Einfühlung

Empathy is the experience of foreign consciousness in general.

— Edith Stein

Client File 231

Name/Alias: Adrian Age: 26 Gender: Male Ethnicity: Chinese Occupation: Finance Experience: No prior experience with partners nor with prodommes

Kinks reported: - Feet - Bondage - Face slapping - Tease & denial - Humiliation

Limits: - Pain (Heavy) - Blood & open wounds - Marks lasting more than two days

Medical history: - None

I review my notes half an hour before the session. Adrian has just returned to Singapore following his master’s degree in finance in London. Over the call, he said he’d broken up with his UK ex-girlfriend three months before graduation due to uncertainties about their future plans, because neither of them wanted to pursue a long-distance relationship. They had a good run; intimacy was infrequent but decent — but she was bossy, even in bed. Sex was vanilla, though he wished they could have explored more kink-wise; and in particular, he didn’t know how to voice his interest in kink and submission to her, for fear she might view it as weak masculinity. He told me this, but I was trying to listen for the things he didn’t say.

6:30pm

I saw him waiting under the streetlamp, as instructed. Our eyes met. I nodded; he came forward and offered a shy, muffled “hi.” I reached out and hugged him; he returned it with the same half-awkward, half-nervous gesture. “Let’s get indoors, it’s too humid,” I said.

Inside, I offered him some water and started him off with some small talk. I asked him how long it had been since he got back from London, though I already had the answer from my call notes. I steered the conversation from London to the English Premier League, before asking him to guess my favourite team. Finding commonality and resonance, Adrian noticeably started to feel more at ease and leaned back into my couch.

After ten minutes on our favourite teams and outcome for the 2024/5 season (no, it will never be Arsenal), I steered us back to kink. I asked about his experience with his ex-girlfriend, he heaved a sigh and told me how his girlfriend would boss him around, both in college and in the bedroom. Her assertiveness was cute at times, but assertiveness and demanding can sometimes be opposite sides of the same coin. Adrian’s recount was largely the same with what he shared over the call with me, perhaps a ‘sanitised’ version as what he felt safe to say.

Once we got onto the topic of kink, we ran through the kinks that we would be exploring together and reviewed safety protocols before a final check-in. I asked him if he was ready to start. He inhaled and said, “Yes, Goddess Ashley.”

7:16pm

He knocked on the door, asking for permission to enter. I let the silence simmer for a few seconds before granting him permission to. As he crawled towards my direction, the corner of my lip curled, slyly, slowly. “Hi Adrian.” I crossed my legs intentionally, fixing my gaze on him. He lowered his eyes as he stopped and knelt right before me.

I leaned closer towards him, ran the back of my palm down his cheek, trailing my index down his neck, his torso, before raising back to his head. “How are you feeling?” I whispered. His body quivered under my touch.

8:45pm

I undid the knots on his wrists. He still held them behind his back, not wanting to move without permission. I cradled him from behind into a sitting position on the floor, my legs folded around his; one arm across his torso while the other covered his eyes. His breathing was still fast and shallow. I leaned close and whispered for him to breathe with me: slow, steady — drawing him into the rhythm of my own breath as I held him against my body. Gradually, his chest began to rise and fall with mine, the two of us settling into the same flow.

Every so often, a small gasp slipped from him without his awareness, the kind that comes from the body before the mind could catch up. It felt almost like a quiet thank you for the attention. Beneath my arms, he leaned subtly into the contact, his body responding with an unguarded need — as though some part of him had been missing and now remembering what being held felt like.

I counted up to five, uncovering his eyes and returning him to the presence. I let him lie with me for just a bit longer.

What we covered kink-wise during the session with Adrian would go into my post-session notes, but I often think about what it doesn’t say.

Empathy isn’t just measured by listening to stories, but asking the questions whose answers needed to be listened to. It isn’t about saying ‘that must be hard’, but understanding how to bring Adrian’s difficulty into the light so it can be seen and felt. Empathy is knowing that I know possibly nothing; Adrian’s past links way deeper than his bossy ex-girlfriend, to his family upbringing that taught him about the societal definitions of masculinity, his avoidant personality, his ‘sanitised’ reason of his breakup, to the type of love he thinks he deserves.

Empathy is not a feeling; it is not guesswork. It is a practice that requires one to resist the instinct to arrive at a conclusion, assume, or to pass judgement about Adrian too quickly. The temptation is always to recognise: to hear something familiar in what someone shares and mistake that recognition for knowing. But recognition is just the door. What’s behind it is usually stranger, older, sometimes, something that hasn’t yet found a name.

Adrian’s intake form listed humiliation. But having Adrian’s body against mine told me what he sought was not that, and I think he understood that. Empathy, as I practice it, is sometimes less about my comprehension, but about creating the conditions in which understanding becomes possible for Adrian, and together, in a search in a world shaped by humility and grace for us.

NB: Adrian’s name has been changed to protect his privacy. Permission has been sought to publish his story.

PS: No one has guessed which English football team I support