On Wanting What Won’t Choose You (And Getting Off On It Anyway)

Have you ever wondered if you keep choosing emotionally unavailable people because some part of you likes it?

Hear me out.

Most of us don’t plan theatrical cheating scenarios.
But we do fantasize about heartbreak.
We imagine being left.
We check our partner’s ex’s socials like it’s a shrine to our own pain.
We spiral in bed at night, rehearsing betrayal before it ever happens.
And sometimes—yes—we even eroticize it.

Not because we’re broken.
But because, on some level, it helps us feel in control.

There’s a specific kind of desire—quiet, shame-filled, hard to name—that isn’t about pleasure so much as it is about pain we can predict. Pain we can choose. Pain we can script.

And at the core of all of it?
A deep craving to be chosen.
To be wanted, even in the ache.
To survive rejection with our sense of worth still intact.

We’ve just been socialized to chase that chosenness in different ways.

For some, the pain says, "Pick me."
For others, "You can take everything—but I still get to hold the scene."

It’s called emotional masochism.
And it’s fucking fascinating.

The Erotic Architecture of a Nightmare

Let’s talk about the erotic logic of worst-case scenarios.

Some people don’t just fear betrayal—they fantasize about it.
The idea of being cheated on, replaced, or outperformed doesn’t just hurt. It thrums. It lights something up.
It’s terrifying. And also... kind of hot?

Because it’s chosen. It’s scripted. It’s something they get to control.

That’s masochism. Not as punishment—but as design.
As control.
As a nervous system survival strategy.

It might start in childhood—when love came alongside chaos, or attention meant exposure. Over time, fear turns into fixation. Obsession twists into desire.

It sounds extreme, but this is what trauma often does: it scrambles fear and longing until they become indistinguishable. What terrifies us becomes what we eroticize—because that’s how we survive it.

This isn’t just about sex.
It’s about making meaning.
It’s about reclaiming the very thing that once broke us—through fantasy.

Emotional Masochism: Everyday Versions of This

Most of us aren’t asking to be humiliated.
But we are checking our partner’s ex’s Instagram at 2am.
We are replaying arguments, imagining abandonment, fantasizing about being left just to feel the ache.

That’s emotional masochism.

And sometimes, it’s even quieter than that.

I was sitting in the living room recently when my boyfriend casually mentioned that the rug beneath me—and the pillows behind me—had been picked out by his ex. Suddenly, she was there. Not in name, but in texture.

Did they dance barefoot on this rug?
Did he brush her hair back while she lay her beautiful head on these pillows, looking up into his eyes?

It felt like I was sitting in the graveyard of her memory.
And it made me want to rip my fingernails off with pliers.

But also? I felt lit up.
Like I hated it—but I craved it.

Because somewhere in that jealousy, in that ache, was the hope that I’d still be picked.
That I’d be more than her.
That my pain would earn my place.

Here’s why.

As sex educator Emily Nagoski says:

“Our brains don’t crave what feels good. They crave what feels familiar.”

If pain was part of how you first learned love, then heartbreak doesn’t just hurt—it feels like home.

So we don’t just tolerate it.
We chase it.
We fantasize about it.
Sometimes we even eroticize it.

Not because we want to suffer, but because our nervous system is trying to make sense of something it never got to safely understand.

Sometimes, imagining the worst isn’t about wanting it to happen.
It’s about making it familiar enough that, if it does, it won’t destroy us.

As Nietzsche said:

“What we call happiness is the feeling that our power is growing—that a resistance is being overcome.”

Emotional masochism isn’t about weakness.
It’s about making meaning from pain.
It’s about turning the thing that broke you into something you can hold.

Pain, Power, and the Fantasies That Keep Us Alive

So no, this piece isn’t really about cheating. Or heartbreak. Or even sex.

It’s about what happens when pain becomes familiar enough to feel like home—and how we try, in whatever ways we can, to make it livable.

Eroticizing the wound isn’t dysfunction. It’s intelligence. It’s creativity.
It’s the nervous system trying to find power where it once felt powerless.

And whether we do it through spiraling, fantasizing, or scripting betrayal—we’re not broken for doing it.
We’re just trying to feel in control of something we never asked for.

Masochism, at its core, is a reclamation.
It says: If I have to feel this, at least let it be mine.

We talk about emotional masochism or cuckolding like they’re niche, taboo, pathological.
But really, they’re natural reactions to the roles we’ve been taught to play.

Women are socialized to tie their worth to being chosen.
Men are socialized to tie theirs to domination and performance.
So of course we both end up eroticizing the ache in different ways—
not because we’re deviant, but because we’ve been trying to survive inside impossible stories.

Masochism, when it’s unconscious, repeats the wound.
But when it’s conscious, it becomes a way out.
A rejection. A reclamation. A rewrite.

Because in the end, no matter how we’ve been conditioned to chase it, we’re all reaching for the same thing:
To be chosen.
To be wanted.
To feel like we still matter—even in the ache.

Which is maybe the most honest—and human—thing of all.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go sage my boyfriend’s rug.
Or fuck it, maybe look at pictures of his ex and roll around on it.