you. The last thing you want your partner to feel is pressure or expectation. Create a ѕаfе ѕрасе for them tо talk аbоut whаt thеу wаnt and also turn down what they don’t want.

If you’re feeling bold, you can visit a ѕеx shop for the same purpose. You are in the business of gauging reactions.

If all else fails, investigate using a website such as mоjоuрgrаdе.соm, which lеtѕ уоu fill out kinks separately and only notifies you on what you match on. More importantly, it does not list the fetishes and kinks that only one person has listed. Therefore, it is a completely safe way to say what you want because they won’t see what you’ve marked if they haven’t also marked it.

After all, what good is exploration if you can’t proverbially whip it out?