A masochist is not someone who likes pain. The masochist meaning people search for is almost never that cartoon. In psychology and relational work, the term points to something more specific and more common than most people realize: a position in a relationship where suffering has become the price of love, and where leaving feels more dangerous than staying. This article explains what that position is, how it forms, and how to step out of it.
Key Takeaways
In this article, masochist refers to psychological and relational masochism, not only sexual masochism. Masochism can manifest in everyday behaviors beyond sexual practices, including how you relate to partners, work, and your own needs.
A masochist is not "someone who enjoys pain." A masochist is someone whose schemas and history make love, worth, and safety feel tied to endurance, self-sacrifice, or self-defeat.
Masochism is a co-created relational position. It depends on a complementary sadistic or entitled position and cannot exist in a vacuum. Neither side is a standalone personality essence.
Gendered socialization strongly shapes who tends to land in masochistic versus sadistic roles, though any person of any gender can occupy either side.
At Bay Area CBT Center, we use schema therapy, CBT, DBT, and couples therapy to help people step out of masochistic dynamics and build mutual, respectful relationships.
What Is a Masochist? (Psychological vs. Everyday Meaning)
In popular culture, masochist gets used loosely. Someone who runs ultramarathons, takes on impossible deadlines, or stays at a job they hate might joke, "I must be a masochist." That casual masochist meaning captures something real-a tolerance for difficulty-but it misses the clinical point.
In psychology, masochism refers to recurring patterns where a person derives a form of satisfaction, or at least a sense of safety, from enduring suffering. The definition is not about enjoying physical pain for its own sake. It is about a learned belief that love is earned through endurance, that your needs come second, and that being chosen depends on being useful. Masochism does not equate to mental illness or self-loathing. It is a relational position, shaped by early life and reinforced by specific kinds of relationships.
Masochistic personality and masochistic character are terms from psychoanalytic and character-analytic traditions. They describe patterns, not a current DSM label. This article focuses on emotional masochism, psychological masochism, and the question many people bring to therapy: why do I sabotage myself?
Sexual Masochism vs. Psychological Masochism
Sexual masochism involves arousal from physical pain, humiliation, or surrendering control within a sexual context. A person who derives sexual gratification from these acts, and who engages in them consensually, is not presenting with a disorder. Sexual masochism disorder in the DSM-5, as a form of sexual masochism that needs clinical attention, is diagnosed only when the person experiences significant distress or impairment, or when the behavior involves non-consensual harm. The brain processes physical pain and pleasure through overlapping neural pathways, and experiencing pleasure from pain is a specialized neurological response-neurological responses can reframe pain signals as pleasurable under safe conditions. In consensual BDSM and sadomasochism, masochists typically hold control through established boundaries and safe words. Healthy masochistic play is rooted in safety, informed consent, and communication. Masochism requires clear boundaries and consent in healthy contexts.
This article is not about sexual fantasies, inflicting pain on sexual partners, sexual pleasure as a goal, or kink. People who enjoy inflicting pain, or who derive pleasure and sexual pleasure from consensual acts, are not the subject here. It is about the form of masochism that shapes a person's life and daily life outside the bedroom. Bay Area CBT Center therapists work respectfully with clients of all consensual orientations and lifestyles.
Historical Origins of the Term "Masochist"
Understanding where the word comes from clarifies how a literary character became a lens for psychology.
Masochism originated from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's literary works, specifically his 1870 novel Venus in Furs. Richard von Krafft-Ebing coined the term masochism in Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), placing it within sexual pathology. Sigmund Freud, in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) and "The Economic Problem of Masochism" (1924), extended the idea beyond sexuality. He described moral masochism-gratification through self-punishment, unconscious guilt, and suffering without erotic content-and proposed primary masochism as an inward turning of aggression. That Sigmund Freud idea of moral masochism, and the later Sigmund Freud essays on guilt, still shape how clinicians talk about turning punishment on oneself. He also introduced the concept of "feminine masochism," a categorization now widely critiqued for its gendered assumptions.
Later psychoanalytic thinkers-Wilhelm Reich, Otto Fenichel, Theodor Reik, Alexander and French-shifted masochism from drive theory toward understanding it as character structure and relational pattern. The proposed self-defeating personality disorder in DSM-III-R (late 1980s) was ultimately dropped, partly because it risked pathologizing abused women who stayed with abusive partners. That ambivalence tells us something: psychiatry itself has struggled with where the line falls between describing a pattern and blaming the person caught in it.
Masochism as a Co-Created Relational Dynamic
Masochism is not a trait that lives inside one person. It is one half of a two-person system. The masochistic position only becomes masochism when someone else takes the dominant position, and the dominant position only becomes sadism when someone stays.
