13 rope lovers shared their confessions about why they tie, 11,012 of their words were distilled into this one image.
Can these 50 expressions filtered by modern technology possibly portray an essence of our reasoning?
Maybe more meaning can be found in the space between these words than in our round sentences?
Is there a pattern in our folly?
Below are the original texts written, so that you can be the judge, or perhaps find your own meaning within the words as we invite you to do so with the image they feed above:
“I tie because Kinbaku “found” me. I do not believe we choose our kinks, as we do not choose our hobbies. I do not think it is arbitrary, if you do mountaineering or surfing, if you like the desert or the sea, if you like to play a team sport or run a marathon (or play chess).
In this sense Kinbaku chose me. I was always a pervert. Already pre-adolescence I was fantasizing about capturing women when falling asleep.
Also, I started to practice Japanese Martial Arts at the age of 14. This made me appreciate Japan, Japanese culture, arts, and philosophy.
Only very late in my development these two lines united. I was already practicing “kink” – but rope bondage seemed to me to be the most boring part on the rich menu that is presented to a person exploring the scene. I believe I saw pictures of tied women done by Araki in the early 1990ies, but this did nothing to me.
But then, on New Year’s morning, on January 1st, 2008, at 3 am in the morning, it struck me. I witnessed a scene, I saw the outburst of energy, the emotions, and I saw beauty in her suffering. Kinbaku had found me. I had to wait four more years to find the right partner for it, but since then, this is what I do. I tie. In Kinbaku I manifest my kink fantasies, me taking power over another person, taking away freedom, doing to her what I want. Also, I can celebrate my appreciation for Japan, for the strange relationship these people seem to have to life and death and for their subtle sense of beauty in the profound and often ugly.
In rope, I can create beauty, I can live out my darkest desires – and I can make her beautiful in her suffering.“
– Alexander
This question gets increasingly different to answer as time passes, as I evolve, my perception and perspective change. There are many layers to why I tie, from being a kinky pervert and loving the eroticism of being restricted to the opportunity to be with my partner in a meaningful way so removed from real life, to live out our fantasies together.
Recently I am longing for ropes, we have not had the opportunity due to circumstance to tie very much, so each time we do, it is very meaningful, emotional, and special to us. The time we are not in rope is building up to a moment where we can live and die together in rope.
– Clover
At first it was all about trying something new and fun. Little did I know how much it would affect me. And don’t get me wrong, ropes and Shibari alone don’t have the magical power of turning one into something different.
Ropes challenged me to work on myself more than anything else I have known before.
It did not only lead to valuable talks, books, and people but also to a state of catharsis I’ve been subconsciously longing for.
My need for devotion, being desired, and used as he pleases is fully satisfied whilst in ropes. To me being tied is challenging, sexy, and sensual in their primal form.
– Komainu
To get in contact with my selves
To feel my inner dark desires
To get forced to let go and express myself honestly
To feel deeply connected with my partner
To get touched by my partner
To get His attention
To feel the rope on my body
To get challenged
To push my selves
To feel FREE
– Kaley
I could not answer this question for just for one side of the ropes since in the last couple of years I realized I enjoy both equally.
I’m in love with kinbaku and I feel so attached to it because it brings me so much presence. During a session we explore our fantasies and nothing else matters anymore. And I can finally feel myself; I don’t need to pretend. I can go for the filthiest and most edgy desires freely and safely. I always say that I prefer kinbaku to the conventional concept of sex (and I really like sex, I work in porn).
But kinbaku forces me to confront emotions and desires that are usually very taboo and demonized in society in a beautiful and objectifying way. And I like feeling hacked and vulnerable.
– Margout
I fell in love with rope for the space that it gives to the model to be helpless and to the rigger to abuse them. And for the particular beauty that the abuse in rope carries.
Sometimes I get tied because I simply want to experience pain, suffering, and abuse.
I love the pain of rope, how it bites into my flesh, restricting my movements like a poisonous hug. I love the progressive nature of the pain in kinbaku. I love how over time it gets transformed from a physical into a mental struggle. I love the moment when my suffering reaches a pinnacle of intensity after which a moment of resignation comes and my mind becomes calm and free.
I also love rope for how objectifying it can be. Not only sexually objectifying by making me open and available but even more so, objectifying by creating an object of beauty out of me in my suffering.
Finally, the deepest and most satisfying way in which I can approach ropes is when it is an expression of my sacrifice for the rigger. In this mindset, I don’t do ropes to meet my needs or desires. Instead I, in a certain way, forget how much I love to get tied and get into ropes for the only reason that I believe that my suffering will give pleasure to the rigger. It’s coming from my submissive need to please powered by a need to give. The more I can give to my partner, the more satisfaction I feel.
– Monika
Why do I like to be tied? The most appropriate answer would be, it just feels right. The very first time my partners’ hand pulled a line across my shoulders, I just knew the feeling. There was love and recognition and desire to obey – obey whatever it is that rope is asking me to do.
My rope bottom type is the one that is looking for depth rather than novelty. I hardly tie with other people besides my partner. I’m never bored to feel the “same” Gote on me again and again. It’s always different anyway.
I’m not submissive, I’m not a masochist, I’m not being paid to be tied as porn professionals, I didn’t have a rope fetish as I started (I have definitely developed one over time 🙂 I don’t have “stories” or fantasies about being in ropes and living out a particular interpretation of what that could mean.
