“Then there is also this: How do you give up something that’s nestled in your marrow, this particular taste in loving, one that is crisscrossed with hate, with specks of long-ago humiliations endured but never forgotten? What I’m referring to is an appetite for a certain degree of debasement, being reduced to a panting, abject creature in the name of sexual pleasure. The fine-tuning of relative power that naturally obtains between couples pitched way up into the insistent blare of one who dominates and one who submits.”
―
Daphne Merkin,
22 Minutes of Unconditional Love