Consider the common shape: one partner over-gives, avoids conflict, puts their own pain aside. The other over-takes, avoids accountability, treats their needs as primary. Both roles stabilize each other. The more one gives, the more the other takes. The taking confirms the giver's belief that they must give more. The giving confirms the taker's belief that their needs are the only real ones. This is not a metaphor. It is how the dynamic works in session, week after week.
The masochistic position is the learned belief that love must be bought with endurance. That your desire and hope for connection depend on compliance. That leaving is the more dangerous act. The complementary position-call it sadistic, entitled, dominant-is the learned belief that control equals safety, that the other person's distress is irrelevant or their own fault. Sadism here is not a hobby of cruelty; it is a position. The sadism of the dominant role and the masochism of the subordinate role lead each other.
Erich Fromm described this as a symbiotic union: the masochist escapes the burden of self by dissolving into the other; the sadist escapes it by absorbing the other. Jessica Benjamin framed domination as a breakdown of mutual recognition, not a property of one person. Gregory Bateson's complementary schismogenesis describes how each person's behavior intensifies the other's opposite behavior until the system locks in place. Sadism and masochism are not two separate disorders. They are two ends of a single relational structure.
Schema Chemistry: Why Masochistic Patterns Feel Like "Home"
Jeffrey Young's schema therapy model offers the clearest clinical explanation for why masochistic patterns persist: schema chemistry. Early maladaptive schemas-deep beliefs formed in childhood-attract their complements in adult relationships.
The relevant schemas, in plain words:
Self sacrifice: your needs come last
Subjugation: you must comply or love will be lost
Defectiveness and shame: you are unlovable as you are
Abandonment: people will leave
Approval-seeking: worth equals pleasing others
These schemas pair predictably. Concrete examples: Self sacrifice matches with entitlement. Subjugation matches with control. Defectiveness matches with a partner who criticizes. Abandonment matches with someone unreliable-because unreliability feels like home.
Each partner's behavior becomes the evidence for the other's schema. The self-sacrificing partner gives endlessly; the entitled partner takes without question; the giving partner's schema is confirmed ("See, I have to keep giving or I'll be left"), and the entitled partner's schema is confirmed too ("See, my needs are the priority"). Masochistic individuals often maintain connections with emotionally unavailable partners because the unavailability activates the abandonment schema and the frantic giving that follows. They may sabotage positive relationships due to self-defeating patterns-a kind, available partner feels wrong, flat, suspicious. Masochism can lead to difficulty accepting genuine affection. The comfort in discomfort is not perverse. It is schema recognition.
If you notice that the "spark" with certain people always comes with familiar panic, high drama, and low actual safety, that is worth paying attention to.
Gendered Conditioning and the Masochistic Position
The masochistic and sadistic positions are not randomly distributed. Society trains them.
Girls are more often raised toward caretaking, self-silencing, and self sacrifice. Carol Gilligan's work on moral development, Dana Crowley Jack's research on self-silencing in depression, bell hooks on love and domination, and Kate Manne's analysis of entitlement and "himpathy" all document how girls learn that their worth lies in being needed, that conflict is dangerous, that accommodation is love.
Boys are more often conditioned toward entitlement, emotional restriction, dominance as identity, and treating dependence as weakness. Michael Kimmel's sociology of masculinity, R.W. Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity, and Nancy Chodorow's work on the reproduction of mothering describe how boys learn to equate agency with control and vulnerability with failure.
The result is polarization. Agency versus connection. Needs versus care. Each partner carries what the other was trained to disown. The dominant-subordinate system is the relational shape that gendered conditioning produces. It is not the only shape, and male individuals can occupy the masochistic position while women can occupy the sadistic one. But the pattern has a direction, and pretending it does not is its own kind of dishonesty. Epidemiological data on partner violence and rates of narcissistic and antisocial personality disorder by sex confirm that direction without turning the point into a statistics piece.
Therapy helps individuals reclaim the disowned capacities: agency for women who were taught to accommodate, vulnerability for men who were taught to dominate.
Masochistic Personality Patterns and Related Diagnoses
Masochistic personality is not a formal DSM-5 disorder. The proposed self-defeating personality disorder was dropped from DSM-III-R partly because it risked pathologizing abused women rather than naming the dynamics that trapped them. But masochistic tendencies appear across several recognized personality structures.
