This is Uncomfortable May 25, 2023 Transcript

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Reema Khrais: And personality wise, how would you describe yourself? Like are you very reflective? Are you more of a lighthearted kinda guy? 

Matt: Yeah, I, I would say intense. in the sense that like anything I do, whether that’s hobbies, whether that’s career oriented, you know, like everything has to be all in. 

Reema Khrais

This is Matt, he’s in his mid-twenties and he lives on the east coast. To protect his identity, he just wants to go by his first name. 

Matt: Like I can’t eat one donut. Like if there’s a box, I have to eat 15. And it’s not just a willpower thing. I’ve come to find that it’s highly tied to a lot of the compulsive wiring that I have. I have to be all in on it because I go to extremes with everything.

Reema Khrais

I got on the phone Matt cause he wants to talk about something he recently went to extremes with. It’s something very private, something he hasn’t talked about with anyone in his life. 

Matt: Like what, what am I gonna tell my parents that I’m addicted to sending thousands of dollars to strangers online to random women? Like it’s just this taboo thing. And

Reema Khrais: Yeah,

Matt: as a society, we haven’t even accepted what I feel are like, like completely normal things. Do you know what I mean?

Reema Khrais: yeah. 

Matt: And for somebody to, to have a findom addiction, I feel like that’s just extremely taboo

Reema Khrais

Matt is talking about financial domination, or findom for short 

If you’re not familiar with it, it’s basically consensual erotic role play that involves money…

People with a findom kink get turned on by the idea of relinquishing control of their finances…

It’s something that falls within the larger world of BDSM…which involves kinks that play with ideas of dominance, submission and control. 

Financial domination… usually happens online and involves two roles…there’s a financial dom and a financial submissive. 

Matt liked to take on the role of the financial submissive, also known as Finsub, or as many of them like to call themselves…

Matt: . pay pigs, cash, cows, wallets, ATMs, uh, cash dispensers.

Reema Khrais

To be a finsub, you typically let someone verbally humiliate and insult you…and then financially dominate you. Which, for Matt, meant 

Matt: just the act of sending money to a dominant, really with the expectation of nothing.

Reema Khrais

So giving money away to financial dommes or findoms…for nothing in return except for a few insulting words and satisfying a sexual kink… Matt had never pictured himself doing something like this. In fact, there was a time when the very idea seemed pointless and weird. He didn’t want this to have a place in his life. But it eventually took a hold of him in a way he could’ve never expected. 

I’m Reema Khrais and you’re listening to This is Uncomfortable, a show from Marketplace about life and how money messes with it. 

Since the pandemic, our lives have been moving out of the physical world and into the online world more than ever before. And maybe that helps explain the spike in curiosity about a kink that is inherently kind of online. 

Google searches for findom have increased by almost 5000% in the last year. There are many different flavors of findom…  it can involve handing control of your bank account to someone else, or quote unquote consensual blackmail, and it can incorporate other fetishes too…

But typically, the most common form of findom is the form that Matt prefers. Sending money to doms online in exchange for being ridiculed. 

When Matt first started experimenting with financial domination, he wanted to relinquish control, to feel vulnerable in one of the places that feels most vulnerable to all of us… our bank account…

On our show today, we follow Matt’s journey into findom and explore the ethics of a kink all about control, power and the exchange of money. 

Growing up, everyone thought Matt was perfect. Even when he was young, people came to HIM for advice. He did well in school. And his parents, who’d raised him in a middle class family, had high hopes and expectations for him… he was the promising child in his family. 

And so at a young age, he got this idea that losing wasn’t an option. My favorite story he told me was  this one time in little league baseball…they had a big game…

Matt:  I remember like the just whole town was there and I was so upset because I, I think I got a hit.But just had a terrible game and we lost. And I just remember the parents driving home. I didn’t say a word. I sat in the car for I think six or seven hours, like, and it was like midnight of a school night. My, my parents couldn’t drag me out of the car, um, just because of how upset I was crying my eyes out bawling and just thinking the world was over cuz we lost that game.

Reema Khrais

Perfection was all he wanted anyone else to see. But to do that, he realized there were parts of himself that he’d probably need to hide. 

When he was in middle school, like a lot of kids his age, he started to secretly explore porn. One day, he was hanging out in his room, waiting for his mom to take him to a movie playdate. He was watching porn videos when he saw this one video playing in a loop. It was a dominatrix, a seemingly powerful woman saying degrading things into the camera about her audience, presumably men. It was like she was speaking directly to Matt. 

