Enneagram and kink: Obliteration, objectification, and the Sexual Instinct
What does it mean to let go – completely? To dissolve, to vanish, to be used, to become nothing? If you’ve felt that pull, you already know: it’s not just a fantasy, it’s a need. A hunger buried deep in the body. The craving for surrender, intensity, obliteration.
For those of us wired with the Sexual Instinct in the Enneagram framework, it’s never really, truly been about vanilla pleasure. It’s about depth. About losing ourselves to something bigger, darker, rawer. A compulsion to burn so completely that we don’t just experience, we become consumed.
And BDSM? That’s where I’ve found it, for sure. And so have many others like me. In power exchange, objectification, degradation, and the thrill of being erased.
And paradoxically, in that nothingness, we find everything.
The Sexual Instinct - More Than The Body
In Enneagram theory, there are three instinctual drives that shape how we interact with the world:
Self-preservation – Craves security, stability, survival.
Social – Seeks belonging, status, recognition.
Sexual – Obsesses over intensity, transformation, and the rawest form of connection.
Your instinctual drives dictate everything: your desires, your fears, the way you throw yourself at life.
The Sexual Instinct in the Enneagram system refers to an innate drive for intensity, deep connection, and transformation. This instinct does not solely relate to sexual attraction. It reflects a desire to merge, consume, and be consumed by an experience, a person, or an idea. Those with a dominant Sexual Instinct often seek out relationships and activities that evoke intensity, passion, and even risk-taking behaviors, favoring depth over comfort, and transformation over the status quo.
"The Sexual Instinct isn’t just an active, yang energy. It also has a strong yin component, an impulse to surrender, to lose oneself, and to drop one's boundaries and defenses all at once. This impulse has often been mistaken for a spiritual drive, as the ego is prone to misinterpret, but if utilized with presence it can serve as an authentic willingness to transform." - John Luckovich
If you’re wired for the Sexual Instinct, ordinary experiences can feel flat. You crave depth, high-stakes encounters, the places that rip you open and leave you gasping.
For some, it’s about being stripped bare – owned, used, objectified. For others, it’s about domination, destruction, total control. For all of us, it’s about breaking apart and becoming something else. The thrill of surrender, control, objectification, or obliteration can serve as a vehicle for psychological transformation.
Obliteration - The Ecstasy of Vanishing
We talk about ego death in philosophy, psychedelics, and mysticism. But we don’t talk about it enough in kink—where it happens in the most electric, embodied, undeniable way.
For some of us, submission isn’t just an act of devotion. It’s a vehicle to disappear.
To be bound and forgotten.
To be slapped, choked, degraded until all the noise in your mind finally shuts the fuck up.
To be stripped of name, autonomy, identity—until all that’s left is sensation and surrender.
Why do we crave obliteration? Some say it’s trauma. Maybe sometimes, yes. But for many of us, the urge to dissolve isn’t about the past, it’s about the future. It’s about transformation. About what happens when we let go so completely that something new emerges from the ashes.
But obliteration has a kinky twin: Objectification.
Objectification - Becoming Nothing, Becoming Everything
Objectification is a dirty word in vanilla circles. But in kink? It’s a portal.
To be furniture – still, silent, unseen.
To be a doll or toy – a thing to be posed, used, discarded.
To be “it” – stripped of humanity, reduced to function.
Why does this appeal? Because freedom exists in the consensual loss of agency, loss of self.
For some, objectification offers escape. A break from the exhausting burden of selfhood. A place where thoughts don’t matter, where the past doesn’t matter, where all that exists is service, submission, and surrender.
For others, it’s reclamation. A way to take control of something that, outside of consent, would be completely wrong. A way to play with erasure and power in a space that feels safe, sacred, and deeply real.
Are We Healing or Repeating?
When does intensity serve us, and when does it consume us? When does erasure liberate, and when does it wound? This is the tightrope walk.
Not all paths to obliteration are healthy. Not all objectification is liberating. The sexual instinct pulls us toward intensity, but intensity isn’t always good. It can be a way to avoid emotions rather than process them. It can become a loop of trauma reenactment rather than a tool for growth.
So how do we know if we’re expanding or just repeating old wounds?
Ask yourself:
Does it feel like a choice? Do you feel agency in your surrender?
Do you come out feeling more whole – or more shattered?
Does it feel like expansion or escape? Are you moving toward something, or running away?
BDSM can be a path to self-destruction—or self-discovery. The difference is intention, awareness, and consent.
The Takeaway: Lean in, But Fully Awake
The filthiest paths can lead to the purest freedoms—but only if we walk them with awareness. If obliteration calls to you, if objectification stirs something in your bones, ask yourself why. Don’t just play, study. Study yourself. Study your reactions. Study the hunger, the fear, the longing.
The Sexual Instinct isn't just about sex. It’s about the cycle of revulsion and magnetism, destruction and creation, the ache to be lost, and the even deeper ache to be found.
“Somewhat counterintuitively, as much as the sexual instinct wants to dissolve boundaries, some degree of separation is desirable so as to have something to push against, which generates excitement. So even if merging is achieved, it is no ‘romance drive,’ as it is coupled with the drive to separate once again, so as to re-engage the intensity and boundary crossing.” - John Luckovich
So lose yourself—but do it with intention. Understand what instinct is driving you. Give up everything—but only if you know how to get it back.