Borderline personality organization frequently includes masochistic patterns: self-sabotage, returning to relationships that hurt, self punishment, and an abandonment schema so intense that mistreatment is preferable to being left. Otto Kernberg described masochistic character structures within borderline organization. Marsha Linehan's model of the invalidating environment explains how a child's development in a dismissive or punishing context teaches the child that their emotions are wrong, that endurance is the only option. Research from clinical populations found that 56.6% of those with BPD traits also showed masochistic/self-defeating personality features. Masochistic traits include persistent self-defeating behaviors, and these individuals often blame others for their own suffering even while remaining in the subordinate position.
Dependent personality traits manifest as difficulty disagreeing, needing excessive reassurance, and tolerating mistreatment to avoid being alone. The love object becomes indispensable regardless of how they behave.
Passive-aggressive or negativistic personality expresses masochism through indirect resistance, chronic complaint, and provoking the other's dominance while never openly refusing. The person suffers visibly but does not leave or state a request. These are not three separate pathological conditions. As Arnold Cooper argued with the narcissistic-masochistic character, they are variations on a structure in which suffering has become the way of holding onto the relationship and the self.
Narcissism, Inverted Narcissism, and the Masochistic Counterpart
Not every suffering partner is a masochist, and not every difficult partner is a narcissist. Focus on patterns, not labels.
Overt or grandiose narcissists show loud entitlement, aggression in the face of criticism, and open dominance. Covert or vulnerable narcissists, as described by Paul Wink and Aaron Pincus, present with wounded entitlement, grievance, shame, and withdrawal. Neither type is masochistic, even though the covert narcissist suffers. Their suffering is about injury to the self, not about earning love through endurance. Their position in the dynamic remains dominant, held through grievance and emotional withdrawal rather than overt control.
The masochistic counterpart is what Sam Vaknin calls the inverted narcissist: a person whose own narcissistic needs are met indirectly, by attaching to a more overt narcissist. The inverted narcissist may feel bored with kind, available people and intensely drawn to controlling partners who make them feel both special and subordinate. They reap supply secondhand-the narcissist's status, confidence, and grandiosity become theirs by proximity. Their schemas (defectiveness, subjugation, approval-seeking) are simultaneously confirmed and soothed. The narcissist needs an audience that will not leave. The inverted narcissist needs a stage they can stand behind. This is schema chemistry at its most concentrated.
Leaving feels like withdrawal from a drug. The craving, rumination, and cycling back are real. Kohut's theory of selfobjects helps explain this: the narcissist is being used as a selfobject just as much as they are using their partner as one. The way out involves learning to get supply directly-by acting on one's own values, being seen for oneself, not by proximity to someone else's grandiosity.
Critiquing "Covert Narcissism" Discourses and Victim-Blaming
Online content now routinely labels anxious, self-doubting, or over-accommodating partners as "covert narcissists." This flips the script: it pathologizes the subordinate position and lets the dominant position off the hook.
Clinically, vulnerable narcissism is a specific structure involving grandiose fantasies masked by shame and hypersensitivity. It is not the same as being anxious or accommodating. Experiencing distress or self criticism does not make someone narcissistic. From a therapy perspective, the point is patterns, safety, and agency-not assigning diagnostic words as weapons. Be cautious of content that turns every painful relationship into a personality-disorder story instead of addressing actual behaviors and power imbalances.
How to Recognize a Masochistic Position in Your Own Life
If you find yourself asking why do I sabotage myself, that question is not a sign of weakness. It is the beginning of recognition, and recognition is a form of self-compassion.
Masochistic individuals often seek partners who mistreat them-not because they enjoy the hurt, but because the dynamic activates familiar schemas. Emotional masochism involves seeking criticism and undervaluation as the baseline of relationships. You may notice that you apologize for having needs, walk on eggshells, or feel most secure when serving, fixing, or rescuing others. You may struggle to accept success or positive outcomes, as though even pleasure is something you have not earned.
In work and achievement, the pattern shows up as chronic overwork, choosing bosses who devalue you, rejecting promotions, or only feeling accomplished when you are exhausted. The sense of meaning comes from endurance, not from satisfaction in the work itself.
These masochistic behaviors are not conscious choices in the usual sense. Other masochistic behaviors include staying after humiliation, explaining instead of leaving, and treating self criticism as proof you are trying. They are schema-driven, automatic, and deeply familiar. If you see yourself here, a structured assessment like a schema questionnaire can clarify the specific schemas involved. Repeating daily positive affirmations will not move the position by itself; treatment means changing what you do when the old pull shows up.
When Masochistic Dynamics Cross Into Abuse
A co-created relational dynamic is not the same as abuse. When there is physical violence, threats, repeated humiliation, stalking, financial control, forced isolation, or sexual coercion, the responsibility is not shared. Those are specific actions of abuse.
