What "triggers" a masochist man? A trigger is a certain stimulus that triggers automatic reactions, conditioned reflexes. For example, when listening to the songs of Yuri Antonov, someone will remember their childhood. Who -the smell of steamed cutlets will remind you of kindergarten. And for some, the sound of raindrops hitting the windshield of a car will remind you of the cracking of glass during an accident. Triggers can cause both pleasant associations and states, and painful ones associated with mental trauma. For a fetishist, one type of women's shoes can cause sexual arousal. For a masochistic man, the trigger that triggers the experience of pleasure will be relationships in which he is not considered, disrespected, or used. Fixation on receiving pleasure from humiliation is formed more often in early childhood , when violence and suffering are romanticized or sexualized by a person. In the works of F.M. Dostoevsky, for example, such a character is often represented by the main character. The novel “The Gambler” is very autobiographical. In it, a game of mistress and slave takes place between the general's stepdaughter Polina and her home teacher Alexei Ivanovich. The teacher, overwhelmed by passion for Polina, is ready to humiliate himself and even say goodbye to life at her request. Polina mocks his feelings, and, taking advantage of Alexei Ivanovich’s voluntary derogatory behavior, every now and then checks the seriousness of his intentions, whether he is really ready to go to great lengths for her. Verbal and physical humiliation, lack of hope for reciprocity, submission - that “turns on” the masochist. “...the thought that I am quite correctly and clearly aware of all her inaccessibility to me, all the impossibility of fulfilling my fantasies - this thought, I am sure, gives her extreme pleasure; Otherwise, could she, cautious and smart, be with me in such shortness and frankness? It seems to me that she still looked at me like that ancient empress who began to undress in front of her slave, considering him not to be a person. Yes, many times she considered me not to be a person..." ("The Player", Alexey Ivanovich about Polina). But the masochist man remains only a toy in the hands of his tormentor, since she does not see authority in him, and he is valuable to her nothing more than his devoted service. A masochistic man understands this, and sooner or later hatred for his tormentor awakens in him, a desire to almost kill her. He feels humiliated, tormented by endless rejection, ridicule, whims, consumerism, betrayal, meanness, passion that does not find a way out. The novel reflects the nature of the relationship between the writer himself and Polina Suslova during their stay in Wiesbaden. Exhausted by passion for Polina, Dostoevsky found solace in the game, eventually losing all his money. Subsequently, he was forced to urgently pay off his debts. This circumstance provided the impetus for writing the novel “The Gambler” about how a man replaced his pathological passion for a woman with gambling, and what it all resulted in. Dependence arises where a person’s needs do not find the proper response. Unable to find consolation in love, the writer filled the gaping void with a pathological craving for the game. The game compensated him for the feeling of revenge of the winner, which was not the case in real life. In addition, excitement acted as an anesthesia for mental pain: “... from the very minute I touched the gambling table yesterday and began raking in wads of money, my love seemed to recede into the background.” Passion for a woman turned into the same passion for roulette Having finished with one bondage, the masochistic man finds himself drawn into a slave relationship with his creditors. The writer’s vicissitudes end when he finds happiness in a stable relationship with Anna Snitkina, whom he met while writing the novel “The Player.” It is Anna who gives her lover the necessary admiration, acceptance and love.