Matt: and I was like, this is, this is wild.

Like this was, there was such a, a sense of excitement

Reema Khrais

To be clear, this is not financial domination. That would come later.

This was basically female domination, also known as fem dom…a kind of kink where women play the dominant role and degrade, humiliate or tease, in this case, a male submissive. Matt doesn’t remember what the dominatrix in the video was wearing, but a typical outfit for a dominatrix might be black leather, a corset, maybe they’ll have a whip…

Matt was intrigued, but he didn’t really understand why

And before he knew it, his mom was calling him to get going. 

Matt: I just shut the, shut the computer really quickly

Reema Khrais: and do you remember what it felt like when you slammed that computer shut? 

Matt: just just the feeling of, know, that you’re doing something that I guess if someone saw, there’s an element of shock,. So like, I would say that there was some sort of thrill involved and that had some appeal to me for whatever reason.

Reema Khrais

When Matt became a teenager, he was popular with the girls at school. He started having girlfriends, and he wanted to enjoy himself with them. But he had this nagging feeling, that it wasn’t enough. Nothing he was experiencing in real life compared to the excitement of femdom… 

When he started having sex, he knew what he was supposed to be feeling. But everything about vanilla sex was underwhelming. 

Matt: I had this, this epiphany early on, like, does this get better? Or is, is it maybe just the compatibility thing? You know, what, what’s the deal here? Why am I not getting the same sort of sensations other people are getting,

Reema Khrais: You, it felt like you were just going through the motions, it sounds like. 

Matt: Just going through the motions, Mm-hmm.

Reema Khrais: Mm-hm

Reema Khrais

He didn’t know why he could only feel really sexually fulfilled watching porn, specifically videos of women who wanted to insult and humiliate a male submissive. 

Matt: you might see, you know, like a mocking of, of a man being inadequate based off, you know, genital size, or could be something like just an adequate like feeling, the general feeling of being inadequate for a partner. It appealed to me cause i like to place myself in that sort of dynamic. 

Reema Khrais

Matt liked being told he was inadequate. Even though again, that’s not at all how he was perceived in real life. 

Matt:  especially in latter half of high school and in college, like I’m, I’m having those partners, but you know, getting my rocks off to being told that I can’t get these partners, you know what I mean?

Reema Khrais

Matt didn’t see a way to integrate the kinky part of himself with the life he thought he should be living. He thought he’d just wake up one day and be like everyone else.  

Matt:  I had this idea that, you know, the world is so big and I’m gonna get out there and I’m gonna, flip the switch.

Reema Khrais

It was during this time, when he was still waiting for that switch to flip, that he first heard about financial domination. 

He was watching a lot of porn, and every now and then he’d see these related videos about findom. One day he clicked one of those videos. It was of a dominatrix looking into the camera, saying degrading things, while asking for money…

Matt:  like a dom flipping off the camera, uh, like an fu pay me type of mantra, just recycled and you know, you’re a loser, maybe a loser sign. 

Reema Khrais

Matt just watched a snippet of it and then put his computer away 

Matt: I was like, Well these people are paying for this. Like, this is such a scam. Like why would you pay for that?

Like, you know what I mean? Because you’re, you’re watching what I’m watching essentially five times a day and you’re actually spending money. So at that point in time I remember watching it and thinking this is gotta be the biggest rip, but, you know, to each their own.

Reema Khrais

He didn’t get it, but for months, he kept seeing findom videos pop up on his screen while he was watching porn. 

Eventually he graduated from college. He had a lot of student debt and wasn’t sure what to do next, so he took a job in finance in his hometown and moved in with his parents to save some money. 

He didn’t love his job and during work he’d sometimes find himself bored, scrolling through Twitter. A lot of femdoms post their porn on there. And whenever he’d scroll looking for videos, he’d inevitably see some tweets about financial domination too….Which began to intrigue him  

Then one day, during his lunch break, he drove his car to this nearby grocery parking lot, where no one could see him. He pulled out his phone, opened Twitter and on this afternoon, he decided to intentionally look up profiles of financial dommes…

Matt: Like, I don’t know why I did that

That’s the, the million dollar question. Right.

Reema Khrais

He started to sift thru profiles of women who shared public tweets like “Who wants to buy me dinner?” or “Send me money you paypig.” 

