# Is there something wrong with me? > No. The diagnostic manual separates a preference from a disorder, and the difference is not what most people assume. Where the distress comes from instead. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/is-there-something-wrong-with-me/ - Section: Questions - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. This question rarely wants a statistic. It wants permission, which nobody can hand over from a website. What I can do instead is show you exactly where the clinical line is drawn, because it is drawn somewhere much more useful than people expect. --- ## In short - The DSM-5 separates sexual masochism, a preference, from sexual masochism *disorder*, which requires distress or impairment. - The DSM-5 also says a conflict mainly between a person and society is not, by itself, a mental disorder. - The line that actually matters is consent between adults. Everything else is preference. - For most people asking this, the loneliness has been doing the damage rather than the interest. No. Wanting consensual spanking as an adult is a preference, and preferences are not disorders. That is not encouragement, it is the position the diagnostic manuals actually take, and the detail of how they take it is more useful than the reassurance. People who ask me this are usually not asking about diagnosis at all. They are asking whether they are broken. So let me deal with the clinical question first, since it has a real answer, and then with the rest. ## What the DSM-5 actually separates If you go looking you will find sexual masochism disorder listed, and you will feel worse for having found it. The word doing the work is the last one. The manual draws a line between having the interest, and having the interest plus clinically significant distress or impairment in your ability to function. Only the second is a diagnosis. The previous edition already required distress or impairment. The fifth edition made the separation explicit, so that consenting adults with unusual but perfectly workable private lives were not classified as ill by default. Around that there is a detail almost nobody mentions, and I think it is the single most useful thing on this page. The manual's general definition of mental disorder says a conflict mainly between a person and society is not, by itself, a disorder. Distress arising from other people disapproving, or from your own fear of being found out, is much closer to that kind of conflict than to the interest itself doing you harm. > **Put plainly.** Wanting it is not a disorder. Being tormented by wanting it might be, and the usual treatment for that is to stop being tormented rather than to stop wanting it. ## Where the pain is usually coming from In my experience the people who ask this are not unwell. They are embarrassed, they have been carrying it privately for a long time, and they have mistaken the loneliness for evidence. That is a specific mechanism rather than a comforting phrase. If you have never once said this out loud, you have no comparison, no ordinary conversation about it, and nothing to weigh your own reaction against. All you have is the private conviction that it is strange, which grows steadily for as long as it goes unspoken. Give it years of that and of course it feels like pathology. The reliable thing I have seen change people is not being told they are normal. It is meeting three other people who want the same thing and turn out to be entirely ordinary: a quantity surveyor, a woman who breeds spaniels, somebody who talks too much about cycling. ## The line that does matter There is one, and it is not about severity or strangeness. It is consent between adults who can give it. An interest that involves another adult who has agreed is in a completely different category from anything requiring a person who cannot agree. That line is not negotiable and it is the only one doing real moral work. Everything else, the implement, the scenario, the fact that it involves being told off by someone in a cardigan, is preference. Preferences are allowed to be odd. Almost everyone's are. ## Four questions worth answering honestly If the clinical answer has not settled it, these are more useful than wondering, and you can answer them yourself tonight. ### Where is the distress coming from? From the wanting, or from imagining being discovered? Those need entirely different responses and only one of them is about the kink. ### Could you go without it? Not happily. Just at all. A preference you would miss is ordinary. A compulsion that overrides your judgement about safety, money or people is worth raising with someone. ### Is your life getting smaller? If this is quietly consuming your sleep, your work and your other relationships, the problem is the proportion rather than the interest itself. ### Are you better afterwards, or worse? Consensual spanking tends to leave people lighter. Something that reliably leaves you worse is telling you something, and [why do I like pain](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/why-do-i-like-pain/) has a section on how this differs from self-harm. > ### If those answers were the worrying ones > > > > Samaritans, **116 123**, free, any hour, and you do not have to be in crisis to ring. Mind has plain information on shame, anxiety, self-harm and finding a therapist at [mind.org.uk](https://www.mind.org.uk). A GP can refer you without you having to explain the kink at all. None of that means the interest is the problem. ## What I would say if you were sitting opposite me That the question has an answer and the answer is no, but that hearing it from me will not do very much, because reassurance from a stranger never does. What tends to work is the ordinary evidence of other people. A [munch](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/uk/munches/) in a normal pub, where nothing happens and everyone is dull, undoes more of this than any amount of reading. And if you are nowhere near that, then reading is a perfectly reasonable place to be for now. Nobody is on a schedule. ## Read next - [Am I normal? The evidence version](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/am-i-normal/) - [Does wanting this mean I was abused?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/does-wanting-this-mean-i-was-abused/) - [Shame and arousal](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/shame-and-arousal/) - [What masochism actually means](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/what-is-masochism/) ## Sources 1. American Psychiatric Association, *Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders*, 5th edition, text revision (2022). Sexual masochism disorder criteria. ## Common questions ### Is wanting to be spanked a mental illness? No. The DSM-5 distinguishes sexual masochism, which is a preference, from sexual masochism disorder, which additionally requires clinically significant distress or impairment in functioning. Having the interest and being at peace with it does not meet the threshold for any diagnosis. That separation was made deliberately so that consenting adults with unusual but functional private lives were not classified as ill by default. ### What if I am distressed about wanting it? Look at where the distress comes from. For most people it is other people disapproving, or fear of being found out, rather than the interest itself, and the diagnostic manual says a conflict mainly between a person and society is not, by itself, a disorder. If you are miserable because you believe you are a freak, the misery is being produced by the belief rather than by the preference. That is worth talking to someone about, and it is usually the belief that shifts rather than the interest.