Staying in an abusive relationship is not evidence of a masochistic personality or a desire for harm. It is often the result of fear, economic dependence, trauma bonding, or lack of safe options. Trauma responses-freeze, fawn, learned helplessness-can look like voluntary masochism from the outside, but they are survival strategies, not preferences.
Professional support is needed when masochistic tendencies cause harm. If you are in immediate danger, contact local emergency services or the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233). Bay Area CBT Center offers trauma-focused individual therapy and narcissistic abuse recovery support.
Therapeutic Approaches to Masochistic Patterns at Bay Area CBT Center
Therapy for masochistic patterns does not aim to erase intensity or sensitivity. It aims to unhook love and worth from suffering. Treatment is pattern work, not a pep talk, and the same treatment tools apply in individual and couples formats.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is one treatment that addresses self-defeating thoughts and behaviors directly-testing beliefs like "I only matter if I suffer" or "my needs are dangerous" through behavioral experiments and structured examination. Schema therapy goes deeper, tracing those beliefs to their origins and using imagery rescripting, chair work, and limited reparenting to shift them.
For clients who engage in self-harm or high-risk behavior in the masochistic position, DBT skills offer emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness tools. Somatic and trauma-informed approaches, including EMDR and somatic experiencing, address the bodily memories of punishment, fear, and abandonment that fuel masochistic patterns.
Long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy uncovers early childhood experiences that shaped these dynamics. Group therapy helps people understand relationship patterns in real-time, with feedback from others who recognize similar positions. Therapists can provide a nonjudgmental space for unpacking patterns without shame.
Bay Area CBT Center offers individual therapy, couples therapy, and group therapy for these patterns across California.
Changing the Pattern: Practical Steps Out of the Masochistic Position
The masochistic position often has the most leverage to change the dynamic, because it is maintained by consent that can, over time, be withdrawn.
Start with the difference between enduring and requesting. A request is specific, behavioral, and allows the other person to say no. "I need you to be more supportive" is not a request. "I'd like you to ask me about my day when I get home" is. Notice whether repeated expressions of need are actually changing anything, or whether they have become part of the cycle-a ritual that substitutes for action.
Behavioral experiments matter. Say no to a small ask. Set a time limit. Leave early. Then observe: does the other person accept your influence, or does the dynamic escalate? John Gottman's research on accepting influence is the clearest test of a willing participant. Someone who is impacted by your feelings and needs is workable. No amount of explaining, begging, or consequence-setting makes an unwilling participant willing.
When a reasonable request is not met, take a self-care consequence: leave the conversation, sleep separately, decline a favor. Not as punishment-as alignment with your own needs.
Build a life outside the dynamic. Friendships, work, communities where you are seen without earning it through hardship. A support network that values your presence, not your suffering. For the reader who recognizes the sadistic position in themselves: it is also learned, also changeable, and also lonely.
If you are in California and recognize these patterns, you can book a free consultation with Bay Area CBT Center, including online therapy statewide.
FAQ
Not necessarily. Enjoying difficult workouts, intense careers, or complex creative work can involve tolerating one's own pain without it being pathological. The concern arises when suffering becomes the primary way to feel worthy, loved, or safe, or when patterns repeatedly lead to harm or humiliation in a person's life. If you are unsure, look at the impact on your daily functioning, self-respect, and relationships. A brief consultation with a therapist can offer perspective.
Yes. People can occupy different positions with different partners, coworkers, or family members-sometimes one-up in one context and one-down in another. Understanding these shifts is clinically useful because it reveals how underlying schemas like fear of abandonment or entitlement play out in varied ways. If you notice yourself alternating between over-giving and over-controlling, that is worth exploring in therapy.
There is overlap. Both involve over-focus on others' needs, difficulty setting limits, and staying in painful relationships. But emotional masochism adds the element of being drawn to or comforted by suffering, guilt, or chronic self-blame as the "price" of connection. At Bay Area CBT Center, work on codependency and masochistic patterns often uses similar tools: schema work, CBT, and emotion-focused relational interventions.
Try language that describes patterns rather than applying a label: "I notice I stay in relationships that hurt me, and a part of me feels pulled to do it." Ethical therapists are trained to approach these dynamics with curiosity and compassion. Masochistic dynamics are among the most common clinical themes. If you are in California and want a therapist experienced with these relational patterns, reach out to Bay Area CBT Center.
Adolescents and young adults can absolutely show early masochistic patterns: staying with bullying friends, tolerating toxic dating relationships, or chronic self-blame. This is an important window for preventive work-teaching boundaries, self-respect, and healthy attachment before patterns harden into adult character styles. Parents who notice these behaviors should consider family or <a href="/san-francisco-therapy/teen-therapy/">teen therapy</a> with a clinician familiar with schema and attachment work.