Matt sat there in his car, and he thought… well, maybe I’ll make an anonymous Twitter account and maybe, just maybe, I’ll respond to one of these tweets. 

Reema Khrais: I don’t know if you want to share your username but.. 

Matt:  something along the lines of like, um, like beta pig or some, something like that. Like, you know what I mean? It probably had some sort of, of, uh, like that you could tell I was trying to be a pay pig.

Reema Khrais: Right, right, right.

Matt: Maybe a picture of a pig is the, is the profile pic, something like that. ‘Cause I wanted them to take me serious. And I was like, this is it. Like, are we doing this? Like why am I doing this? This is so stupid. But like my heart was racing for whatever reason. I remember that.

Reema Khrais

He drafted a private message in response to a domme’s tweet…and then hit send…

Matt: I’d like to serve you or something like that. I, how can I serve you? 

Reema Khrais 

And she responded right away. 

Matt/VO actress : Why are you talking to me? I don’t talk to losers for free. Send 30 to my Cash app. 

Hey,  sent Goddess

MATT/VO actress: Cool, double it 

Matt: sent again goddess

MATT/VO actress: Do it one more time. 

That was, that was the third time. After the third time where I was like, Man, there is nothing more degrading that I’ve ever done.

But the act was so much more humiliating than anything I’ve ever watched. Like, I actually just sent money for like, pretty much no conversation

Reema Khrais: How did that feel?

Matt:  Yeah, that feeling was, was pretty wild because I didn’t feel much of anything after it. It wasn’t like, this is stupid, nor was it, This is great. It was just kind of like an, even, like, my heart was pounding, but my guess my brain was even keeled, like nothingness.

Reema Khrais

He gave away 100 dollars for nothing in return… and it felt really good. 

Matt: The coming to terms with that was such a rush. It was such a thrill. Like you spent a hundred dollars in 10 minutes, like money that you worked hard for, that she did nothing for.And it just felt like this ultimate act of submission. 

And she has no idea who I am, doesn’t know my name, doesn’t know my age, my background, nothing about me yet. I see a picture of her and I’m sending her money to make this actual life sacrifice that benefits her, and in theory, takes away from my happiness.

Reema Khrais

And trying this only made him more curious. 

He loved being in what’s known as subspace, it’s kind of like this meditative state, where you feel vulnerable…here’s how he describes it…

Matt:Like a dog serving the owner, like making the, making the dominant happy like you’re a pet, you feel sacrificial, sacrificing pleasure, you’re taking orders, obeying obedience, right? That’s, that’s all interconnected and it’s just an extreme state of vulnerability where you feel like you don’t have to have to lead the way.

You can rely on that other person to help you achieve whatever end goals you both are commingling with. 

Reema Khrais

Then the next day, during his lunch break, Matt drove to the same parking lot. He pulled out his phone and saw a new message from the dominatrix he paid yesterday….

Matt: She’s like, hey, loser, time to pay again

Reema Khrais

Matt didn’t hesitate. He sent her 150 dollars. He wanted to delve deeper and deeper into this new world. 

Matt: It still carried some sort of a mystique to it. I wanted to see if like more came out of it, right? Like, are we gonna have some sort of relationship, like what’s gonna happen? And it was all these questions that paired together made me keep trying it day in after day.

Reema Khrais

What started off as a fascination soon became a habit. Once or twice a week, whenever he could afford to, he’d send her a hundred dollars here… a hundred dollars there…

Matt: I was sending a hundred, a hundred, a hundred, a hundred…

Reema Khrais

And this first domme he messaged, she’d encourage him each time to spend more than he did before 

Matt: Hey, you sent this much, I think you can do better than that. How about you try to prove it like that? Like a almost a contest or a game in a way

Reema Khrais

Within a couple weeks, he decided he wanted to venture out even more, like why just engage with this one domme when there were so many others out there? 

Whenever he’d send the money, he says it’d feel like he was floating…

Matt: like when I would send, literally the whole world around me was  nonexistent.

Reema Khrais

But then… when the thrill subsided, when that dopamine high wore off, he’d sit there in his car or in his bed or wherever and he’d start asking himself questions like…am I going to keep doing this? Can I even afford to keep doing this?  

Matt:  I really wasn’t stable financially at all I was, you know, burdened with student loans at that time, like drowning in student debt  So there’s obviously the thought in the back of my mind that’s, you know, begging the question, how is this gonna be sustained?

