As a woman very involved in the lifestyle scene (as opposed to the professional scene). Yeah, there’s a lot of reasons people wind up into it, and what your friend describes is the cliche stereotype of the person who pays for pros, but a lot of the lifestylers are similar to a lesser degree.

And yeah it’s not a given that you’re even allowed to have sexual release in a kink event, and sometimes it has to be in a specific room. The sensations, the mind games, the role play, the pain, etc. is often the primary thing happening to the exclusion of other stuff. A surprising amount of bdsm events are just discussion groups and classes.