Quote Originally Posted by jaeangel
There are times when i ask myself the same question.
I was adopted at eight months old and brought into the states by two people I call Mom and Dad. They never told me I was adopted (it finally came out when I was 22) but I think on some level I knew, because I was never treated the way a biological daughter would be treated (I think.) My mother was abusive...the incidents I remember most are the time I was ten and I got into her makeup, and one of her round brushes got tangled in my long hair. She was furious when she came home and found me with her hairbrush in my hair, and because she couldn't get it out, she grabbed the brush and literally dragged me down the hall and down stairs into the kitchen, where she proceeded to cut off all the hair that was caught with a steak knife. Then she took the scissors away that I was trying to even all of my hair off with and made me go to school for the rest of the week with big short and long patches in my hair. It was humiliating. The nuns (I was going to a cathiloc school at the time) were laughing, and so were all my classmates.
And then there was the time I was doing dishes and she came in to check if they were clean, and when she saw scratches on the bottom of one of her pots she went ballistic and chased me around the house waving a meat cleaver and telling me she was going to make me look like the pot. It wasn't even my fault, she found out later she'd made mashed potatoes and the electric blender left the same scratches on the bottom of the second pot that had been in the bottom of the first one. My father was never home. He said he was traveling for his company, and he'd be gone for months on end. only recently, when I hired a private investigator to find him, did I find out that he's now living in Virginia with another woman, has been snce he walked out on my family ten years agao, and his oldest child is now 18. I'm 25. this means that while I was getting beaten up and stuff, he was schmoozing with another woman and having kids with her. The bad part about it is that he's still married to my Mom.
Sorry. Just rambling. I don't have any answers to offer you, except to say that I wondered abut that for a while. Am I enjoying BDSM because it reminds me of my childhood, and did my desire to be humiliated and used stem from those childhood incidents? Do I need to be in an abusive relationship (I was in one out of high school that put me in the hospital before I got out of it) for me to feel like I'm worth something to someone? Eventually, finding no answers to any of those questions, I stopped analyzing and just did what feels good. I'm happily married now to a vanilla man with 2 wonderful baby boys, and I wouldn't change anything about me, because I like who I am. And those experiences I had made me who I am.
I don't know if this helps, but I just wanted you to know I wonder about the same thing you do. You're not alone; especially in this board, there are lots of like-minded people here who understand and are sympathetic, and will help you come to terms with the issues you're fighting with. Hang in there!
I think that this is an interesting part of the thread. The original question was about the possibility of abuse being a root cause of a desire to be involved in BDSM. I would think that this is more of a control issue. From what I have read, in a loving BDSM relationship the control lays with the submissive, (think safe word). The part of this post that then stands out would be the facts of adoption. When adopted quite young there is a very strong desire to be in control. We are safest when we control. We control as a sub by allowing or disallowing our dom to act. I would want to ask those who are subs if they feel this strong urge to maintain that control. As a black market baby (bought for $300 at 2 days) I really want to be in control. I do not think that being involved in BDSM stems from abuse as much as it may stem from that need to control or be controled.

Too many random thoughts. Sorry