Reema Khrais: do you feel comfortable sharing how much you’re making that year?

Matt: Yeah..that year, under 40-thousand 

Reema Khrais

So he was making under 40-thousand dollars a year….and he had 100-thousand dollars in student debt. He was living paycheck to paycheck. 

Reema Khrais: do you remember one of the first times when you looked at your bank account and you were like, Oh, no…

Matt: Yeah. and I just closed the phone. I was like, No, we’re not doing that again.

Still, he kept sending money

Reema Khrais: it’s so interesting how you describe how everything around you would sort of evaporate. And it makes me wonder what  you’re escaping from exactly

Matt: I was escaping from my life I lost ambition in things that I loved all my hobbies. I, you know, it sucks to say it, but I, I genuinely did not have a purpose. I was the furthest thing from content, like the absolute furthest thing. 

Reema Khrais

Matt’s vision for his life wasn’t unfolding how he’d imagined. Everyone had expected him to do big things after college, and he’d even gotten some prestigious job offers, but he was really struggling with his mental health, and didn’t feel equipped to take those offers. 

He was dealing with OCD, anxiety and depression. And he had no real long term plans for his career 

Matt: a lot of those factors, you know, they, they, they add up to a very low level of self worth. 

Reema Khrais

He also started drinking and smoking heavily. He felt caught in this awful negative loop. 

And I get that, You feel depressed or anxious, and you know what things will likely make you feel better, but because you’re so depressed, you don’t want to do those things. And not doing anything, well, that only makes you feel worse. And so instead you go back to your old habits, and the cycle repeats. 

Matt: it feels so counterintuitive, but if you view yourself in a negative light, your brain almost wants you to do things that reinforce that you are, uh, negative.

You think you’re a loser, you’re doing things that you think a loser would do, even though you know at the back of your mind, there’s something off, you’ll continue to do it.

Reema Khrais: if I understand what you’re saying, it’s like you had this fear of failure and financial submission allows you to indulge in that and It becomes this like, tangible expression of how you feel inside.

Matt: Yeah. Fear of failure is a great way to put it. Yeah.

Reema Khrais

And it’s around this time, that Matt says he feels like he really committed to financial domination being a big part of his life. 

Matt: This is me now. I knew early on, that this was gonna be sticking around. 

Reema Khrais

And as this became a bigger part of his daily life, his tolerance naturally started to shift. 

Like sometimes a domme would do what they call a “drain” – basically demanding that  Matt give them a large lump of money. He used to give 100 or 150 but now he was sending 250 or 300. Sometimes he’d even throw in extra and tell them to use it for dinner or groceries. 

Those first few months he says he sent money to more than 100 different women. 

He was still barely making ends meet. When Christmas rolled around, he didn’t have any money to buy gifts for his family and friends, which was really upsetting

Reema Khrais: Did you give gifts to anyone that year

Matt: No, I did not. I was like reclusive that year. I almost just hid from everybody.  I would I would try to distance, oh hey, I’m busy with work and just played the avoidance game 

Reema Khrais

His world began to shrink. He’d casually date, but nothing ever really went anywhere, it was hard for him to open up.  

No one in his life knew the extent of his depression or his anxiety and definitely nothing about his affinity for findom….

And you have to remember that this is a guy who doesn’t like to lose…and on top of that he doesn’t really trust people…so no way was he going to show any evidence of weakness to anyone…

Matt: I don’t ever really talk about my emotions ever at that point in time, you wouldn’t have gotten a word out of me. You would’ve thought everything was, was completely fine

Reema Khrais

And for a while he was doing a decent job of keeping all of this secret. 

But then one day, Matt was walking home when he got a phone call. It was his dad with some questions. 

His dad had opened one of his credit card statements…which was filled with charges for payment apps like Venmo and Zelle. 

Matt: he was like, Hey, is everything all right? And I was like, yeah, what do you mean? and, uh, yeah, my kind of like, my heart sank, like uhoh like my gosh. Yeah. movie’s over, this is it. Um, I’m gonna have to explain myself

And then he, uh, he, he was telling me like, there’s all these payments here. I think somebody has your card. Like, is everything okay?

Reema Khrais

Matt could feel his heart beating faster, his palms getting sweaty.

Matt: I was like, uhoh, like, what do you mean?

And he’s like, well, did you spend uh, 2000 this month on sending these payments? 

