The Ethics of Using Intermittent Reinforcement in the Training of Submissives

[A shorter, less edited version of this original appeared as a rant I posted on reddit]

Behavior modification is something that is brought up a lot in BDSM, especially in the power exchange aspect. When people are getting into it, it’s easy to read about operant and classical conditioning and thinking of all the kinky ways you can control / you can be controlled by your partner. You read about positive and negative rewards and punishment, learn about what you / your partner respond to best, and off you go learning all those fun kinky tricks! It’s one of my kinks, so I can tell you that I totally get it!

But I’ve come across a lot of training and conditioning guides that speak about intermittent reinforcement and how it is more effective in changing someone’s behavior than any other reward/punishment structure. (I know, I know, what is a s-type doing reading those guides, learning all those domly tricks? I’m a brat… ok :) )

None of these mention how outright abusive this conditioning is, though. So, that’s why I am here! Strap in, or strap your s-type in, this is going to be a long one.

What is Intermittent Reinforcement?

As you probably know, we do a lot of experiments on mice. In one experiment, a treat dispenser was placed in various cages with mice. The mice were to hit a lever, and then a treat would come out. For a bit, the mice enthusiastically hit the lever and got treats over and over. Then they realized they would always get a treat, so they only hit the lever when they wanted a treat. When it ran out, they would hit it a few times, searching for the treat, but then realized it was out and stopped all together.

The consistency of the reward created certainty and security, they knew a treat was there, so they didn’t have to hit it over and over. When the treats were gone, the certainty they were gone was there, so they didn’t waste time trying to get what was never going to come.

This is good, this is a healthy relationship! You want your s-types to feel SAFE and SECURE knowing that when they behave or do something that pleases you, they will get a reward! For a number of reasons — this creates healthy attachment, this fulfills the power exchange contract (you get obedience, your s-type gets their reward/praise/security). This is creating a healthy attachment that can be ended in the future without extremely unhealthy negative consequences for either of you should the relationship need to be terminated.

So, if you haven’t figured out from ‘intermittent’ what this is yet: it is when the treat isn’t always there.

So the researchers, being the curious types, decided to only have treats come out randomly and sporadically when the mice hit the levers. They hypothesised that the mice would act like they did when there was no treats, that they would eventually get bored and stop touching the lever at all.

Instead, the opposite happened. They became ADDICTED. Mice would ignore actual real food and just hit the lever over and over again hoping for that treat.The researchers wondered what a mouse that was addicted to this lever would do if they removed ALL the treats. They would surely realize soon it was empty and move on with their lives, right? The mice kept pressing the levers! There were no treats, there never would be treats again, and the mice just kept pressing. That is intermittent reinforcement.

Your Brain On Intermittent Reinforcement

There’s really only two things humans actually like: serotonin and dopamine. So we seek out that which causes our brain to release these chemicals. Dopamine, especially, is very addictive. We love it when our brain releases that wonderful chemical. In BDSM, we play with this brain chemistry a lot when doing masochism, and we treat it like the risky activity it can be. Intermittent reinforcement also messes with brain chemistry.

When we are rewarded or praised, our bodies release dopamine. We get a happy feeling! There’s a lot of different kinds of submissives, but most can be said to want something out of their submission. It’s why we do it! For some that something might be just seeing the joy on their partners face, knowing that they are making their partner happy. Others (whistles innocently in brat) want the reward that comes from that obedience. Many are a mix of both. Either way, a submissive does that submissive thing and gets rewarded by their partner and by their brain releasing that sweet, sweet dopamine.

When rewards or pleasure are predictable, our brain releases less and less dopamine each time. This sounds bad, but it’s healthy. This is why you have stuff like new relationship energy, why the honeymoon period fades in relationships. You need to eventually come down out of the clouds and do the actual work and live your actual life! Less and less dopamine over time allows you to function as a human in a relationship.

When rewards and affection are inconsistent? Your brain releases a SHIT TON of dopamine when that reward or attention or gratitude does eventually come. In less human relation terms: the ice cream shop. You drive by it every day, but you don’t stop and grab a sundae every time. When you do treat yourself and stop in after a super long week, that ice cream tastes like heaven. If you’d stopped everyday, it would be boring and rote. That’s intermittent reward, sporadic and random rewards will create more dopamine.

This means that a happy moment in an abusive relationship releases more dopamine than a super happy moment in an established, healthy relationship. Yeah, it’s fucked up. The highs in an abusive relationship feel higher than the highs in a healthy one. The amount of dopamine released during a “good” moment in an abusive relationship is often disproportionate to the action that caused it: a ‘good’ moment in an abusive relationship can look like the abusive partner doing something that is considered standard in a normal relationship. For example, the victim stubs their toe while cleaning, and the abuser shows what would be considered a very low level of concern. But that small amount of concern can seem like the utmost of care to the survivor, and the dopamine machine powers on at full force.

