Play Party Performance Anxiety

Recently I was reading Joe Robinson’s book Don’t Miss Your Life: Find More Joy and Fulfillment Now and it struck me that something he wrote about pertained to my thoughts lately about public BDSM play parties. (For those not familiar with such parties, they are held all over the United States and Europe and kinky folks can attend and play in a dungeon-like atmosphere, usually after paying a fee.)

One of Robinson’s main contentions is that we all suffer from a more or less constant state of performance anxiety. We live in a society where virtually everything is judged, scored, measured and otherwise assessed for how good it is. It’s pretty hard to let our guard down and just be ourselves. As Robinson says, “The culprit behind performance anxiety is fear of negative evaluation.” I’ve seen this play out in public play parties all too often and at times it concerns me.

When people gather at play parties, there is often the tendency to “play to the crowd.” In other words, rather than being solely focused on their play partners, some people succumb to the temptation to play in order to impress others who might be watching. Sex and erotic play needs to be focused to be great. Lose focus or play to the crowd and the sex and play becomes less than great. It might be flashy. It might look good to the crowd. But often the connection between the play partners is lacking and, at least for me, this ruins the play.

I’m not advocating for the elimination of play parties. Not at all. They can be wonderful. But I do hope that when people attend them they resist the urge to lose focus on their partners and fall prey to trying to impress others. I believe it makes for bad play.

Thoughts?