Reema Khrais

His dad was like did you buy things from vendors online, like what is this? And Matt, he took a beat and searched for an answer, for something plausible, anything that would quickly shut this conversation down. 

Matt: and I said  um, oh yeah, dad, I, I forgot to tell you, I’ve been, I’ve been trading investments on, on a new market. it’s like the secondary financial market and you can sell, sell funds. And of course not happening or real, but, and he’s like, oh, okay, I got scared. I’m like, yeah, don’t worry. I got all that back plus some, it’s a great return. 

Reema Khrais

Matt hung up and walked home with the conversation replaying in his head. 

Matt: there was an immense sense of guilt right after that phone call that, that lingered for like days. And I would be in my apartment and, and, you know, doing whatever I had to do. And there’s just this sense now that like I’m letting my dad down. Like I, I can’t give them gifts.

I can’t donate to charities. I’m supposed to be this great person that exceeds and excels in life. I have nothing to show for it. And not only that, but now I’m a, I’m a liar. Like what good am I? 

And this guilt, for a while it only pushed him into a deeper rut. He started engaging in findom even more, but over the months, as Matt’s tolerance kept growing and as he fell deeper into debt…

Matt: it hit me like, this is not even fulfilling in any capacity. This is literally just a cycle. 

Reema Khrais

Matt wanted out. That’s after the break. 

Reema Khrais

Alright we’re back

I met Matt through Instagram, actually. He had dmd me and it was a very, very sincere message.

Reema Khrais

Mistress Damiana is a professional dominatrix based in Los Angeles. Matt would eventually reach out to her when he was feeling especially low and trying to quit. 

Mistress Damiana is outspoken about how findom can be harmful to subs, which she’s gotten a lot of backlash for, mostly online. (that’s actually how I first came across her)

Mistress Damiana: I’m concerned that they’re getting taken advantage of, um, financially, psychologically, all that stuff. 

Reema Khrais

And so Matt, he sent her a message to thank her for speaking out on how findom can be unethical…

Mistress Damiana: He said, I’ve been trying to heal from this for a long time now. Um, and I, I really appreciate that, how much you support submissive, um, who are in the situation like mine.

Reema Khrais

Mistress Damiana will sometimes get messages like this from other finsubs. And it’s not like she’s totally opposed to findom, she actually engages in it with someone in her life. 

But she does have a lot of strong feelings about it. And to understand them, I actually wanna pause from Matt’s story for a bit and dive a little deeper into the world of BDSM, which I think is actually important to better understand Matt’s story. 

We sent our producer Hannah to meet Mistress Damiana in person….

Hannah: Thank you. Great to meet. 

Mistress Damiana: Nice to meet you too.

Mistress Damiana: So it looks dark in here right now because you’re out there where it was really bright, but your eyes will adjust. Okay. But it is a dungeon. Mm-hmm. . So that’s why it’s dimly lit

Reema Khrais

Mistress Damiana works in Los Angeles and runs what’s known as a BDSM dungeon, basically a space designated for BDSM play….

Mistress Damiana: I’ll just give you a quick tour.

Hannah: Yeah, sounds good.

Mistress Damiana:  Well, this is my reception area.

Mistress Damiana: This is my slave, Charles

Hannah: Hello 

Charles:  Hello. 

Mistress Damiana: This is Hannah.

 Charles: Hi, Hannah.

Hannah:  Hi

Mistress Damiana . Mm-hmm.

Reema Khrais

Hannah told me the dungeon is sleek with wooden floors and pops of red everywhere 

Mistress Damiana: , over here we have a St. Andrews cross where whippings happen,

Hannah: Mm-hmm. 

Mistress Damiana: This is my implement wall where I hang my whips and floggers and paddles and things like that. 

Hannah: how many different things would you guess that you have to hit people with in here? 

Mistress Damiana: Oh my God I mean, I don’t know if I were to guess hundreds. 

Reema Khrais

Mistress Damiana has been a dominatrix for 23 years, it’s her full-time job. And she’s pretty protective of the BDSM community…

Hannah: what do people get wrong about B D S M and kink?

Mistress Damiana: The thing that differentiates BDSM from abuse is the consent part. So it’s not only consented to, it’s wanted because it’s a kink of theirs you know,  if something like torture is being done from the dom to the sub, that is what turns the sub on. 

Then it’s like, oh, there’s there there needs to be high levels of trust for that to happen that’s a part of BDSM is not portrayed in the movies because it’s just, it just wa they just use it for shock value most of the time.