But it feels right to submit in ropes. To go on my knees in seiza and obey to the will of my partner. It feels right to take the pain I don’t like and accept being made to do what I don’t wish for. I learned to embrace this controversy and I think of it as some ritualistic space where I get to live out the parts of myself that normally don’t see the daylight and don’t even visit my fantasy world… the parts that I don’t fully understand myself… In ropes, I seek to surrender. It is erotic to me, to be desired, to be taken. I enjoy being made a beautiful thing for the pleasure of my rigger. I want to become a clay and I want to be touched, moved, split open, taken, rejected, objectified, worshiped, penetrated… Ultimately, I seek to surrender to the core of my being, to the point of dissolving my mental resistance and becoming nothing but a pulsating body, like one of the plants like a flower. On the way there, it might call out different emotions in me, sometimes it is hot as fuck, sometimes, it calls out a layer of deep sadness. I like arriving where it is nothing, just quietness, just being.
– Natasha
Why I tie….it is very difficult to answer that.
Why do some people get turned on by balloons?
I do Kinbaku, BDSM and D/s, because I get turned on by being in control and doing really “horrible” things to people I really like.Maybe I also have a little rope fetish because I like how rope feels, smells, and sounds.
– Rune
I am tied because I want to be taken.
I want to feel your grip, your lead, and to have no choice but for it to devour me.
To give in, and in, and in until I have made peace with the death that you bring me.
The silence that whispers when all I can do is breath.
To feel the strength of my body melt away until there is nothing left.
As if each breath is my last, and I wonder if I would really let you kill me.
I am tied in hopes that our dark souls can meet in passion,
and that my suffering can bring you joy,
and that my body can serve as your possession.
I am nothing.
I am tied to feel as much of everything as I possibly can,
greedy in hopes that I can one day get enough to touch the sadness that plagues me; that the tears will come and you will witness what is really inside.
I am alone, and yet you have me.
-Saara
Every person has a dark side, characterized by behaviors and personality traits they usually don’t like about themself. While living in a society that values strength and positivity as more desirable, we tend to cover these parts in daily life. We’re looking for improvement and perfection, while hiding the “other side“ that comes with it: the insecurity, the struggling, the suffering.
When I entered the rope scene I was confronted with a lot of expectations and beliefs that corresponded to this tendency: there was advice on how to look better in ropes, how to move in the right way, how to sustain a certain pose – or in other words: how to improve your performance as a bottom. This view seemed contrary to what I was looking for: I wanted to leave this pattern of self-control and self-optimization and to experience a full spectrum of emotions that I usually cannot admit in my daily life. I wanted to experience those dark and ugly parts that I usually hide.
When getting tied or tying someone, this is exactly the kind of experience I’m looking for. I want me or my partner to be out of control and to see those dark and ugly parts emerge. I want to create a space to explore this side without being afraid of negative consequences. I want to balance the light and dark parts to see a complete reflection of myself or my partner. Seeing this other side has a certain appeal to me. Maybe because it’s something unusual and exceptional and thus fascinating. Maybe because I feel honored that the person I’m tying with is showing me this vulnerability.
A good balance of light and shadow makes the shining parts even more brighter – a good balance of light and shadow creates perfection while showing imperfection.
– Sandra
Why do I tie?
This is the question we asked ourselves this autumn. And for me this was a surprisingly hard question to answer. I can list many things that I love about kinbaku. For example the control it gives me over my partners body and mind, the dark and erotic sides of rope, or the deep emotional connection that comes from suffering and torment. But then the next question arose, why do I like this things? And that was the hard thing to answer. After many nights of pondering it came to me; the reason kinbaku took my heart.
Kinbaku is real.
When we practice kinbaku there is no hiding, no choice but to expose our true self and the deepest desires of our souls. I often feel like I have a dark soul, not in an evil or twisted sense. It is just that I always had an attraction to the darkness; it comforts me in a way. Allows me to be, it doesn’t demand or ask it just leaves me as I am. Kinbaku gives space to these parts of me, these desires that don’t find a place in daily life. To me kinbaku is not a way of playing it is a place to wallow in the shadows of darkness, a place where I can find peace.
– Samuel
My inspiration to tie in the Japanese style came from images by Sugiura Norio at a time when I didn’t know any Japanese bondage artists and had no teacher.
What I saw was the emotional response of the person tied. It struck a chord deep within me. I wanted to create that kind of response. Since that first moment I’ve been dedicated to achieving that aim. Yet there is more to the story than that.
I love Japanese aesthetics and have since before I found bondage and to find this perverted expression of the emotional and the aesthetic was wonderful to me.
Finally I am an engineer and there is, I think, more engineering in good bondage than many people percieve.
For me this made bondage a perfect storm of interests and emotional satisfaction.
I guess I could say a lot more but that is it in a nutshell.
– WykD Dave
There are a lot of reasons for me to tie.
Because it allows me to be intimate with my partners; I can enjoy power exchange and feel in control in a beautiful way.
I am a fetishist of reactions, and kinbaku is a very powerful way to communicate in a non-verbal way and to get a lot of different reactions via a very simple tool. That is why I love improvisation in kinbaku.
It allows me to be creative, something that I love to be. Few people understand the infinite amount of different situations, dynamics, and patterns you can get with just a single rope and a partner. I also love Japanese aesthetics and you can find (or apply) most of these principles to kinbaku.
It is one of the very few things I have done in my life that hasn’t yet bored me after many years. I usually get bored very easily and change to a different hobby, but with kinbaku I have the same excitement I had the first time I had a rope in my hands.
It also allows me to be dirty, to express my fantasies, to have better sex, and to understand a different way to approach eroticism.
– Zor
Text: Alexander // Clover // Dagmara // Kaley // Margot // Monika // Natasha // Rune // Saara // Sandra // Samuel // WykD Dave // Zor
Data Analysis & Image Generation: Monika (Door)