With the release of dopamine so infrequent, the person experiencing the intermittent reinforcement seeks to change their behavior in order to maximize the chances of getting that next dose. In gambling this can look odd, like blowing on dice or doing a dance before pulling a lever. In relationships, this becomes much more insidious.

What Does It Look Like In Regular Life?

If you ever watched someone obsessively put quarters into a slot machine, time after time, watching them lose more and more money, you are watching someone experiencing the effects of intermittent reinforcement. It’s not healthy.

A lot of the user experiences for modern technology encourage this kind of addiction to your devices and the app you are in specifically through intermittent reinforcement. Facebook has studied this in-depth and uses it’s “like” feature to keep you checking your phone and coming back. They crowdsource the rewards, and suddenly you are tailoring what you post and don’t post based on what gets you the most likes, and more importantly you are constantly logging in and using FB. Gacha games like Puzzles and Dragons and others start out with easily clearable levels with regular high end rewards to hook you, and then the difficulty spikes and the rewards come less and less frequently, and yet you are still playing the game for months.

If you’ve ever looked at someone in a clearly terrible, abusive relationship and asked yourself “why the heck are they still with that piece of shit?” the answer is probably intermittent reinforcement. Abusers will lure a person in and feed them bits of love and affection, usually in great quantities at first. They will lavishly reward their new partners devotion to them with displays of love and promises of affection, and after time will decrease this until all the partner has is bruises and shattered self-worth, and yet. They are addicted, they keep pressing the lever, hoping that this is the time their partner will dispense that love they so keenly need.

On some unconscious level, we do a lot of this to people in our lives every day. We are busy doing something, and someone in our life mentions an accomplishment, and instead of saying “Congrats!” with a smile, we mutter out our praise while mostly distracted by the task we are doing. We might apologize later, give genuine congratulations, and move on. This person may be a coworker, a friend, a parent, a kid. We do it all the time without the intent to hurt or harm.

It happens in kinky and non-kinky relationships intentionally, too. The cold and withholding parent? The older sibling you idolize but who only shows affection on rare occasions? The person you think is your best friend but who always makes you feel forgotten? This type of reward structure doesn’t have to be inside or outside of the bounds of kink to be hurtful.

Why do people do this intentionally? Control. They want the relationship maintained (hence having rewards at all) but want some sort of behavior changed in the person they are doing it to. Perhaps in your friendships, the person doing this wants you to never speak about your own problems, or to never speak up about your preferences for where you go to dinner. So they intermittently reward you when you squash your own needs. You learn to stop saying “we should go to that diner down the street” as, occasionally, your friend will reward you for just going along with what they suggest.

What Does This Look Like In BDSM?

So if this happens all the time in platonic and vanilla relationships, why should we speak to it from a BDSM angle? Because in BDSM, we actively are playing with power/control scenarios and we need to do so openly and honestly and with everyone’s wellbeing in mind. We need to do this with consensual intentionality. While the vanilla abusive boyfriend might not have done research on operant conditioning and pavlov and all that fun stuff, he is still intentionally creating a scenario where he is training someone without their consent. In kink, we are trying to train someone with their consent. But that consent needs to be fully informed and that training needs to still be humane.

In terms of D/s, intermittent reinforcement is only rewarding your s-type for obedience randomly. The s-type is left in a state of anxiety, not sure if they are not properly pleasing you or if you are no longer happy with them. You ask them to do a task, they do it, and then look up at you waiting for you to tell them they did a good job. Instead, you don’t even smile in appreciation. They think they did it wrong, and next time try even harder. Several times this pattern continues, and they become unsure that you even want them as your sub. Eventually, you do smile, pat their head and say they did well. Dopamine overload!

Sure, this will make an incredibly compliant submissive, one who will slowly narrow the focus of their world into doing everything they can to just once more hear you say “good ____.” You will have a s-type who will never leave you. You will also have an incredibly damaged s-type who has no self-worth, little self-esteem, and no ability to handle life without you. You have severely damaged your toy.

Intermittent reinforcement violates RACK/SSC/whatever acronym you use for your kink as it violates three huge principals at the heart of the power exchange: consent, trust, and each party getting their needs met.

I am not going to link, but here is an excerpt from one training guide I found advocating for intermittent training of submissives:

“Much more powerful than a constant reinforcement schedule is an intermittent reinforcement schedule. In such a schedule, rather than getting a treat every time the dog sits, it only gets the treat SOMETIMES. This creates uncertainty in the submissive, and results in the trained behavior being maintained with much less effort and for much longer periods of time because the submissive doesn’t know when its reward will be, so it obeys at all times.”