Hannah: Yeah. Do you think that that sort of incorrect portrayal makes people more vulnerable to sort of abusive, maybe

Mistress Damiana: Oh, yeah. Right. Exactly. So untrained DOMS will see something like that in the, in the movies and. Just be like, well, I can do that. Well, I can treat a person like, shit that looks easy.

Reema Khrais

She likens BDSM to an artform based in mutual respect, trust and acceptance. And to do kink safely and ethically, she says a lot of discussion needs to happen beforehand… 

Um, and so the dom, the responsible dom will, will ask all about them Um, ask about the limits, the, the person’s limits, you know, like where he’s not willing to go.. Most of it is structured around the submissives fantasies. 

Those fantasies might include insults and humiliation. But after a scene is over, she always makes sure to tell her subs just how much fun she had with them. 

Mistress Damiana: there’s something called aftercare at the end of a scene so the scene is contained within these energetic boundaries, right? So that the sub knows, okay, now they’re relating to me as a person, again, that’s the healthy way to do it.

Reema Khrais

She says when it comes to financial domination, it can get tricky cause unlike other BDSM activities, it can be completely transactional and impersonal …. even so, she thinks there needs to be boundary setting… 

And with findom becoming more visible over the last few years, she worries people are getting into it without knowing much about BDSM. She points to how online there are all these cliche, self-serving demands for cash that are drowning out the BDSM culture and community.  

Mistress Damiana: there’s a lot of these financial doms out there just on Twitter  going, disgusting loser pay pig. You know, calling everybody that, it’s just, it’s so, it’s so ignorant because not everybody’s a disgusting loser pay pig.

Not everybody gets off on that. Only go there. Only, only play with these very, very sensitive, um, areas of degradation and humiliation if you know for sure that that person has a kink for it. This is very important. Very, very important.

Reema Khrais

All that to say, she thinks findom can have its place within a trusting, established relationship,  so what might that actually look like? 

Reema Khrais: On your website and on your Twitter profile you brand yourself as an ethical findom, what does that mean? 

Hadrian: um, I don’t like the idea that I would actually damage somebody financially

Reema Khrais

That’s Hadrian Temple, not his real name, it’s his online persona. Also not his real voice, we’re disguising it to protect his employment…

Hadrian is in his 50s and is a financial domme..

Hadrian: So I am OK with a sub not being able to go to the movies because, um, because he’s tributed that money to me and therefore can’t afford to go to the movies this month, I’m not okay with the sub having to skip his mortgage payment

Reema Khrais

He’s been thinking about how to treat financial subs ethically for a long time 

He’s into a wide range of kinks, but he started experimenting with findom about eight years ago when subs began reaching out asking if they could send him money

Hadrian: When I first started doing it my reaction was really, wow, this is a really intense rush. it was like a light bulb went on for me I mean, uh, part of it, part of it is the ego stroke. Um, because at essence it’s another guy saying, you are so hot I want to give you my money. it’s, it’s incredibly empowering

Reema Khrais

But the last thing he wants is to exploit people. He says his FinSubs will usually start out by tributing him $15 or $20, nothing huge, but once he starts developing a more meaningful relationship, he checks in with them about their finances. 

Hadrian:  I mean, I do try to get a sense of what can, what can this particular sub afford? What are his expenses? What are his obligations? Um, and, uh, if, if I get the sense that a sub can’t afford something, I will, I’ll be, I’ll say, Nope, I’m not gonna let you do that

Reema Khrais

One sub came to him and said that in the past, he’d been unable to stop giving money to doms whenever they asked for it… kind of like Matt. This sub wanted Hadrian to financially dominate  him, but he also wanted to be able to save money

Hadrian: one of the things I told him is, okay, your, your paycheck, you know, your paycheck comes on a Friday. The very first thing you do with it is take this amount of money and you put it in your savings account and you never. Touch that except for the specific purpose of buying a house or buying a car or meeting a specific goal that you are saving money for 

Reema Khrais: So you were helping him budget

Hadrian: Yeah essentially

Reema Khrais: And it sounds like he actually listens to you

Hadrian: yes. Yeah as many subs are / He’s good at being, he’s good at doing what somebody else tells Him But he, he struggles to, to be in charge of himself. 

