Pleasure in pain: how shared discomfort can bring us closer together

Finding Pleasure After Pain

For some assault survivors, Katie Simon writes in this excerpt from her upcoming book, ‘Tell Me What You Like,’ “good sex” doesn’t happen easily. Sometimes it’s not even the goal.

Pleasure in pain: how shared discomfort can bring us closer together

Each winter in Hobart, Tasmania, hundreds of people strip naked at dawn, rush into the frigid Derwent River, and emerge shrieking, shivering — and strangely, smiling. Now, a new study led by social psychologist Dr Laura Ferris from The University of Queensland suggests this annual act of voluntary suffering — the Dark Mofo solstice swim — does more than test the limits of human resilience. It might actually bring people closer together. “We hear…