Consent

Intermittent reinforcement plays a big part in what is called “traumatic bonding.” It is a real psychological experience often seen in victims of domestic violence, it is the chemical addiction a survivor has to their abuser, regardless of the kinds of abuse they experienced. It is why they do not leave. It is why the often go back to their abusers shortly after they DO manage to leave. It why abuse survivors will often end up in ANOTHER abusive relationship later! That dopamine hit we talked about earlier greatly inhibits the person’s ability to make rational and healthy choices about their relationships.

These kinds of bonds, these trauma bonds, the addiction from intermittent reinforcement makes it nearly impossible for the key part of the power exchange to exist: the ability of the submissive to withdraw their submission. They might not feel like it, but they are no longer able to meaningfully consent to the on-going power exchange.

When someone has the kind of psychological dependence created by intermittent reinforcement, their world narrows to just that person, to trying to please that person in a way that will create more frequent rewards. They chase that dopamine high, often to unhealthy extremes.

Many D-types have probably come across the masochist who will let their life fall apart if it means another session with a flogger, another chance to go into subspace. We all recognize that that is unhealthy. So, too, does the s-type who has been conditioned with intermittent reinforcement seek out the high of pleasing their D-type. When the goal of the s-type is that sort of dopamine hit that they are chemically dependent on now for happiness, they are impaired. They are psychologically compromised in a way that precludes the ability to consent to the dynamic anymore.

A s-type who has been through this needs to not only find the strength to leave the relationship, but take a long time to re-learn how to experience and be satisfied with normal levels of dopamine releases, how to recognize what they went through and how to create their own happiness before they can consider getting into another D/s dynamic.

Trust

I want to highlight one key part from that excerpt: “this creates uncertainty in the submissive.” You never want to do this to a submissive. I want to be clear here: you are creating uncertainty around the entire dynamic. This isn’t the fun uncertainty you get with a blindfold or other sensory deprivation techniques during a scene. This is an uncertainty about where they stand in your life, what their relationship is to you. The name of this game is trust. That trust is why you can mercilessly flog your submissive, tie them up, ask them to stand in stress positions for hours. They know you care about them, that you would not ask them to do anything that will violate their limits. There is no uncertainty in trust. You submissive needs to be certain that you care about them! Not rewarding consistently for consistent good behavior breaks that trust in a fundamental way. They are constantly anxious that they aren’t good enough for you, that you are no longer interested, that they aren’t doing their best to please you. This lack of trust makes it hard for them to trust you on anything else, even if they hide it.

Why would they hide that lack of trust? See: trauma bonds! They no longer feel they are worth it, and you at least give them some treats, even if rarely. They are fearful of losing what they now think is the only relationship they will even get a little respect in. That’s why abuse survivors stay with abusers: they are so beat down (either figuratively or literally) that they don’t think they can get better anywhere else, so they squash their own needs and ignore their wants and just do whatever their abuser says.

Furthermore, when they are in this compromised state, you can’t trust that they will safeword. They are itching to have that next dopamine hit, conditioned so well to please you to the point of ignoring their own needs. You cannot engage in any edge play like this! They might suddenly start telling you that hard limits are not limits at all anymore in an effort to please you. You can’t trust that you have full and enthusiastic consent.

Needs

In a D/s relationship, it is give/take to each get their needs met. The s-type gives obedience, service, loyalty, devotion, adoration and in return receives rewards, pleasure, safety and security. The D-type gives safety, security, rewards and pleasure, and in return receives obedience, service, adoration and loyalty. There might be other exchanges agreed upon by all people involved in the dynamic, but at the heart of a consensual D/s dynamic is both parties having their needs met.

Intermittent reward systems, however, create a situation where the D-type should always get obedience and service, but shouldn’t always have to give back that safety/security in the form of praise/rewards. The Doms needs are being placed higher than the subs. That prioritization of needs is coming at the expense of the mental and psychological well-being of the sub. An intermittent reinforcement system, as stated in the quote above, means the D-type has to put in very little effort to get the obedience they desire.

That is not fair. All parties should be contributing equally to ensure everyone has their itches scratched and needs met. Going the intermittent reinforcement route might free up the D-type to not have to worry about if their s-type will obey or not, but it comes at the cost of the s-type not getting what they need.

The paradox here being that in regular, healthy BDSM relationships, when a subs needs are not being met, they can find a new D-type with whom they are more compatible, but in intermittent reinforcement dynamics, the addiction the s-type has to the D-type will leave them unable and unwilling to do so, thus trapping them in an unfulfilling and unhealthy relationship.