Reema Khrais

Most of Hadrian’s relationships with finsubs last several months and he’ll develop intimate and pretty meaningful connections with some of them. A lot of them send him money, but some will buy him things from his Amazon wishlist, like hair products, expensive leather shirts, some nice boots. One guy got him a chest harness…

Hadrian: He also bought me a pizza stone.

Reema Khrais: Oh 

Hadrian: He because I had, I had mentioned that I was getting into bread baking

Reema Khrais: oh!

Hadrian has a full-time job and does findom, along with other kinks, as a hobby. Each month he makes a couple hundred dollars to as much as 3-thousand from his finsubs

Hadrian: for me, how I think of findom is the money isn’t the point of the interaction. The money is the tool  the symbol of the power dynamic that we’re working in.

Reema Khrais: and why do you think money can be so sexually enticing to some people? 

Hadrian: Um, well, uh, money is a measure of power in our society Um, so having somebody give you money is giving you power. Uh, additionally in a society as aggressively capitalistic as our society is um, it’s incredibly taboo. so findom is it’s powerful and erotic precisely because it violates one of the basic tenets of our society, which is that you’re supposed to hoard your money

Reema Khrais

Hadrian likes how wrong it feels to turn capitalism on its head in this way. It’s about playing with the idea of money and what it represents… not actually about making money 

Hadrian: My absolute, one of my all-time favorite scenes with a sub, I spent half an hour taking $1 from him just to prove that I could make any amount. A really, really hot time 

Reema Khrais

As a findom, Hadrian has encountered a lot of guys like Matt, people who are into the kink, but have trouble doing it responsibly. Although in Matt’s case, he didn’t have someone like Hadrian to help create healthy boundaries. 

When we left off with Matt, he was feeling especially low. He was spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars each month as a finsub…and he wanted to stop. At the height of things, he’d zeroed out all of his accounts, had no savings and about 4-thousand dollars of credit card debt. 

One afternoon, Matt decided he’d finally confront what at that point he considered to be an addiction. 

Matt: I remember I went and I sat down in my place, and I got my laptop and I pulled up my bank account and I got a pen. So I had a pen, paper, laptop, and I had a calculator to back it up.

I wanted to physically torture myself of writing down every single payment, adding it up and going through that to total and to see what I actually spent

Reema Khrais: so you were hoping this would be like the wake up call for you

Matt: I was hoping, I was like, you know, no one is coming to save you.

Reema Khrais

So with a pen in his hand, he started to sift through his bank accounts, scribbling down all the numbers…

Matt: I just went through it and through it. It was the most meticulous thing ever.

Reema Khrais

Page after page after page…

Matt: It was a terrible feeling, but as I flipped to like page four, it started in a weird way to become cathartic because it was like I was finally tackling the demon’s head on.

Reema Khrais: Mm-hmm.

Matt: and as I’m going through, I couldn’t tell you 90% of who the cashtags were or what sessions they were pertaining to. And it just felt like this major light bulb moment of you knew that you had nothing to show for this, but now you went through all of these sends and you can’t even match the moments of, of what you had deemed as even pleasure.

Reema Khrais: Mm-hmm.

Matt: And that put everything into perspective for me and, and showed me that it, it’s not sustainable. It’s always going to be this high that I’m chasing. And, and I hate the path that I’m on. So why would I keep driving that way? 

Reema Khrais

He kept jotting down the numbers and then finally when he was done, he did the math, by hand and put the pen down. 

He looked at the number in front of him in disbelief and then double checked with a calculator. It was correct. 

Matt: It was somewhere in the vicinity of 30 some grand

Reema Khrais: Hmm.

Matt: there’s 30 some grand that I send that I 95% of it cannot associate to actual moments. Like, can you imagine if you have 30 some grand and you don’t remember where it went? And that’s what it felt like for me. Like I literally opened my window and threw 30 some grand out of my window

Reema Khrais

He started to wonder what it would look like if he kept doing this, like if this is the trajectory, then in a few years, he’ll have spent well over a hundred thousand dollars. That thought alone rattled him. 

Matt:  I don’t get sad. I get angry now, not at, not at people or the findoms or the girls. 

I get mad at myself that I got beat, like I got beaten, right?

Hmm. I know I’m, I’m truly addicted now. Now I know how bad the addiction is because I can’t stop.

Reema Khrais: Right

Matt: But I know I’m gonna find that light at the tunnel. Like I actively want to make a change in my life 

Reema Khrais

After confronting his finances, he stopped for a while. But then as it goes with a lot of addictions, he’s had some relapses. 

