# Does wanting this mean I was abused? > No. There is no reliable evidence that abuse causes an interest in spanking, the research points the other way, and here is why the assumption persists anyway. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/does-wanting-this-mean-i-was-abused/ - Section: Questions - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. Almost everyone who works out what they want asks themselves this at some point, usually in private and usually with a sinking feeling. The answer below runs on evidence rather than encouragement. --- ## In short - There is no reliable evidence that consensual kink is caused by having been abused. - Wismeijer and van Assen (2013) compared around 900 BDSM practitioners with controls and found them equal or better on most wellbeing and personality measures. - Difficult histories are common across the whole population, so finding some in any group of several hundred people proves nothing about cause. - If something did happen to you, that does not make what you want now a symptom. No. There is no reliable evidence that wanting consensual spanking between adults is caused by having been abused, or by any other trauma, and the best comparison anyone has run points the other way. I want to be careful with this page, because it gets read by two very different people. One is idly curious. The other has been carrying something for years and is quietly bracing for confirmation that they are damaged goods. If that is you, read the rest slowly. ## Where the assumption comes from It is a satisfying story, which is most of why it survives. It gives the interest a cause. It files the whole thing under damage, which is comprehensible and sad rather than strange and uncomfortable. And it lets whoever is listening feel sympathetic instead of confused, which is a much easier position to be in. You will meet it from people who consider themselves supportive. Sometimes from a therapist, which is worse, because it arrives with authority attached. The framing is usually gentle: something must have happened to you, let us find out what. ## What the evidence actually shows In 2013 Andreas Wismeijer and Marcel van Assen published a comparison in the *Journal of Sexual Medicine* of around 900 BDSM practitioners against a control group, using standard personality and wellbeing instruments. The practitioners came out equal or better on most measures: less neurotic, more extraverted, more open to experience, more conscientious, less sensitive to rejection, and reporting higher subjective wellbeing. Let me be honest about what that study can and cannot do, because overselling it would be the same error in the opposite direction. The practitioners were recruited through a BDSM community website, so the sample is made of people settled enough about this to be part of a community. It is a snapshot, not something that could establish cause. It is one study, in the Netherlands, self-reported throughout. What it can do is falsify a claim. If this interest were reliably a marker of damage, a group of nine hundred practitioners should have looked worse than controls on something. They did not look worse on anything except agreeableness, which I find both funny and entirely plausible. ## Why the overlap fools people Here is the reasoning error at the heart of it. Difficult histories are common. Depending on how you define trauma, a large minority of the general population has some. So take any group of several hundred adults, ask about their pasts, and you will find plenty of difficult ones. That is true of kinky people, accountants, cyclists and church choirs alike. Pointing at that and calling it a cause requires you to forget the control group. It is the single most common failure in the folk version of this argument, and it gets past people because the conclusion feels intuitive before the numbers are checked. ## What I have actually seen This is experience rather than evidence, and I will label it as such. I have met a great many people in this world with entirely unremarkable histories, nothing in their past they would call trauma and nothing to recover from. I have also met people with genuinely awful histories who find the whole idea of consensual pain repellent and always have. If the theory worked, neither of those groups should be as large as it is. The interest does not sort people that way. ## And if something did happen Some people reading this do have a history, and they are not reassured by finding out that most people do not. So, plainly: a bad history does not convert what you want now into a symptom that needs decoding before you are allowed to have it. I know people who did the work properly, years of it, and came out the far side wanting exactly what they wanted going in. I know others for whom a specific scenario turned out to be tangled with something in their past, and who dropped that scenario and kept the rest. Both of those are sensible outcomes. Neither required giving up the whole thing. The one thing I would watch for is whether a particular setting or phrase reliably takes you somewhere bad rather than somewhere intense. That is useful information about that scenario, not a verdict on you. There is more on telling those two apart in [playing with a trauma history](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/playing-with-a-trauma-history/). ## The question worth asking instead Where did this come from is a question nobody can answer, including the people who claim they can. Whether it is good for you is answerable, by you, tonight. Do you choose it freely, or does it feel compulsory? Does it involve another adult over 18 who has agreed? Are you better afterwards, or worse? Those have real answers and they are the ones that decide anything. Origin stories are interesting and almost entirely useless. > ### If this page has brought something up > > > > Samaritans, **116 123**, free, any hour, and you do not have to be in crisis to ring. Mind has plain information on trauma, shame and finding a therapist at [mind.org.uk](https://www.mind.org.uk). A GP can refer you without you having to explain any of the kink at all. If the abuse was by a partner, or is still going on, the National Domestic Abuse Helpline is **0808 2000 247**, free and 24 hours, and the Men's Advice Line is **0808 8010 327**. ## Read next - [Am I normal?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/am-i-normal/) - [Why do I like pain?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/why-do-i-like-pain/) - [Is there something wrong with me?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/is-there-something-wrong-with-me/) - [Shame and arousal](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/shame-and-arousal/) - [Playing with a trauma history](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/playing-with-a-trauma-history/) ## Sources 1. Wismeijer, A. and van Assen, M. (2013). "Psychological Characteristics of BDSM Practitioners." *Journal of Sexual Medicine*, 10(8), 1943–1952. [doi:10.1111/jsm.12192](https://doi.org/10.1111/jsm.12192) ## Common questions ### Does liking spanking mean you were abused? No. There is no reliable evidence that an interest in consensual spanking is caused by abuse or trauma, despite how often the claim is made. One of the largest comparisons of BDSM practitioners with a control group, Wismeijer and van Assen (2013), found the practitioners scored equal or better on most wellbeing and personality measures, which is the opposite of what a damage model predicts. Some people with this interest do have difficult histories. Most of the population has some difficult history, so an overlap is not a cause. ### What if something did happen to me? It still does not make what you want a symptom to be decoded. Plenty of people work through a genuinely bad history properly, with a therapist, and come out wanting exactly what they wanted before. What matters is whether the activity is something you choose freely, with another consenting adult, and whether it leaves you better or worse afterwards.