Furthermore, if you have to resort to intermittent reinforcement to get your submissive to obey, you aren’t the dominant you think you are. Most s-types have a strong desire to obey, and if you cannot instill that obedience to your liking with healthy conditioning and reward schemes and instead need to resort to abuse tactics, you aren’t as commanding and dominant as you think you are.

What Can We Do?

D/s works because of communication, trust, desire, and understanding. Each party in the dynamic actively wants to be in that dynamic. If your dynamic is suddenly floundering, your s-type suddenly less obedient, you shouldn’t have to resort to the sorts of mind games that intermittent reinforcement is. You should be able to set aside an hour or two where you aren’t in your roles and have an outside-the-dynamic conversation about what is actually going on.

If you want to train or do behavior modification with your s-type, you should explain in advance what sorts of behaviors you want to change and get their consent. You should go over what you want the reward/punishment structure to look like and why. These are things that are going to be done to your s-type and it should be done with their full understanding. Yes, you can keep the mystery and surprise a little bit. Perhaps, you will have a sticker system, where they build up to bigger rewards. Or perhaps you have a variety of rewards that are all equally valuable (or thereabouts) to your s-type and you randomly give that out. The point is, this should be done with full, informed consent.

If you do want to use intermittent reinforcement, even after all of this, talk to your s-type about it beforehand. Tell them to read what they can about it, and discuss other ways you might bring to them the safety, security, and trust they deserve to the relationship and that you understand that you are engaging with them in something that is risky and might be considered extreme edge case.

If you see someone who appears to be being conditioned using intermittent reinforcement, take a moment to talk to them and evaluate if their needs are being met. They might be hesitant to talk about it, saying ‘oh my D-type is so good to me, though.’ Be reassuring that they are worthwhile, good, and deserving of the best. Keep an eye on them, keep an eye on their partner and look out for other signs of abuse. Let them know that you are there for them if they need anything. It can be really difficult to help someone exit an unhealthy relationship, let alone an unhealthy D/s relationship, but let them know you want to help even if you never mention that you think they are trapped in a bad situation.

We don’t like to talk about abuse in BDSM, we are already stigmatized and treated as weirdos and we try very much to make sure people know that the power exchanges we engage in, the flogging and the CNC, the bondage and all the other toys in our boxes are CONSENSUAL and SANE. We say “fake doms” and claim to evict the assholes and abusers.

We need to step it up and talk more in depth and more consciously about what behavior modification entails, and we need to tell people to knock it off when we see them advocating for actual abuse tactics as means of control.

A lot of push-back I have gotten from this is that a lot of people believe flogging and spanking are inherently abusive, and so how can I stay that this structure of reward/punishment is inherently abusive? Why shouldn’t it just be another ‘tool’ a D-type can use in the dynamic? A key difference, to me, is that a lot of s-types know what good flogging looks / feels like, we know just as well as a D-type what dangers there are, and can screen out bad D-types who don’t know how to handle some of the dangerous physical tools. Not as many people are fully informed of the dangerous of Intermittent Reinforcement, the chemical dependence that negates the ability to meaningfully consent. A good D-type would share necessary information on all of the tools they are using, including behavioral ones, especially if the s-type seems unsure or uninformed.

Furthermore, any D-type worth their salt is watching their s-type at all times during a good flogging, looking for signs that they are too deep in subspace to continue to consent, too altered by the endorphines to speak or even remember their safeword. A good D-type will then cease the flogging or spanking or caning or burning or whatever else they are doing and go into aftercare mode. A good D-type realizes that any whacks that come after that point are abuse. The same can be said of intermittent reinforcement, anything that happens after that chemical addiction has been established in the s-type is abuse. And there’s no way to safely navigate that line, so better to just steer clear of it.

As much push-back as I got from D-types, I got (as of this post) over 100 responses, either privately or in the thread, from s-types who had felt trapped, unheard, unappreciated, and used in long term relationships with D-types whom they later realized were abusive in many ways, but had felt unable to leave. Many of them thanked me for helping them figure out just why they had stayed, and giving them the vocabulary to better express their psychological limits with their next D-types.

— couerl kitten

For further reading on the subject, I would suggest you browse the following list:

Teal Swan On Intermittent Reinforcement in Relationships: https://tealswan.com/resources/articles/intermittent-reinforcement-why-you-cant-leave-the-relationship-r210/

Love is Like Cocaine by Helen Fisher: http://nautil.us/issue/33/attraction/love-is-like-cocaine

Behavior Modification, Ethics and Consent: https://www.reddit.com/r/BDSMcommunity/comments/akr02x/behavior_modification_ethics_and_consent/

Behavior Modification, Consciousness and Everything Else: https://www.reddit.com/r/BDSMcommunity/comments/al3cgn/behavior_modification_consciousness_and/