One thing that helped was reaching out to people who might understand. It’s around this time that he messaged Mistress Damiana. They ended up talking, which felt cathartic. He also sifted through forums and message boards and found some recovery groups. 

Matt: a lot of people coming into the group were looking up to me because they, they were hearing that I was, you know, staying, staying clean for a while.  trying to ask me questions.

Reema Khrais

In the last year, Matt has managed to quit findom for good. He also quit drinking and smoking, and is trying to have a healthier relationship with porn. He still has bouts of depression and anxiety, but it feels a lot easier to manage these days. 

And to replace those dopamine hits, he’s tried finding enjoyment in smaller things, like the act of waking up and meditating. Getting out in nature, doing martial arts.

In terms of his financial life, over the last couple years he went into massive savings mode and landed a much higher paying job. He also has a side business that he liquidated. And all of that helped him turn pretty much everything around. 

Reema Khrais: do you have savings yet?

Matt: Oh, yes. Yes. I paid off all of my debt, credit card and student debt. 

Reema Khrais: wow. 

Matt: accumulated savings, I have my investments and my, my compensation through my work is, is sufficient

Reema Khrais

And last Christmas, he was able to afford a gift for his parents.

Reema Khrais

Before I met Matt, I honestly didn’t know much about financial domination. At a distance, it might seem salacious or strange, but I’ve learned that for a lot of people it’s a fun erotic role play that can bring value and a deeper form of intimacy into their lives….the act of allowing someone to see your most private desires can be a freeing and exhilarating thing. 

That said, I keep thinking about my conversations with Hadrian, the findom we talked with. He made the really great point that money is just a tool in this role play, it’s a symbol of power. Especially in a capitalist society where men in particular are conditioned to become providers and money is glorified, this kink subverts all of that in an enticing way. 

But because we live in a capitalist society…money will never just be a symbol…it’s easy for things to quickly get out of hand. That’s why yes, money may be at the heart of these kinds of relationships, but for them to work, for them to be mutually beneficial, what really needs to be central are the things that every healthy relationship requires… open communication and a whole lot of trust. 

Reema Khrais: And you know, we talked a lot about how it can be hard for you to let your guard down to trust people.

Matt: mm-hmm.

Reema Khrais: do you feel like today you could see yourself eventually letting your guard down and engaging in deeper connections? 

Matt: I do, I do. I think that this interview, I just kind of let my guard down, which 

Reema Khrais: Yeah. It’s huge. 

Matt: I think that that would be evidence of improvement.

I do enjoy if, if like, if I can let my guard down and I’ve had like relationships where I can do that. when you can connect with like a person’s soul and always enjoyed that element of it. I just have to get to that, to that step.You know? I’m sure that this journey will lend itself to a deeper search for  more fulfilling personal, uh, connection

Reema Khrais

Alright that’s all for our show this week. If you have any thoughts or comments or wanna share your own story…you can always reach me and the team through uncomfortable@marketplace.org

Also don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter if you haven’t already! Each week, we’ve got recommendations on interesting and fun things to read or watch or cook. You can sign up for that at marketplace.org slash comfort. 

Kate Beaton: it is just lights and smoke and flames and you’ve never seen anything like it. 

Reema Khrais

Next time on This Is Uncomfortable…

Kate Beaton:and you think we’re gonna go in there and, and this is where I work. 

Reema Khrais

The lengths one woman goes to escape student debt

Kate Beaton:I needed to pay this off first for my own sanity because I just could not live with this 

That’s next week.

Hannah Harris Green

This episode was lead-produced by me, Hannah Harris Green, and hosted by Reema Khrais. We wrote the script together. 

The episode got additional support from Alice Wilder and Andie Corban. 

Zoë Saunders is our senior producer.

Our editor is Jasmine Romero, who also did the voice acting in this episode 

Marque Greene is our digital producer, with help from Tony Wagner 

Our intern is Yvonne Marquez.

Sound design and audio engineering by Drew Jostad 

Bridget Bodnar is Marketplace’s Director of Podcasts. 

Francesca Levy is the Executive Director of Digital.

And our theme music is by Wonderly.

Also a shout out to Mistress Damiana and her podcast Lightworkers who play in the Dark, which is where we first heard of Matt’s story. 

Reema Khrais

Alright, I will catch y’all next week.